Odysseus in America

by Jonathan Shay

  PART FIVE: (BOOKS 17-20): STRANGER AT HOME

  Telemachus and Odysseus make their way separately to the palace. In his beggar’s disguise, Odysseus appears at the door, where his son, playing along with the beggar ruse, piously and charitably admits him to the palace. The suitors again show themselves to be disgusting hooligans, just “asking for it,” punishment from the gods. Taking Odysseus as a penniless bum, they abuse him in various ways, even though he now enjoys the religious and political protection of the manor’s hospitality. There are more than a hundred suitors, and Odysseus has to be very careful not to tip his hand and get himself killed. Apart from Telemachus, no one knows who he is, and given all the scammers who have shown up, who is going to believe the kid if he tells them? After the suitors clear out for the night, Odysseus remains behind and gets an audience with Penelope on the pre-text that he has news of Odysseus. Both because Penelope has had her hopes raised and dashed by con men and because the goddess Athena guarantees his disguise, she does not recognize him. However, his childhood nurse, Eurycleia, does, and almost blows his disguise. But maybe because of the subliminal effect of his actual presence, Penelope sets the next day, a feast day to Apollo the Archer God, for the trial of Odysseus’ bow. To win her in marriage a suitor must string it and shoot an arrow through the lined-up holes of twelve axe-head sockets—one of Odysseus’ favorite stunts before he went off to war. After prayers and omens before dawn, Odysseus arises to prepare himself, his son, and two loyal servants for the coming feast, trial, and battle with the suitors, who crowd back into the hall to resume their rowdy binge.

  PART SIX (BOOKS 21-24): VETERAN TRIUMPHANT

  Penelope fetches the bow, a stiff, powerful hunting bow that few men are strong enough to string, much less shoot straight. She carries it to the hall where the suitors are drinking and abusing the disguised Odysseus. She announces the contest for her hand in marriage and leaves. They try to string it and fail. Telemachus, who of course knows the beggar’s identity, fakes an argument with Eumaeus to get the bow into his father’s hands without tipping off the suitors. Odysseus quickly strings the bow, and puts arrow after arrow into the suitors. When his arrows are gone, he and his son and two comrades battle with spears against the still superior number of living suitors, but after killing some in a pitched battle they panic the rest and slaughter them as they try to flee the locked house. Odysseus has identified all the maidservants who had been sluts with the suitors and orders them to drag the corpses from the hall and wash up the suitors’ blood and their terror-loosed shit; then he has Telemachus kill the maids.

  Penelope, alone in her bedroom, does not believe the news that Odysseus has returned. When the long-awaited reunion takes place, they are distracted, mistrustful, and reserved. Odysseus expects revenge from the relatives of the young bloods he has just killed. To buy time, he arranges lights and music for a fake wedding celebration in the locked house. Penelope is still mistrustful of another charlatan. She tests him with secret knowledge of the construction of their marital bed that he alone knows. At last they embrace in their bed. He tells her he must leave again soon; they make love; they tell each other what has happened in the twenty years of their separation; they sleep. At sunup Odysseus, Telemachus, and their loyal retainers slip out of town to the orchard in the hills where Odysseus’ aged father, Laertes, has been living in ineffectual, depressed retirement. After Odysseus reveals himself to his father in a somewhat cruel manner, the three generations prepare themselves to fight off the posse of relatives carrying out the law of vendetta. The mob appears. After an opening skirmish, in which old Laertes is rejuvenated and Telemachus acquits himself bravely, Zeus stuns them all with a thunderbolt and Athena compels them to make peace. Odysseus is restored to his rightful place. Even though he must still complete his final trip away from home, he—and we—have been authoritatively promised that he and Penelope will end their lives in contented, peaceful, well-tended old age.

  APPENDIX II:

  INFORMATION RESOURCES FOR VIETNAM VETERANS AND THEIR FAMILIES

  Some of the resources listed below have Vietnam veterans themselves in mind, some almost entirely veterans’ wives and families in mind. Some are general trauma sites. Veterans will benefit enormously by using resources listed for spouses and families, and vice versa. Most resources are focused on Vietnam veterans, but the following site has links to veterans and military unit associations from other conflicts as well: Veterans’ Associations Links Page: http://members.tripod.com/flavets/linkpage.htm.

  www.vwip.org A site edited by John Tegtmeier, with information resources listed in a glossary-type format. Has many fine narratives.

  www.vietvet.org A site edited by Bill McBride, with links to the World Wide Web Vietnam Veteran Location Service. Has many fine narratives.

  www.themovingwall.org The Web site for the organization that carries half-sized replicas of the Wall to public places around the country for week-long stays. This profound program lowers the financial and psychological barriers that many veterans face in visiting the Wall in Washington. The schedule of locations and dates is posted on this site.

