No one can really describe what it's like to go to war. Words fail in the face of the fury of combat. If anybody can do the topic justice, it's Marlantes, a decorated Marine, Rhodes scholar, and author of Matterhorn, one of the finest novels of the war.

Marlantes's framework for understanding war, and his combat experience in particular, is Jungian psychology. When a warrior faces battle, and faces the ultimate test of kill-or-be-killed, they enter the Temple of Mars. Combat is euphoric, even transcendent, but it is also profoundly destructive. Even ostensible victors depart the Temple of Mars with terrible wounds, visible and invisible. Marlantes has struggled with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ever since returning home from Vietnam, and he's done pretty well by most standards.

His proposed solution is more therapy, essentially. An institutional recognition by the US military and Veterans Affairs that reflection, ritual, and space to remember the dead are necessary. A very traditionalist club of elder warriors and brave women are necessary to welcome warriors home, in all senses of the word.

Marlantes is a gifted writer, and some parts of this book were incredibly moving. His description of the Mass for the Dead, held to give peace to his dead comrades and dead NVA foes, is incredibly moving. But as for Marlantes' own story, I would recommend the 'director's cut' version in Matterhorn above what actually happened. And for the Jungian psychoanalytic take on the Vietnam War and PTSD, Shay's Achilles in Vietnam is still the book to beat.