Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

It occurred to him that because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all.

he’d been assigned his military occupational specialty, or MOS: 0301, infantry officer, inexperienced. If he was still alive in six months he would be anointed 0302, infantry officer, experienced. All Marine infantry specialties were designated by zero-three followed by different pairs of numbers: 0311, rifleman; 0331, machine gunner. Zero-three, called “oh-three,” was dreaded by many Marines because it meant certain combat.

General Neitzel, the current commanding general, had decided that since every Marine was a trained rifleman, it followed logically that every Marine officer should have experience as a rifle platoon commander for at least ninety days. The flaw in the general’s logic was that after a non-infantry officer had made the inevitable mistakes of any new officer in combat, all of which were paid for by the troops under his command, he would be transferred back to his primary military occupation in the rear, subjecting the troops to breaking in yet another new officer and dying because of the new officer’s mistakes.

Just another inch of the green dildo.”

The light died. Voices were silenced. Darkness and fear replaced light and reason. The whisper of a leaf scraping on bark would make heads turn involuntarily and hearts gallop. The surrounding blackness and the unseen wall of dripping growth left no place to run. In that black wet nothingness the perimeter became just a memory. Only imagination gave it form.

thoughts turned to memories of better times, meals they had eaten, girls they had known or wished they had known better.

“What’s he gonna do, Jim, cut your hair off and send you to Vietnam?”

Some Marines hated the North Vietnamese Army and some didn’t, but at least the NVA had the Marines’ respect.

It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn’t even know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about.

“They were on our side twenty-five years ago.” “No shit. Who switched sides, us or them?” “I think it was us. We used to be against colonialism. Now we’re against communism.”

The NVA had forever. The Americans had until the next election.