Thousand-yard stare

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This article is about a military-related term. For the band, see Thousand Yard Stare (band).

The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is the unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier. The stare is a characteristic combat stress reaction which may be a precursor to, or symptom of, post-traumatic stress disorder.^{[citation needed]}

Image from The Great War taken in an Australian Advanced Dressing Station near Ypres in 1917. The wounded soldier in the lower left of the photo has a dazed, thousand-yard stare - a frequent symptom of "shell-shock".

[edit] Etymology

The phrase was popularized when, in 1944, Life magazine published the painting Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare by its World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea. The painting was a portrait of a young Marine at the Battle of Peleliu in 1944, and is now held by U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort Lesley J. McNair, DC. ^[1] About the real-life Marine who was his subject, Lea wrote:

He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?^[2]

The condition was obliquely referred to by World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin in his 1947 book Up Front, in which he states, "Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen."^{[citation needed]}

Frank Johnston, a Vietnam War photographer used the term in a 2001 Smithsonian magazine interview. Johnston says, "I looked up and saw a Marine with what they call the thousand-yard stare, and I lifted my Leica and snapped his picture. The soldier’s gaze never left my lens."^[3]

When recounting his arrival in Vietnam in 1965, then-Corporal Joe Houle 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, Houle said, "After I lost my first friend, I felt it was best to be detached."^[4]

A picture featuring Marine James Blake Miller staring into the dawn and smoking a cigarette after the Second Battle of Fallujah was widely reprinted on the front page of many U.S. newspapers in 2004, earning him the popular nickname of the "Marlboro Marine". "His expression caught my eye", said Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco. "To me, it said: terrified, exhausted and glad just to be alive. I recognized that look because that's how I felt too."^[5]