Michael Herr (1940–2016)

This is a tremendous book. It reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its emotional impact, but was probably even a bit stronger.
To me, its strength is in its capacity to see and discuss the emotional impact of war and senseless slaughter on the otherwise good, gentle young men who would ordinarily never have done such things.
There are many books about war written by historians, journalists and others, but few written with the authentic gut wrenching pain that can only show more come from someone who has been there.
Both the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead American casualties and WW I were senseless stupidities entered into not for the good of the country, but for the good of the “military industrial complex” described by Eisenhower.
This books mentions US bombers dropping 120,000,000 pounds of explosives on a small area in one week and accomplishing nothing militarily important except reinforcing the resolve of the “enemy” to expel us from THEIR country. How much money did the “defense” contractors make on 120,000,000 pounds of explosives? Why is life so cheap? show less

Snappy writing, mixing up war reporting with lots of memoir episodes and anecdotes, about a quarter of the material becomes a bit navel gazing about the war reporters themselves and a vietnamese perspective is essentially missing.
The anger is here, the waste, the lack of a goal. But what this isn't, is some kind of history of the Vietnam war, even in part. Khe Sanh features heavily, but only with an indirect eye. This is a slice in time, with quick sketch portraits of named and unnamed show more soldiers, brief encounters, great quotes. It all felt very Hunter S Thompson and it made sense in retrospect as this is categorized in the "new journalism" style (he'd call it gonzo), which calls into question how accurate this all is. Reviews by veterans suggest it rings true, but is that in the sense of capturing the vibe rather than the literal truth of what happened? As Herzog suggests in his own memoirs, the literal truth can be less True than the fictionalized account.
What did we learn here? A bit of the trough every Vietnam movie has been siphoning inspiration from, and not just in the sense of the capsule moments, but the style, a roving camera circling our protagonist storyteller as waves of horror, boredom and action wash over him in a conflict he doesn't understand or particularly wants to fight. show less

In Dispatches Michael Herr recaptures his time in Vietnam in a vivid and stylishly harsh manner. As an independent journalist, he was able to choose which story to follow and often would catch helicopter rides between locations. He covered a huge part of Vietnam, including Saigon, Khe Shan and Hue. This is an excellent read about Vietnam but it is full of fear, death and the ravaging effect that this war had on both the people there and America as a whole.

He was able to get up close and show more personal with the serving soldiers and it is here, with a backdrop of rock and roll music, the psychological effects of drugs and the general demoralization of the troops, that one gets the clearest picture of the turmoil and uncertainty that the average grunt was facing. In covering the war, Michael Herr became one of them, eating their food, smoking their joints, and sharing their bunkers as bombs fell around them. One particular story of him being the only living passenger on a chopper full of body bags was particularly harrowing.

Michael Herr guides his reader through the craziness that was Vietnam and by the end of the book I felt numb and drained. From the chaos to the inhumanity, Herr doesn’t flinch from showing us the way it was. show less

Michael Herr’s Dispatches is an unfiltered view of his time as a field journalist in Vietnam. It provides to the reader the fears and the daily struggles of the grunts, both army and marines from Danang to the Siege of Khe Sanh, through Tet and from the Mekong to the Central Highlands.

Herr speaks of the disconnect between the average soldier/marine and company level officer from field level officers who who were preaching only the gospel of the body count.

Herr illustrates the fears of the show more average soldier who constantly feared of their own death or wounding, the death of friends both soldier and fellow journalists and how he dealt with Vietnam as did many soldiers with the generous use of pot and alcohol.

Just as The Best and the Brightest, Neil Sheehans,A Bright Shining Lie, David Hackworth’s About Face, Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam, and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, Michael Herr’s Dispatches is a must read. show less