Dispatches

Herr recounts one of his first experiences in Vietnam. He is getting on a Chinook when a sergeant tries to stop him: “He told me I was too new to go near the kind of shit they were throwing around up in those hills” (168). But Herr has been looking forward to seeing some action. The helicopter takes eight hits from enemy fire, and Herr watches as a young man across from him is hit in the guts, and he hangs there, caught in his straps, with the dark spot of blood traveling across his torso, into his armpits, and down his sleeves. He then watches as the blood darkens his pants: “It took me a month to lose that feeling of being a spectator to something that was part game, part show” (168).

Herr meets Davies, a gunner on a hotel terrace, and is invited back to his home to get high. The man lives with a Vietnamese woman that he met in the local bars, and rents a two-story home so that her mother and brother can stay with them. Davies is depressed about the fact that his “wife” continues to work as a prostitute for the other servicemen.