What It is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes

When it comes time to leave the world of combat behind for the world of “ordinary life,” it is going to be more difficult to do the more we blur the two worlds together.

How can you return home if you’ve never left?

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

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

It is critical for young people who return from combat that someone is there to help them, before they turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. 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.

Donald Sandner puts it as follows: “If man is to sacrifice the intensity of his animal nature he must also sacrifice his divine pretensions.”19

“I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts.”20 Richard Ellmann, the great biographer of Yeats, has the right answer. He says this feeling is just the other face of creativity, in Jungian terms, the shadow side of creativity. “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.”21 What’s scary is that it is far easier to take the path of transcendence through destruction than to take the path of transcendence through creation.

The easier the path of destruction gets, the more likely we’ll be to take it. This is another reason why warriors, above all, must fundamentally be spiritual people, that is, people who are on a different path to start with.

This nation should be less worried about putting the Vietnam syndrome behind us than restarting the World War II victory syndrome that resulted in the Vietnam syndrome in the first place. If you go to war singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” you’re going to raise the devil.

We all have shit on our shoes. We’ve just got to realize it so we don’t track it into the house. This realization is one of the things we must work on in training society’s professional fighters: our soldiers, police, and bodyguards. We must take time to make these people aware of their particular shadows and have them clearly understand that they carry this shadow with them—always. This is so crucial to those involved in professions of violence because their job at times does indeed involve hurting or killing people. People holding these jobs cannot project their shadow sides onto “the enemy” or “the criminals” and hope to avoid excesses.

I have come to understand that there are three basic categories or types of atrocity, and almost all atrocities will be one or a combination of these three. There is what I call the “white heat” atrocity, where logic reigns supreme with no feeling or empathy. There is the “red heat” atrocity, where just the opposite happens and emotion, usually rage, rules to the exclusion of all logic and rationality. Finally, there is the atrocity of the fallen standard, where there is a large gap between what is spoken of as a behavioral standard by society back home and what the immediate society in-country actually expects. I have come to this understanding because of direct experience with all three. I’m no monster. I didn’t participate in My Lai or anything close to it. But in combat we do dreadful things that are excused too easily.

We humans make evil and good concrete.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. Because I’m the meanest motherfucker in the valley.”

I realize now that what I did was make up a story in order to get back into my feelings, feelings I’d suppressed and ignored all that long day, and many long days and years before and following. I was too defended against regaining feeling from a factual account. Through the story I could take myself by surprise because I didn’t have my defenses up. It’s one reason why storytelling is so important. In gradually regaining those lost and suppressed feelings I began to heal myself, and I have come to accept the tragedy I participated in.

When we meet the next test, we can meet it only with the character we have at the time, and in this way we aren’t free. Our freedom lies in the fact that we can continually work to improve our character.

The only meaningful statistic in warfare is when the other side quits.

Lying, in rare cases, can actually exhibit good character.

“Doesn’t heroism have a moral objective?”

“The moral objective is that of saving a people, or person, or idea. He is sacrificing himself for something. That is the morality of it. Now, you, from another position, might say that ‘something’ wasn’t worth it, or was downright wrong. That’s a judgment from another side. But it doesn’t destroy the heroism of what was done. Absolutely not.”

Returning from the initiatory space of the battlefield to the normal world is every bit as mysterious a journey as entering the Temple of Mars. The world you left behind has changed and you have changed. You know parts of yourself that you, and those you’ve lived with all your life, never knew before. You’ve been evil, and you’ve been good, and you’ve been beyond evil and good. You’ve split your mind from your heart, and you’ve split your heart with grief and your mind with fear. Ultimately, you’ve been in touch with the infinite, and now you are trying to reconcile yourself to the mundane. The warrior of the future will need to know how to enter and exit both worlds, if not with ease, then at least without permanently disintegrating his or her personality.

The psychology of the young warrior is, I think, almost entirely related to hearth and kin. You can subvert that into patriotism and nationalism if you’re clever and work at it long enough, but I’d been detoxified.76 A homecoming of yellow ribbons and throwing out the first ball at the local game would have made me feel like puking.

My body was trying to tell me I was choking the feminine, but I didn’t get it. Twenty years later I had a dream in which I was going to a wedding. The bride was waiting. A friend asked where the groom was. I had to explain to him that the wedding wouldn’t occur until the groom came home from Vietnam. I had been reading a lot of women writers. This time I got it. The hypermasculine warrior energy has to be balanced by feminine energy, but it must come home to do this.

Pushing Mars into the jungle of our unconscious results in the frightening energy that fuels gangs, drug wars, and increased violence in general.

is primarily women who reintegrate the warrior back into society, the energy of the queen, not the king. Women carry this queen for most young men. Joking about men getting in touch with their inner woman aside, this is healthy, but it usually doesn’t happen until they’re quite mature, at least in their forties. When a young man comes home from war, he’s all testosterone and he’s scary.

There is a correct way to welcome your warriors back. Returning veterans don’t need ticker-tape parades or yellow ribbons stretching clear across Texas. Cheering is inappropriate and immature. Combat veterans, more than anyone else, know how much pain and evil have been wrought. To cheer them for what they’ve just done would be like cheering the surgeon when he amputates a leg to save someone’s life. It’s childish, and it’s demeaning to those who have fallen on both sides. A quiet grateful handshake is what you give the surgeon, while you mourn the lost leg. There should be parades, but they should be solemn processionals, rifles upside down, symbol of the sword sheathed once again. They should be conducted with all the dignity of a military funeral, mourning for those lost on both sides, giving thanks for those returned. Afterward, at home or in small groups, let the champagne flow and celebrate life and even victory if you were so lucky—afterward.

