In WW1, they called it "shell shock" for soldiers incapacitated without obvious injury. In WW2 it was called "battle fatigue", and now TBI.

It seems the WW1 doctors got it right the first time.

Also, artillery has gotten bigger and boomier since then. If it was bad then, it’s likely worse now.

True, but we've got better protective equipment as well.

Hmm. Wasn't WWI "peak artillery"? We use 155mm and rockets now, right?

Artillery has actually gotten smaller. Propellant charges have gotten "boomier" high explosive instead of smokeless propellants hence the traumatic brain injuries on the teams firing them.

What? Shell shock is PTSD. The doctors were concerned about concussive trauma but investigated and ruled it out as the cause.

The concern itself was right to have, but I don't think the concern has ever gone away.

So I don't characterize that as very "right the first time".

They were right as to the cause.

> the cause

Not at all. It might be a cause, but tons of PTSD has nothing to do with concussive trauma, so much so that the other cases overwhelmed the correlating cases when they investigated the causation.

I doubt they had the right technology back then to actually investigate for physical brain trauma. Even today CTE diagnoses are made post mortem. And one can end up with CTE without ever having a full blown concussion.

They had plenty of tech to figure out whether people were near explosions at all.

PTSD is a different thing from TBI/CTE, overlap or not. The diagnosis for PTSD was called shell shock. They did not have it right in a general sense.

Navy Seals aren't firing artillery. The article says the Seals brains were damaged by their own weapons which I assume to be rifles but maybe I'm wrong.

they're talking about blasts from open-air combustion shoulder mounted anti-tank weapons.. very nearly artillery, and very loud.[0] . The article linked is the one mentioned in the parent article.

one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...

SEALs and other special forces use a lot of heavy weaponry and explosives in addition to small arms like rifles and sidearms. Think door breaching charges, grenades, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns.