The
toxic vapors acted quickly against the Second Platoon of the 811th
Ordnance Company, whose soldiers were moving abandoned barrels out of an
Iraqi Republican Guard warehouse in 2003. The building, one soldier
said, was littered with dead birds.
As
the soldiers pushed the barrels over and began rolling them, some of
the contents leaked, they said, filling the air with a bitter,
penetrating smell. Soon, many were dizzy and suffering from running
noses and tearing eyes. A few were vomiting, disoriented, tingling or
numb.
After
the soldiers staggered outside for air, multiple detection tests
indicated the presence of nerve agent. Others suggested blister agent,
too. The results seemed to confirm the victims’ fear that they had
stumbled upon unused stocks of Iraq’s chemical weapons.
From
Camp Taji, where the barrels had been found, more than 20 exposed
soldiers were evacuated in helicopters to a military hospital in Balad,
where they were met by soldiers wearing gas masks and ordered to undress
before being allowed inside for medical care.
“They
drew a box in the sand and had armed guards and were like: ‘Do not get
out of that box. Do not get out of that box,’ ” said Nathan Willie, a
private first class at the time. “I was kind of freaked out.”
Since
last fall, the United States military has acknowledged that American
soldiers found thousands of abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq,
and that hundreds of troops notified the military medical system that
they believed they had been exposed to them. The military acknowledged
the exposures after years of secrecy — and of denying medical tracking
and official recognition to victims — only after an investigation by The New York Times.
Even
then, the affliction of the 811th Ordnance Company had quietly remained
one of the unsolved mysteries of the Iraq war, and a parable of what
several of the victims describe as the corrosive effects of the
government’s secrecy on troop welfare and public trust.
Since
the episode, several of the sickened soldiers have complained of health
effects that they say may be linked to handling leaking barrels. But
instead of finding the Army concerned or committed to their well-being,
they faced years of shifting stories about what exactly had made them
ill.
The
Army, they said, at first suggested that they might have been exposed
to the nerve agent sarin. Then it said that chemical warfare field
detection tests were unreliable and that the liquid was most likely a
pesticide or something else. Then it dropped the subject entirely.
Still,
several of the victims suffered. But because the military’s records
relating to the episode were classified, the victims said, they lacked
the information to settle their gnawing worries or to give them the
standing necessary to pursue medical care or disability claims.
Thomas
S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which advocates
open government, said the government’s refusal to share its information
was a case of the habits of secrecy trumping common sense.
“Soldiers
exposed to something really dangerous cannot find out what it was
because ‘Sorry it’s classified’?” he said. “It’s creepy and it’s crazy.”
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