Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Martyrs for Language

It is unlikely that indentured slaves were worked as hard as grunt Marines in Vietnam. Certainly not with as little to show for it. The sociology that kept these men from escaping entirely through drugs or killing their officer-oppressors is complex - a mix of fear of authority, comradeship, exhausted inertia and the vague hope that their suffering might end without death. Patriotism, revenge, and military pride didn’t register on the meter of soldierly motivations.

Officers, that class of person whom the military suspects might be human, are ambitious prats. The young ones want medals; the older ones want rank and larger commands. Few of them have much regard for the lives of those who report to them. Their main concerns are recognition and reputation. As in most corporate hierarchies, they progress proportionately to their political skill not their competence.

Within the permanent class warfare between officers and enlisted in ‘The Corps,’ other intense battles are waged continuously - between the whites and the blacks, staff and line, liberals and racists, new boys and old hands, short-timers and those who dare not count the days left, lifers and draftees, malingerers and hard men, the weak and the strong, the literate and the unschooled. Occasional shooting and fear eases the tensions but never resolves them.

The politics among officers is simpler: Be noticed; never contradict a superior; have faith in the language of command. This latter includes the idolatry of maps, situation reports, body counts, radio protocols, intelligence estimates, and plans of attack and defence. An officer’s world is entirely symbolic as soon as he is given any unit command whatsoever. This is what he is trained for. Reality is only known by the grunts and no one asks them about it. Unfortunately only they know that the map is not the territory.

One of the important innovations of the Vietnamese War was so-called air mobility, the capacity to move large numbers of fighters quickly to remote places. What the military failed to understand at the time was that it was easier to move the men than to keep them supplied with the essentials of life (and for that matter, death). Despite the rather well-stocked commissaries for those in the rear, front-line troops literally starved when they couldn’t be supplied by air... or were just forgotten about. The language of intimidatory command doesn’t work on technology and other objects like it does on human beings.

The involvement of the United States in Vietnam was a military and moral tragedy. But not primarily because of defeat and the atrocities committed routinely by American soldiers. The tragedy already existed in the military and its ethos before VietNam. And it continues to exist today. This ethos is one of exploitation of the young by the old. The old sacrifice the young for the sake of symbols and through symbols that mask personal interests. Everything else is collateral damage. This is the essence of military life.

The dead and wounded are, therefore, only one consequence of this sacrificial ethos. Those, like the Marines in Matterhorn, who are exposed to its full force never recover. And it is passed on like a virulent virus from generation to generation. Their memory of suffering produces yet more symbology for which to sacrifice yet more young people. Matterhorn is a chronicle of how symbols not bullets are used to dominate and destroy human beings.

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