"Matterhorn," by decorated Marine Corps Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes, is about Vietnam, yes, but the war images he describes with full intensity, anguish and emotion could be about any war at any time in history.
Reading "Matterhorn" is like being right there in the dark-green wet jungle with the young Marines, fighting an officer's battle.
The leeches are attaching themselves, the jungle rot is eating away at feet, the thirst is palpable and the exhaustion is as heavy and thick as the air on Matterhorn.
"It was all absurd, without reason or meaning," Marlantes writes.
"People who didn't even know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about."
Matterhorn is a hilltop in South Vietnam near the Demilitarized Zone, where Marine Corps Bravo Company is based throughout the 600-page novel.
Most of the story is seen through the eyes of 2nd Lt. Mellas, an Ivy League-educated 21-year-old with a cynical yet brave outlook on life in the jungle.
Mellas' weariness reaches a point at which the war all becomes clear:
"Mellas now knew, with utter certainty, that the North Vietnamese would never quit. They would continue the war until they were annihilated. ... He stood there, looking at the waste."
But more than a mountain, more than a battle, this book is about the boys who fight it.
And they are boys, in their teens and 20s and already aging like old men.
They "cry openly like small children who needed to be fed and tucked into bed."
The "smears of purple and orange Kool-Aid on their lips combined with the fear in their eyes to make them look like children returning from a birthday party at which the hostess had shown horror films."
Marlantes writes descriptively and with language that doesn't hold back or apologize for its rudeness, coarseness or rawness.
He knows what to write because he was there. Marlantes graduated from Yale University and served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded numerous medals, including two Purple Hearts.
"Matterhorn" was written over the course of 30 years. It is not a political book. It is just an honest one.
The imagery is intense: The pus runs, the blood oozes and the thirst of the men makes a glass of water seem like a luxury.
The loneliness, sadness and confusion of the soldiers is revealing; it shows a world we think we know, but it's a world where only those who were there truly know.
The men often have a sick feeling that comes with doing the job but not knowing what the job really is.
A 24th Regiment commander observes the viciousness around him:
"The Marines seemed to be killing people with no objective beyond the killing itself. ... He [Col. Mulvaney] tried to ignore it by doing his job, which was killing people."
Mellas is Marlantes' voice. He is one soldier, but he is also every soldier.
"He [Mellas] ran as he'd never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided into opposites and his side had already been chosen for him, his only choice being whether or not to play his part with heart and courage. He ran because fate had placed him in a position of responsibility and he had accepted the burden. He ran because his self-respect required it. He ran because he loved his friends and this was the only thing he could do to end the madness that was killing and maiming them."
Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded American military operations in Vietnam from 1964-1968, said, "War is fear cloaked in courage."
In "Matterhorn," as in other war novels, we see fear.
But more than anything, we see courage.
Read more: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/290225#ixzz1CBHQrxL6
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