Waiting for an Army to Die (27 page)

Sometimes when he thinks about these things he removes a scrapbook and leafs through the photographic proof that he was not always old before his time; and he sees, squeezed between a snapshot of a Vietnamese bar girl and a fading picture of a buddy who did not survive the war, a photograph that he clearly recalls taking. It is a picture of a C-123 spraying not more than half a mile from where he was standing. While staring at the photograph Anderson slowly becomes aware that he is afraid. But it is not, he realizes, simply because it reminds him of the twelve months he spent in the bush. That was a different kind of fear, one that for the most part he has been able to leave behind. The nightmares come less frequently now, and his limbs tremble not because he has flashed to a particularly horrible ambush or firefight. He is afraid because, after three years of tests, consultations, prescriptions, X-rays and hospitalization, doctors are still unable to tell him why he is a physical wreck or what, if anything, can be done to stop the progress of this mysterious disease.

There are times, Anderson admits, when he almost wishes he had cancer. Because then it might be possible to remove the malignant portion of his body and arrest the spread of disease. Or perhaps he would be given chemotherapy and eventually his health would return. Much of the time he feels, Anderson tells visitors, like a house infested with termites. The porch is collapsing, the foundation crumbling, the walls so deteriorated a child could push them over, but the parasites remain hidden and no one can explain why the house is tumbling down. He is afraid, he has discovered, not of dying, but of the unknown.

Looking at a photograph of himself at the age of eighteen, Anderson feels a sense of pride. His boots glisten in the sun and
his girlfriend and mother stand on each side of him, staring proudly at the set of jump wings that have just been pinned to his uniform. Vietnam had not been a difficult decision for him. His grandfather had fought in the Argonne Forest, his father had landed on Normandy, an uncle had won a bronze star in Korea, and by 1969, when he arrived at Tan Son Nhut, he had already lost one member of his high school football team to the Tet Offensive.

As he stares at the thirteen-year-old photograph, the former paratrooper feels torn by conflicting emotions. He has not lost his love for America, but the tears in his eyes are those of rage rather than pride. “Ask not what your country can do for you …” The words reverberate through the room. He remembers a Pakistani doctor (it seemed to him at the time that most of the physicians at the VA were from foreign countries) explaining in halting English that he could not understand Anderson’s questions about Agent Orange, then signing papers ordering that he be held for observation in the hospital’s psychiatric ward. He recalls the first check he received from the VA. It amounted to forty-eight dollars and would be sent each month, said the VA, not because they believed he was suffering from exposure to Agent Orange, but to help him cope with his “war-related” neurosis. Anderson smiles. He had taken the check into his backyard and, tearing the “insult” into tiny pieces, scattered it, as he once had his father’s ashes, to the winds.

Disappearing into his bedroom Anderson returns with a file drawer from which he removes reports, copies of rejection letters from the VA, and letters he has written to Congress, the VA, scientists, the president. “Do you realize,” asks Anderson, “that there are 125,000 Vietnam era veterans in jails or prisons and another 375,000 on parole, probation, or some other form of supervised release?” How many of these men, Anderson wonders, suffer from the sudden mood swings symptomatic of dioxin exposure? How many of the violent rages, which may have resulted in their incarceration, were due to the release of dioxin into their bloodstream during sudden weight losses—quite possibly causing psychological
imbalances? More than 25 percent of all the inmates in state and federal penitentiaries are Vietnam veterans, but has anyone done a fat biopsy study to determine what percentage of these men might be carrying dangerous levels of TCDD-dioxin in their body fat? Could it be that we are paying millions of dollars each year to imprison several battalions of the first army in human history to be poisoned by its own government?

