An endless war

Clyde Fields Sr. was near the top of a telephone pole in Vietnam when he heard gunfire. The Army wireman had a decision to make: jump, almost guaranteeing serious injury, or try to climb down the pole safely, leaving him an easy target for approaching Viet Cong soldiers.

He jumped.

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” the Ensley resident and Vietnam War veteran said. “It was a choice between living and dying. For me, it was an easy choice. My thought was I’d rather have broken bones than to not be able to go home at all.”

The jump injured Fields’ neck, back and legs, and those continue to cause pain to this day. But his time in Vietnam left other wounds that wouldn’t be noticed until later: post-traumatic stress disorder and problems with his liver and bile duct function that Fields suspects were caused by his exposure to Agent Orange.

He marched through fields that had been sprayed with the chemical herbicide, drank and bathed in rivers that it had washed into and, like most soldiers, had little idea of the potential hazards of contact with Agent Orange and other defoliants.

“Things happened that we were never told. They didn’t explain everything thoroughly as to what the effects [were] of Agent Orange and the other herbicides they used,” Fields said. “It takes years for it to come to fruition.”

Presumptive conditions

Agent Orange syndrome is difficult to classify and track because its effects can take many forms. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website, more than 19 million gallons of herbicides — predominantly Agent Orange — were sprayed during the war to remove plants in the Vietnamese jungle. 

Exposure is associated with a list of what are called “presumptive conditions.” These are illnesses that could have occurred regardless of military service, but veterans’ exposure to herbicide chemicals is linked to a heightened risk.

These presumptive conditions include several types of cancers and nerve and skin conditions, among other illnesses: ischemic heart disease; Type 2 diabetes; chronic B-cell leukemia; both Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; multiple myeloma; soft tissue sarcomas; respiratory cancer; prostate cancer; Parkinson’s disease; neuropathy; AL amyloidosis; chloracne; and a disorder called porphyria cutanea tarda, which affects liver function and skin blistering.

The VA has also acknowledged some birth defects in descendants of Vietnam veterans as presumptive conditions.

Some presumptive conditions show up almost immediately after military service, while others don’t appear for decades. This makes the process of determining the source of a condition even more difficult, especially as Vietnam veterans pass retirement age and start to develop more health problems in general.

Dr. Kenneth Ramos, who has studied different elements of Agent Orange syndrome since the 1990s, said that looking at a single veteran is an impossible way to tell whether their condition developed due to exposure or other life factors. But when looking at the Vietnam veteran population as a whole, significant connections can be found that link Agent Orange exposure to certain medical issues, which allows veterans to receive benefits for those conditions.

Ramos is on staff at the University of Arizona and chaired the Institute of Medicine Committee on Veterans and Agent Orange for its 2014 update. Ongoing research is being done to study the strength of links between exposure and certain conditions such as hypertension, bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s-like symptoms. 

Ramos said he is part of a group analyzing veterans’ genetic samples for signs of instability or changes in their genomes related to exposure, which can be another way to confirm whether veterans have Agent Orange syndrome.

Getting benefits

Dr. Vickie Sturdivant of the Birmingham VA Medical Center said Vietnam veterans can take an exam to see if they qualify to be placed on the Agent Orange registry. From there, veterans work with the VA to confirm their exposure and whether any medical conditions would be considered presumptive conditions. Illnesses that are not already on the presumptive condition list must be evaluated case-by-case.

If the VA determines that a veteran does have a condition related to Agent Orange exposure, the veteran can then file a claim for benefits and coverage of treatments. The VA Medical Center serves around 67,000 veterans, mostly in northern Alabama, and Sturdivant said they had given 7,954 Agent Orange registry exams as of December 2017.

“We always err on the side of the veteran. … Even if it’s remotely suggestive, then you default on the benefit of the veteran,” Ramos said of the VA’s approach to research on presumptive conditions.

However, many local Vietnam veterans said they feel like the registry and benefit claim process doesn’t always have that same approach. 

At a weekly Vietnam veterans support group meeting held at the Hoover Vet Center in January, veterans met to swap stories of war experiences, their families and football allegiances. It can be healing for the men who feel like there’s no one else to talk to about their military service. But some of the battles they fight are with the VA, and they spoke of receiving “the runaround” — repeated claim denials and months spent re-filing paperwork and finding doctors to assess their conditions. 

