"Agent Orange a killer of men"

When we had the war in Viet Nam, our soldiers didn't know they would be fighting against more than the Viet Kong soldiers. You would think that our military would be up on the use of certain pesticides and chemicals before using them or maybe they just plainly didn't care, when they sprayed the chemical in the jungle at Viet Nam.

The chemical was later known as agent orange, the destroyer of trees, plants, bushes and now of men. This agent orange chemical has been the cause of many of our soldiers death after the Viet Nam war. Even if our soldiers wasn't killed in the Viet Nam war, the agent orange chemical killed them later, one by one after the war.

My husband is a casualty of that war, that God has blessed to still be standing, even though those chemicals still remain in his body, wrecking havoc on his life. The agent orange chemical has a multitude of side effects, like type 2 diabetes, different types of cancer, leukemia, tumors, arthritis, just a few to mention. I'm sure theirs more ailments to contend with. All of my husbands friends and associates, that got infected with the agent orange chemical died, except my husband.

We're still counting our blessing but you know it's like living with a live time bomb and you don't ever know when it's going to explode. It's really sad and heart breaking, that our soldiers died needlessly, only because the military neglected to research this chemical before using it . So many lives couldn't have been saved. If they had did their do diligence. I think it was their carelessness and uncaring for a catastrophe of this magnitude had to happen to our American soldiers. My husband and I count our blessing each day that he's still among the living.

Benny Faye Douglass