Odysseus in America (2 page)

P
ART
S
IX
(
BOOKS
21-24): V
ETERAN
T
RIUMPHANT

Appendix II: Information Resources for Vietnam Veterans and Their Families

Appendix III: Some Proposals

O
BSOLETE
A
SSUMPTIONS
B
UILT INTO THE
C
URRENT
M
ILITARY
P
ERSONNEL
S
YSTEM

S
OME
S
PECIFIC
R
ECOMMENDATIONS

H
OW
W
E
G
ET
T
HERE FROM
H
ERE

Notes

Bibliography

Index

BY U.S. SENATORS

M
AX
C
LELAND
and J
OHN
M
C
C
AIN

Those of us who have witnessed, taken part in, and suffered the tragedies of war know that the ancient Greek epics offer compelling insights into our own experiences. In the
Iliad,
an epic of war, and the
Odyssey,
an epic of a veteran's attempt to get home, Homer speaks as one who has “been there.” As veterans of the Vietnam War, we appreciated the clarity and utility of
Achilles in Vietnam,
Dr. Jonathan Shay's first book, which put into words what we as veterans have always known: Homer's story of Achilles matters.

Now Dr. Shay has done it again. In
Odysseus in America,
he uses the story of Odysseus to examine another layer, revealing what it means to return from war to a safe civilian society. Dr. Shay's call to protect our troops from injury, and make them more formidable to the nation's foes, takes his vision to another level. He hits the nail on the head by proposing to compel American military institutions to create and protect
trust,
and he sets forth certain key results that must be achieved: positive qualities of community in every service member's military unit; competent, ethical, and properly supported leadership; and progressive, realistic training for what military service members actually do. If we achieve such results within our military, we will prevent not only psychological injury, but physical casualties as well, because these three fundamentals are also
combat strength multipliers.

As part of our work in the U.S. Senate, we both serve on the Armed Services Committee. Although we come from different parties, we are in agreement with the treatment outcomes that Dr. Shay seeks from the combat veterans he serves in the Department of Veterans Affairs. As veterans,
we endorse the goal of trust he proposes for all service members. The laws of nature did not force our present military institutions on us. These institutions are man-made and can be transformed to better serve our nation and its military servicemen and -women.

I thank the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Study and Conference Center, for direct support for the early preparation of this book. I thank Marine Manpower and Reserve Affairs and the U.S. Naval War College for support of research that contributed substantially to the concepts in this book relating to prevention of psychological and moral injury in military service.

Four groups have been both my teachers and supportive community during all or part of the preparation of this book: the clinical team and veterans of the Veterans Improvement Program (VIP) of the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic, Boston; the VWAR-L internet discussion list; the CLASSICS-L internet discussion list; and the First Friday Defense Lunch, an entirely unofficial group that meets monthly in Washington to analyze and promote beneficial changes in the U.S. armed services.

The worldwide collegium of classical scholars has been large-spirited and kindly with this amateur beyond any call of duty. Perhaps their long experience in dealing with late adolescents has given them so much patience with me. Without their work collectively, and their help individually, this book could never have been. My debt can never be fully repaid.

Over the eight years of its preparation, an enormous number of people have helped me with expansive generosity. I can thank by name only a small fraction. My gratitude is not bounded by the list below. In keeping with the nature of this book, the list is alphabetical:

