For a conflict that has made such a huge impression on film and video games, the Vietnam War has not made the equivalent impact on literature: to my mind, there is no Vietnam equivalent to For Whom the Bell Tolls or Catch-22.  Graham Greene’s The Quiet American explored the origins of the war, but the experience of the poor bloody infantry in the ground war of the late 60s and early 70s is a different thing altogether: the endless patrolling, the combination of awesome air power and slogging through the jungle, the leeches, booby traps, the monsoon rains, and an enemy who is hardly ever seen.

Karl Marlantes served as a Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam, and Matterhorn is clearly based on those experiences. Central protagonist Lieutenant Melas is new in the country – despite being assigned to command of a platoon in a rifle company, he is already looking ahead to getting a safer assignment in the battalion Command Post. Needless to say, Melas is in for some rude awakenings.

Matterhorn is the code name for a hill – at the beginning of the book, Melas’ company, Bravo, is assigned to fortify the hill, close to the border with North Vietnam, so it can be used as an artillery position. Yet after digging in, Bravo Company is ordered to abandon the position – political operations further south are drawing resources away, and the hill cannot be held. After a long-range patrol through the jungle in which the limitations of airborne resupply are starkly illustrated due to Vietnam’s misty monsoon, and in which the propensity of senior officers to indulge in classic ‘big hand, small map’ planning is made clear, Melas and the survivors then draw the short straw again, and are pitched in to the jungle with the aim of retaking the very hill they abandoned, Matterhorn, now occupied by the North Vietnamese Army.

Marlantes shows the cruelty and stupidity of a war that by this point had lost all sense of clear strategic direction, and the way this filters down to the soldiers on the ground. The Marines are on the receiving end of senior brass jostling for position, the forces are riven by racial tensions mirroring those back at home, are under-supplied and, worst of all, ill-used by a command structure that, thanks to the widespread use of radio comms, could reach out and order men to ever-more unrealistic objectives, ignoring the judgments of the officers on the scene. The assault on Matterhorn showcases the near-suicidal bravery of the Marines, even as they bitch about their leaders, and the fate of so many of the characters we encounter is determined by officers who are still fighting the last war. Melas develops from a greenhorn in to a battle-hardened leader of men during the course of the novel – the nature of the experience has given him no choice.

With the unmistakable imprimatur of first-hand experience stamped across it, Matterhorn may be the book that comes to define the futile sacrifices made by America’s youth in the pursuit of a deeply unpopular war. It may not go in to the details of what they were fighting for, but when you reach the end of this impressive and compelling book, all you can do is take and step back and intone the unofficial mantra of the poor bloody Marines, faced with endless stupidity and terrible odds: “There it is”.

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