“In the handbook, it says, if you’ve got boots on the ground, you’re exposed,” one veteran at the meeting said.

“These are things that the government won’t own up to, so we have to deal with these the best we can,” another said.

Army veteran and Ensley resident Daryl Osborne was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer, and he said he found it relatively easy to get benefits approved for these presumptive conditions, though he is not on the registry. However, he’s heard of other veterans going “through holy hell” while trying to get disability benefits.

Hoover resident Scott Gilbert receives benefits for leg injuries caused by land mines, but he is just beginning to seek benefits related to a chronic skin rash he developed while still in Vietnam. His youngest daughter had a pituitary tumor and her son was born with a hearing-related birth defect, both of which he believes to be related to his Agent Orange exposure.

“I feel like all of that ought to be covered by the VA. They [Gilbert’s daughter and grandson] are having to pay for that themselves. But it’s because of my exposure that they’re suffering from that, and my grandchildren are suffering with it. That’s the worst part of it to me,” Gilbert said.

The understanding that Agent Orange syndrome is difficult to diagnose doesn’t blunt the emotional impact for veterans who have felt attacked or ignored for their service since they returned to civilian life.

“It seems to me that when you don’t allow us to file a claim, you’re waiting for us to die out,” Fields said. “It’s something that makes you wonder if the country cares as much about you as they told you, because they’re not willing to do the right thing about the whole situation. They’re just wanting to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened, the same way they did us when we came back from Vietnam.”

Between public perception and the emotional trauma of the war, some of the veterans said they rarely talk about their Vietnam experiences outside of their support group. Indeed, many were glad to share their painful memories for the sake of spreading the word about the ghosts of Vietnam that continue to linger.

“It’s hard to explain war. If you haven’t been in it, it makes a different person out of you,” said Army veteran David Freeman, who has ischemic heart condition and Type 2 diabetes. “I wanted to give it to you as straight as I could, without any exaggeration, because war is real, it’s devastating, it’s a nasty business.”

Clyde Fields Sr.

Going to Vietnam forced Fields to “grow up pretty fast.” He was drafted in 1971 at the age of 19 and worked as a wireman handling communication wires for the Army. He served in Vietnam for 18 months.

“I saw some things happen that nobody at 19 should ever have to see,” Fields said. “I’ve seen the worst of the worst.”

He still carries those memories with him. Fields’ PTSD means he often has to avoid crowds and social situations. He can’t drive at night because of the risk of flashbacks.

“A lot of things that happened in Vietnam happened at night. When you got into real bad firefights, it was at night. When you got shelled real heavy, it was at night. And it was very, very dark there. When they started shelling, that was the only light,” he said.

Returning to Birmingham had its own challenges. Fields recalled being told not to wear his uniform home and being asked whether he had killed children. He said employers turned down his job applications if he mentioned his service.

“We had been given a stigma,” he said. “If you mentioned that you served in Vietnam, people would get away from you. They would just walk away.”

The bitterness, he said, hasn’t faded because he feels like Vietnam veterans’ treatment hasn’t really changed.

Fields recalled seeing herbicides handled and, in one instance, spilled while on a base in Vietnam. He said he feels lucky that signs of Agent Orange exposure appeared early for him. He had to have a liver biopsy at age 21 and also found cysts on his bile duct. Fields has been on the Agent Orange registry for several years, though he hasn’t been approved for benefit claims.

Because he was drafted rather than volunteering, Fields said he thinks the VA should do more for its veterans with Agent Orange exposure. 

“I didn’t do it because I wanted to; I did it because the country said I had an obligation to the country, but the country didn’t have the same obligation to me,” Fields said.

Daryl Osborne

Daryl Osborne marched in the civil rights movement, had friends killed in the 16th Street Church bombing and said he was once jailed along with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager.

Coming back from Vietnam to protesters and continued racial struggles made Osborne almost regret what he had left behind.

“I thought, ‘What am I coming back to? I should have stayed in Vietnam. At least I knew who the enemy was in Vietnam,’” he said.

Osborne now lives in Ensley, but he was fresh out of high school and living in Titusville when he volunteered to join the Army in 1965. It was his first experience living and working alongside a group of both black and white people from a variety of backgrounds, and Osborne said it opened his mind in many ways.

“In Vietnam you become closer as a family … you got my back, it ain’t no black and white. We’re all brothers, and we’re here to solve this thing and then go back home,” he said.

