"Well mom, as far as what I do out here is more or less depending upon V.C. activity in the area. We were hit 2 nights ago by about 400 V.C. We had only one man killed. This was because he had fallen asleep again."

"This place is surrounded by mines and 5 strands of constantan [barbed] wire. Somehow about 70 V.C. made it through the mines and wire. They started pouring through a hole in the wire, when the other gunman and I opened up with all we possibly could. Believe me, I was scared."

"The V.C. started running after about 30 minutes of fighting. When daylight had arrived we counted 191 dead V.C. The other guy and myself had caught 61 coming through the hole in the wire and hit them in a cross fire."

Two of my brothers served our armed forces and both served in Vietnam. My oldest brother, Bob, whose letter you just read a portion of, died as a result of Agent Orange. Bob's troop was always dropped off in the middle of the jungles, and used as guinea pigs to entice the V.C. to come to them, in an effort to then surround the V.C. that surrounded my brother's troop. He suffered for over 18 years with kidney failure and had two kidney transplants, taking over 56 pills a day to stay alive.

During his first kidney transplant, the doctors at UCLA hospital advised him, "We found Agent Orange in your system, but we will never write it down because we'd lose government funding if we admit it." Bob served in 1968 and 1969 in this country, and was part of the "Big Red One" 1st Infantry Division, a division known for walking through jungles and for being a threat to the enemy.

Between 1961 and 1971, approximately 77 million liters of herbicides, including 49.3 million liters of Agent Orange containing more than 360 kg of dioxin-contaminated defoliants, were sprayed multiple times over 5.5 million acres in South Vietnam. The chemical, dioxin, was used as a defoliant and herbicide to destroy forests and food crops and is known to be one of the most toxic substances known to man, killing all vegetation it came into contact with. Agent Orange was used so the Viet Cong could not hide in the jungles, and the resulting devastation brought forth many more consequences than even the U.S. Government could have imagined. Tested soils in Vietnam today show "hotspots" that indicate more than 180 million times above the safe level of toxicity, and 30 years following the government-ordered spraying, an urgent need to decontaminate the land still exists.

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