Dispatches

By Micheal Herr Vintage International 1991

Review By Lance Cpl. Brandon M. Gale MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C.

"Dispatches," novelist Michael Herr's account of his time as a journalist in Vietnam from 1967-69, is a fast-paced, unsettling and darkly humorous look at the people he met and the strange things he witnessed during this unstable time in American history.

Herr's style of writing is frantic, jumping from one thought to another, sometimes within the same sentence. It takes time to get accustomed to, but it captures perfectly the frenzied atmosphere Herr experienced. The effect is like a flood of memories, each one connected in some abstract way, the links of a chain totaling a complete picture. He tells his story in the same way people write in their own personal journals.

The book begins in the middle of one of these random episodes. There is no setup, no introduction. The reader is dropped into the story without a compass and with no bearing; the feeling created is as though you entered a conversation after it had begun. Everything is already familiar and nothing gets an explanation.

Herr seems to be more interested in feelings and emotions than with questions and answers. The servicemembers and civilians he encounters do not question the political motives behind the war or other worldly affairs; they are simply trying to keep their bodies alive and minds intact.

Much of the book details the time he spent in Hue City shortly after the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the siege of the Marine base at Khe Sanh. He describes the sounds, smells and ever present danger that made Vietnam a harrowing experience.

In its review of the book, Time magazine said, some stories must be told; not because they will delight and instruct, but because they happened.

Herr's stream of conscience writing is perfectly suited to the hallucinatory nature of that terrible war, a war unlike any other our nation has fought in. He makes sense of what seems to be senseless. Through his honest observations, he shows us what war is like at its lowest levels and how it affects the people who fight it.

"Dispatches" was published in 1977 and was called the best book to have been written about the Vietnam War by The New York Times. Elements for the films Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket were pulled directly from the book.

It is a tough book to read, full of doom and paranoia, but certainly well worth the effort.

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DISCLAIMER: The reviews on these pages are the opinions of the writers and in no way reflect the official opinions or stance of the United States Marine Corps or Department of Defense.