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Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
In this strikingly original and groundbreaking book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Jonathan Shay
15 books29 followersJonathan Shay is an American psychiatrist and author known for his groundbreaking work on combat trauma and moral injury. Holding degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, he began his career in neurological research before shifting his focus to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while working with Vietnam War veterans at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Boston.
Shay gained recognition for drawing parallels between the experiences of modern combat veterans and the warriors depicted in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. His books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994) and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002), explore PTSD through the lens of ancient literature, illustrating the psychological and moral wounds of war. He has been a vocal advocate for redefining PTSD as an injury rather than an illness, emphasizing the role of leadership, unit cohesion, and realistic training in preventing psychological harm.
His concept of moral injury—the psychological damage caused by a betrayal of moral expectations in high-stakes situations—has influenced military and mental health discussions. Throughout his career, Shay has advised military institutions, including the U.S. Marine Corps and Army War College, on improving soldier mental health. His contributions earned him a MacArthur "Genius Grant" in 2007 and led to the establishment of The Shay Moral Injury Center in 2018.
Shay gained recognition for drawing parallels between the experiences of modern combat veterans and the warriors depicted in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. His books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994) and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002), explore PTSD through the lens of ancient literature, illustrating the psychological and moral wounds of war. He has been a vocal advocate for redefining PTSD as an injury rather than an illness, emphasizing the role of leadership, unit cohesion, and realistic training in preventing psychological harm.
His concept of moral injury—the psychological damage caused by a betrayal of moral expectations in high-stakes situations—has influenced military and mental health discussions. Throughout his career, Shay has advised military institutions, including the U.S. Marine Corps and Army War College, on improving soldier mental health. His contributions earned him a MacArthur "Genius Grant" in 2007 and led to the establishment of The Shay Moral Injury Center in 2018.
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June 17, 2012
Homer is ever present in modern culture, but his power is often reduced to a kind of cartoon. The Iliad becomes a sword-and-sandals Hollywood cliche and the Odyssey becomes the original road movie. Shay brings the Iliad back to reality by shining a new light on the ferocious pain of Achilles, pain that today might be called PTSD, but which Shay calls "moral injury."
Shay reads the Iliad as a psychologist and observes in Achilles some of the same symptoms that he sees in his patients, many of whom are veterans of the Vietnam War. The common denominator -- and the thing that differentiates many Vietnam veterans from WWII vets -- is an element of betrayal and disrespect that became the core of the Vietnam experience. Shay calls this "moral injury." The anger of Achilles stems from the disrespect shown him by Agamemnon, and this anger blossoms into grief and rage, causing a breakdown in the soldier's social and moral constructs. When this happens in a combat theater, as it frequently did in Vietnam, the results are catastrophic.
The parallels that Shay draws between Achilles and the experiences of many Vietnam veterans are minutely detailed, including the gut-wrenching voices of the veterans themselves, and his argument is very persuasive. His conclusion is both instructive and practical. He doesn't bewail the existence of war and prescribe an idealistic pacifistic solution. Instead, in a deliberate and concrete way, he shows how vitally important leadership qualities are in the military. In some ways this book seems to be written especially for military commanders, as a reminder that the lesson of the Iliad is still ringing in our ears: to preserve the moral horizon, whatever the circumstances.
Shay reads the Iliad as a psychologist and observes in Achilles some of the same symptoms that he sees in his patients, many of whom are veterans of the Vietnam War. The common denominator -- and the thing that differentiates many Vietnam veterans from WWII vets -- is an element of betrayal and disrespect that became the core of the Vietnam experience. Shay calls this "moral injury." The anger of Achilles stems from the disrespect shown him by Agamemnon, and this anger blossoms into grief and rage, causing a breakdown in the soldier's social and moral constructs. When this happens in a combat theater, as it frequently did in Vietnam, the results are catastrophic.
The parallels that Shay draws between Achilles and the experiences of many Vietnam veterans are minutely detailed, including the gut-wrenching voices of the veterans themselves, and his argument is very persuasive. His conclusion is both instructive and practical. He doesn't bewail the existence of war and prescribe an idealistic pacifistic solution. Instead, in a deliberate and concrete way, he shows how vitally important leadership qualities are in the military. In some ways this book seems to be written especially for military commanders, as a reminder that the lesson of the Iliad is still ringing in our ears: to preserve the moral horizon, whatever the circumstances.
January 22, 2011
Jonathan Shay is a psychotherapist – and impressive amateur classicist – who has spent decades treating Vietnam veterans with severe PTSD. In this fascinating book, he analyzes what he sees as the moral breakdown of Achilles in terms of factors common to the Vietnam War. The first section of the book outlines these factors: a betrayal of “what’s right”; the shrinkage of the social and moral horizon; grief at the death of a special comrade; guilt and wrongful substitution; and going berserk (a clinical condition, not slang). In each of the chapters he describes these conditions as revealed through years of treating veterans, often quoting transcripts of therapy sessions, and analyzes their presence in The Iliad. In the second section he goes through soldiers’ common reactions to these conditions, again drawing from Vietnam veterans’ accounts, and demonstrates the same reactions in Achilles. It’s convincing and utterly compelling.
I’m no classical scholar, but I have read The Iliad many times and can appreciate his deep understanding and meticulous examination. His book is worth multiple readings. In fact, Achilles in Vietnam has filled a role in my understanding similar to movies of favorite novels, like “Gone With the Wind” – now I can’t read The Iliad without this as context and subtext! I also was stunned by the descriptions of combat in Vietnam — both the conditions of guerilla warfare against the Viet Cong and common U.S. military practices seemed designed to inflict maximum psychological damage on our soldiers. Be forewarned: this is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve studied the Vietnam War then much of this will be familiar. If not, brace yourself; the accounts are from men whose combat trauma was debilitating enough that they sought professional help. Also, Dr. Shay quotes veterans’ words verbatim, and the profanity is almost as stunning as the substance. I have no tolerance for profanity and felt like I needed to wash out my head with a power hose, yet at the same time I couldn’t help feel sorry for both the lack of education that often produces such a low level of language and the obvious crutch that profanity was for these men; if the eloquent can’t find words to describe such horrors, what hope had they? (Not all the interviewees swear four or five times in a sentence; there are distinct levels of language corresponding to levels of education, a fact that the Vietnam veterans I know are quick to assert.) The final section of the book focuses on PTSD and possible healing, with less analysis of Achilles; nonetheless, it’s fascinating reading.
I’m no classical scholar, but I have read The Iliad many times and can appreciate his deep understanding and meticulous examination. His book is worth multiple readings. In fact, Achilles in Vietnam has filled a role in my understanding similar to movies of favorite novels, like “Gone With the Wind” – now I can’t read The Iliad without this as context and subtext! I also was stunned by the descriptions of combat in Vietnam — both the conditions of guerilla warfare against the Viet Cong and common U.S. military practices seemed designed to inflict maximum psychological damage on our soldiers. Be forewarned: this is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve studied the Vietnam War then much of this will be familiar. If not, brace yourself; the accounts are from men whose combat trauma was debilitating enough that they sought professional help. Also, Dr. Shay quotes veterans’ words verbatim, and the profanity is almost as stunning as the substance. I have no tolerance for profanity and felt like I needed to wash out my head with a power hose, yet at the same time I couldn’t help feel sorry for both the lack of education that often produces such a low level of language and the obvious crutch that profanity was for these men; if the eloquent can’t find words to describe such horrors, what hope had they? (Not all the interviewees swear four or five times in a sentence; there are distinct levels of language corresponding to levels of education, a fact that the Vietnam veterans I know are quick to assert.) The final section of the book focuses on PTSD and possible healing, with less analysis of Achilles; nonetheless, it’s fascinating reading.
December 11, 2007
A powerful study of the impact of PTSD on the human personality, using the Iliad and other classic literary portraits of traumatized warriors to illustrate the timelessness of this problem with special emphasis on the reasons that the Vietnam war was a more shattering experience for many veterans than other wars have been.
August 23, 2021
This book was published in 1994. For some reason it slipped through the radar for me and my reading about Vietnam. That date also means one needs to be careful about using the material to help a veteran. Also I did have some doubts about the veracity of some stories, but who am I to judge.
I was totally immersed in the book which accounts for the many notes I took.
The cover photo is known as "Reaching Out." It brings tears to my eyes every time I look at it. I can get lost in the tiny details of this photograph. It is included here in this collection of the most famous shots from the Vietnam War:
http://time.com/vietnam-photos/
Chapter 1 is called "What's Right." It is a bold move on Doctor Shay's part. In comparing the American soldier in Vietnam, he refers back to Achilles in the Iliad. Achilles felt wronged. Achilles deserved to have the slave girl Briseis. The fact that Agamemnon would not allow this to happen meant that the great warrior could go and sulk in his tent and refuse to fight. See what I mean by bold move? Achilles "deserved" the slave girl? Shay is saying the American soldiers felt the same way about Vietnam. There was a lack of fairness. Weapons malfunctioned. Whose fault was that? Who got picked to be the point man? Why did officers send soldiers down well travelled paths when off the road would have meant fewer chances of hitting mines? The officers were just in a hurry. And those bastards did not have to die. Only 8 colonels were killed in action in the whole god damn Vietnam war.
