The Book on Vietnam
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237183
Karl Marlantes's epic 'Matterhorn' is the novel the war has been waiting for.
By Steve Kroft | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 30, 2010
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010
It took only the opening paragraphs of Karl Marlantes's epic Vietnam
novel, Matterhorn, to transport me 40 years back in time, stirring
sensory perceptions, memories, and emotions that I had either
forgotten or pushed into the recesses of my mind. The smell of open
latrines mixed with aviation fuel, the chill of the cold monsoon rain
near the DMZ, "the washboard thumping" of helicopters "fighting for
altitude as they skimmed over the treetops and under the cloud cover"
to resupply a mountain outpost littered with tree stumps and
sandbags. If you want to know what that war was really like and what
was asked of the men who fought it, you will do no better than this book.
It took Marlantesa Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar who earned the
Navy Cross, a Bronze Star, two Navy commendation medals for valor,
and two Purple Hearts for his service as a Marine lieutenant in
Vietnam33 years to write, rewrite, and find a publisher for
Matterhorn, but the finished product shows no signs of the ordeal.
Reviewers with far more literary credentials than this one have
called it a masterpiece, comparing it to The Naked and the Deadand A
Farewell to Arms.
The story itself is a microcosm of the Vietnam War. A rifle company
of 200 Marines is dropped into a vast stretch of jungle and
fog-shrouded mountains just a few kilometers from North Vietnam and
the Laotian border, by far the most isolated and inhospitable part of
the entire country. Their job is to seek out and kill elements of the
North Vietnamese Army and disrupt the movements of troop and supplies
into heavily populated coastal plains. The enemy's presence is always
felt but rarely seen until the mood of "monotony and fatigue" is
broken by the "clean cold terror" of combat.
The title of the book draws its name from a firebase the Marines are
ordered to build atop one of the nameless mountains in the area,
"which has the misfortune of being a little bit taller than the
others." Its peak is "flattened and shorn of vegetation" with C-4
explosives, and fortified with deep, secure bunkers designed to
withstand an enemy assault. But as soon as the Marines complete the
task, they are ordered to abandon it, ceding the base and the high
ground to the North Vietnamese, whom they will later have to drive
from the very fortifications they built.
It is but one of the stupid decisions made in the rear area by
clueless commanders with "pink faces" and "starched fatigues, who
move men and artillery around on a map, and cover their asses with
paperwork." Majors and lieutenant colonels obsessed with body counts
and regulation haircuts care more about their next promotion than the
welfare of their troops.
The protagonist is a young lieutenant named Mellas, who arrives in
Vietnam with new fatigues and shiny black boots, fresh from the Ivy
League and Officer Training School, and must assume command of a
platoon filled with battle-hardened teenagers and infected with many
of the social ills that plagued the military, and American society,
in 1969. There are minor mutinies ("What are they going to do, cut
off our hair and send us to Vietnam?"), an undercurrent of racial
tension fed by the black-power politics of H. Rap Brown and Huey
Newton, and resentments that provoke plots to "frag" (i.e., kill)
their superiors.
At first, Mellas has no idea what he is doing, and, like the reader,
no idea of what is in store for him, but he feels his way through the
confusion until his tattered fatigues have the same smell and greasy
consistency of everyone else's, smeared with blood, urine, snot, and tears.
It is a world where there are no clear objectives, no talk of
victory, and the only goal is making it through the day alivea place
where the Marine's valor and courage are motivated by a sense of
duty, a responsibility to his brothers in arms, and his own will to
survive, although there are many moments when death in battle seems
the path of least resistance and the only merciful means of escape.
The North Vietnamese are not the only adversaries. There are leeches,
jungle rot, immersion foot, malaria, dysentery, hypothermia, hunger,
exhaustion, and tigers.
But the book is also filled with truth, wisdom, love, and a rich vein
of dark gallows humor. ("You've got to relax, Mellas, otherwise you
will never learn to love it out here.") It was clearly a labor of
love for Marlantes, carefully constructed and beautifully realized
with dozens of memorable characters.
At 592 pagesincluding maps, a chain of command for the principal
characters, their radio call signs, and a 20-page glossary of
weapons, technical terms, slang, and jargonthe book might seem
daunting to some, but it needs to be approached as a tour of duty. It
doesn't take long for the action, adventure, and adrenaline to pull
you into the distant valleys with "their spidery networks … of unseen
trails" where you will begin to the feel "bandoleers of ammunition
digging into" Mellas's neck, and the "mud sucking on his boots."
Marlantes wants you to understand and appreciate the sacrifices and
bravery, and to recognize that the men who were told to fight the war
were some of the best America had to offer, filled with promise and
potential. They were asked by their commanders to do the impossible,
and they often succeeded in a war that was lost in Washington and in
the court of public opinion, not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
For those who fought there and survived, and for the families,
widows, and children of those who did not, this is their masterpiece.
--
Kroft is a 60 Minutes correspondent who served in the U.S. Army in
Vietnam as a correspondent and photographer for Stars and Stripes.
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