What It is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes

combat is like unsafe sex in that it’s a major thrill with possible horrible consequences.

The violence of combat assaults psyches, confuses ethics, and tests souls.

In—Spiritus. Out—Sanctus. Those were the words that came to me as I watched its gills pumping the alien air. In comes the spirit, out goes something holy, life perhaps, but I realized then that the “in” and the “out” are somehow the same thing and everything is touched by the holy when in the presence of death.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing.

I had entered the temple of Mars, where not only were humans sacrificed, including me, but I was also the priest.

The zone was so small the CH-47 could get only its rear wheels on the ground, with the front of the bird hovering over the edge of the cliff.

I was struggling with a situation approaching the sacred in its terror and contact with the infinite, and he was trying to numb me to

Mystical or religious experiences have four common components: constant awareness of one’s own inevitable death, total focus on the present moment, the valuing of other people’s lives above one’s own, and being part of a larger religious community such as the Sangha, ummah, or church. All four of these exist in combat. The big difference is that the mystic sees heaven and the warrior sees hell.

Ritual torture or martyrdom can be either meaningless and terrible suffering or a profound religious experience, depending upon what the sufferer brings to the situation. The horror remains the same.

When one includes drug and alcohol overdoses, single-person car crashes, fights in bars, and a whole host of other self-destructive behaviors in addition to so-called normal suicides, the number of veterans who have killed themselves at home after the war was over is disturbingly large—and largely ignored.

In our culture individuals now must do initiatory rites on their own. Some do and some don’t.

Boot camp doesn’t turn young men into killers. It removes the societal restraints on the savage part of us that has made us the top animal in the food chain.

Escaping death and injury in modern warfare is much more a matter of luck—or grace—than skill, and this is a significant difference from primitive warfare.

Killing someone will affect you. Part of you will think you’ve done something wrong. It’s drilled in from babyhood.

Imagine the psychic split that must ensue from bringing in death and destruction from the sky on a group of terrorists—young men who have mothers and a misplaced idealism that has led them into horrible criminal acts, but nevertheless young and brave men—and then driving home from the base to dinner with the spouse and kids.

Death becomes an abstraction, except for those at the receiving end.

you don’t have to be Jesus Christ to know when someone is pissing on the church floor.

While on the one hand everyone is glad to be able to strike their enemy with impunity, and ten minutes later call home and have a Coke, there is a psychological and spiritual price to pay.

What is different between then and now is quite simply empathy. I can take the time, and I have the motivation, to actually feel what I did to another human being who was in a great many ways just like my own son.

The ideal response to killing in war should be one similar to a mercy killing, sadness mingled with respect.

You can’t be a warrior and not be deeply involved with suffering and responsibility.

Warriors must touch their souls because their job involves killing people. Warriors deal with eternity.

We cannot expect normal eighteen-year-olds to kill someone and contain it in a healthy way. They must be helped to sort out what will be healthy grief about taking a life because it is part of the sorrow of war. The drugs, alcohol, and suicides are ways of avoiding guilt and fear of grief. Grief itself is a healthy response.

What now looks wanton or sadic seemed in the field inevitable, or just unimportant routine.

“Look, you just found yourself on one side of the world of opposites.

Now, what you had to do was fill out your side of the bargain with a noble heart. It’s your intentions and your nobility in how you conduct yourself in this world of opposites that you’ve got to think about. Did you intend right?”

“the eternal soul is imperishable. No one can comprehend it... You do not kill and your victim is not killed... Weapons cannot hurt the soul; fire cannot burn it; water cannot wet it. It is eternal and it is the same forever. Once you realize this truth there is no need for you to grieve.”

“It is not right to stand by and watch an injustice being done. There are times when active interference is necessary.”16

Turning warfare into crusades only invites clouded judgment and fierce self-righteous opposition that may otherwise have crumbled.

there are two paths to realization, the path of knowledge by meditation and the path of work for men of action.

The more one kills for personal reasons, such as anger, revenge, fame, career, or political advancement, the heavier will be the guilt.

But I have grown to understand that in the cases where I killed to help or save my fellow Marines I don’t feel guilty. I feel sad.

That moral hook is conscious awareness. If it wasn’t something you were aware of previously, you have just now had the hook set. It will hurt. You now know that you are on one side and your enemy is on the other. You are conscious that you have a choice to make about killing that other person. You have to choose to do something.

“Let the dead bury their dead.”

It’s the future killing that counts now.

All any of us can do is wrestle with our own noble and ignoble intentions so that when we are asked to consider life-and-...

In the divine play of opposites the warrior knows only one thing for certain, that a side must be chosen. Once a side is chosen, the actions have to be dedicat...

“If man is to sacrifice the intensity of his animal nature he must also sacrifice his divine pretensions.”

The more removed a situation like combat gets from everyday life, the less applicable the guidelines get. This is why we must rely so much on character rather than rules when discussing and experiencing extreme situations like war.

But all warriors or erstwhile warriors will need to understand that, just like rucksack, ammunition, water, and food, guilt and mourning will be among the things they carry. They will shoulder it all for the society they fight for.

There is a deep savage joy in destruction, a joy beyond ego enhancement. Maybe it is loss of ego. I’m told it’s the same for religious ecstasy.

Part of us loves to destroy. Nietzsche says, “I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts.”

“The urge to destruction, like the urge to creation, is a defiance of limits; we transcend ourselves by refusing to accept completely anything that is human, and then indomitably we begin fabricating again.”

“It is not good works that make a good person but the good person who does good works.”

You can’t be a good person until you observe how bad you are. It is only when the evil is conscious that it can be countered. Torturers during the Inquisition thought they were doing good.

Transcendence through violence.

We are legion, says the Bible. We have a shadow, says Jung.

Once we recognize our shadow’s existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow. This is the way of Charles Manson and terrorist cells.

Since many people strive for positions of power as compensations for needy egos, it is hardly surprising that the corridors of power are filled with people for whom the compassionate responses will be short-circuited as a matter of course.

During combat tours time must be carved out in which to reflect. I wish that after each action the skipper could have drawn us all together, just