Holding up a recent edition of his hometown paper, Anderson points to a by-line which reads: “$2 Million for Agent Orange Studies Funded.” “The bulk of the reassigned money,” Anderson reads, his voice shaking with disgust, “will be used for the controversial epidemiological study the VA was ordered to do by Congress three years ago, as well as other Agent Orange projects the VA has planned.” Squinting at the paper, Anderson adds that the VA has decided to do “ten new research projects on Agent Orange.” The projects will be completed, according to Robert Nimmo of the VA, in five years. Tearing the article from the paper and folding it into squares, Anderson tosses the bulk of the paper into the woodstove. Then he turns and, with his back to the mirror, addresses me as though I were the only person to have remained for the final act of a very, very long play.

“Five years,” he says, “five more years. I think I’ve got it now. I think we’ve all got it now. They’re just waiting.
They are waiting for us all, every fucking one of us, to die.
”

Are we really just waiting for an army to die? In a number of ways the Agent Orange issue is analogous to a murder trial where during the course of the proceedings the prosecutor produces a corpus delicti, witnesses to the crime, even a confession from the murderer, but all to no avail. The judge, for reasons about which one can only speculate, simply refuses to concede that a crime has been committed, dismissing members of the jury with the rather quaint admonishment that he may be calling on them again “in a few years.” If the VA denies that there is scientific evidence of the effects of TCDD-dioxin on human beings, and if its administrators continue to insist that Vietnam veterans cannot prove they were exposed to toxic chemicals, then how is it possible for veterans to
present their case? In spite of the VA’s many rhetorical flourishes of concern, the issue, if one accepts the agency’s arguments, is a moot point for still another five years.

Perhaps it is time to remove the Agent Orange issue to another jurisdiction. One way to accomplish this would be for Congress to establish an independent board of inquiry comprised of world experts on toxic chemicals, physicians knowledgeable about the health effects of TCDD-dioxin, Vietnam veterans, and members of the legislature. By taking the entire matter out of the hands of the VA, the American taxpayer will save millions of dollars that might otherwise be spent on redundant studies, resolve some of the urgent questions that have gone unanswered for too many years and, most important, convince the men and women who served in Vietnam that their fellow countrymen do not consider them a “throwaway army.”

When asked why more hasn’t been done to resolve the Agent Orange issue and provide disability to the sick and dying, many veterans reply that the real issue is money. How much, they ask, are Vietnam veterans worth? And the answer is invariably the same: “As little as possible.” If the principal manufactures of herbicides and the federal government agree on anything, it is that neither wants to be stuck with the bill for compensating thousands of veterans for their illnesses. Other veterans see themselves as scapegoats for an unpopular war. In our haste to forget the pain and divisiveness of the Vietnam era, they say, we have chosen to simply forget about them. Finally, there are those who believe that the Agent Orange issue is a puzzle, with some of the pieces still missing. In time, they argue, a memo will surface from Washington and catapult the nation into an “Orangegate.” What had seemed for so many years a controversy will turn out to be a conspiracy.

Perhaps all of these explanations are true, but I think the real answer to why this tragedy continues was given to me one evening by a Vietnam veteran. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think they’ll ever really settle this thing because there’s just too much money involved. It’s gonna cost the chemical companies or the American
government billions, and people just don’t think we’re worth that much. But I just want the American people to know something. They can write me and my children off if they want to. They can say we lost the war or we’re all crazy or any bullshit they like. But what they don’t know right now is that
we are their future
. What has happened to us will happen to them, and they better believe it because when it comes down, when they start to get sick, when
their
kids start to die and are born deformed or dead, they’ll wonder why they wouldn’t listen to us. I got nothing against anybody. I’m not as gung-ho as I was when I was eighteen, but this is still my country. But I just can’t understand why people don’t understand that what they dumped on us over there in Nam they’ll be dumping right here tomorrow. So when you go back to write your book, just tell people this: I may die, my brothers may die. Maybe we don’t really have any future, but if we don’t who the hell really does?”

