- "I knew one fifth division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit, and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him, that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope. 'They sure give you the range, he said."
An early line from the book that features many vivid descriptions of men at war. The "Lurp" was a Long Range Recon Patrol Marine. He is nameless. Like many characters within the book, his story is told in brief, controlled bursts of blunt and gripping combat prose. I've talked to other readers of this book over the years and the story of the Lurp, even though told in only three sentences, remains vivid with them, too.
Herr's experiences are jarring, bloody and described in a new, raw combat journalist style for a new kind of war. Leveraged by a modern electronic media, fueled by drugs - the references come early and often - and bound by a Hemingway-like fascination with combat and near-death experiences, the author speaks directly to those of us wondering just what the hell went on in Vietnam. His language is blunt. He tells the stories of "kids who got wiped out by 17 years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good."
The book is not as much anti-war as it is anti - people making stupid decisions in war. The best parts (the middle two sections) describe the Tet Offensive -"the week we lost the war"- and the siege of Khe Sanh -"the Western Anchor of our Defense one month and a worthless piece of ground the next..."
There are passages in the section on Khe Sanh that jarred me as an 18 year old reader and still do, today. Herr and other journalists lived among the Marines on that base for weeks, then ask the right questions of military leaders who put young men there to be mortared and rocketed from the surrounding hills. Casualties on the base slowly mount as artillery rains in from Laos (only 7 miles away) and everyone is expecting the big attack. Are we dug in enough? What if they come in huge numbers and overrun the camp? Will this be our Dien Bien Phu? Westmoreland and division commanders seemed to simply think we were smarter than the French. But nobody who spent a lot of time at that combat base ever seriously believed this to be true. Looking back now, decades after the war, using words like arrogant only begins to describe our mistakes in Vietnam.
The last third of the book trails off to a uncertain conclusion. Then again, could it end any other way? One section - "Illumination Rounds" begins with Herr's first experience being under fire. He is in a helicopter attacked at 1000 feet. Someone is banging on the side of the chopper and men are beginning to bleed around him. His description reads like some vague nightmare: "It's just some 'thing' they are going through that isn't real..." From there, the stories keep coming, a paragraph to a few pages long. Brief periods of light on a very dark battlefield.
Herr's tribute to fellow correspondents is also in the last section of the book. He talks about fellow reporters such as Sean Flynn (the handsome son of actor Erroll) and others like him. Many were looking for an adventure, answers to why we were at war there, or simply earning a living through writing and photography. Some colleagues were killed, others wounded. Flynn disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 and has never been seen since.
To get through this book, a reader needs reference to nuts and bolts descriptions of the Vietnam conflict. Military abbreviations and nicknames of hardware, for example, are everywhere. If you dont know NVA from ARVN from Vietcong or what a deuce and a half is, the book will become muddled. Read the wiki references on Tet Offensive, the battle of Hue, and the siege of Khe Sanh before attempting to get through Dispatches.
A last word on the drug use in Dispatches. Herr casually relates using marijuana with the people he is reporting on and being stoned every night in Vietnam. He was under the influence of opium on the plane ride home. He blends in references to music from the 60's from artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. One reviewer from the New York Times called Vietnam our first "rock and roll war." True I guess, but you could almost add the words "on drugs." That might not blurb as well, but it would really nail it.
There seemed to be a certain revolutionary style to drug use by musicians and authors during the 60's and 70's. Earlier in the century, Hemingway, London, Fitzgerald and others all loved their drink and were exceptional writers. Is Herr updating or remaking the stereotype of brilliant writer / heavy substance abuser? It didnt seem like it when I read the book 30 years ago. Now I think maybe. Still, it's an amazing collection of war stories even if experienced or recounted through chemically altered states.
Dispatches, Fields of Fire, Letters from Vietnam, We Were Soldiers Once and Young. All great books for anyone interested in this difficult American war experience. There are hundreds but these are a few of my favorites.
"Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam" is a phrase used twice in the book. A radio call? A prayer? A weary lament from a young reporter who aged very quickly along with the men he chose to write about? Its not very clear as you turn over the last few pages of Dispatches. Then again, it all wasn't very clear in 1973, when the last US troops left Vietnam. Nearly four decades later, it still isn't.
