I could feel a huge concussion wave,

and then I couldn't hear anything.

I told my sergeants my ears were hurting

and that I felt really weird.

My vision was acting all strange.

-- Spc. Paul Thurman

Paul Thurman was not supposed to be deployed. His brain had been damaged before he even left Ft. Bragg; a training accident in which a log was dropped on his head. Brain scans showed evidence of lesions. Yet, inexplicably, he was sent to Iraq. There he sustained a second head trauma; another training accident. An IED  simulator went off three feet from his head.