In the army, I was less worried about gun noises than the extreme whine of large helicopters like Chinooks. When loading in the back end, you have to pass close to the exhaust of the turbine engines. It was too much for me, and I went to the clinic to get earplugs, only to get laughed at. “Buck up and be a man, not a pussy!”
I wore them anyway.
Nope. But then I was an infantryman. Same with contact lens. I was always worried that in the event of a blast the medics would have trouble getting them out.
Other specialties wear hearing protection.
I was a Marine in Vietnam. One day, in no more than a couple of hours, I fired around 1,000 rounds. By the end of that time it felt like someone was slapping me on the ears at every shot, quite painful. I don’t remember any diminished hearing that afternoon or over the next few days.
My guess is that I lost a lot more hearing from working construction without wearing hearing protection.
Though now, at age 60, I wear hearing protection anytime I’m around loud noise.
I never used ear defenders ,not even on the range if I could help it , let alone anywhere else and on my last army medical I was told that I had uncannily good hearing (The rest of me was knackered and falling apart but my ears worked great) in spite of the many loud cracks and bangs I’d experienced over the years .
And I doubt very much if that was anything approaching what WW2
vets went through.
All around waste? So I guess in the history of warfare, no country has ever been liberated. No person has ever been freed, no culture or civilization’s oppression has ever ceased because of battle? That’s what you’re saying? The United States gained its Independence through diplomacy? Slavery was ended via multi-party talks? Imprisoned Jews left to die were were released through the magical intervention of apathy? Some wars are wasteful. But to make such a ridiculous comment as “war is an all around waste” is a discredit to the men and woman throughout history who have fought and died for a righteous cause.
Consider that some components of hearing loss might be hereditary.
Well-bred folks might tolerate exposure to loud sounds and recover very nicely given a bit of time.
Others with a genetic predispostion for hearing problems might be taken out with a single high blast of sound.
I cant speak for US forces but for Brits it is not in our SOPs to wear ear plugs. I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and have been engaged in stand off attacks and firefights and never wore ear plugs. Firstly because over the left ear we wear the headset for the PRR, secondly its just not practicle to have them in all the time. Especially when interacting with the local populace on house searches etc.
However, it is in our SOPs to wear ear plugs on all range shoots, qualifying or otherwise, even in deployed hostile areas.
Ages ago in Reader’s Digest I read something sebnt in by an artilleryman. He said that he was advised early on to put cigarette filters in his ears as ear plugs (I think this was before the advent of those recoverable foam plastic ear plugs that you oll up and let expand in your ears). He found that it worked well, but that it chafed his ears. The solution, he was told, was to rub the outsides of the filters with baby oil.
This lead to the following exchange in the bathroom:
Other Guy: So you, uh, use baby oil?
Hero: Yeah. I put it on my cigarette filters.
Other Guy: Doesn’t that make them taste weird?
Hero: I wouldn’t know. I stick 'em in my ears.
This was related as a true story, which I tend to believe. I’d date it to the sixties, possibly even the fifties, but no later. It couldn’t have been much earlier – I don’t think they had filtered cigs in the 1940s.
The interesting thing I’ve found is that a lot of ex-military centrefire rifles (things like Mausers, Lee-Enfields, and so on) often aren’t all that noisy for the firer. It’s the person next to them that cops an earful of gunshot noise- which is why I always wear earmuffs when I’m out hunting.
Shotguns are also surprisingly noisy too, depending on what loads are being used.