Dispatches by Michael herr

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"He seems to have brought to this book the ear of a musician and the eye of a painter; the premier war correspondence of Vietnam." Washington Post.

"The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time." John le Carre.

"Dispatches puts the rest of us in the shade." Hunter S. Thompson.

Dispatches is a New Journalism book by Michael Herr that describes the author's experiences in Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine. First published in 1977, Dispatches was one of the first pieces of American literature that allowed Americans to understand the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War. At a time when many veterans would say little about their experiences during the war, Dispatches allowed for an experience and understanding of the war like no other source to date. The book is noted for a visceral, literary style which distinguishes it from more mundane and accurate historical accounts. Several of the fictional (composite character) soldiers mentioned in the book were used as the basis for characters in the movies Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
The helicopter gunner scene from Full Metal Jacket is taken directly from Dispatches: the upshot of which is that the gunner finds it easy to kill women and children because they only require less of a lead (meaning, to compensate less for their movement in aiming his weapon, since they presumably run more slowly than men).
The scene in Apocalypse Now where an M79 is fired at an unseen screaming Vietnamese soldier was also taken from this book.
Herr served as a writer on both films and was nominated for an Oscar for Full Metal Jacket, for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Dispatches was reprinted in 2009 by Everyman's Library as a contemporary classic.
Most of the content of Dispatches was material previously published in magazines, including the chapters "Khe Sanh", "Illumination Rounds", "Colleagues", and "Hell Sucks" (the only piece published while Herr was in Vietnam). The first and last chapters ("Breathing In" and "Breathing Out") were written subsequently, and are markedly different in tone. (The previously published articles are more objective than the subsequent pieces, which have all the marks of an author struggling with depression.)
Featured prominently in the book are the journalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone and the photojournalist Tim Page. Only briefly does Herr mention that the first two were captured and presumed dead.




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