I have a new appreciation of a best friend in college. I always ignored Achilles as a big baby sulking in his tent. My friend totally defended him. Achilles had nothing to prove. I am looking at Achilles now with a totally new outlook.
Chapter 2 is about the shrinking of the social and moral horizon. Achilles gradually cares only about a few men around him. He desecrates the body of an enemy, something he never did before. The American soldier in Vietnam slowly only cares about a few people around him. In Vietnam the enemy struck at the body and the mind. Compared to WWII and Korea the deaths and injuries from booby traps triple. Soldiers felt tortured. Some common expressions to deal with it all were "Don't mean nothing" and "Fuck it."
Chapter 3 deals with the death of a special comrade. In the Iliad we have Achilles and his friend Patroklos. Veterans will often say, "I died in Vietnam." Of course, it was their close friend who died. Achilles is treated by Homer as if he is already dead. Following the death of that friend, the soldier often acts with rage. In Vietnam that can mean killing of innocents and mutilation of bodies, just as Achilles did with Hector. While Achilles could wash the body of Patroklos, in Vietnam a body was just zipped up in a bag.
Chapter 4 deals with guilt and wrongful substitution. Patroklos dies, and it should have been Achilles. Patroklos is even wearing the armor of Achilles. "It should have been me," is a a common refrain. I even feel it a bit for my friends George Fell, Bubbles Napierata, and Billy Cyr. Only because I was able to control my life enough to avoid what they had to go through. And they all died. Why did I deserve to live? There is no logical reason for it.
Chapter 5 deals with the state of going berserk as Achilles does after the death of Patroklos. The berserk state can lead to desecration of bodies and killing of civilians. It can mean shooting someone with a full clip long after they are clearly going to die. I wonder if that is the type of thing I see in police shootings where they empty their weapon.
Chapter 6 deals with dishonoring the enemy to make killing easier. We see that throughout the world today based on religion, race, nationality, and so on.
Chapter 7 deals with what Homer left out:
1. Deprivation. There are no examples of thirst, hunger, lack of sleep, heat and cold, filth and squalor, dysentery, insects, animals, and so on. Vietnam soldiers weighed in the middle to low 100 pounds. Carrying ammo was more important than food. No soldiers in the Iliad die of depravation. That would not be glorious for the families of the fallen. And on both sides there is an astounding absence of villains because many nobles traced ancestry to both sides of the Trojan War.
2. Friendly Fire. Many weapons in Homer miss their intended target. It is certainly possible a friendly soldier was killed but it is mentioned only once. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of American deaths in Vietnam were due to friendly fire.
3. Fragging. The word is derived from fragmentation grenade. There is an interrupted fragging episode at the beginning of the Iliad when Achilles draws his sword to kill Agamemnon for denying him the slave girl Briseis. But Athena intervenes. One estimate has 20 percent of American officers who died in Vietnam were killed by their own men. Usually for perceived incompetence.
4. Suffering of the Wounded. Homer does not hide the frightful wounds inflicted but he does not show the suffering. In Homer, about eight men are killed for every man wounded. In Vietnam, about one man was killed for every six wounded. Wounded soldiers die in physical and mental agony. Their screams and groans must have lacerated the spirit of their comrades.
5. Civilian Suffering by All Civilians. Homer displays the full agony of bereaved civilian men and women. Other than that we don't get a full picture of what they went through.
6. Civilian Suffering by Women. For more on that look up Adrienne Rich's essay "Caryatid: Two Columns." The men were killed and the women were raped. My girlfriend in Vietnam was raped by a soldier. She was sold and locked in a room with a man.
Chapter 8 deals with Luck and God's Will. Fortunately, the author has enough sense to focus on luck and not on the acts of some invisible being. Some of the moments in the Iliad where a god intervenes could be examples of just plain luck. I wrote a poem called "Luck" about a man who survived a firefight simply there just happened to be a fallen tree beside him when his platoon was ambushed. He fell behind it and survived. Luck can be astoundingly good or it can be crushingly bad.
Look at this downward tapering funnel of numbers for the Vietnam era:
1. The whole Vietnam Generation: 53, 100,000.
2. Men: 26, 800,000.
3. Served in military during Vietnam era: 8,615,000.
4. Served in Vietnam: 3,145,000.
5. Served in combat: 776,000.
6. Casualties: 321,000.
7. Dead: 58,000.
Check out the last three or four numbers in particular. So much unfairness of things. Were these men just sent out to get killed or wounded? Good luck if you don't?
One story told has a fascinating mix of humor and horror. A platoon lands in an old French minefield. The radio operator sends out the message: BE ADVISED! YOU'RE IN AN OLD FRENCH MINEFIELD! What do the soldiers do? They start running. Soon they are all running. And they all make it out. That's luck.
Sometimes the luck can make a soldier feel invulnerable. Of course, there are plenty of soldiers who die later because their luck runs out. And luck can also lead to the "It should have been me who died" guilt feelings.
Sometimes blame was attributed to soldiers who died.
For many veterans God was lost in Vietnam. What kind of God lets this happen? And where is virtue now?
Chapter 9 deals with reclaiming the Iliad's gods as a metaphor of social power. Many readers find the Iliad's gods hard to take seriously. High school students often asked me did the ancient Greeks really believe in this stuff? I wondered, Do you really believe in your stuff? So this cultural chasm exists. But we should not be smug about it. Those are real gods and must be faced as such. Just like we do the gods of today's world.
Homer views his gods as powerful. But here's the thing: They behave like REMFs. An REMF is a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker. I was an REMF. I know the guilt feelings. While I was getting laid in Saigon, my good friend George Fell was getting killed in the Cambodia invasion. I have no idea how.
Now here is the big question. Were Homer's gods nothing but REMFs? Why use the acronym. Were they nothing but Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers? And why make it plural. Is our God nothing but a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker? What's He been doing during all of this?
Soldiers on both sides want the war to end. Zeus may have been the original REMF. Men died while Zeus dallied. Homer shows Zeus many times as compassionate and caring. Homer was a master of irony.
Chapter 10 deals with the Breaking Points of Moral Existence--What Breaks?
In a brilliant opening of the chapter, the author quotes Lady Percy's monologue from Henry IV, Part I and points out a list of examples of the symptoms of PTSD. Here is the monologue without the author's list of symptoms. See if you can spot them:
LADY PERCY: O my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offense have I this fortnight been
A banished woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talked
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,
And in thy face strange motions have appeared,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.
The whole chapter is an excellent rundown of PTSD symptoms. Worth reading for that alone. There is a loss of authority over mental function. Here are a few main items:
1. Untrustworthiness of Perception. The Grunt's experience is whitewashed by his superiors. And the hypervigilance required to go humping the boonies means nothing is what it seems. It is difficult to remove that. Researchers are finding abnormalities in brain chemistry, function, and even gross structure.
2. Memory. Memories come back in dreams or flashbacks.
3. Persistent Mobilization for Danger. The vigilance never leaves. Although I was not in combat, I learned to chose where I sit, and I still do that. When I first arrived in California, I fell to my knees when a plane broke the sound barrier. I was told that was common among those just arriving from the war zone. It took a few months to break the habit.
4. Persistence of Survival Skills.
5. Persistence of Betrayal.
6. Persistence of Isolation.
7. Persistence of Suicidality.
8. Destruction of the Capacity for Democratic Participation.
Chapter 11 deals with Healing and Tragedy. Homer ends the Iliad with mourning, not reassurance. The same goes for severely injured combat veterans. There is no "triumph of the human spirit."
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. . . . you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Is recovery possible? The author gives three answers: no, don't know, and yes. 1. NO: No one can go back to what they were before. 2. DON'T KNOW: No one knows for certain if recovery is possible. 3. YES: Some soldiers find a way to contribute in a positive way to society.
The author believes in telling stories. That has been what I have been trying to do with my veterans group. The listener must listen with emotion, feeling the emotions of the speaker. "WITHOUT EMOTION IN THE LISTENER THERE IS NO COMMUNALIZATION OF THE TRAUMA." The listener must respect the narrator. Veterans constantly say, "Listen! Just listen!" Or they could say, "You weren't there so shut the fuck up!" I'd be more likely to say the latter.
And respect means refraining from judgment. I NEVER judge a veteran if I can help it.
No person's suffering can be measured against any other person's suffering.
Forgetting combat trauma is not a legitimate goal of treatment.
The final chapter is Conclusion.
1. Thoughtful military people assert the need for better training and leadership. Training for Vietnam was often negligent. I know my training was. My job training for Vietnam was superb. The problem was my training for violence. It was ludicrous. I was heading for Saigon, and they taught me how to fight in a field.
Sun-Tzu said, "Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline. Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive discipline and sternness in command result in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a leader."
2. Protect unit cohesion by unit rotation rather than by individual rotation. Unit rotation is the single most important measure for secondary prevention of combat PTSD.
3. Value griefwork. It should not be stigmatized. Soldiers should be able to weep and feel sorrow without being weak. Focusing on chaplains misses the point. Soldiers need commanders who can be sensitive.
Bodies were not always handled respectfully by Graves Registration in Vietnam.
Meals in honor of the dead would have been more valuable than those stupid Christmas and Thanksgiving meals. I hated those. They were a joke, an insult.