After a year of special training, Osborne volunteered to go to Vietnam in the 5th Special Forces Airborne.

“Going through all that training, I said, ‘I’d like to go to Vietnam and experience some of this,’ — I thought,” he said. “You’re young, and you got an ego that big, you’re going to try it.”

Despite living through dangerous and harrowing situations in Vietnam, on the whole Osborne said he would do it all over again. That doesn’t mean it was all easy, though.

“You learn so much about how to kill and what to do to the enemy, but there never was a class on, ‘Now, you’re going to have some bad times, too.’ They didn’t get you prepared for what you might experience,” Osborne said. “That was the shocking part to me. I was doing damage to the other people, but what about the damage that was done to me?”

A few months after returning home in 1968, Osborne was hospitalized due to “battle fatigue,” which left him frequently angry and violent. In some ways, he couldn’t cope with the sudden change to civilian life, especially family and friends who didn’t understand his experiences.

“I drank from 1968 until 2016,” he said. “I was a job-working, dressing-nice drunk.”

Osborne developed Type 2 diabetes, resulting in the loss of one leg in 2016, and he was diagnosed with prostate cancer a matter of months after the amputation. It was that same year that he stopped drinking.

Both his diabetes and cancer are on the presumptive conditions list, so Osborne said he found the process to get disability claims for those conditions, as well as a hearing disorder and PTSD, fairly straightforward.

“VA has been real good to me. Other guys have bad experiences, I know,” he said. “I’m just speaking for myself — they’ve been good to me.”

Osborne said he doesn’t know if other conditions related to his Agent Orange exposure might turn up later on.

“All the problems I had, I’d do it all again,” he said. “I’d go to Vietnam again, knowing I might come out with all of this.”

David Freeman

David Freeman was older than most Vietnam draftees. The 24-year-old was married and had two daughters when he received his draft notice in 1965. It was a shock, but Freeman said it was never an option to conscientiously object.

“If you don’t bend, you’ll break. So I bent with the breeze and realized my country had called,” the Irondale resident said.

His past involvement in civil rights rallies got Freeman noticed in boot camp.

“He said, ‘You wanna march? Well we’re going to teach you how to march,’” Freeman said of one drill sergeant.

But most soldiers, regardless of color, seemed to realize they were “eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, getting the same haircut” and getting ready to fight the same enemy.

Freeman sailed into Vietnam as part of the Army’s 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division with a “horrible feeling of helplessness.” He didn’t know much about the reasoning behind the war, beyond “fighting communist aggression,” but he was focused on survival.

“[I was] thinking and wondering whether the next incident or the next explosion or the next round would just take me out of this mess. But still you felt — I felt — that I had to do what I’d been called upon to do for this country. Didn’t know nothing about the politics,” Freeman said.

He was trained to be a radio operator, and Freeman said carrying the equipment and antenna sometimes felt like a target on his back. He saw a friend from his football team at Jackson-Olin High School die while in Vietnam.

“The chance of getting away and getting back home was slim to none, and slim had left town on us,” Freeman said. “You grow some guts, I think. You know that if it’s your time, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to keep the faith, suck it in and keep moving.”

Freeman recalled seeing both Agent Orange and napalm sprayed across fields, sometimes a little too close for comfort.

“It’s a weird feeling to lay here and see a ball of fire and smoke less than a quarter of a football field away, I’d say. And you know what’s going on, you know what’s happening. But you know what you hope: that they don’t get off course and spray that napalm right where you are,” he said.

Freeman developed a chronic skin rash while in Vietnam, and he later developed ischemic heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, both considered Agent Orange presumptive conditions. He had open heart surgery in February 2017.

“I know the condition will be there until the good Lord calls me on in,” Freeman said. “You can’t un-ring the bell.”

Freeman said attending the support group at the Hoover Vet Center has helped him process the emotional baggage both from his service in Vietnam and the medical effects of Agent Orange exposure. He was one of several veterans there who said, despite the long-term impact, they would make the same choice to serve if they had to do it all over again.

“[I] wonder sometimes if I would do it all over again, and the answer is, ‘Yeah,’” Freeman said. “With all its drawbacks, with all its shortcomings, this is a wonderful country, and it’s worth fighting for. Worth dying for, which it looks like I’ll end up doing.”