31 May 2010
 
Matterhorn
 

(Matterhorn cover, Atlantic Press photo)
 
Matterhorn "was barren, shorn of trees. Nothing green was left in what was slowly turning into a wasteland of soggy discarded cardboard C-ration boxes, cat-hole latrines, buried garbage, burned garbage, trench latrines, discarded magazines from home, smashed ammunition pallets and frayed plastic sandbags."

I finished the book this morning, at first light, the time when the weary Marines of Bravo company stage their second assault on Matterhorn, an imaginary fire-base from a real war long ago.
 
It has been a gripping few days spent partly in the monsoon, and partly in airplanes and airports and by the glittering blue waters of the pool. In the novel, Marines had constructed the base at the top of a peak to interdict North Vietnamese regulars who are probing Route 9, the way to the coast, and the only route for their tanks that will ultimately crash through the gates of the US Embassy in Saigon.
 
It is the year after the Tet Offensive, a year in which I could have been one of the 19-year old kids who make up the cast of characters in a sprawling, brutal and thoroughly unsettling book.
 
Having constructed fire-base Matterhorn, Bravo Company is ordered to abandon it, and then must take it back twice in the course of a week.
 
Matterhorn is about attrition, U.S. Grant-style. It is horrifying in a way that only the plain stark truth can be. It is not a perfect book, but it is as powerful as anything I have ever read. I won’t play the spoiler here, but on Memorial Day there is no more emotional reading possible. Marlantes spent thirty years writing and re-writing the fictionalized account of his war.
 
I was near to finishing it last night, but I was getting blurry and put it aside, since I wanted to understand with crystalline clarity what Marlantes was trying to say.
 
I am glad I did, and went through the last Magical Mystery Tour with protagonist Mellas (and alter-ego Marlantes) and the gallant Hawke as the set-up to the finale.
 
Random, senseless, monstrous, banal. Matterhorn is an idiot tale, full of sound and fury told by a very astute participant.
 
I am not going to spoil the book for you. But I can share this. The Navy Cross is the highest award the Department can present, and it sometimes was a consolation award for the Congressional Medal of Honor, which in the days of carnage had an informal quota system for the three largest military organizations.
 
The Marines were counted as part of the Navy. The citation on the award of the Navy Cross to then-1st Lt. Karl Marlantes reads a lot like the book. He was serving as the XO of a Marine unit operating on the Rockpile, a 750-foot nightmare thrust of granite just south of the inaccurately named Demilitarized Zone.
 
In 1969, the NVA had abandoned their traditional infiltration route down the Ho Chi Minh trail, which empties into the isolated Central Highlands. Instead, General Giap decided to send his forces directly southward into the populous coastal plain of Quang Tri Province.

(Snuffies. US Army photo)
 
The citation indicates that the President Johnson took pleasure in the award for the Navy Cross for these actions:
 
“During the period 1 to 6 March 1969, Company C was engaged in a combat operation north of the Rockpile and sustained numerous casualties from North Vietnamese Army mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, small arms, and automatic weapons fire…. First Lieutenant Marlantes skillfully combined and reorganized the remaining members of two platoons, and... initiated an aggressive assault up a hill, the top of which was controlled by a hostile unit occupying well-fortified bunkers... the attack gained momentum which carried it up the slope and through several enemy emplacements before the surprised North Vietnamese force was able to muster determined resistance... completely disregarding his own safety, (he) charged across the fire-swept terrain to storm four bunkers in succession, completely destroying them. While seriously wounded, he  continued to lead his men until the objective was secured, a perimeter defense established, and all other casualties medically evacuated…he resolutely refused medical evacuation for himself.”

God, what is contained in those few dry formulaic words. Matterhorn expands the experience to nearly six hundred searing pages.
 
There is a larger context to the Marine campaign to block the NVA’s advance, of course. This is not a strategic account. A marvelous companion piece is the novel “Lotus Eaters,” by first-time author Tatiana Soli. I am glad I read them in sequence, and both are fresh in my mind.
 

Soli's book was of the city, of Saigon, and the Bush was a place to go to see the elephant.
 
Matterhorn is all elephant. No civilians at all.
 
Sort of stunning to read it on a lazy weekend to finish at first light on Memorial Day.
 
I am not giving a thing away if I tell you of the chills that ran down my spine as I heard in silence the chanting of the surviving Snuffies on the hill and the drumming on the c-rat box:
 
"If it's good enough for Parker...
Then it's good enough for me..."
 
The names went on and on, like they do on the black Wall downtown.
 
It is a day to remember.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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