Matterhorn [Paperback]

This is a book that can cause obsession since having devoted nearly every waking hour of the past week to reading this gripping tale it haunts you long after you turn the last page. Let me stress however that it was time well spent and it pales in comparison to the massive investment of passion, memory and catharsis that eventually took Vietnam War veteran Karl Marlantes some 35 years to write this great book. It is based on the Vietnamese conflict with its title drawn from the codename for a remote, mountainous military outpost which was a "firebase" constructed by Marines, near the demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating North and South Vietnam and near Laos. The basic story revolves around the fact that having invested huge energy into taking this mountainous base the marines are firstly ordered to abandon it and then bafflingly retake it shortly after.

This short description should not hide the fact that "Matterhorn" is a book of brazen ambition and sometimes difficult complexity. Marlantes narrative is relentless and punishing, not least in its description of collective mass of bugs, leeches and bites which have you almost itching as the marines "hump" through the impenetrable Vietnamese jungle with its larger and more dangerous horror of fierce tigers. I recently reviewed Gene Sledge's great non fiction work on the pacific war "With the old Breed" which is a harrowing and mind-numbingly vivid description of the combat zone. Reading "Matterhorn" I was struck how Marlantes, a decorated former Marine, draws on his own front line experience of Vietnam to construct its near fictional equivalent.

The story play outs viewed through the lens of a young (21 years old) second lieutenant, Waino Mellas, who like Charlie Sheen's character in the film "Platoon" joins the Marines with a bundle of motives but mostly confused notions of patriotism which are blown apart by the military debacle that he walks into. "So what's new" you ask, since thwarted idealism and steady military disillusion are the basic template of a vast number of war novels? The answer to this question is that the book does indeed follow some classical tenets of the war novel. But in addition what "Matterhorn" does is take this and mould it into something bigger and bolder not least when brilliantly tackling the sheer self serving callousness of rear echelon officer politics with their "strategic career choices" or the rampant omnipresent racism which pervaded this conflict whether between the black and white "grunts" or the visceral hatred of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). Marlantes makes a point however of not preaching and recognising that in war "good" and "evil" are shifting sands and that survival is the only imperative, as Private Joker stated in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket "the dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive".

There are times in the first part of this book where you do feel overwhelmed by huge weight of military detail and minutia, relentless pre-combat tension and the sheer multitude of characters, but stick with it, since the pace and tension builds throughout. The role of the bitter and twisted alcoholic Lieutenant Colonel Simpson is a key factor, while the more experienced veteran a marine named Hawke is probably the most sympathetic portrayal in the book. The journey throughout the book for Mellas is the well travelled path from novice to veteran but the underpinning journey is about the cruel removal of hope epitomised by the following passage - "Mellas knew, in his rational mind, that if there was no afterlife, death was no different from sleep. But this cruel flood was not from his rational mind. It had none of the ephemerality of thought. It was as real as the mud he sat in. Thought was just more of the nothing that he had done all his life. The fact of his eventual death shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. He could only squeal in pain."

The book is full of insightful writing and throughout an anger boils underneath it. In one sense Matterhorn reveals Marlantes own blinkered and frustrated view of his experience and the novel does have some faults. Ever since Graham Greene penned the Quiet American some Vietnam novels have struggled to capture a picture which is often more vivid in fact. Indeed in this reviewers opinion the greatest Vietnam books are either pure history such as Karnow's political tome, or alternatively eye witness accounts like Herr's "Dispatches" or Mason's "Chickenhawk". What is special about "Matterhorn" is that Marlantes has written a fictional work to stand aside this great war literature and the combat scenes are brilliantly portrayed. Overall it is a vivid, troubling, wrenching and timeless book of a terrible journey. An unforgettable read.

