T

WO HUNDRED meters away, facing the Marine trenches, there was an NVA sniper... who shot at the Marines from a tiny spider hole. During the day he fired at anything that rose above the sandbags, and at night he fired at any lights he could see. You could see him clearly from the trench, and if you were looking through the scope of a Marine sniper's rifle you could even see his face. The Marines fired on his position with mortars and recoilless rifles, and he would drop into his hole and wait. Gunships fired rockets at him, and when they were through he would come up again and fire. Finally napalm was called in, and for ten minutes the air above the spider hole was black and orange from the strike, while the ground around it was galvanized clean of every living thing. When all of it cleared, the sniper popped up and fired off a single round, and the Marines in the trenches cheered. They called him Luke the Gook, and after that no one wanted anything to happen to him.


—Dispatches
© 1968 by Michael Herr
Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1977
Excerpt taken fom the First Vintage International Edition (1991) pp. 125-126