Military Exposures

I can't say for sure what caused all my problems, but I do know for a fact that the anthrax shot is still affecting me to this day. I still get the rashes. I can also factually say that the M8 alarms did go off several times. Chemical agents, DU, and that little experimental PB pill could very well be responsible for my ill health experiences. I saw more death and destruction in just a few days than anyone can even come close to understanding. It was a killing field, and it was. It was one-sided, and we slaughtered them. I mean, I don't know any other way to put it. I can even recall using blown-up equipment to pull parts off of them to repair our equipment. A lot of their equipment was American made, and that is an absolute fact. It was American equipment we were blowing up, and light switches and certain things we were able to take off those vehicles and use them. If we had a problem, we would go to that vehicle that was blown up and pull those parts off. And then, again, no thought was given to DU contamination at the time. I mean, we had our hands all over it. We weren't in MOPP gear. We weren't, you know, we didn't wear protective gloves or anything. We used our hands and our wrenches, and we did what we had to do and moved on. But there was definitely, I don't know, but I would assume at least 70% damage from DU weapons. I mean from M1 main gun rounds, or the A-10, or the Bradley, or, you know, I could go on and on and on how much DU we used on that battlefield. 

Some of the things that I think that we were exposed to would be the pesticides they used, like our airplanes we have to spray before we can come back in country, and I know that that was DEET that they used. And any kind of pesticides, they're toxic. Depleted uranium. The pills that they gave us. The desert terrain. It's an environment, and it's entirely different than what we're used to here in the United States. There's, who knows what is in the soil or in the air, bacteria, or any kind of things that we could have been exposed to. The smoke from the oil well fires. The smoke in the air. The smoke from them burning trash and whatever stuff. The captured Iraqi equipment. Who knows what that was exposed to that was in our cargo compartment and that we handled and touched and breathed the air in around? When you deice, you use ethylene glycol or propylene glycol. There was numerous times where you're out. As an engineer, I would be either inside at the panel preflighting or outside as the scanner, preflighting outside. If the airplane is getting deiced, you get coated in that stuff. Jet engine fumes. Hydraulic fluid. 

The asthma, I feel that there’s multiple things that could be related to the asthma. I don’t specifically have exactly which is which other than we had traveled through many of the oil fires that were burning so we had that smoke that we were inhaling, right? Two is the Gulf War sand particulates are extremely sharp and minute. We were engulfed in numerous sandstorms where it was just a wall. And when it hit ya, you couldn’t see your hand three inches right in front of your face. We had goggles but nothing really for protection for lungs. So, that could be a portion of it. We also did, I don’t know if this sarin could have something to do with it because there’s many times where we ended up, our alarms would go off, but they told us to disconnect them because they were faulty and that wasn’t the case. So, the VA themselves, the doctors, finally kind of came through that they think that our unit was hit with low levels of sarin gas between four and eight times, separate times, on multiple occasions. And so, maybe one or two of those, of the initial incidences were MOPP 4 masks and the other incidences occurred that we didn’t know they happened because we were told to turn the equipment off because it was faulty. So, I don’t have an exact number other than I know the first two I think was protected for but the other ones, I’m not sure. And then the last one of the details is either trash burning, the burn pit, along with doing cleaning out the latrine stalls, using diesel and lime to ignite that burn. So, I’ve been involved with all of that. 

And so during the daytime, it’d be so hot that we couldn’t go out in the sun. Sometimes it was up over 130 and me and the sun we don’t agree so I was drinking a lot of water. I was drinking probably a case of water. And these cases of water were about—I guess they were about 50 or 52 ounce bottles each and there is 12 in a case. It was just—that’s the only way I could survive. But I did what I had to do. Showers—we made showers from an emersion heater and then a shower bag. The latrines—they—I would call them primitive. They—what they did is they cut a drum, 55 gallon drum in about half and they’d slide it and they made this wood frame and they put like wire mesh on the front so you could see out and then they have fly bait there for all the flies. And that’s what you had for a latrine. And with the feces and with the urine you couldn’t dig a hole you had to burn it. And when it come to burning, you’d use mogas and you’d use diesel. Mogas to get it started, diesel to burn it because diesel burns hot. I was an NCO at the time and so I got detailed to take a couple people, take the stuff out, go and get it burned. You had to stir it so it’d burn good. I don’t know what the effects of that would be but it didn’t smell good. It wasn’t anything good. While I was over there I got maybe dysentery. Just all kinds of things that you can get over there.

