Except for the novella “The Long March” and the play “In the Clap Shack,” Styron’s work usually treats military culture obliquely. “The Suicide Run” tackles that culture head-on while, for the most part, avoiding the trap of reductiveness into which too much late-20th-century American war literature tends to fall. Styron chronicles what happens to those damaged by battles they did not fight — those who must dwell always in anticipation of the horrors to come.