The thousand-yard stare (also referred to as two-thousand-yard stare, combat shock, or shell shock) is a phrase often used to describe the blank, unfocused gaze of

combatant Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...

s who have become emotionally detached from the horrors around them. It is sometimes used more generally to describe the look of

dissociation Dissociation, in the wide sense of the word, is an act of disuniting or separating a complex object into parts. Dissociation may also refer to: * Dissociation (chemistry), general process in which molecules or ionic compounds (complexes, or salts) ...

among victims of other types of trauma. The thousand-yard stare is likely the same phenomena as what medical researchers refer to as the combat stress reaction.

Origin

The phrase was popularized after ''Life'' magazine published the painting ''Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare'' by

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

artist and correspondent Tom Lea, although the painting was not referred to with that title in the 1945 magazine article. The painting, a 1944 portrait of a nameless

Marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

at the

Battle of Peleliu The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II by the US military, was fought between the United States and Japan during the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign of World War II, from September 15 to November 27, 1944, on the island of ...

, is now held by the

United States Army Center of Military History The United States Army Center of Military History (CMH) is a directorate within the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. The Institute of Heraldry remains within the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Arm ...

Fort Lesley J. McNair Fort Lesley J. McNair is a United States Army post located on the tip of Greenleaf Point, the peninsula that lies at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. To the peninsula's west is the Washington Cha ...

, Washington, D.C.Jones, James, and Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). -
"Two-Thousand-Yard Stare"
. - ''WW II''. - (c/o Military History Network). - Grosset and Dunlap. - pp.113,116. - About the real-life Marine who was his subject, Lea said: When recounting his arrival in Vietnam in 1965, then-Corporal Joe Houle (director of the Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas in 2002) said he saw no emotion in the eyes of his new squad: "The look in their eyes was like the life was sucked out of them," later learning that the term for their condition was "the 1,000-yard stare". "After I lost my first friend, I felt it was best to be detached," he explained.

References

{{reflist Aftermath of war Military slang and jargon Post-traumatic stress disorder Thomas C. Lea III

Origin

See also

References