The 2,000 Yard Stare

The experiences of artist and Life magazine correspondent Tom Lea during a World War II landing on the island of Peleliu led to several powerful paintings and sketches published in a June 1945 issue of Life magazine (1). Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare hauntingly portrays the characteristic vacant stare of a dissociative response to military trauma. The caption of this piece in Life describes “battle fatigue,” and Lea therein describes the subject of his painting: “He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign…. Two thirds of his company has been killed or wounded but he is still standing. So he will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?” (1).

Following 12 years of fighting the global war on terror, including operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are again asking how much a human being can endure: another attack, another deployment, another war? Clinicians, advocacy groups, and politicians all have various answers to this question. Meanwhile, as they debate the merits of past and future conflicts there are more than 2.6 million U.S. military personnel who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, with more than 500,000 veterans presenting to Department of Veterans Affairs clinics for treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on at least two occasions in 2012 and numerous others who have not yet sought care (2). As noted in the recent Institute of Medicine report on PTSD in military and veteran populations, there continues to be a need for an integrated, coordinated, and comprehensive strategy by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and a need for more mental health care professionals to take care of this growing list of veterans (2).

These warriors are all too familiar with the understated agony of exposure to repetitive trauma portrayed by Lea, and they are perhaps the only ones who fully understand the experience this empty yet tortured gaze reflects. But, silently, they wait to be called on. Perhaps they will be called on to see their psychiatrist; perhaps it will be for another deployment. Either way, they will answer the call if they can. They will endure once more if they can.

And we too must answer the call to ensure our system supports and cares for their sacrifice.