Could it be that our willingness to ignore the suffering of thousands of Vietnam veterans is an attempt to avoid looking into our own future? Is it possible that in watching a twenty-eight-year old veteran like Paul Reutershan die of cancer we may be witnessing the death of our own son or daughter from the effects of radiation, dioxin, PCBs, or a host of chemicals that inundate our air and water and are contained in the very food we eat? Or that seeing a photograph of Kerry Ryan, born with sixteen birth defects, or Lori Strait, born with the left half of her brain missing, we are experiencing fears that, as future parents, we find unthinkable? But even if we choose to avoid looking at what has happened to Vietnam veterans, the fact remains that 50 percent of all US groundwater is either contaminated or threatened with contamination, that this year more deaths will be due to air pollution than car accidents, and that more children die in the United States each year from cancer than from any other disease.

On July 22, 1980, Christopher H. Johnson, a Vietnam veteran who had lost his right leg and part of his hearing in Vietnam, and whose son died after being born with multiple birth defects, told the Subcommittee on Medical Facilities and Benefits: “Don’t you
think that it is only right to take care of the American men who supported you first. We are natural-born citizens of the United States of America. We have been reaching out for years for help. Now is the time for you to step forward and take the responsibility and appropriate action. Don’t leave us with the only benefit remaining, which is the burial benefit. A lot of Vietnam veterans have already used it much too early in life. The Vietnam veteran never had a chance to enjoy adulthood. Now I can’t enjoy growing old. The evidence and facts have been in for years. Agent Orange is a killer.”

Christopher H. Johnson is a Vietnam veteran, but his testimony could be that of any American parent or victim of toxic poisoning. Although the Vietnam War has ended, the Vietnamization of America continues unabated. Vietnam veterans are our future, and however painful that may be for us to admit, our future is now.

1941–1946

Tests and development as a chemical and biological warfare agent.

1946

Commercial use on weeds and brush.

Late 1961

Introduced in Vietnam as part of US chemical warfare.

June/July 1969

Reports of frequent birth defects in defoliated areas of Vietnam.

April 1970

Pentagon stops using Agent Orange due to worldwide pressure and significant scientific evidence.

April 1970

Surgeon General reports to Hart committee on restrictions of 2,4,5-T: suspension of liquid formulation for home use; suspension of all aquatic uses; intent to cancel registration of nonliquid formulations for use around homes and on all food crops.

May 1970

Dow et al. appeals decision to cancel use on food crops.

Late 1970

Lawsuit by Consumers Union to force Department of Agriculture to suspend rather than cancel use.

1970

Environmental Protection Agency takes over regulation of pesticides.

January 1971

Appeals court orders EPA to reconsider Department of Agriculture refusal to put firmer restrictions on 2,4,5-T.

May 1971

Science advisory panel set up by EPA recommends that ban on use around homes be lifted and other restrictions set aside. Many scientists severely criticize advisory panel.

August 1971

EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus announces EPA would continue to press for cancellation of 2,4,5-T on food crops and orders hearing on uses causing greatest human exposure.

September 1971

Dow asks and gets an injunction from district court in Arkansas stopping EPA from cancellation hearings.

April 1973

Appeals court reverses district court decision and upholds EPA order for cancellation.

July 1973

EPA plans go-ahead for cancellation hearings, begins pre-hearing conferences with Dow, Department of Agriculture, Consumers Union and Environmental Defense Fund.

May 1974

Dow and Department of Agriculture hold conference on 2,4,5-T.

June 1974

EPA withdraws order of intent to hold hearings scheduled to begin the following month. Also withdraws cancellation order on rice crop use.

1975

President Gerald Ford announces that the United States would make no first use of military herbicides in offensive operations.

1975

US Forest Service prohibited from using 2,4,5-T in Arkansas because of NEPA violations.

1976

US Forest Service in Region 6 voluntarily suspends use of 2,4,5-T while court case against Siuslaw National Forest is in process.

1977

US Forest Service found to violate NEPA process regarding Environmental Impact Statement in uses of 2,4,5-T.