Dispatches

The disconnect between what the higher ups in Command are telling the correspondents, and what the correspondents are actually experiencing in the field, is explored in this chapter.

Herr travels to Dong Ha with Karsten Prager, a correspondent with Time, who has been covering the war on and off for three years. When they get there, they request an interview with the commander, General Tompkins. Tompkins offers the correspondents packs of cigarettes, and sits down to listen to a long, intricate question from Prager involving “weather variants, air capability, elevation and range of our big guns, his big guns, problems of supply and reinforcement and (apologetically) disengagement and evacuation” (148).

The general explains that he is hard of hearing and asks Prager to repeat the question. As Prager restates the question, Herr’s mind drifts to the Marines in Khe Sanh, especially Mayhew. Prager ends his question with, “what I want to know is, what if [the North Vietnamese] decides to attack at Khe Sanh and, at the same time, [the North Vietnamese] attacks at every single base the Marines have set up to support Khe Sanh, all across the DMZ?” (149).