As a correspondent in the Vietnam War, Michael Herr experienced first hand the Tet Offensive, the siege of Khe Sanh, and the battle of Hue. In Dispatches, which I believe was first published in 1977, Herr describes multiple facets of the war as seen through his eyes, as filtered through his consciousness, and as wrung through his conscience.
Much of what Dispatches describes is not news to me; the Vietnam War has been something of a hot topic since I was a little girl listening to the casualty counts on the evening news. However, Herr's account is so rewarding, so riveting, that I hated to put it down. Combining rich descriptions of the milieu - landscape, city, or awesome, ghastly destruction - with unforgettable portraits of grunts and officials, fellow correspondents and super sappers, he fills in the outlines of what I already knew with vivid color.
The themes of the book are military malpractice, political bullshit, and, of course and above all, death. Also, Herr's (and everyone else's) love-hate relationship with war. And his attempt to reconcile the unreconcilable. And the sheer inevitability of it all. He writes, "There'd been nothing there that hadn't already existed here, coiled up and waiting, back in the World."
Epic and intimate, humorous and horrible, Herr's account is never simplistic and almost always fascinating. The only part that falls short for me is the section about his colleagues in the press corps; though many of the portraits are well drawn, for me they rarely measure up to those in the remaining chapters of the narrative.
Still, I enthusiastically recommend this book for those interested in the Vietnam War, and for those interested in war generally. Men and war. Yep, men and war.
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