Soldiers should not be medicated because they feel the need to weep.
4. Do not encourage berserking. A good soldier should always maintain self-restraint.
5. Eliminate intentional injustice as a motivational technique. Humiliation and degradation need to be removed from the military.
6. Respect the enemy as human. A common idea in Vietnam was that the enemy did not value human life as much.
7. Acknowledge psychiatric casualties.
I was totally immersed in the book which accounts for the many notes I took.
The cover photo is known as "Reaching Out." It brings tears to my eyes every time I look at it. I can get lost in the tiny details of this photograph. It is included here in this collection of the most famous shots from the Vietnam War:
http://time.com/vietnam-photos/
Chapter 1 is called "What's Right." It is a bold move on Doctor Shay's part. In comparing the American soldier in Vietnam, he refers back to Achilles in the Iliad. Achilles felt wronged. Achilles deserved to have the slave girl Briseis. The fact that Agamemnon would not allow this to happen meant that the great warrior could go and sulk in his tent and refuse to fight. See what I mean by bold move? Achilles "deserved" the slave girl? Shay is saying the American soldiers felt the same way about Vietnam. There was a lack of fairness. Weapons malfunctioned. Whose fault was that? Who got picked to be the point man? Why did officers send soldiers down well travelled paths when off the road would have meant fewer chances of hitting mines? The officers were just in a hurry. And those bastards did not have to die. Only 8 colonels were killed in action in the whole god damn Vietnam war.
I have a new appreciation of a best friend in college. I always ignored Achilles as a big baby sulking in his tent. My friend totally defended him. Achilles had nothing to prove. I am looking at Achilles now with a totally new outlook.
Chapter 2 is about the shrinking of the social and moral horizon. Achilles gradually cares only about a few men around him. He desecrates the body of an enemy, something he never did before. The American soldier in Vietnam slowly only cares about a few people around him. In Vietnam the enemy struck at the body and the mind. Compared to WWII and Korea the deaths and injuries from booby traps triple. Soldiers felt tortured. Some common expressions to deal with it all were "Don't mean nothing" and "Fuck it."
Chapter 3 deals with the death of a special comrade. In the Iliad we have Achilles and his friend Patroklos. Veterans will often say, "I died in Vietnam." Of course, it was their close friend who died. Achilles is treated by Homer as if he is already dead. Following the death of that friend, the soldier often acts with rage. In Vietnam that can mean killing of innocents and mutilation of bodies, just as Achilles did with Hector. While Achilles could wash the body of Patroklos, in Vietnam a body was just zipped up in a bag.
Chapter 4 deals with guilt and wrongful substitution. Patroklos dies, and it should have been Achilles. Patroklos is even wearing the armor of Achilles. "It should have been me," is a a common refrain. I even feel it a bit for my friends George Fell, Bubbles Napierata, and Billy Cyr. Only because I was able to control my life enough to avoid what they had to go through. And they all died. Why did I deserve to live? There is no logical reason for it.
Chapter 5 deals with the state of going berserk as Achilles does after the death of Patroklos. The berserk state can lead to desecration of bodies and killing of civilians. It can mean shooting someone with a full clip long after they are clearly going to die. I wonder if that is the type of thing I see in police shootings where they empty their weapon.
Chapter 6 deals with dishonoring the enemy to make killing easier. We see that throughout the world today based on religion, race, nationality, and so on.
Chapter 7 deals with what Homer left out:
1. Deprivation. There are no examples of thirst, hunger, lack of sleep, heat and cold, filth and squalor, dysentery, insects, animals, and so on. Vietnam soldiers weighed in the middle to low 100 pounds. Carrying ammo was more important than food. No soldiers in the Iliad die of depravation. That would not be glorious for the families of the fallen. And on both sides there is an astounding absence of villains because many nobles traced ancestry to both sides of the Trojan War.
2. Friendly Fire. Many weapons in Homer miss their intended target. It is certainly possible a friendly soldier was killed but it is mentioned only once. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of American deaths in Vietnam were due to friendly fire.
3. Fragging. The word is derived from fragmentation grenade. There is an interrupted fragging episode at the beginning of the Iliad when Achilles draws his sword to kill Agamemnon for denying him the slave girl Briseis. But Athena intervenes. One estimate has 20 percent of American officers who died in Vietnam were killed by their own men. Usually for perceived incompetence.
4. Suffering of the Wounded. Homer does not hide the frightful wounds inflicted but he does not show the suffering. In Homer, about eight men are killed for every man wounded. In Vietnam, about one man was killed for every six wounded. Wounded soldiers die in physical and mental agony. Their screams and groans must have lacerated the spirit of their comrades.
5. Civilian Suffering by All Civilians. Homer displays the full agony of bereaved civilian men and women. Other than that we don't get a full picture of what they went through.
6. Civilian Suffering by Women. For more on that look up Adrienne Rich's essay "Caryatid: Two Columns." The men were killed and the women were raped. My girlfriend in Vietnam was raped by a soldier. She was sold and locked in a room with a man.
Chapter 8 deals with Luck and God's Will. Fortunately, the author has enough sense to focus on luck and not on the acts of some invisible being. Some of the moments in the Iliad where a god intervenes could be examples of just plain luck. I wrote a poem called "Luck" about a man who survived a firefight simply there just happened to be a fallen tree beside him when his platoon was ambushed. He fell behind it and survived. Luck can be astoundingly good or it can be crushingly bad.
Look at this downward tapering funnel of numbers for the Vietnam era:
1. The whole Vietnam Generation: 53, 100,000.
2. Men: 26, 800,000.
3. Served in military during Vietnam era: 8,615,000.
4. Served in Vietnam: 3,145,000.
5. Served in combat: 776,000.
6. Casualties: 321,000.
7. Dead: 58,000.
Check out the last three or four numbers in particular. So much unfairness of things. Were these men just sent out to get killed or wounded? Good luck if you don't?
One story told has a fascinating mix of humor and horror. A platoon lands in an old French minefield. The radio operator sends out the message: BE ADVISED! YOU'RE IN AN OLD FRENCH MINEFIELD! What do the soldiers do? They start running. Soon they are all running. And they all make it out. That's luck.
Sometimes the luck can make a soldier feel invulnerable. Of course, there are plenty of soldiers who die later because their luck runs out. And luck can also lead to the "It should have been me who died" guilt feelings.
Sometimes blame was attributed to soldiers who died.
For many veterans God was lost in Vietnam. What kind of God lets this happen? And where is virtue now?
Chapter 9 deals with reclaiming the Iliad's gods as a metaphor of social power. Many readers find the Iliad's gods hard to take seriously. High school students often asked me did the ancient Greeks really believe in this stuff? I wondered, Do you really believe in your stuff? So this cultural chasm exists. But we should not be smug about it. Those are real gods and must be faced as such. Just like we do the gods of today's world.
Homer views his gods as powerful. But here's the thing: They behave like REMFs. An REMF is a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker. I was an REMF. I know the guilt feelings. While I was getting laid in Saigon, my good friend George Fell was getting killed in the Cambodia invasion. I have no idea how.
Now here is the big question. Were Homer's gods nothing but REMFs? Why use the acronym. Were they nothing but Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers? And why make it plural. Is our God nothing but a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker? What's He been doing during all of this?
Soldiers on both sides want the war to end. Zeus may have been the original REMF. Men died while Zeus dallied. Homer shows Zeus many times as compassionate and caring. Homer was a master of irony.
Chapter 10 deals with the Breaking Points of Moral Existence--What Breaks?
In a brilliant opening of the chapter, the author quotes Lady Percy's monologue from Henry IV, Part I and points out a list of examples of the symptoms of PTSD. Here is the monologue without the author's list of symptoms. See if you can spot them:
LADY PERCY: O my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offense have I this fortnight been
A banished woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talked
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,
And in thy face strange motions have appeared,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.
The whole chapter is an excellent rundown of PTSD symptoms. Worth reading for that alone. There is a loss of authority over mental function. Here are a few main items:
1. Untrustworthiness of Perception. The Grunt's experience is whitewashed by his superiors. And the hypervigilance required to go humping the boonies means nothing is what it seems. It is difficult to remove that. Researchers are finding abnormalities in brain chemistry, function, and even gross structure.
2. Memory. Memories come back in dreams or flashbacks.
3. Persistent Mobilization for Danger. The vigilance never leaves. Although I was not in combat, I learned to chose where I sit, and I still do that. When I first arrived in California, I fell to my knees when a plane broke the sound barrier. I was told that was common among those just arriving from the war zone. It took a few months to break the habit.
4. Persistence of Survival Skills.
5. Persistence of Betrayal.
6. Persistence of Isolation.
7. Persistence of Suicidality.
8. Destruction of the Capacity for Democratic Participation.
Chapter 11 deals with Healing and Tragedy. Homer ends the Iliad with mourning, not reassurance. The same goes for severely injured combat veterans. There is no "triumph of the human spirit."
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. . . . you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Is recovery possible? The author gives three answers: no, don't know, and yes. 1. NO: No one can go back to what they were before. 2. DON'T KNOW: No one knows for certain if recovery is possible. 3. YES: Some soldiers find a way to contribute in a positive way to society.
