Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Matterhorn [It’s not a book so much as a deployment, and you will not return unaltered]



I have no combat experience.  I never led Marines in a jungle in a war that had no strategic objective.  I have never commanded troops who would die on my watch.  I don’t pretend to have even the remotest grasp of the experiences outlined in Matterhorn, and I don’t assume to be 1/1000th the human that Marlantes (or Mellas, or Hawke, or Fitch, or Goodwin, or Cortell, or Jackson, or Vancouver, or…) are.  Those people (especially Marlantes) make people like me feel like insignificant pukes, and I am grateful for that.  Awhile ago, I had some military training and limited military experience, both of which inform my reading and give me the proper vocabulary to read Matterhorn with a degree of technical ease. 

That said, this book is astonishing.  It is painfully conceived of real war experience, laboriously gestated over 30+ years, and brilliantly executed in its telling of the horrors of battle and the graceless beauty of the warriors who fight.  Upon finishing the book, I wanted to immediately reread it. 

I hate when people ask what a book is about.  A novel is almost never “about” the plotline, but usually about the book’s themes and overarching message.  In this case, Matterhorn is both.  It is about a company of grunts fighting their battles in the Quang-Tri province of Vietnam, during monsoon season.  It is about the people and events of a specific time and place.  It is also about humanity, compassion, race-relations, brotherhood, manhood, ambition, patriotism, war, survival, God, and evil. 

A summary from Sebastian Jungerman, writing for the NYT Book Review:

The story is told from the point of view of a young second lieutenant, Mellas, who joined the Marines for confused and vaguely patriotic reasons that are quickly left in tatters by military incompetence. At great psychic and physical cost, Mellas and the rest of Bravo Company, Fifth Marine Division, climb a steep mountain near the intersection of Laos and the DMZ separating North and South Vietnam, then build an outpost capable of withstanding enemy artillery. As soon as they finish, they are told to abandon it because they are needed for a large operation farther south. There ensues a multiweek stagger through impenetrable jungle, the company plagued by lack of food, lack of ammunition and inadequate resupply. One man is killed by a tiger. Another dies of cerebral malaria. Starving to death and bearing a dead friend on a pole, the men of Bravo Company finish their mission and are allowed a brief rest at one of the main support bases.

Soon enough, however, they are ordered to retake Matterhorn, which has since been occupied by the enemy. It is there, on the flanks of their own outpost, that the horror and absurdity of war are finally played out.
Marlantes unceremoniously drops us into the bush and assaults our senses.  At once we are submerged in monsoon rains, jungle rot, leeches, acrid smoke, fear, hunger, cold, and exhaustion.  In that world, we learn the men around us, we come to love them all. 

I can say from experience, there is no job in the world like platoon leader.  I was a combat bridging platoon leader in Korea, leading 75 soldiers and a fleet of equipment, at the age of 23.  That would have been a ripe old age in the setting of Matterhorn, where platoon commanders are barely drinking age yet leading teenagers with deadly weapons on missions to kill.  A company commander would be about 25 and making decisions that would send teenagers home in body bags, before they could even experience adulthood.  As a platoon leader in the Army, I loved every aspect of the job and the people – I even loved the things I hated.

The descriptions of combat tedium are so real.  I read in an interview where Marlantes scorned Hollywood’s need to make entertainment out of war.  There is nothing entertaining or glorious about war, not tactically, not strategically.  Marlantes takes us into the little routines of the combat Marine’s life.  Readers looking for entertainment might not appreciate these intricacies, but I value truth and this book exudes it. 

I have felt the disorientation of navigating terrain with zero moon illumination.  I have made leadership decisions in the mental cloud of operating 48 hours with no sleep.  I have posted guard in a sandbag bunker, in the rain, cold and hungry, wondering why I wasn’t warm and comfortable with my buddies back home.  I have carried a weapon and full pack over mountainous terrain and desert, with blisters and sprained joints.  I did none of these things in conditions of any real consequence, and I knew they would all soon end with me sleeping, full bellied, freshly showered, in a safe warm bed.   I am thankful to have glimpsed the life of a soldier, but I have never been called upon to make any real sacrifices.  I have never been truly tested, and I will die wondering what I am made of. 


All the trite descriptions work here: harsh, gritty, brilliant, devastating, powerful, riveting, horrifying, phenomenal, staggering, beautiful, intense, heartbreaking, genius.  I highly recommend Matterhorn to everyone. 


Read Karl Marlantes' Navy Cross citation here.  (Reads a lot like a chapter from the novel.  Marlantes also graduated from Yale and was a Rhodes scholar - before serving in Vietnam)


Read Sebastian Jungerman’s NYT  review here. (from which this post title was quoted)

I highlighted too many passages to quote.  Half the book is quotable.  Just go read the book and highlight it yourself.

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like an excellent read. For some reason I am particularly drawn to military books from the VietNam War era.

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  2. I too am drawn into military books from the VietNam War era.

    And Raina, I was drawn to this site, reading and following along before I discovered you are writing it. Wonderful pages you have here.

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  3. Have you read Band of Brothers? I am drawn more towards non-fiction books about the battles of WWII. But Like you I am less about the entertainment of it and more truth and details in the battles of the 20 Century. I am currently reading Miracle of Dunkirk and bought Band of Brothers last week. Which would you recommend first Matterhorn or B of B?

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  4. mrkmommy, sorry it is taking me so long to reply. I'll just say that I have a lot going on. I have only read portions of Band of Brothers. I liked Matterhorn better. It is a novel, but very straightforward and real. Parts of it are clearly memoir, as you can tell from reading Marlantes' Navy Cross Citation. I can 100%, with all my enthusiasm, recommend that you read Matterhorn as soon as possible. It is exceptional.

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  5. Thank you for your response; unfortunately, I didn't see it sooner so I have started BofB already. But I will definitely buy Matterhorn next.

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