Because the water that we was given over there in Saudi Arabia was heavily bleached water to kill the bacteria that was in the water. You have water units where they supposed to pump clean water and give you clean water ‘cuz we had water buffalos which is like a big thing where they put water in, and you go up and fill your canteens up and everything. And what it is, is water they get from, I don’t what do you call it, the thing in the desert where the water comes.

Interviewer: A well?

Participant: Like a well, yeah, like a water well they get out of—they pump the water out of the desert and they run it through a filtration system and they fill up the water buffalos for us, all of the military people where they add chlorine and everything else to it so they can kill all the bacteria and everything in it. So, for a year or so, I didn’t know nothing but chlorine flavored water.

As soon as I got out, I got back, I got out. You don’t wanna be stuck in the desert. Flies. Flies. You wanna, you could pull up dead in the middle of the desert within one minute them flies gonna be on you. Millions. Then they burning feces. We built us a, I don’t wanna say that, toilets. I mean you walk in there, millions of flies. In the screen. I mean millions of flies. The conditions were deplorable. You didn’t have no toilet. It was terrible. Maybe I’m a wimp, but I ain’t like it. I put it to you like that. I didn’t like it at all. But I lived through it. 

I had missed several of the mandatory vaccines, so I received most them at one time, and the outcome wasn’t good. I had immediate stomach problems. Actually, I dropped to the ground when they gave me the anthrax vaccination, but that's another story. But I had stomach problems, unbelievable cramping, upper respiratory problems, congestion with out-of-control runny nose, then rashes started. And I put in parentheses around anthrax because years ago, when I was trying to figure out what these rashes were, I went onto the DoD website. I did not hack anything. I did not do anything like that, but I found what reactions look like to anthrax, and mine matched them immediately. 

After they gave us the pills for anthrax, I had pus coming out of my armpits. Yeah, something—yeah. And that was from the pills. They didn’t tell us what it was. They just lined us up. Here, take these pills. Didn’t give us a choice. It was ordered. You take them pills. Didn’t see no officers or anybody else do it, higher up the chains, but I don’t appreciate being a guinea pig. That’s the first time I noticed something wrong—was seriously wrong. We all had fevers. We were all sick. All our lymph nodes and everything was puffed up. Yet they kept giving us the pills. That’s the first time I noticed something was wrong. By then, it was already—started getting headaches. For some reason they gave us blood thickener. I’m thinking—Okay, we hit the beaches, we’re not going to bleed so bad. That didn’t work out too well. Then they had to turn around and give us blood thinner. Well, go figure. Yeah. Idiots. Then I sat there for months on end outside in the Persian Gulf while the buildup was going on. And all this time, they were giving us pills, shots, you know, because supposedly he had anthrax and all that other chemical warfare stuff. And yeah, the alarms went off. We were told—Ah, it’s bad batteries. Just shut them off, take the batteries out. Okay. 

When we got back from Saudi, we had to, I remember filling out a form of our medical on our return. Because I think we filled one out going, but I don’t, I’m pretty sure we had to have, and with all the shots and stuff. They had us going out. One of the questions was, I did get diarrhea over there, and that was on my form, and there was something about a rash, and that was the one thing. I just can’t remember about the rash. And I can’t remember it in Saudi, but it had to be something because I wrote it on the forms coming back. And we got a lot of shots over there. A lot of shots, and I don’t have anything in my records with those shots. There was one time we got a shot, and they brought us in. It was like your typical flu vaccine type of thing. They had the needles already prepared, and you came through, and they took it off, and they wrote the number down, and they stuck you in the arm, and you went over and waited for 10 minutes, I think it was. So, while we were over there, after they gave me a shot, after about a minute, my arm felt like it was on fire. I’m asking other people, I’m like, do you feel, are you feeling anything? And there were some people that had the same reaction that I did to it, but then there were some that were like, no. We don’t feel nothing. So, yeah, it was just a weird thing. We had a lot of shots over there. A lot of shots. And again, in my medical records, my year over there isn't even in them, or when I requested them, it wasn’t in there that I got it. 