Our more sane ancestors had ceremonies like sweat rituals to physically bring the bodies back into civilian mode. Mongolian warriors were taken into heated yurts and had every muscle that could be reached pressed and rolled with smooth staves, squeezing out toxins, signaling the psyche and the body that it was time to stop pumping adrenaline.

There is also a deeper side to coming home. The returning warrior needs to heal more than his mind and body. He needs to heal his soul.

We are a very aggressive and warlike nation. Denying our collective responsibility for these activities, whether they were right or wrong, is like scurrying around the house of an alcoholic hiding empty bottles and never mentioning the drinking.

The grief that is expressed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and it is the grief that most people focus on, would not be possible if it weren’t for the fact that the very building of the memorial was itself an act of recognition and pride on the part of veterans who took it upon themselves to get the project done. The memorial was not built by a grateful nation; self-respecting veterans built it and had to fight to have it placed where it is.

Without integration of the positive and negative sides of the war, the experience isn’t transmitted in any practical and meaningful sense, and we will continue to seek the glory of war unchecked by wisdom about all the costs of war.

Is Terry Waite the warrior of the future or just crazy? He is neither. He is a brave man. Not all brave people are warriors. But in that interview Waite helped define what a warrior is when he said he would not choose sides and would not use a weapon, i.e., violence, other than to protect someone. In contrast to Waite, a warrior does choose sides. Choosing sides is the fundamental first choice that a warrior must make. Like Waite, a warrior is also willing to protect someone against violence, but Waite was talking about violence that is immediately being applied. The second fundamental choice of the warrior is to be willing to use violence to protect someone against even intended or implied violence. This second fundamental choice engenders an additional choice, which is accepting the risk of death and maiming that usually results from the decision to use violence against violence. To become a warrior requires making these two fundamental choices and accepting the risks entailed. Doing the above eliminates any need to use the adjective “ethical” in front of the noun “warrior.” A warrior, by my definition, acts ethically. Using violence other than to protect makes a person a bully or a murderer. The first decision, choosing sides, means taking on the warrior spirit. People who take on the warrior spirit become metaphorical warriors. They are like warriors in certain aspects, but they are not warriors. This choice is serious enough, often entailing commitments of great perso...

can say that the position of the conscious warrior will decrease the suffering of political violence in an imperfect world while the position of Terry Waite will eliminate the suffering of political violence only in a perfect world. One of my axioms of faith is that we don’t live in a perfect world.

In order for a moral code to be of any practical value, that moral code must be applicable in the world in which we live. I unabashedly take a utilitarian stand that any moral code must help reduce suffering.

The warrior’s dictum is, however, oddly dependent philosophically on Waite’s dictum. In order to adhere to the warrior’s dictum the ethical warrior acts only when and if others use violence first. That is, someone else must have already abandoned Waite’s position—the philosophical necessity required for the ethical application of the warrior’s power. Accepting this means accepting that a moral nation’s first use of its warrior power will always be defensive because preemptive strikes are immoral.

Like capital punishment, once done, a preemptive strike cannot be undone, and the nation struck could be innocent.

A warrior cannot commit to combat tentatively. Flawed as our response to Pearl Harbor was by racism and ignorance, it was not flawed by doubt about Japan’s intentions.

Of course a no-preemptive-strike policy limits options and confines strategy and makes less philosophic warriors moan in frustration. Since the ethical warrior’s position requires someone to break Waite’s dictum, in some ultimate sense, the ethical warrior always plays defense. More traditional fighters will call this approach impractical. What they mean by “impractical” is that they are initially placed in a vulnerable position. This presents real practical problems for the warrior that should not be minimized. The point is to plan with this constraint in mind, not to abandon the principle.

Obama admin and ROEs

The problem is that a strategy of mutually assured destruction works only with opponents who have essentially the same value system. It will not work against suicidal terrorists or suicidal governments. Such people obviously value some things more highly than their own lives. This does not make these people irrational.

The warrior should hold back force or offensive operations only when the other side stops using violence—period.

If we are unable to take sides against a clear opponent, and unable to use violence with every means at our disposal to force that opponent to stop using violence against our side, then we should not go to war. We should use other means to either encourage or coerce people to do what we want. The world community helped end apartheid in South Africa through a whole lot of pressure other than military force. Finally, there is the very real problem that the people who make the decisions to send in the warriors often fail to adopt the warrior mode consciously themselves.

I do not doubt that most of our leaders take their responsibilities very seriously, but only if they see that they are actually doing the killing can they make a more conscious decision. Ideally, they should know ahead of time that they will have to face nightmares the rest of their lives over the killing. It will make for better decisions.

So when a politician sends in the Marines, the politician uses violence every bit as much as the Marines themselves.

When a president or member of Congress decides to go to war, he or she must do so as a warrior, not a policy maker.

Wotan exists. I think Wotan is closer to the surface in some cultures than in others. I think Wotan is closer to the surface in boys than in girls. I know that within me, or all around me, are very fierce and wild forces. These forces have to be channeled and guided. They are too big to dam or damn. These forces, which can come through all of us, are not created in childhood. However, the strength of character required to guide these forces is greatly helped, or greatly damaged, by how we parent our children, particularly when this force appears.

Our greatest protection against falling into the thrall of the beast is children raised without shame and suppressed rage. This will ultimately demand a revolution of respect in child rearing.

A pseudoman, whether male or female, can be an effective killer but cannot be a conscious warrior.

Infantry platoons have medics for the body. Why not for the soul?

The substitute for war is not peace; peace is a seldom-achieved political state of being. The substitutes are spirituality, love, art, and creativity, all achievable through individual hard work.

As long as there are people who will kill for gain and power, or who are simply insane, we will need people called warriors who are willing to kill to stop them.