 |
| Penelope welcomes Odysseus |
The last major deployment of
British troops to Afghanistan has taken place ahead of the withdrawal of combat
troops at the end of next year. Britain’s wars, for now, are coming to an end.
But what does that mean for the soldiers coming home? For some, it’s not the
end of the fight but the beginning. The real fight has yet to come, a fight
that continues to take lives long after the war has ended. Every war has its
after-war and Iraq and Afghanistan are no different; a report published in
February by the US Department of Veteran Affairs found that, in 2010, 22 US
veterans killed themselves every day, while in the UK more soldiers and
veterans took their own lives in 2012 than died in combat in Afghanistan.
The invisible wounds of
veterans have long been recognised from the "shell shock" of the
first world war to the "nerve problems" of the second, through
to the naming of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by American
psychiatrists in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. But the issue of combat related
stress is not a new phenomenon. Exploring the far-reaching consequences of war goes
all the way back to ancient Greece. The effect war can have, not just on those
who fight wars but also on those close to them, was addressed in Homer’s epic
poem The Odyssey. After the Trojan war, Odysseus sets off on his journey back
to Ithaca, surviving encounters with Lotus Eaters and Sirens only to face
another challenge: the homecoming. Homer's poem confronts the issue of how soldiers
cope when conflicts end. It asks searching questions: can soldiers ever, truly,
return home? Can they survive not just the war itself, but the war's aftermath?
Will they bring the war home with them?
The Trojan war provided the
Greeks with a platform and context for telling stories about conflict and its
effects. According to Edith Hall, professor of classics at King's College
London, this direct expertise gave Greek authors the ability to discuss
"the cost of war in terms of the mental health of combatants"
with a "frankness and sophistication from which we can learn a great deal
in the third millennium".
After the
“shell-shock” of the first world war and
the “nerve problems” of the second, it may seem as though science and medicine
are finally is coming to grips with the problem but in essence science has simply
found a fancier name for it. The ancient Greeks, it seems, were experts in what we would now term
PTSD.