Dispatches

When in Saigon, Herr almost always gets stoned before going to sleep, which results in him not being able to remember his dreams. He interviews the Marines and asks if they can recall their dreams, and they tell him that “they didn’t remember their dreams either when they were in the zone, but on R&R or in the hospital their dreaming would be constant, open, violent and clear” (33). Not only does Herr go to bed stoned, he often smokes before getting out of bed.

In the Highlands, it is possible to get a pound of weed for a carton of Salems from the Montagnards, the indigenous people of the Central Highlands. Smoking with some infantrymen, one of them hands Herr a plastic bag full of what looks like dried fruit. Hungry, Herr almost reaches into the bag, “but it had a bad weight to it” (34). He realizes later that it was a bag of dried ears cut off of North Vietnamese soldiers.

Dana Stone, a photojournalist covering the war, tells a story about flying in a Chinook with a Marine’s rifle pointed straight at him. When he motions for the man to point it away, he and the other Marines just laughed.