What It Is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes

  By Greek and Roman times the combined war and justice god had become a god of battle, the terrible Ares or Mars. Robert Graves comes down pretty hard on him: “Thracian Ares loves battle for its own sake. All his fellow-immortals hate him, from Zeus and Hera downwards, except Eris, his sister, and Aphrodite who nurses a perverse passion for him, and greedy Hades who welcomes the bold young fighting-men slain in cruel wars.”95

  My reading of Graves is that of a man who himself never came to terms with Mars. When you read of his terrible experiences during the First World War and the years he spent afterward with painful physical and untreated psychic wounds, it is obvious that he suffered terribly from post-traumatic stress disorder. His unhealed wounds influenced greatly his view of the war god, and it is such a point of view that many in today’s culture hold. This is because so many people in today’s culture need the same healing. Despite Graves’s description, and our own one-sided view of Mars, it is clear that the ancient Greeks had still retained much of the earlier, more whole form of Mars, or Ares, as they called him. The connection between the war god and god of justice is evident in the hill in the midst of Athens called the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares. The Areopagus is where the Athenians had their principal court of justice. Judges were called areopagitae.

  What all this says to us today is that it is time to return Mars to his lost connection with justice. The “them and us” perspective we’ve gone through for the past several thousand years is coming to an end. It isn’t over yet, however. Many in America, including many of our leaders, still cast their dark shadows on a so-called evil empire, an “axis of evil,” or Muslim countries in general, and they on us and on one another. I will never forget the image of burning oil fields during the Iran-Iraq War, two great nations futilely destroying what was dragging them into the modern world. What happens in Uganda is instantly known in Siberia. People all over the world view the same soccer game at the same time. My Italian soccer shoes have leather uppers from Argentina and soles from Malaysia; they are assembled in China, marketed through an American retail chain, and advertised on Japanese televisions whose components are made in Singapore. The smith that Cúchulainn defends today is everywhere. Once again we are forming into the only tribe there is, the only people.96 Mythologically speaking, this is turning the pure war gods, such as Mars, back toward the gods of war and justice, such as Tiwaz.

  It is important, however, to remember that information technology and international commerce change far more rapidly than culture and religion. We are moving toward a world that sees itself as one people, but we aren’t there yet. During this period of transition, we will find ourselves increasingly embroiled in wars where the primary goal is to restore, or even establish for the first time, civil order and a workable system of justice, not to defeat a clearly defined enemy who is trying to harm us. It behooves us to recognize the difference in order to make it clear whether troops are acting in the role of warriors or the role of police. As I said at the start of this chapter, warriors choose sides. Police cannot choose sides; they must be on the side of the law.

  We cannot expect young men, particularly teenagers, who are trained to take sides as warriors, trained to fight the enemy with all the hotheaded passion and lack of introspection and, let’s face it, lack of mature judgment that makes them ideal weapons of the state, to do the job of the police, who need to be extremely mature and the very opposite of hotheaded. Even more problematical, we cannot place even mature policemen in situations where there is no agreed-upon law with which they can side. If you go to any penitentiary in this nation and ask its inmates if it is wrong to murder or commit armed robbery, virtually all of them will agree that it is. Yet in Afghanistan there is fundamental disagreement on whether or not it is wrong to cut off the ears and nose of a woman who disgraces her abusive husband by trying to run away. Which law do our mature police side with there: sharia law, tribal law, or the law of modern democracies? Forces acting as police must act with the legitimacy provided by law that is recognized as being impartial. If foreign troops are placed in situations where they are expected to act in the role of police but where the legitimizing law is not agreed upon and not supported by the local population, then troops trying to act like police will fail and should not be committed. If national policy is to force compliance with a view of the law other than what already exists in the location in question, then this requires warriors. Committing troops as warriors, however, requires a sober assessment of whether or not using coercive violence to accomplish a change in commonly accepted law is moral, particularly if those who don’t agree with us aren’t threatening us. It also requires ascertaining just how long it will take before forced compliance turns into nonforced acceptance. In societies where currently accepted law is approximately ten centuries behind the accepted law of modern democracies, it could be decades. If we are unwilling to commit warriors for decades we should stay put, relying instead on nonmilitary forms of pressure to bring about the required change. Again, South Africa is exemplary; the law did change there.

