Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character [Paperback]

An original and groundbreaking book that examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’sIliadwith Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

In this moving, dazzlingly creative book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’sIliadwith Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A classic of war literature that has as much relevance as ever in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a “transcendent literary adventure” (The New York Times) and “clearly one of the most original and most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam War” (Tim O’Brien, author ofThe Things They Carried).CHAPTER I

Betrayal of What's Right

Every instance of severe traumatic psychological injury is a standing challenge to the rightness of the social order.

Judith Lewis Herman,

1990 Harvard Trauma Conference

We begin in the moral world of the soldier -- what his culture understands to be right -- and betrayal of that moral order by a commander. This is how Homer opens theIliad.Agamémnon, Achilles' commander, wrongfully seizes the prize of honor voted to Achilles by the troops. Achilles' experience of betrayal of what's right, and his reactions to it, are identical to those of American soldiers in Vietnam. I shall describe some of the many violations of what American soldiers understood to be right by holders of responsibility and trust.

Now, there was a LURP [Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol] team from the First Brigade off of Highway One, that looked over the South China Sea. There was a bay there....Now, they saw boats come in. And they suspected, now, uh -- the word came down [that] they were unloading weapons off them. Three boats.

At that time we moved. It was about l3œ