Along with 20,000 other veterans, he's not included in the Pentagon's official count of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's because Landrus' wound was to his brain and hidden from view. Landrus, 24, of Clarkston, Wash., says he did not realize the nausea, dizziness, memory loss and headaches he suffered after the blast were signs of a lasting brain injury.

Army medics who examined him in the field didn't find the wound either. "They wanted to know if we had any holes in us, or if we were bleeding. We were in and out of there (the aid station) in 10 to 15 minutes," Landrus remembers.

For the balance of his combat tour, he tried to shake off the blast's effects and keep going. Now, "my goal is to get back to a normal life," he says.

A USA TODAY survey of four military installations and the Department of Veterans Affairs, where combat veterans are routinely screened for brain injury, has found that about 20,000 people show signs of damage. They are not counted in the Pentagon's official tally of 30,000 war wounded.

The military lacks "a standardized definition of traumatic injury or a uniform process to report all TBI (traumatic brain injury) cases," Assistant Secretary of Defense Ellen Embrey wrote in a memo last month. As a result, it is hard to determine the scope of the problem, she wrote.

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Labels: Iraq War, TBI, traumatic brain injury, Veterans