  In addition to moving back toward justice as well as war, the war gods are also changing in another important way. This change has long been part of our mythology. The offspring of Ares and Aphrodite is Harmonia, harmony. As Graves puts it, “Harmonia is, at first sight, a strange name for a daughter borne by Aphrodite to Ares; but, then as now, more than usual affection and harmony prevailed in a state which was at war.” This is certainly true. My parents often talked with affection about the war years, when “we all were pulling together.” There is also the fact of incredibly deep bonds of affection among soldiers. Graves, however, stops short. What I think the mythology is telling us is that inner harmony, personal harmony, is the result of the union of Aphrodite and Ares, the integration of love, sex, justice, and war. Without this union, there is no harmony. The relationship between Ares and Aphrodite is far from perverse, as Graves has it; it is a step in human consciousness, and the sooner we take that step, the less we will suffer. There is evidence that this is occurring, at long last. On the personal level, men and women are integrating their contrasexual sides. Gender roles are far more flexible. This has thrown both sexes into turmoil, or at least it sure threw me into turmoil, but I have hope that eventually harmony will prevail and we’ll have females who are integrated and healthy women and males who are integrated and healthy men.

  Militaries of true democracies now take great pains to minimize the deaths of innocent people. In that same war in which my parents found affection and harmony on the home front, both sides were killing civilians by the hundreds of thousands, in horrible ways, and not even thinking about it much. Many of the people who fought in that war are still among us. This is incredibly rapid change. Military forces are often employed on missions of mercy. The militaries of most democracies have successfully integrated women into all specialties except those involving close physical combat. Ares and Aphrodite have formed a union, but, like all unions, it isn’t without its difficulties and it takes a lot of work.

  AFTERWORD

  I have tried to explain what it was like for me to go to war: why I went in the first place, what happened while I was there, and how it was when I came home.

  What got me into the temple of Mars was a contradictory mixture of patriotism, genetic imperative, the draft, a yearning for transcendence and escape from the humdrum, a need to prove my manhood, and just plain self-testing and curiosity. Inside the temple I experienced a surprising love for those who entered with me. There I prayed for deliverance from horror, carnage, and death. Never have I felt closer to God and more baffled by the problem of evil. In that temple, I experienced transcendence and, momentarily, ecstasy. I also experienced flawed humanity and raw savagery, my own and that of others, beyond comprehension for most people. I’ve never approached the intensity of these feelings after returning home. I do, however, find disturbing reminders of the bad ones when I read the newspapers, hear jingoistic claptrap, awake from nightmares, or see
unbidden images welling up from my memory at the most awkward times. I have learned to find gentle reminders of the good ones when I write fiction, play the piano, share holidays with my family, see old comrades, and make love. I still long for the stronger feelings of war’s transcendence and ecstasy, but, like the recovering alcoholic, I also know their destructive and dangerous aspects.

  We must be honest and open about both sides of war. The more aware we are of war’s costs, not just in death and dollars, but also in shattered minds, souls, and families, the less likely we will be to waste our most precious asset and our best weapon: our young. The more we recognize the feelings of transcendence and the psychological and spiritual intensity of war, the easier it will be to prevent their appeal from clouding our judgment about going to war the next time. What ultimately will save us from the appeal of war is achieving this transcendence and intensity through other means. 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. I’ve done my part. I can only pass on what I’ve learned in the hope that some current or future warrior will be more conscious of the conflicting forces I’ve touched on in this book in order to better control them and be a better warrior than I was. Warriors must always know the people they are protecting and why. They must undertake the personal responsibility for deciding when to kill and for what higher cause. This implies a commitment to a cause beyond self-interests, or even national interest alone. The split-off war god Mars must be brought back together with Tiwaz as protector of order and justice, no longer solely for the local tribe, but for all humanity.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my wife, Anne; my children, Peter, Laurel, Sophia, Alexander, and Devon; and my first wife, Gisèle, for their wonderful support. Anne and Gisèle helped greatly with suggestions on early drafts. I am grateful for Julia Karpeisky, whose fine mind untangled many of my self-tied logical knots. I would like to thank my friend and spiritual guide, David Bona, and those VA psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors who made such a difference in my life: Larry Decker, Sharon Rapp, Emmett Early, Lorry Kaye, and Ellen Li. I would like to thank the members of the Three A. M. Shopping Club, combat veterans all; you know who you are, why we keep running into each other at deserted twenty-four-hour supermarkets, and how much you mean to me. Finally, I would like to thank my editor, John Flicker, whose skill in shaping and cutting greatly improved the book; the people at Grove/Atlantic, particularly Morgan Entrekin, Deb Seager, Jodie Hockensmith, Sue Cole, and Peter Blackstock; Don Kennison, for the much appreciated and fine job of copyediting; Susan Gamer for her careful and thoughtful proofreading, and the people at International Creative Management, particularly my agent Sloan Harris, for their support, skill, and hard work.

  Endnotes

  1. I recognize that the word God often connotes the image of some white-bearded father figure up in the sky someplace, but short of sounding completely silly by using such expressions as the Unexplainable I don’t know any way around this problem. I don’t find it any more enlightening or sophisticated to write the Universe or the Cosmic Energy than to write God.

