The Maine Recycling Corporation in Lisbon, Maine is shown, on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. Authorities found the Army reservist, Robert Card, dead from a self-inflicted gun shot wound on Oct. 27 at the recycling center near the Androscoggin River. On Wednesday, Oct. 25, Card had opened fire in a bowling alley and then at a bar in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people. . First is the roaring sound that no movie can ever match.
I was deployed in Iraq from 2016 to 2017 and served as an infantry officer and a journalist, assigned to. Earlier this month we learned that Robert Card, a U.S. Army Reserve soldier who killed 18 people in a mass shooting in Maine in October, experienced high levels of brain damage. For around eight years, Mr. Card spent summers working as a hand grenade instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Mr. Card was not assessed for a brain injury during his hospitalization. There may be thousands of others like him who are suffering from brain injuries they aren’t even aware of. Not all of the physical and mental costs will be readily apparent. Many of them will be invisible wounds that fester for decades after our current wars have ended. The insidious thing about mild traumatic brain injuries is that they can occur in both training and combat environments in routine operations.