Dispatches

by Michael Herr

It was a characteristic of a lot of Americans in Vietnam to have no idea of when they were being obscene, and some correspondents fell into that, writing their stories from the daily releases and battlegrams, tracking them through with the cheer-crazed language of the MACV Information Office, things like “discreet burst” (one of those tore an old grandfather and two children to bits as they ran along a paddy wall one day, at least according to the report made later by the gunship pilot), “friendly casualties” (not warm, not fun), “meeting engagement” (ambush), concluding usually with 17 or 117 or 317 enemy dead and American losses “described as light.” There were correspondents who had the same sensibility concerning the dead as the Command had: Well, in a war you’ve got to expect a little mud to get tracked over the carpet, we took a real black eye but we sure gave Charlie a shitstorm, we consider this a real fine kill ratio, real fine.… There was a well-known correspondent of three wars who used to walk around the Danang press center with a green accountant’s ledger. He’d sit down to talk and begin writing everything you’d say, entering it in, so to speak. The Marines arranged for a special helicopter (or “fragged a chopper,” as we used to call it) to take him in and out of Khe Sanh one afternoon, weeks after it had become peaceful again. He came back very cheerful about our great victory there. I was sitting with Lengle, and we recalled that, at the very least, 200 grun...