The author believes in telling stories. That has been what I have been trying to do with my veterans group. The listener must listen with emotion, feeling the emotions of the speaker. "WITHOUT EMOTION IN THE LISTENER THERE IS NO COMMUNALIZATION OF THE TRAUMA." The listener must respect the narrator. Veterans constantly say, "Listen! Just listen!" Or they could say, "You weren't there so shut the fuck up!" I'd be more likely to say the latter.
And respect means refraining from judgment. I NEVER judge a veteran if I can help it.
No person's suffering can be measured against any other person's suffering.
Forgetting combat trauma is not a legitimate goal of treatment.
The final chapter is Conclusion.
1. Thoughtful military people assert the need for better training and leadership. Training for Vietnam was often negligent. I know my training was. My job training for Vietnam was superb. The problem was my training for violence. It was ludicrous. I was heading for Saigon, and they taught me how to fight in a field.
Sun-Tzu said, "Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline. Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive discipline and sternness in command result in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a leader."
2. Protect unit cohesion by unit rotation rather than by individual rotation. Unit rotation is the single most important measure for secondary prevention of combat PTSD.
3. Value griefwork. It should not be stigmatized. Soldiers should be able to weep and feel sorrow without being weak. Focusing on chaplains misses the point. Soldiers need commanders who can be sensitive.
Bodies were not always handled respectfully by Graves Registration in Vietnam.
Meals in honor of the dead would have been more valuable than those stupid Christmas and Thanksgiving meals. I hated those. They were a joke, an insult.
Soldiers should not be medicated because they feel the need to weep.
4. Do not encourage berserking. A good soldier should always maintain self-restraint.
5. Eliminate intentional injustice as a motivational technique. Humiliation and degradation need to be removed from the military.
6. Respect the enemy as human. A common idea in Vietnam was that the enemy did not value human life as much.
7. Acknowledge psychiatric casualties.
May 21, 2018
This book changed the way I saw Achilles. It helped me see the "human" side of the hero birthed by a nymph. Jonathan Shay did two things: described how modern soldiers are affected by war and how Achilles was affected by war. Chapter by chapter, he connects Achilles emotions and actions with the modern warrior. You understand how grief manifests into rage...for today's soldier, as well as yesterday's warrior, using the Iliad and Achilles as the touchstone. It's a fascinating read. I highly recommend it.
April 2, 2025
Listened to the audiobook (thank you رغد). A unique study on chronic PTSD which draws parallels between American soldiers in the Vietnam War and Achaean soldiers of Homer’s Iliad. The core of the book is about the necessity of the communalization of grief, other interesting notes on berserk states, shrinking of social/moral horizons, philia / friendship amongst soldiers of both wars, respect for the enemy amongst the Greeks but an encouraged/indoctrinated disrespect and dehumanization of the enemy mainly via biblically based religions. And a whole lot of first hand accounts from US vets. Really well narrated. This was such a comprehensive and informative read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
June 18, 2012
The definitive work on Vietnam era post traumatic stress. The Author compares the way warriors (soldiers) dealt with the hardship of war in Vietnam and in the Trojan war, based on the Odyssey. The book is filled with moving vignettes, dialog from the Odyssey compared with actual discussions between Vietnam vets and the author.
June 18, 2017
Failures of the American Army
30 September 2012
This is one of the toughest books that I have read to date and pretty much halfway through the chapter on grief I found that my brain had been reduced to slush. Now, I have never been to war and never experienced war, but when Shay says in his introduction that this book will have a tendency to bring flashbacks to combat veterans he was not kidding. As I suggested, I am not a combat veteran and I found this book very hard going myself, and in a way, reading this book also brought about flashbacks from my past, and I would hardly say that I suffer from PTSD or have had a hard life compared to many others in our society.
Jonathan Shay is a psychiatrist that works with Vietnam vets helping them cope with civilian life and helping them (I feel that the word recover would be an inappropriate word since there are some things that one can never recover from, such as an amputation, and some psychological trauma simply cannot be healed) live with the psychological trauma that is likely to be with them for the rest of their lives. When somebody once coined the phrase (I cannot remember who it was but I believe it was some American General in World War II) War is Hell, he wasn't kidding, and the testimonies that we are told from the Vietnam Vets who had agreed shared their stories go a long way to demonstrate this.
As I read through this book the nagging feeling that kept gnawing away at me was whether the United States, in the way that they run their army as one would run a corporation, can really expect to be able to win a modern war. The way the army is constructed may be able to win a war where two nations throw armies up against each other, such as what happened in World War II, and even in Korea, but when the war that one is fighting is against insurgents who continually melt back into the civilian population, then the way one fights a war and constructs the armed forces, may need to be reviewed. An army is not a police force and a police force is not an army, and the Americans discovered that when they attempted to use the national guard to attempt to put down anti-Vietnam protests in the United States. The role of the police is to protect the order of society and to thoroughly investigate crimes to make sure that the real perpetrator is arrested. However, the job of an army is to defeat the enemy: in effect to shoot first and ask questions later.
One of the problems that Shay has pointed out, and this is something that is not new because this is the way wars have been evolving over the last half a millennium, is that the commanders are becoming more and more removed from the battlefield, to a point where they do not see that action and do not understand the nature of war. Von Clausewitz indicated this in his book 'On War' when he talks about the concept of the fog of war. The best way to describe this is that what may look good on paper does not necessarily work on the ground. It should be interesting to note that when a general actually joins the troops and leads the troops (as opposed to directing the troops from a bunker behind the lines, or even thousands of miles away) the effectiveness of the army actually increases, and we only need to look at Napoleon's successes to be able to see that.
However the nature of war has changed a lot since Napoleon's day. As technology advances we continually distance ourselves more and more from the enemy, to the point where it is almost becoming like a computer game. Shay talks about how the modern Judeo-Christian ethic seeks to demonise the enemy to make the enemy easier to kill. To some people it is easier to kill a dog than a human because the dog is not a human, so to get over humanity's resistance to killing another human, we turn the enemy into an animal. However, the opposite also works true in that by turning the soldier into an animal the human loses all concept of their humanity and becomes like the animal. Of course, the problem that arises is that the human can no longer return to human society, a concept that is explored elsewhere.
I particularly appreciated his discussion of the way troops were trained. One particular movie that I have seen about the Vietnam war clearly brings this idea out (the movie is Full Metal Jacket) and that is where the trainer (and in cases commanders) are constantly focusing on where the person is failing rather than their successes. The belief is that by constantly denigrating the soldier it forces the soldier to overcome his or her weaknesses and thus becomes a better soldier. This is not the case (and I shall explore this when I discuss the nature of warfare and the corporation below). In Full Metal Jacket, the poorest performer in the group ends up shooting himself in the toilet, and we learn from this book that this is not as far fetched as it seems. We are told the story of a helicopter pilot that was torn to pieces for refusing to do something, then going out and killing himself.
Shay refers a lot to the Illiad in this book, and uses the story to show us what war is about. There are a lot of differences, but there is also a lot of insight into the effect of war upon the individual. Remember, in the ancient world, all males were warriors so all males had experienced war. Tragedy was a way to help the citizens to cope with returning to civilian life. Also, we note, that the main characters in the Illiad are all commanders, and they are all involved in the fighting. This is not the case today. Where the commanders in the Illiad knew what it was like on the ground, the commanders today do not. As such, the orders that are passed down come from people, in many cases who have not seen or experienced action, and expect the soldiers to obey them. I remember when I explored a military position after completing university, I discovered that I could walk into the army at the rank of major, which meant that I would never have to see combat action, and with my law degree, I would be dealing with people who had seen action with no understanding of what it would have been like to have been out there. Fighting a war on the ground requires quick thinking and a willingness to do things on the spur of the moment, however the chain of command does not allow the soldier to do this. The soldier must obey his commanding officer, and any deviation from that is punishable. They say that the back bone of the American Army is the chain of command, and by ignoring the chain of command will undermine the army. However, as we have seen in Vietnam, and more recently, in Iraq, it was the chain of command that proved to be the armies undoing.
Now, I will speak of the idea of the corporation as the army. Having worked in the corporation, I have seem many elements that have come out of the book. We take the idea of the manager as the commander. When you are on the floor, you may be exposed to direct customer contact, and in some positions that can be really draining. However, the higher up the managerial chain, the less customer contact you have. However the higher up you go, the more you are expected to have the people beneath you perform to a high standard. If the people beneath you fail, you fail. However, consider an irate customer screaming at you, and you are not permitted to terminate the call because the customer is everything. The customer pays the company money, and it is expected that the customer continue to pay the company money, however it is not the manager's job to take the call. The company has upset the customer, however the person on the floor is expected to resolve the complaint, and sometimes, even to convince the customer to upgrade their services. In some companies (McDonalds for instance) the managers are expected to be on the floor and to deal with customers alongside the staff, however many others do not.
I have also seen instances where beratting employees with the belief that that creates a better employee is used. This, once again, is not the case. Granted, if an employee that makes a mistake is not shown the mistake, then the employee is not going to learn. However, by constantly hammering the employee for their mistakes, without actually acknowledging what the employee has done right, and rewarding the employee for what they are doing right, will end up destroying the employee. The same goes with religious institutions. We get so caught up with trying to create better people by hammering them for their mistakes, that we actually are blind to the damage that is being done to that person.
