I've been around guns all my life and never used hearing protection, mainly because in the extreme of a gun fight you usually don't have earmuffs or cotton to stick in your ear. Maybe that is the reason why I don't hear so good now.

So noise from gunfire was no strange thing to me, but the level of combined noise level was greater than what I had every experienced on a gun range even firing automatic weapons M-60, m-16, and m-14's and such. I usually had no problems with hearing range officers while on the range, but for some reason that didn't come close to the Muskets, Artillery, artillery simulator charges and screaming combined.