Growing Evidence Shows How Artillery Fire in Syria, Iraq Left US Troops With Brain Damage

Reporting in US media is drawing a link between mental health issues suffered by returning soldiers and the US military’s unprecedented reliance on long-range heavy arms fire in Iraq and Syria.

Renewed attention to the issue comes amidst studies in recent years examining the effect of shockwaves from heavy weapons fire on the human brain.

The phenomenon is likened to the emerging understanding of the traumatic brain injuries caused by repeated hits in American football.

Reporting over the weekend profiled returning US service members from Iraq and Syria who suffer numerous maladies, including headaches, nightmares, memory loss, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and suicidal ideation.

Many soldiers cope with homelessness and chronic unemployment as a result of their conditions. One member of a Marine Corps gun crew committed suicide after suffering from years of headaches and depression. His team fired 7,188 artillery rounds in just a few months in Iraq.

Another coped with bouts of psychosis after returning from Syria, hearing voices and suffering from hallucinations. He was ruled not guilty by reason of insanity after he broke into a stranger’s home and killed a man. He’s currently committed to a locked ward of a mental hospital in Minnesota.

Key to the problem is the recent US strategy of relying on long-distance heavy arms fire in combat, especially during their intervention in the Syrian Civil War. The US military was sensitive to domestic opposition after unpopular campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and US politicians never sold intervention in Syria to the public as they did with those conflicts.

Military planners sought to achieve their objectives in Syria through heavy reliance on the use of artillery, which requires fewer soldiers than other forms of combat and risks fewer casualties from direct confrontation.

Troops fired tens of thousands of shells there, numbers not seen since the Vietnam War. The artillery blasts are capable of lobbing 100-pound shells as far as 15 miles away, producing strong shockwaves in the process that affected entire military crews.