Dispatches

by Michael Herr

I thought about the grunts who had sat in a circle one night with a guitar, singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Jack Laurence of CBS News had asked them if they knew what that song meant to so many people, and they said, Yes, yes, they knew. I thought about the graffiti that John Wheeler had discovered on a latrine wall there, “I think I’m falling in love with Jake,” and about the grunts who had gone running up the trenchline to find a stretcher for me to sleep on, about Mayhew’s space blanket, about the kid who had mailed a gook ear home to his girl and could not understand now why she had stopped writing to him. I thought of the thirteen Marine maneuver battalions deployed across the Z and of the brutality and sweetness they contained, all the ways they had of saying their thanks, even though they knew you were crazy for being there. I thought about the Marines at Khe Sanh on this night; it would be about the forty-fifth night of the shelling, the Flood had not lasted this long. Prager was still talking, the general was still nodding and touching his fingertips together and the question was almost finished. “General,” Prager said, “what I want to know is, what if he decides to attack at Khe Sanh and, at the same time, he attacks at every single base the Marines have set up to support Khe Sanh, all across the DMZ?” And I thought, Please, General, say “God forbid!” Let your hands fly up, let involuntary shudders rack your spare, tough frame. Remember Langvei. Rememb...