Do U.S. Troops Risk Brain Injury When They Fire Heavy Weapons?

Damage from firing them? Maybe so.....but it's still better to be on the delivery end, than on the receiving end!

Going to weigh in and tell you off stories of EOD dets in country that have resulted in detached retinas in members of our unit. TBI can't be far behind in my eyes. Especially repeated tremors. Now I am not a doc- nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, but sequence of events leads me to believe the answer is yes. Greta question PO1 William "Chip" Nagel

In my basic course, we had training on the 90 mm recoiless rifle. We were all excited to fire it. But our Platoon NCO trainer had been a 90 gunner in VN. He was totally deaf in his right ear from firing it. He told all the new eager Lts waiting to fire that after we fired the first time, we wouldn't want to fire the second time. We laughed, but quickly found out he was right. When the round went off, it felt like someone had taken an icepick and stabbed it into our ear and right through our brain. I'd never felt anything like it before. So then when the loader and gunner LTS switched positions so each LT could fire, the mood was very different. Instead of being eager to pull the trigger, there was a dread about it, where we tensed up, knowing what was coming. And sure enough, it hurt just as bad the second time. We gained a new respect for our plt nco who had fired hundreds of those rounds.