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William Dieterle's film The Last Flight (1931) begins, after a brief sequence explaining how they were wounded, with two WWI pilots, Cary Lockwood, played by Richard Barthelmess, and Shep Lambert, played by David Manners, sitting in a hospital, watching a clock in anticipation of the war's end and their release. Both men are fully dressed. They appear angry, not excited, and lean forward as ifthey will take offat a sprint once set free. Barthelmess, in particular, appears to brood. His expression conveys an almost criminal intent. It fades briefly, however, in the presence of a military doctor in the next scene. The doctor prescribes "time" for Shep's nervous tick, stretching for Cary's burnt hands, and normal living for both of the lieutenants. But in a conversation with a colleague following their departure, it becomes clear that these are only hollow words:
Well, there they go. Out to face life and their whole training was in preparation for death ... They fell, you know: 6000 meters. Like dropping a fine, Swiss watch on the pavement. Shattered both of them. Their nervous systems are deranged, disorganized, brittle ... Spent bullets. That's it. They're like projectiles: Shaped for war and hurled at the enemy. They've described a beautiful, high-arching trajectory. Now they've fallen back to Earth: spent, cooled off, useless. (00:05:06-00:06:17)
Of course, there are a number of different interpretations for the doctor's speech: war weariness, cinematic foreshadowing, or an effort to channel America's angst surrounding the successful reintegration of servicemen into postwar society. But, what cannot be dismissed is its clear focus on the psychological wounds of combat. The doctor sees Shep and Cary as "spent bullets" because of their minds, not because of nervous ticks or burnt hands. In 1931, The Last Flight suggests that any trouble WWI veterans might have reintegrating into society has entirely to do with the psychological wounds of combat.
Literary trauma theorists apply psychoanalytic principals to literary texts, exploring these wounds as they appear on local levels in characters, narrators, and interpersonal interactions within a plot. These principals also prove useful in understanding how cultures comprehend and process trauma. Scholars like Cathy Caruth and Richard Bernstein suggest that traumatic events are never fully experienced consciously (Bernstein 44) and that much of...