Hell Sucks by Michael Herr
Michael Herr spent six years trying unsuccessfully to get into the pages of Esquire when he approached Harold Hayes about being the magazine’s Vietnam correspondent in the spring of 1967. Though the anti-war movement had begun, Herr still needed to make a case for why Esquire should devote considerable space to the conflict. In a letter to Hayes, he wrote: “As an overwhelming, unavoidable fact of our time, it goes deeper than anything my generation has known, even deeper, I’m afraid, than Kennedy’s murder. No matter when it ends or how it ends, it will leave a mark on this country like the trail of slime that a sand slug leaves, a lasting taint.” Herr was in Vietnam during the TET Offensive and “Hell Sucks” was the first of several devastating pieces of reportage he wrote for the magazine, later collected in his seminal book, Dispatches. Herr later contributed to the writing of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.