A Reporter in Nam

Herr’s view of the Vietnam war is diffucult to interpret because at times he describes it as a hell with brutal accounts of mutilation and death. At other times, he seeks solice in the exhileration that comes from the fear.
He was there “to cover the war and the war covered me”, is easiest way to describe what he encountered. Herr was nieve at when he first got to Saigon. He writes of the moring before he was dropped off on the front lines, he had purchased fatigues and dressed up in them, stood in front of his mirror “making faces and moves I’d never make again”. He, and probably most men entering this war thought it would be like old war movies or cowboys and indians. Much later, he ends up buring this set of fatigues and with them, any misconceptions he had that a person could come out of this war the same as they went into it. Herr, personally believed that he didn’t understand what he was about to see until much later, even after he had been back in the United...