"(Filling sandbags,) the small E-tool burned his blisters and sores. He watched the blood and pus from the jungle rot on his fingers and wrists smear in with the mud and rainwater. He paused occasionally to wipe his hands on his trousers, not even thinking that he had to sleep in them. Everything soon had the same greasy consistency anyway, mixing in with the urine that he couldn't quite cut off because he was so cold, the semen from his last wet dream, the cocoa he'd spilled the day before, the snot he rubbed off, the pus from his skin ulcers, the blood from the popped leaches, and the tears he wiped away so nobody would see that he was homesick." - A teenage Marine in the field, in MATTERHORN

MATTERHORN is the phenomenal first-novel by Karl Marlantes about the experience of being a Marine infantryman in Vietnam. Even if you didn't know (from the book's back cover) that the author is a veteran of that conflict, you'd know from the very first page that he'd been there and experienced or witnessed all it had to offer: the mud, leeches, jungle rot, immersion foot, drenching rain, fog, mosquitoes, tigers, C-rations, dank hooches, weaponry, scout dogs, jungle marches, razor-sharp elephant grass, barbed wire, entrenchments, infantry assaults, mortar attacks, battlefield first-aid, perilous helicopter missions, racism, fraggings, exhaustion, supply failures, death of friends, horrific wounds, land mines, incompetent command leadership, ammunition shortages, dysentery, close-up and personal killing, terror, boredom, homesickness, short-timer sticks, and blood-lust. Also, the simple pleasures of a warm Coke or hot coffee on the front lines or a cold beer and cleansing shower in the relative relaxation of a rear staging area.

The novel's hero is Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, the boot commander of the First Platoon, Bravo Company, First Battalion, Twenty-Fourth Regiment, Fifth Marine Division. At the opening of the narrative, Bravo Company occupies Fire Support Base Matterhorn in the jungle highlands of northwest South Vietnam in the corner formed by the Demilitarized Zone and Laos.

All of the combat action takes place on or around Matterhorn, a wretched hill of no inherent value except as a strategic position from which to engage and interdict the North Vietnamese Army. To battalion and regimental command, it's but a map coordinate. To the grunt Marines, it's a place where they're sent to die or be maimed.

To Mellas, a Marine Reserve officer out of Princeton University, Matterhorn is the forge that will make him a combat leader. And, while he'll come to realize the futility of the conflict that was America's Vietnam imbroglio, he will also come to value the camaraderie, loyalty and true grit demonstrated by a group of young men - not much more than overgrown kids, really - in desperate circumstances far from home.

Fiction writers can go their entire careers and not pen a novel as powerful as this debut work by Marlantes. At 566 pages, plus a 31-page Appendix that's a "Glossary of Weapons, Technical Terms, Slang, and Jargon", MATTERHORN was of intimidating size before I read the opening sentence. Before long, I resented having to put the book down. This is a tribute to the Vietnam veteran and the Marine Corps, and may be one of the most vivid and compelling literary renderings you'll read all year. And you will, or should, appreciate even more the young Americans in harm's way in the country's contemporary overseas conflicts.

I read the novel primarily because I had served as an Army infantry lieutenant in Vietnam during 1967 and 1968. Generally I prefer to read non-fiction and have not read a novel of the Vietnam War since Tim O'Brien's 1979 novel, Going After Cacciato. I found myself becoming immersed as the author was dealing with similar issues such as gaining the respect of his men upon his arrival. There were some errors to my mind, such as the cotton bandoliers that we wore diagonally across our chests held seven magazines -- not twenty, or claymores were not detonated by "pulling a cord," but rather by squeezing a handheld electrical detonator (clacker) when we were out on ambush, though if were inside our company perimeter at night we would simply rig our claymores to trip wires (before inserting the blasting cap into the top of the mine); additionally, Dapsone was not used to ameliorate against jungle rot, but rather was taken in conjunction with Primaquine to mitigate against Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Still I feel that Marlantes truthfully depicted the youth of the Marines in his dialogues, who for the most part were nineteen and twenty years of age. Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross, which earns my respect. Up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where I served until September 1968 I did not observe any racial problems out in the bush, and the majority of the soldiers in my platoon were blacks. Morale in the Army up through 1968 was actually quite high. Marlantes is describing the war during 1969, a time when morale had begun to plummet after the introduction of Nixon's "Vietnamization" Plan, as soldiers no longer wanted to be the last man killed in a war from which our political leaders intended to disengage. I fought in a different war, up in the Highlands, through 1968, the bloodiest year of the entire war, we soldiers out in the bush on our search and destroy missions still believed. We sincerely believed we were fighting the good fight and beating back the communist onslaught, and that our comrades had not died in vain. To my mind Marlantes accurately portrayed the Marine experience up along the DMZ. I'm pleased that Vietnam Vets are continuing to tell their stories, each of which adds another layer of understanding for students of history -- after the Veterans are gone.

A. T. Lawrence, author of Crucible Vietnam