30 September 2012
This is one of the toughest books that I have read to date and pretty much halfway through the chapter on grief I found that my brain had been reduced to slush. Now, I have never been to war and never experienced war, but when Shay says in his introduction that this book will have a tendency to bring flashbacks to combat veterans he was not kidding. As I suggested, I am not a combat veteran and I found this book very hard going myself, and in a way, reading this book also brought about flashbacks from my past, and I would hardly say that I suffer from PTSD or have had a hard life compared to many others in our society.
Jonathan Shay is a psychiatrist that works with Vietnam vets helping them cope with civilian life and helping them (I feel that the word recover would be an inappropriate word since there are some things that one can never recover from, such as an amputation, and some psychological trauma simply cannot be healed) live with the psychological trauma that is likely to be with them for the rest of their lives. When somebody once coined the phrase (I cannot remember who it was but I believe it was some American General in World War II) War is Hell, he wasn't kidding, and the testimonies that we are told from the Vietnam Vets who had agreed shared their stories go a long way to demonstrate this.
As I read through this book the nagging feeling that kept gnawing away at me was whether the United States, in the way that they run their army as one would run a corporation, can really expect to be able to win a modern war. The way the army is constructed may be able to win a war where two nations throw armies up against each other, such as what happened in World War II, and even in Korea, but when the war that one is fighting is against insurgents who continually melt back into the civilian population, then the way one fights a war and constructs the armed forces, may need to be reviewed. An army is not a police force and a police force is not an army, and the Americans discovered that when they attempted to use the national guard to attempt to put down anti-Vietnam protests in the United States. The role of the police is to protect the order of society and to thoroughly investigate crimes to make sure that the real perpetrator is arrested. However, the job of an army is to defeat the enemy: in effect to shoot first and ask questions later.
One of the problems that Shay has pointed out, and this is something that is not new because this is the way wars have been evolving over the last half a millennium, is that the commanders are becoming more and more removed from the battlefield, to a point where they do not see that action and do not understand the nature of war. Von Clausewitz indicated this in his book 'On War' when he talks about the concept of the fog of war. The best way to describe this is that what may look good on paper does not necessarily work on the ground. It should be interesting to note that when a general actually joins the troops and leads the troops (as opposed to directing the troops from a bunker behind the lines, or even thousands of miles away) the effectiveness of the army actually increases, and we only need to look at Napoleon's successes to be able to see that.
However the nature of war has changed a lot since Napoleon's day. As technology advances we continually distance ourselves more and more from the enemy, to the point where it is almost becoming like a computer game. Shay talks about how the modern Judeo-Christian ethic seeks to demonise the enemy to make the enemy easier to kill. To some people it is easier to kill a dog than a human because the dog is not a human, so to get over humanity's resistance to killing another human, we turn the enemy into an animal. However, the opposite also works true in that by turning the soldier into an animal the human loses all concept of their humanity and becomes like the animal. Of course, the problem that arises is that the human can no longer return to human society, a concept that is explored elsewhere.
I particularly appreciated his discussion of the way troops were trained. One particular movie that I have seen about the Vietnam war clearly brings this idea out (the movie is Full Metal Jacket) and that is where the trainer (and in cases commanders) are constantly focusing on where the person is failing rather than their successes. The belief is that by constantly denigrating the soldier it forces the soldier to overcome his or her weaknesses and thus becomes a better soldier. This is not the case (and I shall explore this when I discuss the nature of warfare and the corporation below). In Full Metal Jacket, the poorest performer in the group ends up shooting himself in the toilet, and we learn from this book that this is not as far fetched as it seems. We are told the story of a helicopter pilot that was torn to pieces for refusing to do something, then going out and killing himself.
Shay refers a lot to the Illiad in this book, and uses the story to show us what war is about. There are a lot of differences, but there is also a lot of insight into the effect of war upon the individual. Remember, in the ancient world, all males were warriors so all males had experienced war. Tragedy was a way to help the citizens to cope with returning to civilian life. Also, we note, that the main characters in the Illiad are all commanders, and they are all involved in the fighting. This is not the case today. Where the commanders in the Illiad knew what it was like on the ground, the commanders today do not. As such, the orders that are passed down come from people, in many cases who have not seen or experienced action, and expect the soldiers to obey them. I remember when I explored a military position after completing university, I discovered that I could walk into the army at the rank of major, which meant that I would never have to see combat action, and with my law degree, I would be dealing with people who had seen action with no understanding of what it would have been like to have been out there. Fighting a war on the ground requires quick thinking and a willingness to do things on the spur of the moment, however the chain of command does not allow the soldier to do this. The soldier must obey his commanding officer, and any deviation from that is punishable. They say that the back bone of the American Army is the chain of command, and by ignoring the chain of command will undermine the army. However, as we have seen in Vietnam, and more recently, in Iraq, it was the chain of command that proved to be the armies undoing.
Now, I will speak of the idea of the corporation as the army. Having worked in the corporation, I have seem many elements that have come out of the book. We take the idea of the manager as the commander. When you are on the floor, you may be exposed to direct customer contact, and in some positions that can be really draining. However, the higher up the managerial chain, the less customer contact you have. However the higher up you go, the more you are expected to have the people beneath you perform to a high standard. If the people beneath you fail, you fail. However, consider an irate customer screaming at you, and you are not permitted to terminate the call because the customer is everything. The customer pays the company money, and it is expected that the customer continue to pay the company money, however it is not the manager's job to take the call. The company has upset the customer, however the person on the floor is expected to resolve the complaint, and sometimes, even to convince the customer to upgrade their services. In some companies (McDonalds for instance) the managers are expected to be on the floor and to deal with customers alongside the staff, however many others do not.
I have also seen instances where beratting employees with the belief that that creates a better employee is used. This, once again, is not the case. Granted, if an employee that makes a mistake is not shown the mistake, then the employee is not going to learn. However, by constantly hammering the employee for their mistakes, without actually acknowledging what the employee has done right, and rewarding the employee for what they are doing right, will end up destroying the employee. The same goes with religious institutions. We get so caught up with trying to create better people by hammering them for their mistakes, that we actually are blind to the damage that is being done to that person.
Read
July 10, 2025This book was somewhat disappointing to me, and I almost abandoned it two-thirds of the way in, but the concluding chapters somewhat redeemed the book.
The basic problem is that the book starts with what seems a very intriguing premise: We can learn a lot about combat trauma and Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder by reading the Iliad, and we can understand the Iliad better by learning about combat trauma, particularly as it affected Vietnam combat veterans. Several interesting ideas are introduced early, and we are led to expect that a lot will be revealed about the specific traumas of some veterans and the results of these traumas. However, when we get to the middle sections of the book, it becomes apparent that the author is not going to provide a whole lot of extra depth in his analysis, that he does not approach his own ideas very critically, and that several short interview excerpts are recycled and returned to without revealing a whole lot more. That is to say, it feels as though the material for a short essay has been puffed out to full-book length without sufficient justification.
In the end, however, the author reveals a lot about the problems relating to combat trauma, and makes a persuasive argument for a need for several changes to protocol, procedure, and culture within the military to help minimize the psychological injuries that result from combat trauma. The book finishes well and has some valid points to make. However, along the road to reaching the end, the analogy of Achilles's experience as representative of the Vietnam vet's experience has kind of fallen by the wayside.
Which suggests that this book might better have been presented as a book on combat trauma and the lessons we should learn from Vietnam vets, including a short introductory essay about Achilles. Along the way, occasional reference back to the case of the Iliad could be made only where it is most apt. And more time, attention, and critical thought could be directed to the topic that this author knows best: the etiology of PTSD and methods for its prevention and treatment.
That would be one way to approach it, but there are many other ways. Unfortunately, the way the author chose did not seem ideal to me. He pushes some points were they don't seem persuasive, and tries to force a fit where it doesn't always work. Particularly inapt is the author's attempt to contrast the different religions of the heroes of the Iliad and of the American soldiers in Vietnam, and drawing conclusions about how this affects the traumatic impact of loss. It just seems the author is speculating, but not so convincingly.
One example of a chapter ending in a muddle is Chapter 6, which approaches the topic of why it is wrong to dehumanize the enemy, with real-life examples from Vietnam and the Pacific War of WWII, but then a complaint about how teachers incorrectly teach the lessons of the Iliad is shoehorned in and the point that the chapter was building up to seems lost... and he didn't even bother to mention what he would consider the right way to teach the lessons of the Iliad. He manages to get in a little barb directed at "hostile biblical propaganda against pagan cultures" too. I mean, I get it, we shouldn't dehumanize the enemy, but the pieces seem lumped together, not cohesive.
Another assertion that stands out as false is this: "Everyone knows that people debate whether God exists, but no one questions the benevolent character of this possible God, if he does exist. Questioning his goodness simply does not enter the mind."
And here I find a lack of critical depth: The author deals with the effects on memory and emotion that arise from combat trauma. He manages to talk about the authority of memory over the veteran, how inescapable memories may arise that are charged with inescapable emotional intensity, and also the effect of having memories that are completely devoid of emotional content where it would be natural to be emotional. But I had to ask, is it legitimate to claim that intensely emotional memories (in certain patients) and detached memories without emotion (in other patients) are both elements of the same condition?
