He gave up the soft life of a Rhodes Scholar during the sex, drugs and rock and roll days of the 60s to join his fellow Marines in Vietnam. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. Marlantes is a unique combination of highly intellectual scholar and highly decorated combat officer who endured some of the more violent combat of the Vietnam war out in the field with his Marines. Here are the hard-won truths that underpin MATTERHORN: the author's real-life experiences behind the book's indelible scenes.īut it is much more than this. WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. In 1968, at the age of twenty-two, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty. 6, 2011 A manual for soldiers or anyone interested in what can happen to mind, body and spirit in the extreme circumstances of war. It took Karl four decades to come to terms with what had really happened, during the course of which he painstakingly constructed a fictionalized version of his war, MATTERHORN, which has subsequently been hailed as the definitive Vietnam novel. WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR by Karl Marlantes RELEASE DATE: Sept. Pitched into a war that had no defined military objective other than kill ratios and body counts, what he experienced over the next thirteen months in the jungles of South East Asia shook him to the core.īut what happened when he came home covered with medals was almost worse.
In 1968, at the age of 22, Karl Marlantes abandoned his Oxford University scholarship to sign up for active service with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam.
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