JMA & Motorfirebox: When Marlantes made his statement:

"The ideal response to killing in war should be one similar to a mercy killing, sadness mingled with respect."

Didn't that refer to how he felt the thing as a whole should be viewed decades, maybe many decades later? I don't have a copy to refer to (the library copy isn't back yet) so I may have the context wrong but what I remember is something more along the lines of being proud of professional accomplishment but a bit sad that the accomplishment involved killing a lot of people, NVA soldiers, who may not have had much choice about being there. Again I remember him saying that after decades of reflection, this is how he felt he should best view it.

That he came to that after so much time implies that Marlantes, the old man came to the conclusion that that is how old men should best view it. But what worked good for Marlantes long after the fighting stopped. For others who knows?

That viewpoint would not be so workable for soldiers during and in the immediate aftermath of fight I imagine. I read once of a B-26 crew that caught a Chinese unit in the open in the daylight and killed over 1,000, that one crew. Feeling anything but pride and happiness that those dead Chinese weren't around to kill G.I.s would have been a handicap to future missions.

I am not sure his descent into sex, drugs and rock and roll isn't anything more than a young man leaving a highly regimented world and entering the US of the late 60s and 70s (I forgot if he partied in Europe too). Sex, drugs and rock and roll was a way of life easily engaged in by a lot of people in those days. Maybe it had something to do with his combat experience but maybe it had just as much to do with being a young man in a place where it was easy.

I always thought Grossman was dead wrong too. He always talked about humans instead of culture and I never remembered reading anything about the Mongols being troubled by angst. The comments section in the Best Defense junior officer preferred reads list cited by JMA tore Grossman apart.

Not all of the writing is about guys who have problems. Most maybe because problems are inherently more dramatic than people who are well adjusted. But not all. Bob Greene wrote a very good book called "Duty" (I think). It was about his father and also about Paul Tibbets whom Greene got to know very well. IIRC Tibbets had no guilt, was proud of his unit and its accomplishment and knew that dropping the bomb ended the war sooner thereby saving many.