Waiting for an Army to Die (7 page)

Assigned to a “zippo monitor,” or flamethrower boat, Sutton cruised the rivers and streams of the Mekong Delta, burning off “dead brush or half-living foliage” to expose enemy bunkers and ambush sites. Sutton estimates that there were over fifty thousand miles of rivers and streams in the Mekong Delta, many of them “laced with bunkers, underground hospitals, VC R&R areas, and spider holes. Did I know some of the areas we were burning had been sprayed with herbicides?” Sutton demands. “Absolutely not. I never even heard of Agent Orange until late 1978, even though I’ve been sick since 1976.”

On the door to Sutton’s basement apartment, where he lives with his wife, Patty, his twenty-one-pound tabby cat, and hundreds of articles, books, scientific papers, government documents, and tapes on the defoliation campaign and the health effects of herbicides, is a sign:
THIS PROPERTY PROTECTED BY AN ARMED VIETNAM VETERAN
.

“I’ve spent the past two and a half years researching this problem,” says Sutton, leading me into his living room, “and they don’t like me very much at the VA because I tend to be very outspoken about this thing. I just won’t put up with any more of their bullshit. See, I don’t have much education. In fact, when I write to the VA now I put down that I’m a
research analyst
, which is what I am, really. But they don’t wanna hear about it because they just don’t wanna admit that our government might have killed its own troops.”

We return to the dining room table, and Sutton puts water on the stove for tea. Pointing to one of the many documents stacked and strewn about the table, he says, “This information isn’t top secret, just look at it. I got this stuff from
them
, from the very people who deny that we are sick. They deny that we’re sick and dying, but their own literature describes the teratogenic and carcinogenic effects of the stuff we were exposed to in Nam.”
Opening one of his photo albums, Sutton points to a picture of the zippo monitor on which he served. In the photograph a small craft—Sutton explains the zippos were about fifty-seven feet long—is spraying a riverbank with fire. Another photograph shows two zippo monitors cruising the Mekong Delta, one just a few hundred yards behind the other. Between the two crafts a mortar shell has landed, sending up a geyser. Beneath the photograph a caption reads: “This one missed. The next one didn’t.”

Sutton talks in short bursts of rage, in monologues replete with technical references to the harmful effects of herbicides. The effort seems to exhaust him, and he closes his eyes, stroking the enormous cat that reclines atop the dining room table’s clutter. Regaining his composure, Sutton announces that in a few moments a “Seal” and his wife will be arriving. “I thought you might want to talk to him,” Sutton says, “because he’s sick too, and he can tell you that we’re not just makin’ this whole thing up.”

Joe Naples and his wife Charlotte arrive, and Sutton explains that he and Naples have been living just a few blocks apart for years and only recently discovered that they spent time on the same boat in the Mekong Delta. Mrs. Naples says that she doesn’t really wish to talk, preferring to give her husband support and, when necessary, prompting him with details about the years he has spent fighting the debilitating effects of herbicides on his health. “It’s not unusual,” Sutton explains, referring to Naples’ temporary memory lapses. “You’ll talk to a lot of vets who have this problem. It’s just part of the effect of dioxin on the central nervous system. I sometimes forget what I’m saying or doing, too.”

Naples, who spent three years in Vietnam as a Navy Seal, but “more in the bush than on a boat,” removes his leather jacket and, shoving the sleeves of his sweater to his elbows, exposes tattooed forearms heavily scarred by chloracne and “punch biopsies.” The biopsies, Naples explains, were taken by VA doctors to determine whether or not his fatty tissue contains traces of dioxin. He has had the rashes for many years and when they spread to his arms and legs and the sores broke, covering his skin with a “pussy glaze,” he
went to the Veterans Administration for help.

“All that’s left here,” says Naples, pointing to his left forearm, “is scar tissue. They took a skin biopsy, and after about a month I went back to Northport Hospital [Long Island, New York]. The biopsy had been sent to the Bronx to be analyzed and Northport was trying to get the results from there. And the two doctors that were taking care of me in Northport were really honest; they were very interested in it, and one of them called me into her office. So I asked her about the results of the biopsy; and she said she hadn’t gotten any results on the biopsy, and that they couldn’t get the slides. So I says, ‘How come?’ And she says, ‘Joe, there are just three things that possibly could have happened to them slides. One, somebody took the slides and wants to study them some more. Two, they were on their way here in the mail and got lost. Or three, they were conveniently lost, dropped through a hole in the floor.’ And she says, ‘If you want my opinion it was probably the last one. I just feel that this is what happened.’ ”

Angered over having undergone minor surgery, only to be told that he might never find out the results of lab tests performed on the dime-sized pieces of skin removed from his arms, Naples went to Victor Yannacone, attorney for Vietnam veterans in their suit against the VA for gross negligence, to see if the slides could be subpoenaed. But Yannacone told Naples this wasn’t possible, that the slides had obviously disappeared and little could be done to find them. The rash continued to spread over Naples’ forearms, thighs, calves, stomach, and face, making him so uncomfortable at times that he couldn’t sleep. And when the Manhattan VA called to say the doctors there would like to take a look at his lesions, Naples thought that perhaps he might get help after all.

