TBI five times greater than Pentagon listed

Data: Thousands of TBI cases off the record

By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Friday Nov 23, 2007 8:32:20 EST

Along with 20,000 other veterans, Marine Lance Cpl. Gene Landrus is not included in the Pentagon’s official count of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s because his wound was to his brain and hidden from view.

Landrus — who faces medical separation from the Corps and is up for the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in a May 2006 roadside bomb attack outside Abu Ghraib, Iraq — said he did not realize the nausea, dizziness, memory loss and headaches he suffered after the blast were signs of a lasting brain injury.

Army medics who examined him in the field didn’t find the wound either.

“They wanted to know if we had any holes in us, or if we were bleeding. We were in and out of [the aid station] in 10 to 15 minutes,” said Landrus, 24, of Clarkston, Wash.

For the balance of his combat tour, he tried to shake off the blast’s effects and keep going. Now, “my goal is to get back to a normal life,” he said.

A USA Today survey of four military installations and the Department of Veterans Affairs, where combat veterans are routinely screened for brain injury, has found that about 20,000 people show signs of damage. That’s nearly five times the number officially listed by the Pentagon — 4,471.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/gns_tbi_071123/

Why aren't the wounded with PTSD or TBI given Purple Hearts? Why are they not counted as wounded? Why are the soldiers who commit suicide because of PTSD not counted in with the death counts? Why is it that when history lists the numbers connected to any war, all the prices paid are not all there? Someone should change this. Someone in Congress should get on this and correct this injustice. By neglecting this, they are saying all of them do not matter as much as some of them.