What It Is Like To Go To War / by Karl Marlantes

Marlantes, acclaimed novelist and author of the Vietnam War Epic Matterhorn, delivers another fascinating account of wartime experience. This outing is a far more personalized testament to the nature of military combat. Marlantes' has quite an extensive knowledge about the experiences involved in joining the military, going to war and returning home. The book is more a blend of in-country reporting--transcripts from the author's own field notes are included--accommodated by insider knowledge of the feelings which go through a soldier's mind on the battlefield, the psychology of fight or flight instinct and the simultaneous sense of fear and exhilaration. As much as his own experiences are taken into account, the author delves into other territory. The process of recruitment, obligations involved in commitment to duty, just war theory and the concept of military engagement. A scholar as well, he's equipped to elaborate on the more controversial issues like the economic disparity between those who die fighting and those who live by handing down orders. It's a worthy reflection by an individual more than up to the task of fleshing out the multi-faceted aspects of war and combat. (959.70434092 MARLANTE)

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War / by Karl Marlantes

Not unlike Charlie Sheen's character Chris Taylor in the movie Platoon, Karl Marlantes was a middle-class college graduate when he joined the marines to fight in Vietnam in 1968. The Rhodes Scholar with a degree from Yale began his tour as a Second Lieutenant, enduring some of the fiercest combat action of the entire war while serving as a Platoon Commander. His tenure prompted him to record his experiences in book form, intending the literary effort first as a response to the vigilant anti-war protests he encountered upon his return home. Eventually he re-evaluated his vision towards the formation of a novel. After literally hundreds of rewrites, retouches and rejection letters, Marlantes' Matterhorn, a labor of love over 35 years in the making, is here, inculminating the Vietnam War in all of its horror, tragedy, controversy and legacy.

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In 1969, the Matterhorn is a strategic hilltop in South Vietnam not far from the Demilitarized Zone and only 3 clicks from the border with Laos. It's where some of the most relentless, most ferocious combat of the Vietnam War is being waged, in part by the Marine Corps Company Bravo of the 5th Marine Division led by Platoon Commander 2nd Lt. Waino Mellas. Mellas is 21 and green, having just arrived in country and put in charge of the Bravo One platoon full of scared, ambivalent and often unpredictable grunts, most of whom are still teenagers. In brutal fashion under seemingly mad orders from a dithering, indolent Battalian Commander, the troops of Bravo Company have been ordered to take and hold the Matterhorn against a barrage of counterattacks implemented by the very determined, very unyielding and uniquely skilled North Vietnamese forces.

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Mellas doesn't remain a novice long. No one does in this environment. He and his corp of marines--troops of every race, from all different backgrounds--succeed in taking the hill only to abandon their position when further, likewise inane directives order them elsewhere. All the while, they contend against the might and muck of the jungle where leeches suck them dry, wild animals attack and eat them, their provisions deteriorate, their feet rot and their bodies starve. It is a putrid, ugly and dirty war--literally and figuratively. Dishonor and dissension are commonplace in the ranks where fear, bickering, infighting, self-preservation and emotional paralysis get the better of the men. After all, their circumstances are largely pre-determined, orchestrated above their heads through decisions out of their control.

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Few novels recreate the disaster that was the Vietnam War like Marlantes in this vivid portrait entailing absolutely everything. From the sheer confusion and chaos of combat to the reckless tactics exercised down the chain of command, the book manages both a macro and micro viewpoint of the conflict which accomplished so little at the expense of so much. Literature on Vietnam--fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, etc.--has long weighed down the shelves and no one will question the historical validity, or even the iconoclastic appeal, of the war. Its cultural impact as well as social and political reverberations are well-known just as its personal repercussions are still felt. Yet there are few truly good novels on it, and even fewer great ones. Matterhorn fills that void. It really is a great war novel perhaps destined to become a classic, but a book which won't be soon forgotten never the less. (FIC MARLANTES)

Another World / by Pat Barker

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Known for her thought provoking literary novels, author and historian Pat Barker is a skilled writer and a worthy craftsman of historical and contemporary fiction, her Regeneration trilogy--three historical stories concentrated in the World War I era--garnering critical acclaim. Another World examines the contrasting lives of a modern blended family and the father of the clan's 101-year-old grandfather, a World War I veteran living out his last days.

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Nick and Fran have been married for 3 years, each previously divorced with one child--Nick the father of 14-year-old Miranda, Fran the mother of 11-year-old Gareth--and having had a third child, toddler Jasper, just recently between them. While it hasn't been easy with both Nick and Fran working hard on the job and at home, Gareth and Miranda constantly at odds, Jasper needing round-the-clock attention, etc., things malinger on in the haphazard way of families everywhere, sparse outings and family togetherness given a priority just as the more pressing issues swallow up time, energy and resources.

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Meanwhile across town, Nick's very elderly grandfather Geordie, who's outlived both of Nick's parents, spends his last days remembering a very long life which has spanned the entire twentieth century. Geordie may seem old and a bit senile but he's still with it enough to remember his early boyhood in the late Victorian era, the formidable way of life in the rough blue-collar mining town of Newcastle, his youth alongside peers in the trenches during the first World War and, most of all, his terrifying experience on the battlefield of the Somme where he witnessed the grisly death of his younger brother.

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Barker really is a unique talent, subtly remarkable in the way she fabricates a story, her prose at once elegant and engaging yet reverberating poignancy and authenticity through piercing observations. Entirely different worlds are portrayed through Geordie's steadily decaying body, his century of thoughts, feelings, events and relationships revealed through a solitary repose, a milieu well contrasted by Nick and Fran's more conventionalized balancing act which includes son Gareth's violent outbursts and a new baby on the way. Each generation forms its own distinct realm, possesses its own misunderstood dimensions. But even as the boundaries of time and age are reiterated, strange similarities bind families and people together. Because, as Barker is so apt to unveil, each individual is merely a continuation of all the generations of their ancestors, their lives a collective embodiment of the world then and now.