In one of the notes that actually brings attention to a somewhat controversial claim, the author comments on his assertion that a berserk soldier enters into an isolating state that divorces him entirely from all community with the living. The end-note points out that there is some overlap in the kind of behavior witnessed in an isolated berserk individual and the behavior of mob violence, and he concludes, "The exact relationship between the two, and particularly whether the postfrenzy consequences are similar, deserve serious study." Well, yeah, perhaps. Or perhaps this points to a flaw in the author's thinking. Berserking may not be a strictly isolating phenomenon if it is also witnessed in mobs.
Another question that was not resolved: If betrayal of what is right and the death of a dear friend are major components in the etiology of PTSD, and we conclude this because all PTSD patients from Vietnam report experiences of betrayal and loss... well, what about the veterans without PTSD? What if we determined that such experiences as betrayal of what is right, and the loss of a close friend in combat, were near-universal experiences of ALL combat veterans, and not just the ones with PTSD? I.e., what if what we're really analyzing here is what went wrong with Vietnam rather than what are the root causes of combat-PTSD, and we're confusing one for the other?
These questions do not in any way invalidate the author's claims. They simply pose a challenge which the book did not answer. The author should have addressed some of these topics to provide the kind of depth that would reward a full reading of his book.
And yet... and yet... I did come away feeling I know more about PTSD, the vet's experience, the consequences of betrayal and berserking, the value of grief and respect for the dead, the necessity of granting one's enemy the status of humanity, the traumatic effects of atrocity on the perpetrator as well as the victim, and I'm at least partially persuaded that Homer's Iliad reflects a true understanding of the combat veteran's experience. So the book did deliver well enough.
The basic problem is that the book starts with what seems a very intriguing premise: We can learn a lot about combat trauma and Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder by reading the Iliad, and we can understand the Iliad better by learning about combat trauma, particularly as it affected Vietnam combat veterans. Several interesting ideas are introduced early, and we are led to expect that a lot will be revealed about the specific traumas of some veterans and the results of these traumas. However, when we get to the middle sections of the book, it becomes apparent that the author is not going to provide a whole lot of extra depth in his analysis, that he does not approach his own ideas very critically, and that several short interview excerpts are recycled and returned to without revealing a whole lot more. That is to say, it feels as though the material for a short essay has been puffed out to full-book length without sufficient justification.
In the end, however, the author reveals a lot about the problems relating to combat trauma, and makes a persuasive argument for a need for several changes to protocol, procedure, and culture within the military to help minimize the psychological injuries that result from combat trauma. The book finishes well and has some valid points to make. However, along the road to reaching the end, the analogy of Achilles's experience as representative of the Vietnam vet's experience has kind of fallen by the wayside.
Which suggests that this book might better have been presented as a book on combat trauma and the lessons we should learn from Vietnam vets, including a short introductory essay about Achilles. Along the way, occasional reference back to the case of the Iliad could be made only where it is most apt. And more time, attention, and critical thought could be directed to the topic that this author knows best: the etiology of PTSD and methods for its prevention and treatment.
That would be one way to approach it, but there are many other ways. Unfortunately, the way the author chose did not seem ideal to me. He pushes some points were they don't seem persuasive, and tries to force a fit where it doesn't always work. Particularly inapt is the author's attempt to contrast the different religions of the heroes of the Iliad and of the American soldiers in Vietnam, and drawing conclusions about how this affects the traumatic impact of loss. It just seems the author is speculating, but not so convincingly.
One example of a chapter ending in a muddle is Chapter 6, which approaches the topic of why it is wrong to dehumanize the enemy, with real-life examples from Vietnam and the Pacific War of WWII, but then a complaint about how teachers incorrectly teach the lessons of the Iliad is shoehorned in and the point that the chapter was building up to seems lost... and he didn't even bother to mention what he would consider the right way to teach the lessons of the Iliad. He manages to get in a little barb directed at "hostile biblical propaganda against pagan cultures" too. I mean, I get it, we shouldn't dehumanize the enemy, but the pieces seem lumped together, not cohesive.
Another assertion that stands out as false is this: "Everyone knows that people debate whether God exists, but no one questions the benevolent character of this possible God, if he does exist. Questioning his goodness simply does not enter the mind."
And here I find a lack of critical depth: The author deals with the effects on memory and emotion that arise from combat trauma. He manages to talk about the authority of memory over the veteran, how inescapable memories may arise that are charged with inescapable emotional intensity, and also the effect of having memories that are completely devoid of emotional content where it would be natural to be emotional. But I had to ask, is it legitimate to claim that intensely emotional memories (in certain patients) and detached memories without emotion (in other patients) are both elements of the same condition?
In one of the notes that actually brings attention to a somewhat controversial claim, the author comments on his assertion that a berserk soldier enters into an isolating state that divorces him entirely from all community with the living. The end-note points out that there is some overlap in the kind of behavior witnessed in an isolated berserk individual and the behavior of mob violence, and he concludes, "The exact relationship between the two, and particularly whether the postfrenzy consequences are similar, deserve serious study." Well, yeah, perhaps. Or perhaps this points to a flaw in the author's thinking. Berserking may not be a strictly isolating phenomenon if it is also witnessed in mobs.
Another question that was not resolved: If betrayal of what is right and the death of a dear friend are major components in the etiology of PTSD, and we conclude this because all PTSD patients from Vietnam report experiences of betrayal and loss... well, what about the veterans without PTSD? What if we determined that such experiences as betrayal of what is right, and the loss of a close friend in combat, were near-universal experiences of ALL combat veterans, and not just the ones with PTSD? I.e., what if what we're really analyzing here is what went wrong with Vietnam rather than what are the root causes of combat-PTSD, and we're confusing one for the other?
These questions do not in any way invalidate the author's claims. They simply pose a challenge which the book did not answer. The author should have addressed some of these topics to provide the kind of depth that would reward a full reading of his book.
And yet... and yet... I did come away feeling I know more about PTSD, the vet's experience, the consequences of betrayal and berserking, the value of grief and respect for the dead, the necessity of granting one's enemy the status of humanity, the traumatic effects of atrocity on the perpetrator as well as the victim, and I'm at least partially persuaded that Homer's Iliad reflects a true understanding of the combat veteran's experience. So the book did deliver well enough.
September 19, 2024
What an insightful book! We were only supposed to read a few chapters for class but I wanted to read the whole thing. It also makes me want to reread the Iliad with a new perspective. There were a lot of valuable lessons that I picked up from this and it will definitely be one that I will keep on my shelf.
December 7, 2009
Achilles in Vietnam is a study of the impact of PTSD on the human personality, using The Iliad to illustrate the impact of this problem with emphasis on the reasons why Vietnam was more traumatic for many veterans than other conflicts have been. This was a good book to read along with The Iliad and helped me bring out some of the underlying themes throughout Homer’s text.
This book contained some very keen observations in it. You just have to fight through all of the boring psychology jargon and read it carefully and analytically to understand its numerous messages. If there is one problem I had with the way it was written, I would say that it throws a great deal of information at you and never lets up. Leaving you to sort out the mess inside your head. It’s a great analysis of the trauma of war though, and the way in which Shay can relate it back to the work of Homer is rather impressive. However, while it was interesting, this is a very dry and difficult read, not something you should pick up just for kicks. I would recommend it to anybody looking to further their knowledge on any of these subjects, but don’t expect it to be an enjoyable read.
This book contained some very keen observations in it. You just have to fight through all of the boring psychology jargon and read it carefully and analytically to understand its numerous messages. If there is one problem I had with the way it was written, I would say that it throws a great deal of information at you and never lets up. Leaving you to sort out the mess inside your head. It’s a great analysis of the trauma of war though, and the way in which Shay can relate it back to the work of Homer is rather impressive. However, while it was interesting, this is a very dry and difficult read, not something you should pick up just for kicks. I would recommend it to anybody looking to further their knowledge on any of these subjects, but don’t expect it to be an enjoyable read.
November 19, 2007
This was a great book in conjunction with The Iliad. He compares PTSD symptoms in Viet Vets he counsels to descritions in The Iliad. Very intense depictions of modern PTSD copied verbatim from transcripts with the vets. One man describes leaving his house at night carrying a steak knife, walking down dark alleys hoping someone will threaten him. This is real.
July 14, 2013
I was writing a paper about Bill Anderson and his Civil War experience when I stumbled upon this work. Completely changed the direction of the paper, and my relationship with a friend who recently returned from combat in Iraq.
August 11, 2021
I've read the Iliad multiple times and taught parts of it on several occasions. The comparisons to modern soldiers in combat situations brings new life and immediacy to the ancient characters and their actions.
The reader should be aware, though, that Shay in his interpretation of the Iliad in an historical context regards 'Homer' as the single author of a unified text, a bard living in the 8th century BCE; thus he explains, e.g., the immediate deaths on the battlefield (as opposed to drawn-out deaths of septic wounds) as a way of pleasing the customers/listeners, by giving their forefathers a more illustrious death than was realistic (he gives a statistic on the ratios of wounded to dead in the Iliad and in Vietnam). And in the same vein, the 'lack of bad guys' - how the Trojans are heroes, too - is in this optic explained by the customers being products of generations of intermarriage between Greek and Phrygian families.