  2. I am not saying that the infantry today has it easy. Certainly the communications with home have changed, but the field conditions, such as filth, cold, heat, fatigue, and lack of sleep, have not changed since the infantry was using rocks. However, the trend is clear. Robots are already being deployed for fighting in cities. And soon they will be able to be controlled from Nevada.

  3. Helicopter landing zone, usually a circle hacked out of the jungle or elephant grass with machetes and knives.

  4. The workhorse medical evacuation helicopter of the U.S. Marines and U.S. Army in Vietnam. Huey comes from HUE-1, helicopter, utility, evacuation.

  5. Agency for International Development.

  6. Few on the aircraft were old enough to drink alcohol legally.

  7. Chinese communist grenade, the same design as the Russian and German World War II “potato masher,” a round canister filled with high explosive and steel ball bearings on top of a wooden stick.

  8. Radio interview, April 1, 1993.

  9. The primary attack aircraft used by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War.

  10. “Snake” is short for snake-eye bombs, bombs with pop-out tail fins that slowed their descent to enable more accurate delivery and the escape of the faster-moving jet in tight conditions like this. “Nape” is napalm, jellied gasoline, a horrific incendiary substance invented during World War II that sticks to its targets, such as human flesh, and is used in flamethrowers and bombs. The name derives from naphthene and palmitate, the primary jellifying ingredients.

  11. It’s not just for daring the fire that I call these chopper pilots brave. In peacetime a pilot would be considered totally crazy to fly in those mountains, with their tricky winds and clouds obscuring the instant death called hillsides. Marine Air Group 29 (MAG-29) flew out of Quang Tri.

  12. The demilitarized zone that separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam.

  13. Lieutenant; the platoon commander.

  14. Originally published in 1922.

  15. Krishna is the eighth avatar (or incarnation) of Vishnu, the preserver, part of the Hindu trinity along with Brahma, the creator, and Shiva, the destroyer. Kali, the mother goddess in her destructive form, is Shiva’s wife. Krishna, as preserver and protector, represents that which maintains the world, including order. This is an important aspect of Krishna, an aspect which used to belong to our very early Western war gods but which we lost.

  16. I am paraphrasing or quoting directly from the Mahabharata, Udyoga Parva, trans. Kamala Subramaniam, 1988.

  17. Matthew 8:22

  18. Matthew 12:30.

  19. Donald Sandner, “The Split Shadow and the Father-Son Relationship,” in Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Mahdi, Foster, and Little, 1987.

  20. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, 1979.

  21. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats, 1964.

  22. Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 1999.

  23. Literally, “warrior way,” the code of the Japanese samurai.

  24. William Butler Yeats, from “Lapis Lazuli.”

  25. The M-14 was the standard NATO rifle in use before the adoption of the M-16. It was much heavier than the M-16, with a heavier bullet, so it had greater range and accuracy, neither of which was needed in jungle warfare but both of which were greatly desired in open space. At that time the M-16 was also considered unreliable. It had improved, but only after needless deaths. A small act of tiredness during the design phase? A small favor granted to a defense contractor? A small bureaucratic slip about powder composition? Small things, magnified terribly by war.

  26. Light Anti-Armor Weapons, handheld antitank missiles like little bazookas.

  27. Poem translated by John Lucas, in Christine Fell, trans. and ed., Egil’s Saga, 1975.

  28. Combine this with the completely sufficient reason that it also means I’ll have a better chance of surviving than you will and you’ve got overwhelming pressure to always increase weapons technology. If stopping war is a goal, attacking weapons development is a losing strategy.

  29. If not controlled blood obscures what the surgeon needs to see as well as weakens the patient.

  30. I’ve watched my own position change. I initially supported both wars to eliminate weapons of mass destruction under the control of a sadist in Iraq and al-Qaeda’s base and its leader in Afghanistan. When one mission turned out to be based on a false assumption and the other mission failed, I’d have brought the troops home. From the very start, however, I abhorred the “war as Olympic Games” coverage by the media and the self-ri
ghteous attitude of the administration.

  31. Supply bases replenish matériel. Hospitals replenish soldiers. Allowing the unhindered resupply of both increases the deaths and casualties on our side. Directly attacking wounded soldiers (e.g., indiscriminately bombing a hospital) is immoral but it is not immoral to take away hospitals through infantry action directed against troops who are guarding them. Once a hospital is taken, unevacuated patients should be cared for.

  32. New Fucking Guy.

  33. A fire mission occurs when an observer sees a target, radios back to the artillery battery the exact map coordinates, and adjusts the first few shells onto the target. He then gives the order to “fire for effect,” meaning lob as many shells into the target as one thinks necessary to destroy it.