Local author recognizes that pain of war spans the centuries

Local author recognizes that pain of war spans the centuries
By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Aug 31, 2009 @ 12:03 AM
After he began working with Vietnam veterans, Dr. Jonathan Shay heard in their stories the same feelings of grief and betrayal that triggered "the rage of Achilles" in Homer's ancient epic, the "Iliad."

At the Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston in 1987, former grunts spoke to him of the betrayal of "what's right" by officers and politicians. They revealed lingering sorrow over lost comrades and simmering rage that made their homecomings so difficult.

A Harvard-educated psychiatrist who'd never been in the military, Shay made powerful connections with them by writing stories about Homer's heros, Achilles and Odysseus, warriors like them scarred in body and soul.

"From the beginning, I had an interest in the idea that war could damage good character. War hasn't changed in 3,000 years," he said. "The Iliad is about what war has always done to people. Everyone is changed by combat but not everyone is injured."

Looking back, Shay remembers the veterans in that first program as "very rough men who'd experienced severe combat trauma and were given to rages."

"Everyone was an outpatient. There were no locked doors, no court orders. Almost all were from Vietnam," he said. Later, there were a few from World War II and Korea, he said.

Now retired, Shay credits "dumb luck" for helping him reach troubled veterans through stories from Homer's 2,700-year-old poems about the Trojan War and its aftermath.
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Local author recognizes that pain of war spans the centuries