Waiting for an Army to Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

veterans.
    “After my operation I filed a claim for service-connected disability. I went to the Veterans Administration counselor and told him what I wanted to do, but he didn’t know anything aboutAgent Orange—absolutely nothing. I actually had to bring in the paperwork and show him how to fill it out. About a month after I filed my claim I received a form letter from the VA stating that ‘there is no evidence supporting a connection between Agent Orange exposure and any disease, except for chloracne.’ They didn’t send any documents or articles about Agent Orange, just their statement that ‘these are the facts.’ And when I did write asking for documentation on Agent Orange, they said their information had all been consumed in a fire. Then of course we received the next good laugh in the mail when they wrote that they had lost all of my service records while I was overseas. How could they just lose all our records? I did receive some information, some records, but they still don’t have any of my records from Vietnam, or my first two years in the military. But I’ve corresponded with enough veterans who were in the area I was in and who were exposed to Agent Orange, and they can verify that we were exposed.” *
    One of the early ploys which the Veterans Administration used to avoid paying service-connected disability to victims of Agent Orange was to argue that veterans could not really prove they were exposed to herbicides in Vietnam. The Department of Defense also used this argument to discredit veterans’ claims of cancer and birth defects due to exposure to Agent Orange. In testimony before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, United States Senate, Major General William S. Augerson, at the time deputy assistant secretary of defense, argued a retrospective epidemiological study of Vietnam veterans. Because there “are generally no data exposureconcentrations and exposure times,” said Augerson, the results of such a study would be “highly unreliable.” Given the existence of HERBS tapes that constitute a computerized record of the time, date, place, and amount of herbicide sprayed, the major general’s statement would appear at best based upon bureaucratic rhetoric. And had he attended any of the hearings that are being held throughout the country on the problems and perils of dioxin exposure, he would have heard hundreds of veterans testify that they were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. For example, a veteran who had served with the First Aircraft, Air Mobile, told the New York State Temporary Commission on Dioxin Exposure: “After the LZ [landing zone] was sprayed, we walked around the perimeters, strung barbed wire all around it. Then we sat down, the helicopters flew in, and this stuff was blowing all over the place. Most of us drank out of bomb craters, showered in bomb craters. All the guys know about that. That’s the only time we could wash up. And all that water was polluted with Agent Orange.”
    Clark spreads the form letters denying him service-connected disability payments for his bladder cancer on the table, and waits while I examine them. They are succinct, designed to make the readers feel hopeless, as though appealing the decision would be a folly. There is no “Thank you for serving your country.” Or “We are sorry you are suffering and only hope that, once further research is done into this matter, we can be of help.” Nothing to soften the blow. Just flat denial. In one letter, however, the VA does elaborate on its reason for rejecting Clark’s request for disability. The letter reveals that while undergoing an examination Clark once fainted and that this has led the VA to conclude that he just might have a “hysterical personality.” That he might have lost consciousness because his body was reacting to a serious assault from cancer seems not to have occurred to the Veterans Administration. “They think we’re all nuts,” said one veteran. “And if they can