Karl Ackerman, Mark Adin, Gary Allord, Professor James Arieti, Colonel Carl Bernard, U.S. Army, retired, Nancy Bernhard, Major General Robert R. Blackman, Jr., USMC, Gillian Blake, William F. Boomhower, Mark Bowman, Mike Brittingham, Steven L. Canby, Professor Domenic Ciraulo, Michelle Citron, Vicki Citron, Corky Condon,
Professor Erwin F. Cook, Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, U.S. Army, retired, Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF, W. T. Edmonds, Jr., Lieutenant General Bob Elton, U.S. Army, retired, Jack Farrell, Helmuts Feifs, Commander Rabbi Robert Feinberg, USN, William J. Filipowich, William J. Finch, Professor Lydia Fish, Lisa Fisher, Professor Henry Flores, Chaplain Donald R. Forden, Professor Eugene Garver, Mary Garvey, Professor Leon Golden, Rear Admiral Kevin P. Green, USN, Diana Gregory, Sally Griffis, Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Lieutenant General Michael W. Hagee, USMC, H. Palmer Hall, Donald Hines, Admiral James Hogg, USN, retired, Robert “Dr. Bob” Hsiung, Lieutenant Colonel William F. “Toby” Hughes, USAF, retired, General James L. Jones, USMC, Professor Terence Keane, Lieutenant Colonel Faris Kirkland, U.S. Army, retired (deceased), General Charles C. Krulak, USMC, retired, Colonel Robert E. Lee, Jr., USMC, retired, Mark Lewis, James Lynch, Jack Mallory, Jonathan Matson, Major General James N. Mattis, USMC, Bill McBride, General Edward C. “Shy” Meyer, U.S. Army, retired, Sue Michmerhuizen, Dr. Thomas L. Milbank, Captain Daniel E. Moore, Jr., USN, Professor William Mullen, James Munroe, Warren K. Murray, Professor Gregory Nagy, Lieutenant General Gregory S. Newbold, USMC, Monte Olson, Ed Palm, Perseus Digital Library, Ralph Peters, Dale Peterson, Major Greg Pickell, USANG, Colonel Mark Pizzo, USMC, retired, Gunnery Sergeant H. John Poole, USMC, retired, Captain Ike Puzon, USN, retired, John Rakes, Lieutenant General John E. Rhodes, USMC, retired, Chet and Ginger Richards, Tom Ricks, Roy Ringel, Michael W. Rodriguez, Professor Amélie O. Rorty, Joseph W. Saltzman, Major General Robert H. Scales, U.S. Army, retired, Alan Scheri, Jim Schueckler, Lieutenant General Terry Scott, U.S. Army, retired, Professor Stephen Scully, Hannah Yael Shay, Samuel Zvi Shay, Henri Shay-Tannas, Bruce Shirk, Dennis Spector, Franklin C. “Chuck” Spinney, General Donn Starry, U.S. Army, retired, Judee Strott, Reverend Ray Stubbe, Tom Sykes, Professor James Tatum, Richard K. Taylor, John Tegtmeier, Harry Thie, John C. F. Tillson, Edward “Ted” Toland, Vice Admiral Pat Tracey, USN, Lieutenant General Bernard “Mick” Trainor, USMC, retired, Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry, U.S. Army, retired, Professor Lawrence Tritle, Lieutenant General Walter F. Ulmer, Jr., U.S. Army, retired, Major Donald Vandergriff, U.S. Army, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, USMC, retired, Michael and Michele Viehman, Professor David Sloan Wilson, Professor Donna Wilson, David Wood, Piers Wood, Colonel Mike Wyly, USMC, retired, Chris Yunker.

The
Iliad
may have been a fiction, but the bard sang the truth. By comparing veterans' stories to the story of Achilles, in
Achilles in Vietnam
I showed that what Homer sang about—particularly betrayal of “what's right” by a commander and the deep human attachment between battle comrades—cut close to the experiences of
real
soldiers in
real
war. I pointed out that the surface story of Achilles is about war itself, all war, and will be valid as long as we have war. The
Iliad
is a classic, not because it's on college reading lists, but because it is so vividly truthful about this persisting and terrible human practice. In fact the veterans' words have helped the professors hear the poet's words afresh.

The poet also taught those of us in psychiatry and psychology to hear things in the veterans' words that we had not previously attended to: the moral dimension of trauma and the dreadful, rabid state of the berserker, which Homer shows with such fidelity when Achilles “loses it” after Patroclus is killed.

