Search Results for: Veterans

Operation Delirium

Longreads Pick

Colonel James S. Ketchum oversaw years of research into new methods of chemical warfare—which included testing on U.S. soldiers:

“Today, Ketchum is eighty-one years old, and the facility where he worked, Edgewood Arsenal, is a crumbling assemblage of buildings attached to a military proving ground on the Chesapeake Bay. The arsenal’s records are boxed and dusting over in the National Archives. Military doctors who helped conduct the experiments have long since moved on, or passed away, and the soldiers who served as their test subjects—in all, nearly five thousand of them—are scattered throughout the country, if they are still alive. Within the Army, and in the world of medical research, the secret clinical trials are a faint memory. But for some of the surviving test subjects, and for the doctors who tested them, what happened at Edgewood remains deeply unresolved. Were the human experiments there a Dachau-like horror, or were they sound and necessary science? As veterans of the tests have come forward, their unanswered questions have slowly gathered into a kind of historical undertow, and Ketchum, more than anyone else, has been caught in its pull. In 2006, he self-published a memoir, ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,’ which defended the research. Next year, a class-action lawsuit brought against the federal government by former test subjects will go to trial, and Ketchum is expected to be the star witness.

“The lawsuit’s argument is in line with broader criticisms of Edgewood: that, whether out of military urgency or scientific dabbling, the Army recklessly endangered the lives of its soldiers—naïve men, mostly, who were deceived or pressured into submitting to the risky experiments. The drugs under review ranged from tear gas and LSD to highly lethal nerve agents, like VX, a substance developed at Edgewood and, later, sought by Saddam Hussein. Ketchum’s specialty was a family of molecules that block a key neurotransmitter, causing delirium. The drugs were known mainly by Army codes, with their true formulas classified. The soldiers were never told what they were given, or what the specific effects might be, and the Army made no effort to track how they did afterward. Edgewood’s most extreme critics raise the spectre of mass injury—a hidden American tragedy.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 11, 2012
Length: 57 minutes (14,350 words)

Retracing the steps of a Marine who went missing in the Montana wilderness. Family, friends and fellow Iraq veterans struggle to understand what happened to 30-year-old Noah Pippin:

Pierce remembers the stranger as none too friendly. Pippin kept his back turned when Pierce started asking questions and said curtly that he’d hiked in from Hungry Horse. Seeing the fatigues, Pierce asked if he was military, and Noah told him he was a vet. 

‘You been over in Iraq?’

‘Got back a little while ago.’

‘I was in Vietnam,’ said Pierce, hoping to break the ice. ‘Navy.’

Noah didn’t answer. 

‘If you’re going hiking in these parts, you need a gun,’ said Pierce. ‘Do you have one?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just a .38.’

‘That ain’t much to stuff in the face of a grizzly when he’s chewing on your foot.’

‘It’s all I got.’

“Why Noah Went to the Woods.” — Mark Sundeen, Outside

See also: “The Waiting.” — Ashley Halsey III, Lonnae O’Neal Parker, Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2010

Why Noah Went to the Woods

Longreads Pick

Retracing the steps of a Marine who went missing in the Montana wilderness. Family, friends and fellow Iraq veterans struggle to understand what happened to 30-year-old Noah Pippin:

“Pierce remembers the stranger as none too friendly. Pippin kept his back turned when Pierce started asking questions and said curtly that he’d hiked in from Hungry Horse. Seeing the fatigues, Pierce asked if he was military, and Noah told him he was a vet.

“‘You been over in Iraq?’

“‘Got back a little while ago.’

“‘I was in Vietnam,’ said Pierce, hoping to break the ice. ‘Navy.’

“Noah didn’t answer.

“‘If you’re going hiking in these parts, you need a gun,’ said Pierce. ‘Do you have one?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just a .38.’

“‘That ain’t much to stuff in the face of a grizzly when he’s chewing on your foot.’

“‘It’s all I got.'”