“They called us in,” says Naples, “and on the day we got there, all of a sudden the doctor was called away. So we went home. And they call us back a second time and we went in to see the doctor, and she was friendly, really responding to us, genuinely interested in the rashes. And then she said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to make a phone call. I’m gonna try to call the Bronx VA to find out just what happened
to those slides.’ She went out of the room for a few minutes, came back in and announced: ‘Okay, Joe, we’ve found out what we needed to know, you can go home now, we don’t have to do anything more.’ I had hand-carried my records to Manhattan, signed a release of information form so they could get whatever they needed, and I said, ‘What about this release of information form I signed?’ And she said, ‘No, when your lesions come back up you come and see me then.’ And since then we haven’t heard anything more about it. The thing was, she was really warm, friendly,
till she made that phone call
, and then all of a sudden it was
zap, gone
, just get outta here.”

While Joe Naples and Bobby Sutton talk, I think about the many times I have seen men like them leaving a steel mill in Gary, Indiana, an auto assembly plant in Detroit, or a coal mine in West Virginia, lunch box under the left arm. And in how many neighborhood bars we have sat together on a Saturday afternoon, chugging shots and sipping beer while watching reruns of sporting events. But for Naples and Sutton, that was before Vietnam. Because of the slow debilitating effects of dioxin and phenoxyacetic acid, they find it difficult to work, and the damage to their livers rules out drinking.

“I thought the stuff they were spraying was insect repellent,” says Naples, “and of course some of it was. But I didn’t know nothin’ about herbicides at the time. When I first got to Dong Tam, there was a lot of vegetation. But by the time I left, the mangrove forest that had been there was so burnt out we ended up playin’ softball on it. And I hear from Bobby that when he got there the place was almost like a desert.”

“Listen,” Sutton says, “when a place is so fertile that you can take a piss and ten minutes later something will grow there, you know somethin’s wrong when it turns to muck, just dirt.” Opening one of his photo albums, Sutton points to a picture of something that resembles a brown sheet of construction paper superimposed on a tiny pool table, leaving only a thin green margin. “There it is,” he says, pointing to the brown sheet, “that’s the softball field Joe’s talkin’ about. One time it was jungle, but that’s the way it
looked in 1969.”

“Before I entered the service,” Naples continues, pulling his sleeves carefully over his forearms, as though by covering the chloracne he can stop the rash from spreading or anesthetize the terrible itching and burning, “I lettered in almost every sport in high school. I was on the wrestling team, played Triple A baseball, and had no physical problems whatsoever. But for the past ten, maybe twelve years, I’ve had these rashes that have gotten progressively worse. I’m losing my balance. I’m dizzy, I’ve got constant headaches. My eyes are sensitive to light, and I’d just say my health has been goin’ downhill most of the time. As time goes by, it just gets worse.”

Charlotte Naples nods painfully in agreement after each statement, massaging her husband’s arms and occasionally whispering encouragement. During his three-year tour of duty, Naples was “mostly involved in reconnaissance, setting up ambushes, intercepting gun runners and tax collectors.” He was wounded three times—once in the neck by a .30-caliber machine gun—and was with “the very first group, or one of the first,” to enter Cambodia in 1966, four years before the war “officially” spread to that country. He was in his teens when he went to war; but now, though he has not yet celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday, he feels like an old man, confused, bewildered, angry at the nation that seems to want to punish him for the thirty-six months he spent in combat.