Apart from this rather simplified view on the Homeric question, the comparison as a whole stands. Classical scholars can gain from this perspective; where we usually speak of Achilleus' kleos being damaged by Agamemnon's theft of Briseis - as if this were something rather alien - we would do well in remembering that this is a superior officer publicly humiliating a fellow (and slightly, in one sense at least, lower-ranking) officer in view of the whole army. What Agamemnon does simply ain't right.
The reader should be aware, though, that Shay in his interpretation of the Iliad in an historical context regards 'Homer' as the single author of a unified text, a bard living in the 8th century BCE; thus he explains, e.g., the immediate deaths on the battlefield (as opposed to drawn-out deaths of septic wounds) as a way of pleasing the customers/listeners, by giving their forefathers a more illustrious death than was realistic (he gives a statistic on the ratios of wounded to dead in the Iliad and in Vietnam). And in the same vein, the 'lack of bad guys' - how the Trojans are heroes, too - is in this optic explained by the customers being products of generations of intermarriage between Greek and Phrygian families.
Apart from this rather simplified view on the Homeric question, the comparison as a whole stands. Classical scholars can gain from this perspective; where we usually speak of Achilleus' kleos being damaged by Agamemnon's theft of Briseis - as if this were something rather alien - we would do well in remembering that this is a superior officer publicly humiliating a fellow (and slightly, in one sense at least, lower-ranking) officer in view of the whole army. What Agamemnon does simply ain't right.
May 26, 2022
This book is emotionally very difficult, but as the author points out, we owe it to these combat veterans, especially those from Vietnam, to listen, and to do better by them in every single possible way. War is traumatic for everyone involved, and as a society we have failed our soldiers in nearly every conceivable way.
Shay accurately points out that the Iliad is a tragedy- it’s a war story, and a story about the tragedy of Achilles and the undoing of his moral character. We typically see Achilles as a great hero but the Iliad is a story about a great warrior’s fall from respectable war practice.
The integration of the experiences of combat vets from the Trojan war and the experiences of combat vets from the Vietnam war clearly show the traumas of war and it’s effects on the mental states of our soldiers, but more importantly, it shows how over time we’ve begun to fail our soldiers and cause them more mental harm.
Shay accurately points out that the Iliad is a tragedy- it’s a war story, and a story about the tragedy of Achilles and the undoing of his moral character. We typically see Achilles as a great hero but the Iliad is a story about a great warrior’s fall from respectable war practice.
The integration of the experiences of combat vets from the Trojan war and the experiences of combat vets from the Vietnam war clearly show the traumas of war and it’s effects on the mental states of our soldiers, but more importantly, it shows how over time we’ve begun to fail our soldiers and cause them more mental harm.
June 13, 2024
Finally finished the last couple chapters upon getting the book from the BPL — fascinating study of the Iliad. So many interesting parallels. I keep bringing it up to people at home as a segue into discussing reception studies and the importance of thinking about classical texts through a plethora of different temporal/situational angles and perspectives.
Currently working on Odysseus in America!
Currently working on Odysseus in America!
October 26, 2016
Note: All of these ratings are based on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best.
Writing Quality: 7
Literary criticism and medical nonfiction can be some of the most boring books on the market. Not so with this one. It's written at an accessible level. It is rather dry, befitting its genre, but definitely makes apt comparisons and keeps a good balance between example and explanation.
Setting: 7
Usually nonfiction books don't have a setting, but this one paints such a vivid picture of culture that I consider it a setting. I now understand the ancient Greek culture surrounding the Iliad much better, as well as the horrific culture experienced by Vietnam combat veterans. I can discuss the norms of military hierarchy without ever having experienced it. I do wish there was more of the Iliad for balance, but overall they were both well done.
Characters: 8
This entire book is, in essence, a deep character case study. We delve into the psychology of Achilles and the troubles of Vietnam vets. I never knew what caused such things as the "beserk state," but now felt able to sympathize with the feeling. I was impressed by this character development, especially in a nonfiction book. For confidentiality reasons, the veterans were not named, though this did take away from my understanding (as when Shay tags something like, "the same veteran we met earlier said this). That's the only reason points are docked.
Plot: 7
I am now thoroughly convinced we need better treatment of our troops. So the argument did its job. Since it's a complicated problem, the answer is quite complicated, and I can't state all of its facets here. I'm not sure I could follow a logical path, though, from one argument to the next, which is where the lost points come from.
Enjoyment: 5
I enjoyed the insights I learned with this book. But it's never pleasant to learn about combat.
Structure: 5
This book was highly structured, with many subheadings and such. It made for more focused reading certainly. But the overall book seemed not to have a common goal until the end. That was odd.
Emotional Story: 8
Getting inside the mental mechanisms of our characters means we develop an emotional attachment to them. Since it's not a novel, they don't arc, but it was an impressive emotional attachment all the same.
Hook: 4
While the insights were impressive, it's still as dry as its genre. If you've read a little bit, you can put it down and not care about the rest. But while you're reading it, it does have those impressive insights to keep you going.
All of this averages out to a 6.48/10, which is a 3.2/5, hence the 3-star rating.
Writing Quality: 7
Literary criticism and medical nonfiction can be some of the most boring books on the market. Not so with this one. It's written at an accessible level. It is rather dry, befitting its genre, but definitely makes apt comparisons and keeps a good balance between example and explanation.
Setting: 7
Usually nonfiction books don't have a setting, but this one paints such a vivid picture of culture that I consider it a setting. I now understand the ancient Greek culture surrounding the Iliad much better, as well as the horrific culture experienced by Vietnam combat veterans. I can discuss the norms of military hierarchy without ever having experienced it. I do wish there was more of the Iliad for balance, but overall they were both well done.
Characters: 8
This entire book is, in essence, a deep character case study. We delve into the psychology of Achilles and the troubles of Vietnam vets. I never knew what caused such things as the "beserk state," but now felt able to sympathize with the feeling. I was impressed by this character development, especially in a nonfiction book. For confidentiality reasons, the veterans were not named, though this did take away from my understanding (as when Shay tags something like, "the same veteran we met earlier said this). That's the only reason points are docked.
Plot: 7
I am now thoroughly convinced we need better treatment of our troops. So the argument did its job. Since it's a complicated problem, the answer is quite complicated, and I can't state all of its facets here. I'm not sure I could follow a logical path, though, from one argument to the next, which is where the lost points come from.
Enjoyment: 5
I enjoyed the insights I learned with this book. But it's never pleasant to learn about combat.
Structure: 5
This book was highly structured, with many subheadings and such. It made for more focused reading certainly. But the overall book seemed not to have a common goal until the end. That was odd.
Emotional Story: 8
Getting inside the mental mechanisms of our characters means we develop an emotional attachment to them. Since it's not a novel, they don't arc, but it was an impressive emotional attachment all the same.
Hook: 4
While the insights were impressive, it's still as dry as its genre. If you've read a little bit, you can put it down and not care about the rest. But while you're reading it, it does have those impressive insights to keep you going.
All of this averages out to a 6.48/10, which is a 3.2/5, hence the 3-star rating.
September 19, 2021
4.5
". . . the Iliad can be legitimately read as a text concerning the human experience of combat."
Great read for anyone interested in PTSD/combat trauma, what causes it, how it affects soldiers, and what is at stake when we go to war. This is also a good companion piece for those interested in how PTSD plays a role in the story of The Iliad, particularly for Achilles’ character. Reading “The Iliad” with an understanding of combat trauma adds much more context to the story in my opinion.
Keep in mind that this book is a little outdated. (PTSD criteria has since changed with the DSM 5). However, it still provides a good overview if you want to learn about PTSD symptoms and how it affects soldiers. I learned about combat in Vietnam and its differences compared to ancient warfare with this book.
I'm looking forward to reading Shay’s follow up Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. Analyzing/understanding Odysseus’ behavior after he leaves Troy and eventually returns home makes a lot more sense when PTSD is included in the conversation. (See Circe for a good overview at the end of the book of this behavior).
". . . the Iliad can be legitimately read as a text concerning the human experience of combat."
Great read for anyone interested in PTSD/combat trauma, what causes it, how it affects soldiers, and what is at stake when we go to war. This is also a good companion piece for those interested in how PTSD plays a role in the story of The Iliad, particularly for Achilles’ character. Reading “The Iliad” with an understanding of combat trauma adds much more context to the story in my opinion.
Keep in mind that this book is a little outdated. (PTSD criteria has since changed with the DSM 5). However, it still provides a good overview if you want to learn about PTSD symptoms and how it affects soldiers. I learned about combat in Vietnam and its differences compared to ancient warfare with this book.
I'm looking forward to reading Shay’s follow up Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. Analyzing/understanding Odysseus’ behavior after he leaves Troy and eventually returns home makes a lot more sense when PTSD is included in the conversation. (See Circe for a good overview at the end of the book of this behavior).
April 7, 2012
Shay's account of PTSD among Vietnam veterans is eye-opening to the horrors faced by soldiers both during and after the war. His juxtaposition of quotes from his patients and lines from The Illiad are well done and includes insightful analysis of the two. I found a frightening similarity between many of the Vietnam experiences and those of the recent wars in the Middle East. The military has learned, since Vietnam, to drastically curtail what the media can show of the war. In recent wars, this serves to hide, from the bits that leak out, many of the same misguided leadership decisions and atrocities that Shay discusses with his Vietnam veterans and so outraged the American public. It seems all too likely that returning soldiers today will experience the same traumatic effects as those in the book, despite supposed progress to the contrary.
