When I think of it quickly, just seeing the name somewhere or being asked what it was like, I see a flat, dun stretch of ground running out in an even plane until the rim of the middle distance takes on the shapes and colors of jungled hills. I had the strangest, most thrilling kind of illusion there, looking at those hills and thinking about the death and mystery that was in them. I would see the thing I knew I actually saw: the base from the ground where I stood, figures moving across it, choppers rising from the pad by the strip, and the hills above. But at the same time I would see the other, too; the ground, the troops and even myself, all from the vantage of those hills. It was a double vision that came to me more than once there. And in my head, sounding over and over, were the incredibly sinister words of the song we had all heard for the first time only days before. The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away, it promised, Coming to take you away, dy-ing to take you away.... That was a song about Khe Sahn; we knew it then, and it still seems so. --Michael Herr, from Dispatches https://youtube/watch?v=n4_TXuU9ars&list=PL4E9DE5384C195CB6
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 20:13:53 +0000
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