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. As they smoke, a few friends join them at the house, and one of them tells Davies that since he has so little time left on his tour, he should leave the woman, which Davies is considering.

At one point, Herr is trying to catch a helicopter to Pleiku, and he meets an African-American Marine who tells Herr that he is really an agent for the Panthers, sent over to recruit members from the troops. Later, he tells Herr that he is just playing with him, but when the man gets on his helicopter headed for Dak To, he raises his fist in “the Sign” (181).

When one of his medics gets wounded, a sergeant calls repeatedly for a medevac, but none comes. After two hours, he sees a helicopter from another outfit and is able to make radio contact with the pilot. The pilot tells the sergeant that they are not going to land, and he will have to wait for a helicopter from his own unit. The sergeant tells the pilot that if he does not pick up his wounded medic he is going to have the helicopter shot down. The helicopter does pick up the wounded Marine, but the sergeant is later called by his commander, who questions the sergeant’s professionalism. The sergeant says he waited as long as he could without losing the man. The commander responds, “This outfit is perfectly capable of taking care of its own dirty laundry” (183). When the sergeant questions the commander on his use of the term “dirty laundry” to describe a wounded Marine, the call goes dead.