by Tom Rinkes

Created on: June 11, 2008

Died On The Fourth Of July

"...I'm dying, but life's been fair to me I guess, all except for this"

Stanley Albert "Stosh" Frakowski is a common man of likewise language who was just eighteen when he joined the Army in 1966. Rather than follow his father and older brothers into a well paying job at the local coal mine, he chose to answer his country's call to halt Communist expansion. The above is an excerpt from my interview with a man who feels betrayed by his duly elected leaders.

Agent Orange was a leaf killer, plain and simple. Countless truckloads of soldiers and supplies moved across the Ho Chi Minh Trail, protected from air strikes by thick jungle foliage and mango trees. Some 366 kilograms were used from 1961-1971, but due to lost inventories and poor record keeping, the exact number will never be known. The herbicide, whose main ingredient was Dioxin, was sprayed liberally to strip the land of all vegetation that could shield the enemy from our land and air forces, and it worked. But the consequences to humans, those born or unborn, wasn't realized until years later. Due to daily exposure, Mr. Frakowski was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and an enlarged spleen. I was invited to his home one Saturday morning to discuss his dilemma, and after coffee and small talk he grew silent. I took that as a good time to start.

"So, Stan, when were you first exposed to it?"
"I'm sure it was when we set up the big guns, you know, the 105 Howitzers. After the CB's (Construction Battalions) cleared off spots for us, and the grunts (Infantry) came back from patrols, we shelled the hell out of 'em. The recoil and the dust created when we shot the rounds was full of that stuff. But, we should've known something was wrong, 'cause some of the guys came back and their skin was peeling off their hands."
"Did you have any experiences like that?"
"Nah, but sometimes big pockets of fog would roll in and burn our eyes, at least we thought it was fog. We just did our best to dodge it."

The man looked down at his feet and shuffled them a little. He moved his head a little side-to-side, and looked like he had something on his mind; something was troubling him. I surmised it was just his condition-nothing more.

"Where did all this happened, exactly?" I inquired.
"I was stationed at Phu-Loi. It's not too far from Cam Rahn Bay, where most of the drums came in. They all had this orange strip on them-I guess that's how it got its name."
"What company were you in?" I could

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