Summary of Michael Herr's Dispatches

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I knew one 4th Division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him.
#2 I was waiting for a helicopter to take me out of there. The rest of the team had caught a chopper straight into one of the lower hells, but it was a quiet time in the war, mostly it was lz’s and camps.
#3 The more you moved, the more you saw, and the more you saw, the more you risked death and mutilation. The system was geared to keep you mobile if that was what you wanted, but it began to make sense only if you were there to begin with.
#4 Flying over jungle was almost pure pleasure, but flying over jungle and landing in it was always painful. I never belonged in there. Maybe it was what the people had always called it, Beyond.

Sujets

• Vietnam War

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669382201
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Michael Herr's Dispatches
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I knew one 4th Division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him.

#2

I was waiting for a helicopter to take me out of there. The rest of the team had caught a chopper straight into one of the lower hells, but it was a quiet time in the war, mostly it was lz’s and camps.

#3

The more you moved, the more you saw, and the more you saw, the more you risked death and mutilation. The system was geared to keep you mobile if that was what you wanted, but it began to make sense only if you were there to begin with.

#4

Flying over jungle was almost pure pleasure, but flying over jungle and landing in it was always painful. I never belonged in there. Maybe it was what the people had always called it, Beyond.

#5

The American military was extremely drunk during the Americal Division’s camp visit. The colonel in charge could barely speak, and when he did, he said things like, We aim to make good and ensure that if the Viet Cong try anything cute, we won’t catch them with their pants down.

#6

Mobility was just mobility, it saved lives or took them. But what you really needed was a flexibility greater than anything the technology could provide. You needed to be able to accept surprises and not control everything.

#7

The ground was always in play, being swept. Under the ground was his, above it was ours. We had the air, we could get up in it but not disappear in to it, we could run but we couldn’t hide, and he could do each so well that it looked like he was doing them both at once.

#8

I remember once being offered a choice between two C-ration cans, dinner, and I’m still alive. I was grateful that I was still alive to eat the food, but I was also tired and scared.

#9

When I saw what was happening, I didn’t want to get on the helicopter, but they’d made a special landing for me. The men had been wrapped around in ponchos, some of them carelessly fastened with plastic straps, and loaded on board. I flew the rest of the way to Danang in a general’s plane.

#10

When you saw the bodies on the ground, you often fabricated a connection between a detached leg and the rest of a body, or between a body and the positions and poses that were always imposed on them.

#11

I went to cover the war, and the war covered me. I was there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, and I acted on it. I didn’t know what I was seeing until later, when I returned home and told stories.

#12

On my first day at the Kontum airstrip, I was sent from colonel to major to captain to sergeant, who told me to find another outfit to get myself killed with. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was so nervous that I started to laugh.

#13

I was walking down the street when a man suddenly stood in front of me. He didn’t exactly block me, but he didn’t move either. He looked at me and through me, no one had ever looked at me like that before.

#14

Everywhere you went, people would say, Well, I hope you get a story. And everywhere you went, you did. Everyone had a story to tell, and in the war, they were driven to tell it.

#15

The stories I heard were amazing, and I was never bored. I was always plugged into the stories and images of the war, and even the dead were telling me stories.

#16

I once mistook a bloody nose for a head wound, and I realized how I would act if I ever got hit. I never told that story to anyone, and I never returned to that outfit again.

#17

I would always go to sleep stoned in Saigon. I would wake up in the late afternoon on damp pillows, feeling the emptiness of the bed behind me as I walked to the windows looking down at Tu Do.

#18

In Vietnam, I met many Americans who were stoned all the time. They would travel the war for a hundred years just by swimming in that pool.

#19

By 7:30 p. m. , the city was beyond berserk with bikes. The air was like L. A. on short plumbing, and the subtle city war had renewed itself for another day.

#20