Source: Outside
Published: Apr 9, 2012
Length: 44 minutes (11,100 words)

Liberals’ history with regard to gay rights is not as progressive as some would like you to remember:

It was, after all, the trustees of the Smithsonian Institution, not a Bible Belt cultural outpost, who bowed to pressure from the militant Catholic League just fifteen months ago to censor the work of a gay American artist who had already been silenced, long ago, by AIDS. It was a Democratic president, with wide support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, one of the most discriminatory laws ever to come out of Washington. It’s precisely because of DOMA that to this day same-sex marriages cannot be more than what you might call placebo marriages in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized them. DOMA denies wedded same-sex couples all federal benefits—some 1,000, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ programs—and allows the other 42 states to ignore their marriages altogether.

“Whitewashing Gay History.” — Frank Rich, New York magazine

See also: “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.” — Theodore B. Olson, Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2010

Whitewashing Gay History

Longreads Pick

[Not single-page] Liberals’ history with regard to gay rights is not as progressive as some would like to remember:

“It was, after all, the trustees of the Smithsonian Institution, not a Bible Belt cultural outpost, who bowed to pressure from the militant Catholic League just fifteen months ago to censor the work of a gay American artist who had already been silenced, long ago, by AIDS. It was a Democratic president, with wide support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, one of the most discriminatory laws ever to come out of Washington. It’s precisely because of DOMA that to this day same-sex marriages cannot be more than what you might call placebo marriages in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized them. DOMA denies wedded same-sex couples all federal benefits—some 1,000, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ programs—and allows the other 42 states to ignore their marriages altogether.”

Author: Frank Rich
Published: Feb 26, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,479 words)

U.S. soldiers returning home face a culture that doesn’t understand them:

The 1 percent tends to be concentrated in the southern states and among the working and lower-middle classes. With a few notable exceptions—such as vice-president Joe Biden’s son Beau—the children of the elite have not served in these wars. It’s a sharp change from the night of Pearl Harbor, when Eleanor Roosevelt told a radio audience, “I have a boy at sea on a destroyer, for all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific.”

Instead, America now has its first generation of political and business leaders who have not served in the military, and it shows. With the Pentagon ordered to slash spending as part of wider government budget cutting, military benefits, such as pensions, and college education funding for veterans are on the chopping block.

“Veterans’ Struggle.” — Anna Fifield, Financial Times

See also: “The Last Two Veterans of WWI.” — Evan Fleischer, The Awl, May 3, 2011

Making the Memorial

Longreads Pick

“It’s taken me years to be able to discuss the making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, partly because I needed to move past it and partly because I had forgotten the process of getting it built. I would not discuss the controversy surrounding its construction and it wasn’t until I saw the documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision that I was able to remember that time in my life. But I wrote the body of this essay just as the memorial was being completed—in the fall of 1982. Then I put it away…until now.”

Author: Maya Lin
Published: Nov 2, 2000
Length: 19 minutes (4,994 words)

The Military’s Secret Shame

Longreads Pick

What happened to Jeloudov is a part of life in the armed forces that hardly anyone talks about: male-on-male sexual assault. In the staunchly traditional military culture, it’s an ugly secret, kept hidden by layers of personal shame and official denial. Last year nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for “military sexual trauma” at the Department of Veterans Affairs, up from just over 30,000 in 2003. For the victims, the experience is a special kind of hell—a soldier can’t just quit his job to get away from his abusers.

Source: Newsweek
Published: Apr 3, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,222 words)

Deadly Medicine

Deadly Medicine

A Deception, and a Reluctance to Ask Questions

Longreads Pick

Last month, after actual veterans uncovered his deceptions, Richard Strandlof was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then arrested by the Denver police on an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license. The veterans group he helped create, the Colorado Veterans Alliance, has disbanded. And now Mr. Strandlof, apparently penniless, remains in jail on $1,000 bail.

Published: Jun 7, 2009
Length: 5 minutes (1,398 words)