Book Review: Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2010) by Karl Marlantes

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This is a great Vietnam War tale – and although it is a work of fiction it is still authentic in spirit and in its every detail. Matterhorn is the name of a fictitious hill within the story in the Khe Sanh area of I Corps, South Vietnam. This is the best novel that I have ever read to come out of the Vietnam experience and one of the best war novels I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it.
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The author, Karl Marlantes, has been there. He was a highly decorated Marine platoon commander in Vietnam, earning the Navy Cross (the only higher award for Navy and Marine Corps personnel being the Medal of Honor), the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, ten Air Medals and two Navy Commendation Medals for valor. Keeping in mind the notorious stinginess of the Marine Corps in awarding medals of any kind, his achievements are noteworthy. Marlantes is also a Yale graduate and a Rhodes scholar. He spent over 30 years working on this, his debut novel.
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The novel gives you the experience of the Vietnam War, the insane horrors of combat, the constant filth, both the extremes of the tropical heat to the shivering cold nights when soaking wet and bone-weary. Race relation problems of the late 1960s are handled very well, and also the phenomena of “fragging” an incompetent officer or NCO. For Marines planning to stay in the Corps, there was a distinction between the more professional “career men” versus the “lifers.” A lifer was defined as “someone who can’t make it on the outside,” someone with enough rank to make your life miserable for no good reason, and these guys were sometimes targets of fraggings. The dialogues and the profanities are exactly right.
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The stupid politics of that war is everywhere a major theme, as lives are wasted taking hard-won territory only to abandon it soon after. On occasion an officer would think more about their own career advancements than the losses or hardships of their men. Those being killed and maimed are usually teenagers who haven’t even lived their lives yet. The book sometimes makes you very angry, but it is ultimately redeeming.
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The protagonist, 2nd Lt. Mellas, evolves from a spoiled college kid with military-political ambitions to a good combat officer and a compassionate commander of men. He learns from both the enlisted and commissioned Marines who have been in-country before him. The other characters are very well drawn and very authentic, especially Lt. Hawke, the kind of guy that men will follow anywhere. The humor in the midst of horror also comes through at times.
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There were many details in the story that really brought back vivid memories. For example, the concussion from the explosion of in-coming enemy mortar rounds sending a wave of pressure against your eyeballs as well as your eardrums. Also well-written are the times when you think that you will certainly die soon – e.g., Cortell and Jermain discuss Pascal’s Wager, although they have never heard of Pascal or his philosophical “wager” about what awaits us after death. We all knew about that bet in some way of our own and were forced to think about it. That is haunting.
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Before reading the novel, definitely read the “Glossary of Weapons, Technical Terms, Slang and Jargon” in back, and keep a bookmarker in place there so that you can refer back to it while reading. The Vietnam War had its own unique jargon, but so did the Navy and Marine Corps, and so a lot of it is esoteric to those services. But even I had to look over this Glossary many times for things such as radio call-sign protocol details, etc.
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Also, keep handy the three pages in front of the novel for the fictitious “Chain of Command and Principal Characters” chart (with their radio call-signs in italics), and also the two map pages: “Bravo Company’s Area of Operation” and “Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill.” The USMC units in this novel are fictitious, in that they are real Marine (reserve) units but they were never in Vietnam. Also, the map adds the fictitious Vietnam hills Matterhorn, Helicopter Hill, Eiger and Sky Cap, and this map goes farther west toward the Laotian border than it did in reality beyond Khe Sanh. Read the author’s disclaimer on the copyright page for the full details about his fiction versus the reality.
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I think this novel is going to be a war classic.
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