47 pages • 1 hour read
Michael HerrA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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When Herr gets back to Khe Sanh, he brings heat tablets with him, so that the Marines can heat up their rations for the first time in who knows how long. He also brings alcohol with him. His kindness toward the “grunts” is returned in how they take care of him and the other correspondents. They make sure he always has an untorn pair of fatigues, a flak jacket, a helmet, and a stretcher to sleep on. When he and the Marines in the bunker wake up to automatic fire, he finds that one of them, Mayhew, is leaning over him, probably to protect him from any incoming fire.
Herr meets Day Tripper and Mayhew:
one a big Negro with a full mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth, a mean, signifying mustache that would have worked if only there had been the smallest trace of meanness anywhere on his face. He was at least six-three and quarterback thick […] The other Marine was white, and if I’d seen him first from the back I would have said that he was eleven years old (115).
Although roughly the same age, Day Tripper shows greater maturity of the two, and tries to protect Mayhew from himself. On the back of Day Tripper’s helmet, he has “carefully drawn a full calendar where each day served is marked off with an X” (116). When Day Tripper finds out that Mayhew has extended his tour for four months, he’s so upset that it is a while before he can talk to Mayhew again.
Orrin, a friend of Mayhew’s, gets a letter from his wife admitting that the child she’s carrying was conceived after he had left for his tour. She refuses to name the father, saying only that it’s a good friend of his. Because Orrin becomes hell bent on surviving Vietnam so that he can return to Tennessee and murder his wife, he becomes something of a lucky charm. The other men believe that his obsession with revenge is going to allow him to live out his tour, and Herr and the other Marines feel safer when he is close by.
One night, when they are woken up by machine gun fire, Mayhew and Herr leave their bunker to find out what is going on. It turns out that three North Vietnamese soldiers were caught at the wire. Two were killed, but the third is only injured, and he is shrieking in pain. A Marine with an M-79 points his gun at the injured man:
There was an enormous flash on the wire 200 meters away, a spray of orange sparks, and then everything was still except for the roll of some bombs exploding kilometers away and the sound of the M-79 being opened, closed again and returned to the holster (143).
This is the first time that traditional scenes with recurring characters, other than Herr, are implemented. Before this, Herr has encounters with other characters, but they are one offs, and rarely do the characters have names. Only a couple of the other correspondents, Flynn and Dana, pop up occasionally with a quote or an anecdote.
Herr has said that Day Tripper and Mayhew are fictional characters. One of the effects of having these two recurring characters that are given detailed descriptions and their own distinct voices is to play with time. Up until this chapter, Herr is bouncing from one exchange to the other, giving the impression of never landing. When he gets to Day Tripper and Mayhew in Khe Sanh, time seems to slow down as we’re given a chance to get to know these two teenage soldiers.
Another effect of giving the reader the opportunity to get to know these two characters is that now we can put a name and a face to the fear and carnage these soldiers both face and mete out. Through Day Tripper and Mayhew, we become more invested in the war as a whole.