Then in 1990 and 2000, we got the anthrax vaccine. I had five out of the six shots, and I had a severe reaction. By the third shot, my arm was huge, red, welts. It started at the top of my arm and wrapped all the way down around my elbow onto my forearm. And all the symptoms that I had gotten under control all came back tenfold, with muscle pain being the worst. So, after my third anthrax shot, I became pregnant, which was not intentional, but I was happy with it, nonetheless. But by the end of the first trimester, I miscarried, and the naturopathic doctor said it was a good possibility that it was due to the anthrax vaccine because I had had three up to that point, and I had a lot of, I had such a reaction to it that it probably caused the miscarriage. That was just with a private doctor. No military or VA involved.

We were one of the only units on the entire American side that was living in fighting holes. Our commander decided that was the best thing for us. So we had big berms built and fighting holes. And of course the first month and a half was rainy season, so all our holes were flooded. So we spent most of the time wet, and cold, and miserable. We didn’t have any ammunition. So that was the first month was just in the middle of nowhere. Big wet holes. We had gone into our full MOPP gear probably seven or eight times in that first month maybe. We had stuff blow up around us. 

And I was involved in another incident when the 11th ARC, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiments motor pool blew up right next to ours. I was up on top of a D9 bulldozer. And waiting for Stand To, when the motor pool next to ours blew up and I got thrown in the air and landed on the concrete tarmac. They said I was out for a few minutes. But once I got my bearing and I was more worried about my guys and everything else going on. So, I had refused medical attention. I just went about doing my job. But shortly afterward, then when we had to do the cleanup of the motor pool that blew up, we didn't have respirators or anything like that. We were out there moving who knows what, was dilapidated uranium and everything else. We were out there cleaning and scraping down the concrete to bulldozer and have to get all the equipment, all the destroyed equipment out of there. And we put a lot of long hours in. But I started experiencing chest pains and bad headaches and I was tired and all that. But I just attributed it to the long hours and the workload. 

Yeah, we were on land and the Patriots fired and we had scuds coming in. Alarms would go off. We were told to ignore it. Okay, maybe two or three hours after the alarm went off, we were told to get in the MOPP suit. Then we’d wear the MOPP suit for three days. Okay. What’s what’s—you know, you’re about two hours too late here. What’s going on? Oh, just ignore it. I drove down the Highway of Death in a MOPP suit. You ever hear of the Highway of Death? Yeah, I was there. You know, be sitting out in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, and the alarms would go off. Fire—oil fires? It would be 12 o’clock in the afternoon and you could swear it was twelve-thirty, one-thirty in the morning. Pitch black. All the time. Days on end. Our skin was just covered in that soot. And we were breathing it. 

The oil, when they attacked the oil fields and the oil, the smoke oil filled the sky, and it would be 12 o’clock during the day and it looked like it was midnight outside, because it was just dark. And no matter what you put on your face or a mask or anything, when you went inside and you blew your nose, you were still blowing out black. Literally. Because it was just oil. It was just seeping in. It was really, really bad. And I’m sure anyone that was over there at that time can tell you that was—it was bad. And the Scud—we only had one Scud that was blown up over us. A Patriot shot it down. But I don’t know—and I can’t swear that the man had chemicals in the Scud or not, I don’t know.

And that makes me curious because I have aches and pains all over the place, I hurt constantly. And I did 90 days in Dhahran, and during those 90 days, I never saw the sun. I never saw the stars. It was right after the Gulf War ended. I mean immediately after. We were still flying combat air patrols over Iraq, and it's when he had set all the oil fields on fire. And our planes used come back from there, because we flew combat air patrol missions for the U-2s. They would take pictures, and at that time, I was out of Holloman Air Force Base, and we'd fly combat support for them, and the planes would come back just coated with oil. Just grungy, grungy, grungy stuff. And that's the stuff that we'd breathe night and day for 90 days. 

We went through past three-mile highway. And it was so fresh that we could, there was still burning, and you could still smell the flesh burning. It was horrifying. And then it wasn’t very long after that that the oil fires were lit up. It probably started before we went to Kuwait City. It’s hard to remember time. But once the oil wells were lit, we didn’t see sunlight for about three days. It was like a real nasty, oily rain coming down. And it was just miserable. You couldn't get clean. It had a weird smell. Weird feel to it. Just you know when we were out, had to do our guard duty and patrol, you know we were in the rain getting just, it soaked right through everything.