Matterhorn

Vietnam, 1969. Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas arrives at Fire Support Base Matterhorn, an isolated Marine position near Laos and the Demilitarized Zone, eager to prove himself during a thirteen-month tour. Almost immediately Bravo Company is ordered to abandon the mountain and move into the jungle, where hunger, disease, monsoon weather and an elusive North Vietnamese enemy test the unit long before any decisive battle.

As the Marines patrol and fight through Quảng Trị Province, Mellas confronts the costs of ambition, poor command decisions and racial division within his own company. The struggle to survive turns Matterhorn from a military objective into a measure of loyalty and sacrifice. Drawing on Marlantes’s own service, the novel presents combat through the daily physical and moral pressures placed on very young men.