Herr, the narrator, begins by describing a map in his apartment in Saigon that he inherits from the previous tenant. The map is a relic of the past, showing Vietnam “divided into its older territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China, and to the west past Laos and Cambodge sat Siam, a kingdom” (3). The narrator then explains that this country hasn’t existed for years. Herr describes information as being flexible, that “different pieces of ground told different stories to different people” (3).

At the end of his first week as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Herr meets an information officer whose job it is to tell journalists, celebrities, politicians, and other influential people about how they had destroyed the Ho Bo Woods, “denying the enemy valuable resources and cover” (4). The narrator imagines that even the letters the information officer sends to his wife are “full of it […] And if in the months following that operation incidences of enemy activity had increased ‘significantly,’ and American losses had doubled and then doubled again, none of it was happening in any damn Ho Bo Woods, you’d better believe it […]” (4).