For Britomart, as always forever and ever for MEB, and this Veterans's Week, in honor of the Nation's War Dead.

May those who return from this nation's wars always receive the welcome they deserve and have peace of mind, and may God grant the families of those who do not return peace of mind as well.

This will be your standard style book review of a truly wonderful book by Caroline Alexander: The War that Killed Achilles.

Britomart had it shipped to me at 5:00 p.m. yesterday, and I finished it this morning; at 225 pages; it goes quick, and is a great, great read.

One chapter, about the death of Achilles beloved friend Patroklos, Man Down, says it all, about the timeless, timeless grief over the loss of comrades in arms, the wound the deeper for the bonds generated by war's Erotic companionship of Thanos: Love and Death is always the most potent potion of all.

The War that Killed Achilles is scholarship of the highest order, "academic," in the best sense of the word, because every moderately intelligent person can understand it.

A reasonable effort by any reader will bring away an amazing amount of food for thought, although I cannot say I agree with all of the author's conclusions about the meaning of Homer's Illiad, or of war, alas, the Potion of Eros and Thanos.

Having said that, General Zinni, a very wise old Marine, simply stated on the back of the book jacket, that The War that Killed Achilles is "...mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to command responsibility."

That says it all, for General Zinni is a very, very wise man, and knows war all too well.

The work which Ms. Alexander analyzes is of course Homer's The Iliad, the tale of the fall of Ilion, the city more commonly called Troy.

Just in terms of exploring the wondrous fruits of scholarship on Troy dating to the magisterial work of German business dreamer, and Iliad fanatic, Heinrich Schliemann, which by the way totally disproved the academic conventional wisdom as to the non-existence of Troy, in terms of Indo-Aryan cultural roots, Ms. Alexander's work rewards the read y itself.

Indo-Aryans value glory, perhaps, too much, or perhaps, it is what it is; that is the real question.

For surely what the Greeks would call the "agon," the competitive struggle for "arete," excellence, for what Tim Banning for western Europe a millenia later correctly called The Pursuit of Glory, the pursuit of  a touch of immortality, whether in the boardroom, the academic cloakroom, the bedroom, and most especially, the battlefield, has always be an "agon" generatng the material power, wealth and cultural magnificence of the West, and also of course the West's  agony of periodic nearly suicidal wars among Indo-Aryans.

As Ms. Alexander pointed out, the ancients well understood that the Dark Age of Greece followed the "victory" of the Danaans/Acheans for a reason, the palaces of their Mycenean Lord Agamemnon soon falling into ruins after honoring Menalaos.

Was it worth it, King an Country?

Is that not always the unanswerable question of war?

But of course, the main focus of Ms. Alexander in terms of the Iliad's characters is, and properly, Achilles and the Eros of the Thanos of War in terms of the pursuit of glory.

Does not every soldier, and his widow, and his orphan, not have to ask that question; was it really worth it?

Achilles doubts about the mission in the beginning are timeless, as is the question raised when the Boss Man Agamemnon plays by a different set of rules than the little guys actually doing the work of war:

"When should I follow orders, and when is there a higher duty?"

More on that key point shortly.

The Iliad of course is one of the greatest works of art ever produced: bar none.

It is a posession of Indo-Aryan civilization forever, like the Vedas.

In a different lifetime, I should have liked to have read it in the original Greek, and annotated it, as did the Great Captains Alexander and Von Molke the Elder, the latter the architect of Sedan I, of Prussia over the French.

The Great Captains, ah yes, for that is the question Ms. Alexander raises continually: what price martial glory?

There are few other questions in life more important, for as Ms. Alexander notes, in the last five thousand years, ninety four per cent of the time, human beings somewhere on earth have been dying for glory in war.

But is such glory worth it, or does it matter, that it just is what it is, and if you are not in that pay grade, just shut up and kill.

