Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

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

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.