Required reading for war

 What It Is Like To Go To War, by Karl Marlantes, Corvus, RRP£16.99, 272 pages

In 1968, 23-year-old Karl Marlantes went to war. He was changed profoundly by Vietnam and he has spent the past 40 years coming to terms with the experience. In 2010 he published Matterhorn, his acclaimed debut novel about the war.

Part memoir, part primer for the modern warrior and part exorcism of past ghosts, What It Is Like To Go To War is brutally honest, clear-eyed and necessary. “The Marine Corps taught me how to kill but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing,” writes Marlantes. It is the spiritual toll that killing took on him that he has struggled with and believes modern soldiers are woefully unprepared for – resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and often suicide.

Interweaving his personal combat experiences with lessons drawn from Homer, the Mahabharata and Jung, Marlantes, a Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar, has written a powerful book that should be required reading for those going to war – and the leaders who send them.