Battle Fatigue

In his autobiography The Sound of Sleat, Jon Schueler refers to specific events that greatly affected him, but did not deter him from training as a B-17 navigator before deploying to the European theater.

Excerpts are here: https://www.jonschueler.com/pdf/Jon_Schueler_Art_War_Jan_2018.pdf

Scroll down to the page titled: “Quotes from The Sound of Sleat: A Painter’s Life by Jon Schueler”. He makes it abundantly clear that he struggled desperately to understand what was going through his head, but could not.

He was sent back to the States in 1944 and hospitalized for a time. After he was medically retired, he put his energies into art, following in the footsteps of Willem de Kooning, a superb realist who turned to abstract expressionism, and Jackson Pollock, the drip painter who drank between bouts of painting.

One of the persistent subjects that Schueler infused into his paintings and wove into his writings was his experience in World War II when he served as a navigator in the U.S. Army Air Corps. His war memories, and undiagnosed PTSD, haunted him and continually found expression in his post-war work. He specifically struggled with deep guilt over the lastminute change of plans – precipitated by his decision to marry – that resulted in his escaping the practice flight that killed the whole crew in a tornado during training in El Paso, Texas. In Europe, he was one of only two men in his squadron to survive the wartime missions over France and Germany, and this perceived alteration of fate never found a place of reconciliation within his psyche. Following medical retirement in 1944 he embarked on a career path of painting, first in San Francisco and then in New York. Then, after successful exhibitions, in 1957 he consciously chose a kind of creative exile and went to Mallaig, a small fishing village on the west coast of Scotland in sight of the Isle of Skye. Without fully understanding why, he centered himself in this rugged, dramatically changeable environment for months at a time, painting quickly in inspired bursts of energy charged with his full life force, as though he wasn’t sure if he would have time to finish. Vigorously responding to the emotions invoked by the clouds, sky, sea and land, he lived, in a way, inside of his paintings, and without realizing it, slowly started healing his unseen war wounds. – Exhibition proposal for Lost Man Blues exhibit by Jon Schueler.  https://www.jonschueler.com/pdf/Jon_Schueler_Art_War_Jan_2018.pdf

In the first half of the 20^th century, post traumatic stress associated with warfare was referred to by several terms, including shell shock and battle fatigue. We’ve already had comments from several people who have said “Dad came home from the war and never talked about it until….”

N.B.: Photo added after AW1Ed found one for me. Thanks for that!

In Schueler’s recollections of flying as part of a bomber squadron, he witnessed planes in his squadron being hit and plummeting toward the ground, but no sign of parachutes, which meant the crew had not escaped. As he saw this kind of thing more than once, he no doubt felt his own helplessness to do anything, like many other people in WWII, and internalized it until he could no longer function as a navigator. When he turned to art, hoping to find some success in the modern art world, he found his greatest inspiration and did his best work in the village of Mallaig in northwestern Scotland, located on the Sound of Sleat.  Inspired by the skies of the Sound, he worked through his issues and, in my view, brought the same light into expressionism that Turner brought into Impressionism.

The difference between Jon Schueler and some of the people who claim what is now termed PTSD, but have other things going on,  is that he faced his issues and made them work for him, not knowing whether or not he would succeed. He did what used to be referred to as “toughing it out” on his own.

That’s all I have to say.

Category: Disposable Warriors, Historical, War Stories