Study: 1 in 4 soldiers at war have hearing loss

[unhappycamper]

Study: 1 in 4 soldiers at war have hearing loss
By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Monday Aug 4, 2008 12:14:07 EDT

The bombs along the Baghdad road exploded one after the other, leaving one soldier unconscious and another screaming from his wounds. Staff Sgt. Kevin Dunne's squad was under attack. Rifle and machine gun fire pinned them down. Then, shots from a sniper.

Dunne yelled orders, but he and his squad were at a disadvantage.

Dunne said he couldn't hear well enough to tell where the sniper fire was coming from.

"I had no idea," he wrote in an e-mail to USA Today.

In the four months before the April 7 attack, the chief physician at Fort Hood, Texas, had warned that Dunne's hearing was so bad that he should be removed from combat duties. Others in the Army overruled him and sent Dunne back to Iraq for his third combat tour.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/gns_hearingloss_080408/