The toll from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is high. Almost 7000 American service members lost their lives, with more than 50,000 listed as wounded in action.
Thanks to extensive wounded warrior efforts, the nation is far more aware of the dangers of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and of the challenges and possibilities for amputees using prosthetic devices. But military men and women, in far greater numbers than the Pentagon numbers reflect, have sacrificed something else that is too seldom acknowledged: their hearing.