Agent Orange Gets Another One

[BarryBobPosthole]

He was one of my cousin’s uncles by marriage, and they were best of friends. He was always around when I was a kid and I always looked up to him. He took off from Arkansas to Alaska during the pipeline early days. Served in Viet Nam and has had many health issues from Agent Orange. Died today at 68.

RIP Jim Tom Trumble

BKB

11473

[Thumper]

Ironic. One day after National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vietnam_War_Veterans_Day

Sorry for your and the family’s loss P-hole.

I always worry about AO related ailments kicking in. I’ve already lost a buddy to AO and we worked many of the same missions. I’m on the AO registry with the VA which means they’ve confirmed exposure and have done all the tests to determine a base point. I go in annually for retesting so they can compare results and graph any changes. I used to live in a small village just a few klicks down the road from a major AO storage facility and we constantly sprayed AO around the perimeter of the compound. That stuff gets into the ground water and I literally showered in the stuff as my water came from a shallow well next to my bungalow. It was also my drinking water and I’d simply strain it through an old t-shirt to filter out the mosquito larvae and any other “chunks” that might have fallen into the well. I ‘bout barfed when I pulled up a bucket of well water one day and there was a half rotted dead rat in the bucket. I have no clue when he fell in and drowned.

Parallels? My name’s Jim. I’m 68. I worked pipeline construction (building DFW Airport) before Uncle Sam snagged me and handed me orders for ‘Nam. When I got out of the service, I seriously considered moving to Alaska to work on the Trans Alaska.

RIP Mr. Trumble. :(

[Penguin]

Sorry to hear that Posty.

Whenever I see a photo of a young man of long ago who has now passed on, I always wonder how life went for them. So many of them have that eager, full of vigor look of a young man. You always hope they had a good ride.

Will

[BarryBobPosthole]

He had a good ride, and like most of the high school grads from lower income families he got drafted. He served his country and his country denied the harm done to him for many years. When the good old USA finally admitted it, he already had liver cancer. I always knew him to have a smile on his face and when I saw him last year he had accepted his fate and amazingly still had a positive outlook.

When I look at his life and others I know who served in the middle east who’ve come home with brain diseases like MS, it makes me mad. There is no truth to be found anywhere these days. Its sad.

BKB