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ACHILLIES IN VIETNAM:

Combat Trauma and The Undoing Of Character

by Johnathon Shay. Published in USA by Simon & Schuster. Publication date: 1995-10-01.

I have finished “Achilles in Vietnam” and first and foremost I make the point that it is about the best understanding of chronic stress I have seen so far from the psych/medical profession in regard to PTSD and recommend its perusal.

Having said that I would like to make the additional points beyond what I wrote earlier, it is very much an American point of view, unfortunately they carried a great deal more baggage then others in regard to their poor training, rotations, cultural conditioning, corporate command style and not by no means last their lack of respect for their soldiers the enemy and everybody else for that matter.

Much of which Col. Hackworth described in “About Face” which he makes reference to but does not go into the detail so I had the feeling that what I wrote years ago “that the Americans would rather be dead then accept advice from others who had proven success.” Hackworth never had that problem but the general American command structure did.

It should be stressed regardless of the additional problems the Americans had other nations who practise his recommendations still have a PTSD problem with their soldiers. For those that don’t know Hackworth was integrating his junior officers in Australian platoons to improve their standard and even when command found out and ordered him to stop he thought it was so essential he carried on doing it behind their backs which had negative consequences for him later.

Disrespecting your enemy is a recipe for disaster, especially in the Vietnamese case, they were fighting wars 300 years before and right up to when the Americans arrived, now that is burying your head in the sand. I made the mistake in my early years of only focusing on the “actual” combat veterans, but I eventually woke up to the fact that all these peripheral issues were only items of degrees, where as the experience of extended war with no safe havens were enough in itself for everybody involved even the ivory tower generals flying around the country for luncheon appointments, were open to the possibility of immanent destruction.

On that same note I saw no mention of the limited times in combat 2nd WW veterans had as compared to the year of grinding into the dust that was the Vietnam experience and that is the real key, not the combat itself it was the fact there was never any real relief.

I have to take him to task in what he called the “berserkers” we in our army call them experienced veterans and because we rotated whole units they were evenly spread and they proved to be essential in limiting causalities as the failed experiment with 5 RAR where these experienced people were light on the ground proved.

Many of these people did several tours and in my experience made the Australians so successful in combat and their only concern was to bring home ALL who went with them. Now for the nitty gritty, he lets the veterans themselves off the hook, the “poor me” factor for example, you want everybody else to feel your pain but if they do empathize they are immediately dismissive with a “you could not possibly know” and they don’t but some do try and by dismissing them they lose an ally that would help in their defacto normalisation.

There are many other factors associated with the “poor me” syndrome, most of which relates to associative aspects of enhancing the condition for some and destructive for others. They also surround themselves with memorabilia and then complain they are locked into the theatre that was Vietnam they are, but having all that crap around does not help.

Coupled with that is the going over and over “their” so called experience, when challenged it is quite often a collective of all experiences. So when they are stable enough they need to be challenged, but as he quite rightly points out the psychs really did not know what they were dealing with.

It is a lot more complex but it is an area that nobody seems to understand, I understand the basics but it goes a lot further then that. The fact that many of these people and many others not diagnosed with PTSD also have many medical problems is not really addressed, it seems that life style rather then another possibility like Allostatic Overload is the reason accepted by default.

Now we come to nightmares, flashbacks, location disorientation and the quite often debilitating cold sweats that accompany them. These are physically and mentally soul destroying aspects that has little attention, despite the fact they are easily addressed and often produce startling results to such an extent a group in England that seem to be practising what I call dream management claiming it as a cure. It is not! But it makes the job of rehabilitation a far easier process.

Sadly we can’t use this in our paper as it is totally PTSD orientated even though he does state on page 172 “A growing number of medical researchers are currently finding abnormalities of brain chemistry, function, and even gross structure in those suffering from combat PTSD. This is a rapidly advancing field.” That maybe but Allostatic Overload would suggest they are looking in the wrong place.

Syd McLeod 11.11.10 Remembrance Day

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.

Mac

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