Avoiding mirrors, of course, does nothing to make his chest pains go away, restore his coordination, stop the recurrent bouts of dizziness, or explain the chronic nausea from which he suffers. At times Anderson’s muscles are so weak that he is unable to open a jar of peanut butter for his children; and there are days when he sits for hours, sometimes until long after the sun has set, waiting for a suicidal depression to pass, struggling to remember that things were not always like this, that once he could walk miles in a full field-pack without tiring, do hours of calisthenics without complaining. He passed through basic training, he wrote friends back home, “with a smile.” Once he could easily manipulate the straps of his parachute as he glided toward the ground during training exercises with the 101 Airborne.
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.