September 13, 2021
Great information and personal accounts of combat PTSD, but the information is slightly outdated due to the publication date (1994). The use of DSM III-R diagnostic criteria was appropriate for the year of publication, but is now outdated. Those using this book as a resource need to look up the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in the DSM 5.
November 9, 2019
We enjoy scant few opportunities to read our recent history in the light of more ancient examples. This pairing of Vietnam combat experience with the narrative of The Iliad is a wonderful exercise. I hope for more interrelation of the classics to come.
April 7, 2018
I feel like this book needs an up-front disclaimer. While it is fair and accurate to describe the book as an interesting academic comparison of the the experience of soldiers in the Illiad (though the caveat must be added: the experience *as related by Homer*) and modern-day soldiers in Vietnam, as well as an argument for a particular framework to understand the 'failure mode' of humans under extreme wartime stress, there are also moments of 'throw you entirely out of the book' revulsion while reading.
But be prepared for racist and dehumanizing quotations, as well as graphic descriptions of death. That said- I don't think any of it is gratuitous. The book is primarily about psychology of soldiers in wartime, attempting to understand them probably *should* be jarring.
One love, one hate:
I loved the framework for understanding the contraction of social circle that results from stress. Strong examples both from the Illiad and modern experience showing how a person’s ‘tribe’ becomes both more sharply defined and contracts under wartime conditions. Also interesting and practical ideas for how those conditions might be changed to prevent the social isolation and resulting socially unbound behavior of some soldiers.
I hated the argument that demonization and dehumanization of the enemy is a Judeo-Muslim-Christian phenomenon. (Although I appreciate that the author includes Muslim in this grouping, what he seems to actually mean is Abrahamic religion. And then he proceeds to use only a Christian interpretation of good and evil, so my appreciation is muted.) The biblical passages he sites to bolster his ‘the enemy is animalistic’ argument seem to do nothing of the kind, and he undercuts own his argument by referencing the wartime propaganda of the Japanese, who are definitely not culturally Abrahamic and have no problem demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy. Then, he begins the next chapter with an offhand comment that Homer’s audience would have been descended from both sides of the Illiad conflict… which would *entirely* explain why the Illiad contains so little of the demonizing/dehumanizing language we have come to expect of soldiers in wartime!
Overall, a good read for anyone with an interest in psychology, history, and war. Would be a good discussion book paired with either the Illiad (duh) or On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman.
But be prepared for racist and dehumanizing quotations, as well as graphic descriptions of death. That said- I don't think any of it is gratuitous. The book is primarily about psychology of soldiers in wartime, attempting to understand them probably *should* be jarring.
One love, one hate:
I loved the framework for understanding the contraction of social circle that results from stress. Strong examples both from the Illiad and modern experience showing how a person’s ‘tribe’ becomes both more sharply defined and contracts under wartime conditions. Also interesting and practical ideas for how those conditions might be changed to prevent the social isolation and resulting socially unbound behavior of some soldiers.
I hated the argument that demonization and dehumanization of the enemy is a Judeo-Muslim-Christian phenomenon. (Although I appreciate that the author includes Muslim in this grouping, what he seems to actually mean is Abrahamic religion. And then he proceeds to use only a Christian interpretation of good and evil, so my appreciation is muted.) The biblical passages he sites to bolster his ‘the enemy is animalistic’ argument seem to do nothing of the kind, and he undercuts own his argument by referencing the wartime propaganda of the Japanese, who are definitely not culturally Abrahamic and have no problem demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy. Then, he begins the next chapter with an offhand comment that Homer’s audience would have been descended from both sides of the Illiad conflict… which would *entirely* explain why the Illiad contains so little of the demonizing/dehumanizing language we have come to expect of soldiers in wartime!
Overall, a good read for anyone with an interest in psychology, history, and war. Would be a good discussion book paired with either the Illiad (duh) or On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman.
May 14, 2019
This book is more about Vietnam than it is about the Iliad, the story of the "Wrath of Achilles." That is, the book uses the story of Achilles and the fall of Troy to explain the experience of thousands of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. More immediate to me, it specifically explores the phenomenon of post-traumatic stress disorder, and why it manifests itself in some but not in others. The author's thesis is that PTSD isn't just from enduring a stressful situation--in Vietnam, it was most likely to affect those who felt they'd been betrayed by their leaders, or by someone they trusted. It is this violation of trust, along with the experience of traumatic events, that is most like to bring about PTSD.
I read this book because I teach The Iliad in high school and was looking for some insights I could use in the classroom. But in a wonderful bit of serendipity, I just happened to pick up Achilles in Vietnam not long after my wife of twenty years had suddenly left me and our three children, and I was trying to cope with that, along with a whole bunch of psychological issues I was grappling with as a result of that desertion. And in reading Achilles in Vietnam, in reading Achilles' reactions to his perceived betrayal by Agamemnon, and American soldiers' reactions to what they perceived as betrayal by their leaders in Vietnam, I recognized the same behaviors in myself at my perceived betrayal by my wife of twenty years. So I got a three-for-one: I gained some insight into Achilles' behavior in The Iliad, I gained some insight into what traumatized so many American servicemen in Southeast Asia, and I gained a powerful insight into what was going on inside my own head during the greatest crisis in my life.
I read this book because I teach The Iliad in high school and was looking for some insights I could use in the classroom. But in a wonderful bit of serendipity, I just happened to pick up Achilles in Vietnam not long after my wife of twenty years had suddenly left me and our three children, and I was trying to cope with that, along with a whole bunch of psychological issues I was grappling with as a result of that desertion. And in reading Achilles in Vietnam, in reading Achilles' reactions to his perceived betrayal by Agamemnon, and American soldiers' reactions to what they perceived as betrayal by their leaders in Vietnam, I recognized the same behaviors in myself at my perceived betrayal by my wife of twenty years. So I got a three-for-one: I gained some insight into Achilles' behavior in The Iliad, I gained some insight into what traumatized so many American servicemen in Southeast Asia, and I gained a powerful insight into what was going on inside my own head during the greatest crisis in my life.
November 30, 2022
Shay is as insightful as his patients' accounts are devastating. His analysis of the soldier's experience of Vietnam, compared and contrasted with the warfare portrayed in the Iliad is instructive both in understanding the way we fail veterans today and the way we've written about violence for millennia.
February 21, 2024
Really really really well done. Would he 5 stars but there were just a few tiny things the classicist in me didn’t love. That being said I think this is a must read for anyone who consumes any classical media or interacts with the military in any way, shape, or form
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March 26, 2019Traumatic
August 16, 2019
Terrific book
May 23, 2020
Incredibly compassionate and moving.
July 3, 2025
rock solid. reread!
August 3, 2015
This is a really interesting and valuable book. The author is a classicist, who is very familiar with Homer's Iliad dealing with the Trojan wars, an a psychiatrist who has had extensive experience dealing with Vietnam veterans who suffer from chronic combat related ptsd, (as I do). It has been very difficult to work my way through the effects of my war experience on my psyche and as a result on my life. There have been many admissions to veterans' facilities and many hours of work with psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors. None seemed to do me much good from my point of view, simply because they did not understand what they were dealing with nor how to treat the veterans concerned. Ultimately anything I have been able to achieve in developing ways to manage my life have been down to me.
In that process I have become convinced that it is the deconstruction of the sense of self that leads to the damage of the soul so evident with Vietnam ( and I have no doubt Afghanistan and Iraq) veterans and this book confirms that view. The author has also thrown light on issues that relate to that deconstruction of the soldier's sense of self that I had not thought of. Through his reference to an ancient Greek battle he has been able to show the commonality of the soldiers' experience and through contrast to point up issues that were fundamental and potent in the mental and emotional trauma inflicted on veterans during the Indo China war.
There were specifics of the American experience that did not relate to Australians who participated because our approach to soldiering was different but the fundamentals remain the same. Primary among these was the sense of betrayal we all felt. Betrayal particularly by our politicians who lied us into war for their own political ends and by a wider society which just dismissed our service as inconsequential at best and as somehow morally flawed at worst. This book should be mandated reading for anyone involved with veterans who suffer in this way.
In that process I have become convinced that it is the deconstruction of the sense of self that leads to the damage of the soul so evident with Vietnam ( and I have no doubt Afghanistan and Iraq) veterans and this book confirms that view. The author has also thrown light on issues that relate to that deconstruction of the soldier's sense of self that I had not thought of. Through his reference to an ancient Greek battle he has been able to show the commonality of the soldiers' experience and through contrast to point up issues that were fundamental and potent in the mental and emotional trauma inflicted on veterans during the Indo China war.
There were specifics of the American experience that did not relate to Australians who participated because our approach to soldiering was different but the fundamentals remain the same. Primary among these was the sense of betrayal we all felt. Betrayal particularly by our politicians who lied us into war for their own political ends and by a wider society which just dismissed our service as inconsequential at best and as somehow morally flawed at worst. This book should be mandated reading for anyone involved with veterans who suffer in this way.
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