Powerful story. One of the better articles I've read in a while.
A war hero returns home, 40 years laterBy John Blake, CNN
updated 4:08 PM EDT, Sat March 24, 2012
(CNN) -- Karl Marlantes stared at the young man through the sights of an M-16 rifle and slid his muddy finger over the curve of the trigger.
Turning toward him, the man locked eyes with Marlantes and froze.
"Don't throw it. Don't throw it," Marlantes whispered, hoping the man would surrender.
Moments earlier, the North Vietnamese soldier had been hurling grenades at a group of U.S. Marines. He was cornered near the top of a hill. Blood streamed down his face from a head wound; the crumpled body of a friend lay at his feet.
Marlantes had slithered undetected to a spot just below the soldier's foxhole. When the soldier popped up, arm cocked to throw another grenade, he spotted Marlantes.
The soldier's dark eyes widened in fear; he looked around for a way out, but there was none; and then he snarled, showing his teeth.
Marlantes watched as the grenade left the soldier's hand and tumbled straight toward him.
'How can you return home?'
He had a family, a big income, and stayed in first-class hotels while jetting off to Europe and the Far East. When companies faced a crisis, they called Marlantes. He was the Ivy-League educated business consultant, the ex-Marine with the medals.
Yet few knew that Marlantes was facing his own crisis. Something was happening to him that neither he, nor his wife or five kids, could understand: There was hardly a day when he wasn't thinking about the secrets he left in Vietnam.
"How can you return home if you've never left?" he once wrote.
Marlantes is 67 now, with thick salt-and-pepper hair, a scruffy goatee and a calm, measured way of talking, but the fatigue can be seen in the lines under his eyes. He's been sorting through his war memories for over 40 years.
He first tried to purge them. He took 33 years to write "Matterhorn," his 2010 debut novel about a Marine unit in Vietnam. He released his combat memoir, "What It is Like to Go to War," last year.
What do you do when you take a young man who had just earned his doctorate in philosophy and place him on the battlefields of Europe during World War II? You get a classic. Gray, who served in a counterintelligence unit during the war, marshals his philosophical training to examine why men are drawn to battle, how they deal with guilt and how war changed him. The book is deeply philosophical and personal. Its influence can clearly be seen in Karl Marlantes' contemporary classic war memoir, "What It Is Like to Go to War."
Few contemporary writers describe the fierce bond that unites men in danger better than Junger. Whether it's the doomed fishermen in "A Perfect Storm," or his inspiring portrait of the late Afghan resistance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud in "Fire," Junger's stories are rich in detail and testosterone-fueled banter. In "War," Junger follows American soldiers as they try to survive a 15-month deployment at a remote outpost in Afghanistan ringed by the Taliban.
There's a well-known picture of a tanned and shirtless E.B. Sledge, staring vacantly after battle in World War II. The photo, reprinted in Sledge's searing memoir, seemed to say it all. Sledge had seen so much brutality that he would never be the same. Sledge's gripping account of U.S. Marines fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific is harrowing. His description of Marines casually using knives to dig out gold crowns from the mouths of dead Japanese soldiers after battle is unforgettable. Sledge's memoir was part of the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, "The Pacific."
When a U.S. Navy Seal team tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, America cheered. It's not unusual today to hear of crack American military units tracking down bad guys in remote places to bring them to justice. Bowden's "Black Hawk Down," reminds readers, though, of another time when some of America's finest soldiers were cut to pieces in the winding streets of Somalia when they went after a bad guy. The book is a graphic reminder that no matter how good soldiers are, awful things can still happen when plans go wrong. The book was later made into a hit movie.
Ambrose, the gravel-voiced historian, once said that a relative had accused him of writing books that celebrated American triumphalism. He never denied the charge, and "Band of Brothers" is a superb example. It's a rousing look at an American paratrooper unit that participated in some of the biggest battles in World War II. Their commander came out of central casting: handsome, brave and a natural leader. None of his paratroopers had any moral qualms about the war. There were no racial tensions in the unit. Ambrose' book evoked what seemed to be a simpler time when America was emerging as the world's strongest nation. It still works today, though, because it also captures the brotherhood that all soldiers, not just Americans, share.
Caputo's novel is the polar opposite of "Band of Brothers." It is considered the definitive Vietnam novel. His autographical account of his stint as a Marine combat officer in the early years of Vietnam is considered by many the best book on Vietnam. Perhaps only two other Vietnam books -- "Dispatches" and "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young," are as popular.
During the last days of World War II, German soldiers desperately sought out American and British units in order to surrender. There was a reason that they were afraid of surrendering to advancing Russian soldiers -- they might not survive. The war on the Eastern front was waged without pity. Some have called it the clash of titans because the huge number of soldiers and tanks involved. Biderman's account is considered one of the finest descriptions of that clash from the ground level. He survived five years of combat on arguably the cruelest terrain in World War II.
Both books have been hailed as war classics. "Matterhorn" became a New York Times bestseller. Critics described his memoir as "spellbinding" and "staggeringly beautiful." Marlantes was invited to speak at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy.
Marlantes accepted so many speaking requests that a three-week stretch is the longest he's spent at home during the last two years. But Marlantes' books aren't just memoirs. They're warnings.
What Marlantes faced may soon afflict the families and friends of thousands of American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The nation is facing a post-traumatic stress disorder "epidemic," a recent U.S. Army study concluded.
The study says that about 472,000 Afghan and Iraq veterans are suffering from PTSD, which includes symptoms such as inexplicable bursts of anger, depression, and memory loss. The U.S. Army sergeant recently arrested for allegedly gunning down 16 Afghan villagers, including women and babies, had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and PTSD. He was on his fourth deployment. Veterans carry invisible wounds, Marlantes says, but so do their loved ones.
"For every veteran who goes through a divorce, a wife goes through one, too," he writes near the beginning of his memoir. "For every veteran alone in the basement, there is a wife upstairs, bewildered, isolated and in despair from the dark clouds of war that hangs over family life."
Those clouds of war can take a decade to engulf a veteran. Marlantes didn't have his first flashback until about 15 years after he left Vietnam, when he walked into a business meeting one day and saw a pile of mangled bodies on the conference table.
"When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family," he says. "It's just starting."
Families can prepare for that burden, he says, but they must first understand some uncomfortable truths: War isn't just hell. It can also be exhilarating.
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/24/living/karl-marlantes-war-books/index.html?hpt=hp_c2 