  www.virtualwall.org The Virtual Wall, maintained by Jim Schueckler. “The Virtual Wall contains virtual memorials to the men and women named on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Each name or photo on our index pages links to a personal memorial. If you do not find a name here, you may request a memorial; no fee, no donations, no commercials.” A database of American military deaths in the Vietnam War is at www.no-quarter.org.

  www.va.gov/rcs The Vet Centers (officially the Readjustment Counseling Service, or RCS) do excellent work out of storefront centers around the country. They are usually listed in the telephone book under “Vet Center,” and a complete directory is available through the RCS Web site. The heart of the Vet Center concept is peer counseling. Many of the counselors are veterans, although today a great many who started as uncredentialed peer counselors have taken training in one or another of the mental health professions.

  www.trauma-pages.com A site edited by psychologist David Baldwin, devoted to all aspects of trauma, including combat trauma.

  www.ncptsd.org The official web site of the National Center for PTSD, with a link to search the PILOTS database of scientific and scholarly literature on trauma.

  www.dr-bob.org/tips/ptsd.html My pamphlet called “About Medications for Combat PTSD.” It needs updating, but the philosophy of informed partnership will never go out of date.

  www.patiencepress.com For access to The Posttraumatic Gazette, a newsletter with a wealth of resources and wisdom for veterans and their families. I strongly recommend purchase of the complete set of back issues and subscription to the Gazette.1

  Two excellent books for spouses and families of veterans:

  Mason, Patience C. H. Recovering from the War: A Woman’s Guide to Helping Your Vietnam Veteran, Your Family, and Yourself. New York: Viking, 1990.

  Matsakis, Aphrodite. Vietnam Wives: Facing the Challenges of Life with Veterans Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 2nd ed. Lutherville, Md.:Sidran Press, 1996.

  APPENDIX III:

  SOME PROPOSALS

  “You Americans spend so much, and get so little for it.”

  —Martin van Creveld, Jerusalem, 19991

  Completely renovate the military personnel system, so that it reliably produces skilled, cohesive units, and competent, ethical leaders at all levels. The three touchstones—cohesion, leadership, and training—are the desired end state that this renovated personnel system should achieve and support. Everything that currently exists in the way of policy, practice, and assumption should be tested against this end state, and likewise everything that is proposed.

  Here are some assumptions about American military service that are so familiar they have become invisible. Every one needs to be critically reexamined and most of them discarded:

  OBSOLETE ASSUMPTIONS BUILT INTO THE CURRENT MILITARY PERSONNEL SYSTEM2

  • Military fighting formati
ons on any scale can best be thought of as machines. Machines run best and can be best maintained using identical, standardized parts. Service members must be interchangeable.

  • War is an industrial process.

  • Only individual training and skill credentials matter.

  • The only costs of moving a service member from one unit to another are the financial costs of the move and the administrative paperwork. Like-credentialed troops are fungible.

  • Personnel turbulence is a fact of life.

  • There’s no way to replace casualties, except individual by individual. Units should be kept up to strength on the battlefield by the constant flow of individual replacements.

  • Too much cohesion in small units is dangerous to the chain of command.

  • Among units of like kind, uniform readiness and uniform capability are best.

  • Weapons matter more than skill.

  • Enlisted service members are a “free good,” either conscripted or motivated to enlist by conscription.

  • Under all circumstances, a unit that has been “filled” to or beyond its table of organization is more ready than one that is not.

  • Only officers can make decisions or think of better ways to do things.

  • Success in the military is measured by the rank you achieve.

  • Everyone wants to get ahead, to move higher in the table of organization; conversely, anyone who is motivated by anything other than advancement in rank is deficient in either “attitude” or “motivation” and is “complacent.”

  • Officership is a form of general management, requiring only the ability to organize, motivate, communicate, and set goals and priorities. Officers are “generalists” not “specialists.”

  • The only motivations that count are “tangible incentives” appealing to the service members self-interest.

  • Opportunities for advancement in rank have to be uniform.

  • Career equity must trump other considerations. “When stabilization [of the unit] conflicts with the concept of equity in fulfilling personnel assignments, equity will prevail” (A[rmy] R[egulation] 614-5).

  • Individuals must be managed by a centralized personnel system.

  • If allowed to remain in roles they excel at, enjoy, and consider important, service members will stagnate.

  • If allowed to form strong bonds with other service members, they will engage in favoritism, cronyism, and prejudice.

  • Our military services are scientifically managed and organized. Military history and comparative study of military institutions contribute little to the development of successful military organizations

  • The Department of Defense must organize itself around the requirement for total mobilization.

  • No one can remain mentally and physically fit (“young and vigorous”) for military service beyond the age of fifty.

  • There is no way reliably to measure mental and physical fitness, vigor, and competence.

  • Job security makes people slack.

  • Relentless competition in everything—“running scared”—floats the best people to the top and gets the most out of everyone.

  • Enlisted military service is unskilled manual labor and should be compensated at that rate.

  • Only tangible incentives matter.