That is where I depart company from Ms. Alexander, for if Achilles had said, for example, how about we have a lottery between me, Aias (Ajax), Odysseus, and Diomedes to replace your lost prize, maybe Patroklos lives?

Maybe, even if Achilles just sucked it up like a man and gave Agamemnon Briseis, if he had really been a team player, took one for the team like all good soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, Achilles just says you know:

"There are plenty of more women to rape and pillage over there in Troy, Andromache is pretty hot. That would be really cool, to kill Hectkor, take his life, and his wife. Now that is a victory. Besides, I may get Patroklos killed if I don't follow orders, because that is not my paygrade. Just keep your head down, Achilles, and do the work of war. The Gods will sort it out anyway, as usual."

Alas, I can think of some other objections to Ms. Alexander's work, and my writing about it as well, that I think tells an important tale.

First, some men, although not a wise one like General Zinni, will privately have their hackles raised by a woman writing about war in the first place: what can she really know?

Do not women by their nature give life, and men take it?

Yes, I think so actually in a general sense, although that is not a view that most people will currently admit to having.

In fact, Ms. Alexander's depiction of the farewell seen of Hector of the Shining Helm, his wife Andromache's Knight in Shining Armor, a wonderful wife soon to be carried off by another man as a concubine, with Hecktor's infant son Astyanax to thrown from the "strong walls" of Troy, does justice to one of the most poingant realities shown in all of literature, the reality of the male need to prove physical valor, in part for female approval in the contest for reproduction among men, and the price of the drive for glory.

In the end, I think Ms. Alexander underestimates the reality that the more a male's activities approach physical violence in their competiveness, the more props they get from the chicks, so to speak: nice guys do not get the girls as much.

Hence the recognizable Georgie Porgie scum Paris of the Iliad, who caused the disaster in the first place.

No one really likes a mamma's boy, because you doubt in a pinch, whether they have your back, so to speak.

More generally, I can picture the quiet reaction of the males I know saying the same thing about this essay; what he does he know about war, he is just a teacher?

It would seem that the only real way one settles things among most men I know who seem to so enjoy picking on me for being a teacher, is if I were to beat the snot out of them, I mean risking bone crushing, permanently damaging physical punishment, because teaching is perceived by many as less close to the direct male competition of the business world, which I think says a lot about human nature and war in the end, that it is what is.

To be fair to these male friends, male teachers often secretly fear that too quite often, which is why one of the most memorable characters in all the literature of war is an All Quiet on the Western Front, in the teacher who fills boys with notions of glory, notions which not only died on contact with the shovels bashing peoples heads in in the trenches, but especially, when the teacher later in the novel had to put his money where his mouth is, when he had to put his body on the line, and failed the test very, very badly.

That is why my personal hero is Joshua Chamberlain.

He passed that test of manhood that would in reality seem to be universal in character with flying colors at Gettysburg in command of Little Roundtop, wounded seven times total, promoted prematurely posthumously to Brigadier General and on hand to receive the surrender of my second favorite soldier, who made a mistake thevery  next day for which Pickett never forgave hime, both his nations devoted and humble servant, General R.E Lee.

But there is no glory in for most soldiers, Ms. Alexander is quite right about that. I think in the end, it is a very, very private thing, as the character Hoop in Black Down says something like,

"That first bullet goes past your head, it is all about the man next to you. And that is all."

As Ms. Alexander points out, most soldiers in all wars are most like the weary killing of Achilles, who when returns to battle, at the horrific execution of Lykaon, crying and begging for his life, says, in effect, very loosely translated:

when i was young

and my heart was an open book

i used to take prisoners

i know i did, i know i did

but in this neverending pointless war in which i fight in

 makes me give it a cry

shut up, mama's boy, it's your time to die

So if you want a reflective read on the nature of war, read Ms. Alexander, although I have to come to very different conclusions, even though the better angel of my nature wishes this were not so.

Because at the end of the day, even if there's no glory, there's always the warrior's honor of meeting death without showing fear in the face of the enemy.