When a leader destroys the legitimacy of the army’s moral order by betraying “what’s right,” he inflicts manifold injuries on his men. The Iliad is a story of these immediate and devastating consequences. Vietnam has forced us to see that these consequences go beyond the war’s “loss upon bitter loss… leaving so many dead men” (1:3ff) to taint the lives of those who survive it.
–Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Unmaking of Character