AGENT ORANGE

• By Kathleen_Geaghan
• Posted July 31, 2008 at 8:34 am
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You touched my soul. My brother is 4 years older than I and when he came back from Nam and Cambodia he had hellish stories. My heart goes out to you. And thank you. Hugs, Kathy

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• By sue70529
• Posted July 31, 2008 at 1:20 pm
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My brother passed away in 1995 from skin and bone cancer the doctors said was caused from Agent Orange.

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• By Sarasota
• Posted July 31, 2008 at 2:09 pm
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Thank you for your service J.W. Blessings to your future! SarasotaSandy

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• By JWNugent
• Posted August 4, 2008 at 11:35 pm
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I've been working on a book of poetry describing Vietnam. My first poem was written in 1967 when I received my orders for Vietnam. The book is almost done.

Joseph

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• By JWNugent
• Posted August 4, 2008 at 11:43 pm
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I'm sorry about your brother. The greatest fear has always been what will catch up with us. Many Veterans are in poor health compared to others of their age. Agent Orange has been very difficult to pin down. Only organizations like this with open communication and the exchange of information will bring the truth forward. Sarcoidosis is listed as an Agent Orange related illness, but there is very little information on why or what time scale is appropriate. Now they say you had to have signs of sarcoidosis before leaving Vietnam. Well no one was looking for it back then.

Joseph

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• By JWNugent
• Posted August 4, 2008 at 11:46 pm
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Thank you Sarasota. I only did what I though any American citizen should do.

Joseph

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• By south127
• Posted September 24, 2008 at 9:31 am
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Thanks for your service!! My husband is a retired Marine (3 tours in VN). I am retired from the VA's rating board. If I can help with any questions on your VA ratings or benefits, please feel to contact me at sue.south@gmail.com.

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• By JWNugent
• Posted September 28, 2008 at 10:02 pm
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I have the odd problem of lacking records. The day I left Vietnam my records files were blank. It was as though I were never there. The clerk at 1st Division headquarters told me if I had not been sitting in front of him he wouldn't of believed I had ever been in country.

The record situation has worsened in that VA treatment record from other facilities have gone missing. It has all become a sad game. Because the clinical records(sick call) disappeared in Vietnam they say there is no proof. They don't even know my service record for the period including my MOS.

Oh well.

Joseph

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• By south127
• Posted September 28, 2008 at 11:25 pm
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Joseph,
The VA can also use lay statement from people you served with, as well as, people (including friends and relatives) that knew you served in Vietnam.
Have you written the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis to try and obtain a copy of your service records? Also you can have your congressman intervene in your behalf.
Good Luck!
Sue

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• By JWNugent
• Posted November 9, 2008 at 12:55 am
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Sorry for the long delay. My claim has been reopened, but the process is like a moving target. There are numerous policy changes and each region has differing policies or interpretations. I've tried several avenues for records. St Louis informed me my records were destroyed in a fire. A friend working with naval records told me that the records destroyed were older records. The military records are another option, but I gotten a lot of confusing answers to the location of various record types. One location will cite another location as being the place for records storage and the place they cited will cite a third location or return me to the previous location. The real problem is that the record types I need to chase down are themselves fragmented or will refer to another record type all together.

I was going to track by using morning reports, but in so many situations I was on TDY status to another unit or a MACV command and then sent to a Vietnamese unit. There are times when they sent me out and I passed through so many units that when my feet hit the ground after a helicopter ride no one was aware of where I had been placed and who I was working for. If certain missions were scrubbed and the information not transmitted to the proper unit my team could be dropped off with bogus call signs and frequencies. When radios went out or the wrong antenna type was used we were completely out of contact with anyone. We really didn't exist in application since we never carried orders or paperwork; just a map or map portion with some compass bearings and vague notes that only we could decipher. Generally we were escorted when in populated areas such as Saigon or large base camps because we couldn't say anything about what we were doing and didn't have paper work and at times little or no identification. Interesting work but not stuff that shows up in records since all information processed through intelligence. The only people who knew our names were the people that initially sent us out. Often we were detached and sent to another location without anyone knowing who we were. The person we talked to on the radio was just a vague voice coming out of nowhere; sometimes we were only a call sign.

These kind of records are hard to track; sometimes the information was listed in a vague enough manner that all that was known was that we were TDY. We worked for S2 and certain information was not shared. Sorry for being a bit chatty tonight. Truthfully all of this activity merged into a single blur with only fragmented details remaining.

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