  SOME SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS

  • “Flatten” the services—reduce the number of operational echelons and headquarters.

  • Replace trickle-in-trickle-out individual manning with life-cycle unit manning.

  • Give every service member a home unit and every unit a home base and a lifetime unit association membership for him/herself and his/her family.

  • Make unit stability the rule, with turbulence the exception, rather than turbulence the rule and stability the exception.

  • Replace up-or-out with up-or-stay-if-still-performing.

  • Significantly reduce the numbers in the 0-4 to 0-6 grades.

  • Replace specific branches with combined arms, logistics, and specialists.

  • Decentralize officer management.

  • Link promotion of tactical officers to decision-making ability and performance in repeated force-on-force free-play field exercises and repeated true competitive war games

  • Reform military education and training—introduce true competitive war gaming as a core educational and cultural practice for tactical personnel at all levels and beginning with entry-level training.

  • Do away with “all or nothing” twenty-year retirement system; vest pensions at seven to ten years.

  • Require all officers to serve in enlisted ranks prior to commissioning (including those on their way to or graduating from the service academies).

  • Reconceptualize the skills, compensation, and training of the enlisted ranks of the combat arms in terms of professional athletes or musicians, rather than unskilled manual labor.

  • Renovate the enlisted and officer personnel systems together, so that they harmonize.

  The above list is my own, but it overlaps considerably with the recommendations found in Major Donald Vandergriffs Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs.3 Major Vandergriff’s excellent book documents the cultural and institutional history of the U.S. military personnel system, as well as its persistent result of reducing military capability.

  HOW WE GET THERE FROM HERE4

  My mission from the veterans I serve is one of democratic persuasion in the military services, the Congress, and the public. The agenda is open, not concealed: with a three-to five-year horizon, an omnibus military personnel act in Congress that:

  • is bipartisan, and nonideological (this is neither a Republican thing nor a Democrat thing, neither liberal nor conservative);

  • has been openly and thoroughly debated within the military services and the Department of Defense, and the changes contemplated have been requested by the services;

  • is adaptable to each service’s distinctive traditions, technologies, and force structure, eliminating “one size fits all” in personnel policy, practice, and culture; and

  • treats service members decently in the face of inevitable changes to their career expectations, through an intelligent ten-year implementation plan.

  NOTES

  Frontispiece

  1 Attic red figure stamnos by the Siren Painter, ca. 500-450 B.C.E. Odysseus and the Sirens. London E440, from Vulci. ARV 289.1 (J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963]. After A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Greichische Vasenmalerei: Auswahl Hervorragender Vasen-bilder [München: Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann, 1900-1925], pl. 124.) Image courtesy of the Perseus Digital Library, www.perseus.tufts.edu.

  Preface

  1 Taking Homer at his word was the approach Achilles in Vietnam took to the Iliad, the Achilles epic: The Iliad opens with a thunderclap, when Achilles’ commander Agamemnon betrays the moral order of his army by wrongfully seizing Achilles’ prize of honor, his geras. Agamemnon had no more right to do that than a modern colonel taking the Medal of Honor ribbon off the tunic of a sergeant under his command. Achilles’ rage at this degrading treatment leads him to withdraw physically from the battle, something that he could do legally but a modern soldier can only do psychologically. When an inspiring and effective combat leader pulls out, the result is loss upon loss to his comrades as the enemy moves in, just what happened to the Greeks. Achilles then lets his foster brother Patroclus, his closest comrade and second in command, go back into the fight. Patroclus saves the Greeks from being thrown into the sea from their beachhead, but is killed doing it. Achilles suffers profound grief and guilt, goes berserk and commits outrage after outrage in the course of winning the war for the Greeks by bringing down Hector. This is the surface story of the Iliad, about combat soldiers and what matters to them: the moral and social world they inhabit. This surface story means something in the real world.

  2 Parameters:
US Army War College Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, Autumn 1995, p. 133.

  1. Introduction

  1 Citations are to Robert Fagles’s Odyssey translation (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996) or to Robert Fitzgerald’s Odyssey translation (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990). They are in the form book number: line number(s), translator’s name. Where other translations are quoted, the source is identified in the same manner and referenced in the notes. Line numbers refer to the translations’ numberings; where the line numbers refer to the original Greek, this is noted as “orig.” rather than with a translator’s name. The Loeb Classical Library editions of Homer provide the sources for the original Greek, respectively the Iliad, ed. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), and the Odyssey, ed. A. T. Murray, as revised by George E. Dimock (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). A note on English representation of Greek words and proper names: I have followed the spelling conventions used by Professor Robert Eagles, whose Odyssey translation is most frequently quoted in this book. Where other translations have been quoted I have retained the spelling used in the quoted source. I have refrained from using accents when I transliterate Greek words that are not proper names, with the exception of the eta and omega, which are shown as ē and ō, respectively. I have also substituted “Greek” for Achaian, Argive, and Danaan, where they have appeared in the Homeric quotations.