You Aint Got The Stare Images of Battlefield

You Ain’t Got The Stare! Images of Battlefield Trauma in Drama & Literature Two Thousand Yard Stare, Tom Lea, 1944

Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick 1987 • PAYBACK …You listen to Joker, new guy? He knows ti ti. Very little. You know he's never been in the shit, 'cause he ain't got the stare. • RAFTERMAN …The stare? • PAYBACK …The thousand-yard stare. A marine gets it after he's been in the shit for too long. It's like. . . it's like you've really seen beyond. I got it. All field marines got it. And you'll have it too.

Payback’s Stare • The character in Full Metal Jacket is describing an manifestation of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. • This effect has been seen very often in combat veterans and others affected by profound fear. • All sense of focus and direction is lost in this expression. • Looking into another world……….

The (2) Thousand Yard Stare Fireman 9/11

The (2) Thousand Yard Stare

Private Eagerfield (War Hyperthyroidism and Hyperadrenalism) (General Adaptational Syndrome). Eagerfield's facial expression indicates von Graefe's syndrome (immobility of the upper eyelid and downward rotation of the eye)

What is Shell Shock • The psychological phenomenon that came to be known as shell shock is today largely called PTSD (Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder) • WHO. ICD-10 Classification (F 43. 1) • Sleep difficulties, irritability and outbursts of anger, difficulty in concentrating, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response.

Battlefield Trauma & Shell Shock • The psychological trauma suffered by soldiers in combat has been known for millennia. • In modern literature it was arguably first described as a wound separate from the physical in: • The Red Badge of Courage by Steven Crane (1894) • A novel about the American Civil War.

‘Soldiers Heart’ • The American Civil War was the first mechanised war. • And occurred at the birth of modern psychology and psychiatry. • Medics reported what would today be recognised as PTSD in otherwise unwounded soldiers calling it Anxiety Neurosis or Soldiers Heart and Da Costa’s Syndrome.

World War One • World War One brought Shell Shock into the common vocabulary. • Tens of thousands of soldiers suffered severe neuro-psychiatric disorders, some of startling characteristics. • Many soldiers were treated as malingerers and even today some describe ‘factitious PTSD’.

Daily Sketch Article 27/12/17 • If you suffer from' nerve strain, don't take so many drugs. Just paint your ceiling blue , and your walls yellow, and see that everything else in the room is made to match. • • Thus shall your shattered nerves 'besoothed, and you shall become even as other men.

Shell Shock & Battle Fatigue in Literature & Drama • Commentators on PTSD have looked for it in pre-psychiatry age literature. • We have had war in our societies for at least 5, 000 years so we must have had PTSD for as long. • What is the earliest example? • The Iliad (720 BC) • Achilles displays PTSD in bloodlust?

Battle Fatigue In Classical Literature • Herodotus, 440 BC , Marathon History, Book VI • A strange prodigy likewise happened at this fight. Epizelus, the son of Cuphagoras, an Athenian, was in the thick of the fray and behaving himself as a brave man should, when suddenly he was stricken with blindness, without blow of sword or dart; and this blindness continued thenceforth during the whole of his afterlife.

‘Shell Shock’ in Scripture • Deuteronomy 20: 1 -9, • When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou. . . the officers shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart.

Sophocles • "I wanted to keep the pain to myself, son, but now it cuts straight through me. Do you understand? It cuts straight through me, “ • Philoctetes to a comrade • The poems Ajax and Philoctetes have been used in drama therapy for US soldiers and marines in a psychological technique similar to flooding.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV • Lady Percy describes Hotspur, her husband’s emotional detachment in Act 2, scene 4 • In this description we can see all of the modern symptoms. • Dissociation (Tell me sweet Lord, what is’t that takes from thee thy stomach, pleasure and golden sleep. • Depression and emotional/sexual dysfunction (And given my treasures and my rights of thee to thick- eyed musing and cursed melancholy)

Shakespeare’s Henry IV • Sleep disturbance (In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d and heard thee murmur tales of iron wars) • Hyper-vigilance and startle response (Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth and start so often when thou sit’s alone) • And in thy face strange motions have appear’d such as we see when men restrain their breath • (is that the thousand yard stare? )

The Red Badge of Courage Steven Crane 1894 • Steven Crane was too young to serve in the American Civil War • But he did speak to many veterans • In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted, having slept but little and labored much. They rolled their eyes toward the advancing battle as they stood awaiting the shock. Some shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.

All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque • Suddenly my Mother seizes hold of my hand asks falteringly: “Was it very bad out there Paul? ”. Mother, what should I answer to that! You would not understand, you could never realise it. And you never shall realise it. Photo: All Quiet on the Western Front. ITC Entertainment Production November 14, 1979 • . . . rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those are dangerous moments. They show us that the adjustment is only artificial.

R. C Sheriff’s Journeys End Young impressionable officer 2 nd Lt. Raleigh joins his ‘hero’ Captain Stanhope’s unit to find he is no longer the Rugger skipper he knew at school but a morose and bad tempered drunk. Another officer 2 nd Lieutenant Hibbert complains of Neuralgia and Stanhope thinks he is a malinger. The play, written in 1928 was badly received because the audiences did not want reminding of the war that ended only ten years earlier. ‘No Leading lady’ Photo: from David Grindley’s 2011 production of Journey’s End

Strange Meeting Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918 • It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined. • Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then , as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.