Vietnam. A word that still to this day means many things to many different people. Travellers etch across its landscape throughout the year wandering its myriad paths and villages, soaking up its cultured cities. Its people are famous for their relaxed personalities and interesting take on life. But for several thousand Vietnam War veterans, this beautiful country remains a nightmare of ferocious memories, strange drug-addled flashbacks, and the emotions of fear and loss. Recently, I was picking through a history of America in the Twentieth Century and spent some time looking at this infamous war. One of the recommended readings, I was informed, was Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Herr wrote for Esquire Magazine during the late sixties and spent two years embedded with the US forces in Vietnam. A number of years following his return Herr wrote this book as a memoir of his time in the country and a scathing overview of the human catastrophe of the conflict. I was surprised, and deeply enlivened to the book before I even began reading, to find that Herr had co-wrote Full Metal Jacket – and indeed the crisp dialogue of that film is referenced significantly in the reality of his account of the war. He went further by writing much of the voiceover in Apocalypse Now – thus acquiring a central role in the two greatest Vietnam War movies.

Having finished the memoir, it is almost impossible to convey the savage intensity of Herr’s writing. Carefully examining the warfare from the point of view of the average “grunt” the book is a masterclass in exposing the utter depravity of the war. But much more than this the book finds a voice in the American soldier, a lonely dispirited, often courageous figure – mired halfway around the world in a green and brown sludge – drowning in death. Herr draws the colour from the country leaving only the forest and hills, the blood and rounds – the bright of napalm. Almost every single page (and I am not exaggerating here) reads like an image from the previously mentioned films – except Herr’s critical voice hangs dissonant echoing through the story, suffusing the theme. He examines the madness (absolutely staggering proportions), the fear and resignation, the burly anger and, scarily, the men who enjoy the unfolding drama. The killers. He weaves a narrative through some of the main conflicts of the latter section of the war – the Tet Offensive, the intensity of the military base at Khe Sanh. To my mind his journalist feels like Private Joker. Brash yet innocent, intelligent and conflicted. Herr mentions, quite loosely, that at times he crossed the line, his correspondent shedding viewer status and sitting behind an M-16 – gathering fire, shouting down the world.

Honestly, I have read very few books that truly – comprehensively – capture the very essence of a subject. Certainly, more so when that subject is the murderous hell of warfare. You sit with the marines for a period, wallowing in the endless rain of artillery (boarding the DMZ the forces effectively resided within bombing distance all of the time) the harsh shock of rifles and the buzz of choppers. Death exists permanently within inches, millimetres. And all of the time the NVA continued to pummel endlessly – never letting up, only dying, only to be replaced – inhuman in their courage. They fought viciously at night, armed to the teeth, almost no tracer rounds; just the startle of their AK47’s their AKMs, their shouts. It is serious reading when you look at the figures: Herr discusses this only in the broad sweep – 20% survival rate in some platoons, marine night-rotations often never returning, US napalm drops kill everything, period. It is serious reading any way you want to read it – but it is also reflective; it follows men into a war and explores their reactions, their humanity. Whether that humanity disappears into malevolence, or is shattered by madness and leaves an empty vessel where a grunt can exist on instinct, natural to the world around him, a marine, a Cav, whatever.