Vieques, Puerto Rico (CNN) - Nearly 40 years ago, Hermogenes Marrero was a teenage U.S. Marine, stationed as a security guard on the tiny American island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico. Marrero says he's been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig's disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair. "I'd go out to the firing range, and sometimes I'd start bleeding automatically from my nose," he said in an interview to air on Monday night's "Campbell Brown." "I said, `My God, why am I bleeding?' So then I'd leave the range, and it stops. I come back, and maybe I'm vomiting now... He said the weapons used on the island included napalm; depleted uranium, a heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition; and Agent Orange, the defoliant used on the Vietnamese jungles that was later linked to cancer and other illnesses in veterans...
Marrero says he's been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig's disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair. "I'd go out to the firing range, and sometimes I'd start bleeding automatically from my nose," he said in an interview to air on Monday night's "Campbell Brown." "I said, `My God, why am I bleeding?' So then I'd leave the range, and it stops. I come back, and maybe I'm vomiting now...
He said the weapons used on the island included napalm; depleted uranium, a heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition; and Agent Orange, the defoliant used on the Vietnamese jungles that was later linked to cancer and other illnesses in veterans...
If we in the civilian side feel that militaries treat their recruits with disdain, we should re-visit the mythologies we retain that support socuh organised callousness. Such as believing in military adventures, in regime change, in nuclear weapons, in forcing countries to bend to our will. Unfortunatley I imagine that the US, France and the UK would rather unravel as nations than give up such foundational myths. keep to the Fen Causeway
