With gripping prose and unforgettably horrific imagery, Matterhorn is a searing depiction of the ways in which war impacts the humanity of the individual. Though Matterhorn covers many themes that apply to wars universally, it also touches on several issues more specific to the Vietnam war, including racial conflict and the growing anti-war sentiment in the United States. The protagonist, young Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, enters the war with naive dreams of personal success and glory, but his traumatic experiences in the jungle ultimately force him to confront the true human costs of war. 

The men Mellas serves with have committed themselves to the marines and will follow orders—no matter what personal sacrifices this might entail. However, their honest dedication to duty is seemingly exploited by their superiors, who make strategic decisions while they watch the fighting from afar. The third person narration allows the reader to follow the morbid analysis of war strategy: inept commanders like Simpson are granted the privilege of moving troops around, even sending them to reclaim previously abandoned bases when doing so will cost them their lives. The vantage point of the higher ranking officers distances them from the marines they send to their deaths and allows them to think about success and failure in abstract and dehumanizing terms—for example, by measuring the success of a battle by calculating whether their body counts or the enemy’s were higher. While the officers are disconnected from and largely indifferent to the suffering of the men under their command, those fighting on the battlefields feel increasingly hopeless, unable to articulate the larger purpose of the war or what these battles are meant to accomplish. Frequently pushed beyond their physical limits, the men are further burdened by the apparent meaningless of their trials, some of which seem wholly unnecessary, as when their superiors force them to go without food and water as punishment for not meeting checkpoints on time.

Isolated and alone in an unfamiliar place, the men grow increasingly dependent on each other, and social norms—such as racial boundaries—begin to break down as they work to keep everyone alive and well. Yet this proves to be an impossible task: again and again, the men watch their friends die, becoming victims of bombs and machine guns. The “squid,” or hospital corpsmen, are forced to make impossible choices, such as deciding which patients are most likely to die and then transferring their IV bags and plasma to those more likely to make it. Even nurses in charge of assisting the injured realize the grim irony of doing their job well enough to send injured marines back out to the front lines—healing them just in time for the next battle that could kill them.

The larger senselessness of war emerges through the illogical orders the men are given and must follow. At great cost, they claim Matterhorn, secure it well, are ordered to abandon it, and are then ordered to reclaim it from the North Vietnamese Army. In their struggle to reclaim what was once theirs, Mellas and his fellow marines lose many of their friends, even as their superiors, who are located a safe distance from the fighting, criticize their efforts. Disillusioned completely by his experiences, Mellas longs to leave and even attempts to kill his superiors in a blind rage before his gun is pushed to the ground. Though Mellas eventually adjusts to the reality of war, in doing so, he loses any expectation of emerging from Vietnam as a gloriously untouched hero.

In addition to exploring the broader issues associated with all wars, Matterhorn exposes the unique...