“If I might interject,” says Sutton, obviously in pain and impatient to talk about his long struggle to get the VA to recognize his many ailments as genuine and service-connected. “It’s really ironic, because I would say that Joe and I have about 95 percent of the same symptoms, only he doesn’t vomit after meals like I do. I’ve had the headaches, abnormal electroencephalograms, chronic diarrhea, a Class I enlarged prostate gland, my sperm looks like tapioca pudding, and after four years of trying, my wife and I lost our first child after a half-term pregnancy, which really set both of us back. My knees buckle from under me, and I have photosensitivity of the eyes, that’s why I have to wear sunglasses. I suffer from peripheral neuropathies. The VA says I don’t have them, but they’ve issued
this device to kill the pain they say I don’t have,” lifting his shirt and pointing to a small box from which several wires protrude. “The box is supposed to send electrical impulses which will block the pain messages to my brain; that’s why I have these electrodes attached to my lower back and thighs. But I ache all over, really. I get pains that come right out of left field, the left-field bleachers, and it hurts, that’s all.

“And another thing, they try to treat us like psychos at the VA. You’re automatically a drug addict, baby burner, or maniac. Every time anybody goes in it’s the same questions: ‘What kind of drugs are you takin’,’ and ‘You’re an alcoholic, aren’t you?’ Hell, Joe can’t drink. I can’t drink. A lot of vets can’t even take one beer without fallin’ on their ass. One beer, man, and I’m just done.”

Naples nods, shakes his head sadly, and, lighting a cigarette, adds, “When I went into the clinic with my lesions they asked me if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. And I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ But it wasn’t because of the lesions. I wanted to see him because I was gettin’ the nightmares and flashbacks. But the first thing they ask you is, ‘You’re an alcoholic, aren’t you?’ Any Nam vet that has been in contact with herbicides will tell you that you can’t drink. You have a headache that will last for three days, and it starts
while
you are drinkin’; I mean you’re actually hung over after just a few sips of beer. And you’ll vomit your intestines out, for christsake. I take a drink of beer now and I’m just gone. Before even a half of a can goes down the headache is there, it just starts pounding.”

“Dioxin,” Sutton explains, “collects in the fatty tissues of your liver, and you can’t filter out the poisons. It also affects the DNA process. When a baby is forming in the womb and the genes are splitting to form the phalanges, the facial muscles, the different organs, just one molecule of dioxin can take the place of a normal gene splay. And that’s where you get polygenetic birth defects, the same as the Vietnamese people are having.”

In spite of the treatment he has received from the VA, Naples who augments the family income by training attack Doberman pinschers, finds a certain grim humor in the VA’s incompetence. “I
went in for a compensation hearing and this doctor had me sit down and he says, ‘Joe, can I see the flamethrower burns?’ I says, ‘What flamethrower burns?’ He says, ‘You were burned by a flamethrower, that’s what those things on your arms are, aren’t they?’ I says, ‘No, I was never burned by a flamethrower; these are rashes that have been comin’ up for the past fourteen years, and every year they intensify. And this is the worst they’ve ever been!’ ‘Oh well,’ he says, ‘I thought they were flamethrower burns.’ ”

Naples laughs and, after a brief conference with his wife, continues. “Then they tried to tell me it was from the tattoos, the color from the tattoos was causin’ my chloracne. On my legs? I don’t have tattoos on my legs. And then,” laughing, “I go down the hall to see this next doctor and I tell him about the headaches, the stomach cramps, and everything, and he says, and this is exactly what he said, he says, ‘Joe, the headaches are just tension. And we consider you a “breather” or a “sigher.” ’ That’s what he said I was, that was his entire diagnosis.”

“And I’m considered an air swallower,” Sutton announces with a touch of pride. “But see, it’s true that some of us have difficulty getting air into our lungs or oxygen to our blood. So the VA calls people like Joe who may need to take an extra breath now and then ‘breathers’ or ‘sighers.’ ”

In the beginning, says Sutton, the VA tried to tell him that he could not have been exposed to toxic herbicides because he served with the Navy in Vietnam. “Yeah, they’ll take my service records and say, ‘But you were in the Navy, you couldn’t have been exposed.’ But look,” opening his photo album to a page of zippo monitors, “you see how close we were to the riverbank. Our flamethrowers were pressurized at two thousand pounds per square inch and could reach the length of a football field, but sometimes we were as close to the bank as we are right now from that fence,” pointing to the fence that surrounds his backyard, a distance of no more than thirty feet. “So when the wind was from the wrong direction it came right back in our face, you got it, you got the smoke. And you’ve got to remember too that when plants and wood take up the Agent Orange and it is burned, you can get more dioxin. And we
were always in and out of the water, taking baths, and even swimming in places where there was obviously run-off from the defoliated banks. We had one of those fifty-five-gallon herbicide drums on our boat too, and we cut it in half, painted it green, and used it for a shower. Now what was in that drum I wouldn’t know, and some of the guys even used those drums to store watermelons in, or for barbeques, or God knows what all.”