This book is an obvious next step. Homer's
Odyssey
has sung of a veteran's struggles to get home for more than two and a half millennia. Let's take Homer at his word and see what we can make of it.
¹
The
Odyssey
as a whole—but most vividly the fantastic adventures of Books 9-12—may profitably be read as a detailed allegory of many a real veteran's homecoming. Time and again Odysseus shows himself as a man who
does not trust anyone,
a man whose capacity for social trust has been destroyed. This is the central problem facing the most severely injured Vietnam veterans. Odysseus stands for the veterans, but as a deeply flawed military leader himself, he also stands for the destroyers of trust. Homer's Odysseus sheds light—not always flattering light—on today's veterans and today's military leaders.

I invite the reader to see that real veterans' psychological and social homecomings cast new light into the
Odyssey.
No single “true” interpretation
of the
Odyssey
trumps all others. Here I expand the appeal that I first made with
Achilles in Vietnam:
that when reading Homer, we take seriously combat soldiers' and veterans' actual experience as an added source of interpretive insight.

I was completely surprised by the tide of support for
Achilles in Vietnam
among professional military people. The book made a strong pitch for the prevention of psychological and moral injury in military service, and for changes in U. S. military culture and practice that would promote prevention. As an unknown VA psychiatrist back in 1993, I had been unable to recruit a single active-duty military service member to comment on the manuscript before it was published. I figured I had no hope of getting a hearing from the people on the inside.

An early review of
Achilles in Vietnam
in the journal of the U.S. Army War College,
Parameters,
changed that: “Were it in the reviewer's power, no officer would be allowed to swear the oath of commission until he had read this book.”
²
Two Commandants of the Marine Corps have put it on their professional reading programs for All Hands in the Marine Corps. I have met privately with two successive Marine Corps Commandants and an Air Force Chief of Staff; a Secretary of the Navy invited me to give his guest lecture in the Pentagon. Heady stuff! The invisible company of the combat veterans standing at my shoulder when I speak gives me missionary courage to address a roomful of generals and admirals. The veterans don't want other young kids wrecked the way they were wrecked. The fire in my belly for prevention burns hot and hopefully will shine light in every chapter of this book.

I cannot presume to speak for or about all veterans. But I do know that the veterans I have the privilege to serve in the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Boston want me to do this work. They remain, despite their terrible psychological injuries, proud Americans who want the armed services to attract the best young people in the country, and for those young people to flourish.

So this book comes into being as the first one did: a labor of love that joins Homer's great epic with the lives of American combat veterans to give them the chance to cast new light on each other. And it continues my missionary agenda to convince the American public to
care
about how military units are kept together, how they are led, and how they are trained.

So let us begin …

O
DYSSEUS IN
A
MERICA

“Must you have battle in your heart forever? The bloody toil of combat? Old contender …”

—
Odyssey
12:132f, Fitzgerald
¹

“I wish I had been
untrained
afterward … reintegrated and included. My regret is wasting the whole of my productive adult life as a lone wolf.”

—Jim Shelby, Vietnam veteran
²

“Doc, you're f——ing crazy.”

—One of my patients, a former Army Airborne sergeant, veteran of four Vietnam combat tours, upon hearing that I was going to lecture on prevention of psychological injury at the United States Military Academy at West Point

Homer's
Odyssey
is the epic homecoming of a Greek fighter from the Trojan War. Odysseus' trick of the hollow horse got the Greeks inside the walls of Troy, a feat that ten-to-one superiority in troop strength had never achieved. He was the very last fighter to make it home from Troy and endured the most grueling travel, costing him a full decade on the way. Odysseus' return ended in a bloody, triumphant shoot-'em-up. It is now more than thirty years since the majority of American veterans of the Vietnam War have returned home—physically. Psychologically and socially, however, “many of us aren't home yet,” in the words of one combat medic.
³

My portrait of the psychologically injured combat veteran is colored by
respect and love. However, I shall conceal none of the ugly and hateful ways that war veterans have sometimes acted toward others and themselves during their attempts to come home and be at home. To the ancient Greeks, Odysseus' name
meant
“man of hate” or “he who sows trouble.”
⁴
Indeed, some veterans have sown trouble in their families. No one should ever hear from his mother, “You're not my son!” or “Better you died over there than come home like
this.”
Yet veterans with severe psychological injuries have sometimes heard these terrible words.