What It Is Like To Go To War

What It Is Like to Go to War is one of the most powerful and profound accounts of combat ever written, and a critical examination of how we might better prepare our soldiers for the psychological and spiritual aspects of war. In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. Marlantes was well trained for the task at hand, but, as he soon discovered, far from mentally prepared for what he was about to experience. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat. He killed the enemy and watched friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his time at war. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with analysis, self-examination, and his readings-from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. MarlantesÆs book is set to become required reading for anyone-soldier or civilian-interested in this visceral and all too essential part of the human experience. Book jacket.

A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the author of the best-selling and award-winning novel Matterhorn.