Marine battles over contaminated Lejeune water

As the editor of Wounded Times Blog, I've tracked a lot of stories that left me stunned. This is one of the biggest ones. When we take Marines, train them to attack the enemy, did they ever think the enemy would be among them? How dare the government expose them and their families to toxic water on top of everything else they have to go through? Topping of the exposure itself, they covered it up while the children were dying because of it!

There have been many betrayals the military has committed against the men and women serving this nation. It never seems to enter their minds that while they have men and women committed to the nation, the military should return that same sense of commitment to them as well.

While Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium can be passed off as war hazards, as appalling as that sounds, they were associated with weapons used against the enemy. Any service member exposed to these chemically based weapons was considered just a part of the risk in war. They had to fight to be compensated and treated for the illnesses created by these chemicals. In the beginning it did not dawn on them they would also be fighting for their own children because of these chemicals. As bad as all of this sounds, consider the risk being provided to them where they and their families lived.

When we count the numbers of war dead, honor them on Memorial Day, as we did last weekend, there were many families across the nation wondering when their military dead would ever receive such an honor. Would they ever be counted as paying the ultimate price for service to this nation when they died because of what this nation allowed to happen to them?

Last weekend I was in Washington DC with the Nam Knights and traveled to The Wall. While I stood near it, I thought of my friend Capt. Agnes "Irish" Bresnahan. In March of this year, she went to Washington for an appeal on her VA claim. She had Agent Orange related illnesses and PTSD, not because of being deployed to Vietnam, but because of being based at Fort McClellan . "Home to the US Army Military Police and US Army Chemical Schools (Chemical Defense Training Facility - CDTF)." Her name along with hundreds of thousands more, will not be engraved on The Wall, nor counted among the reported numbers in the accounting tally. Irish died in Washington DC when her heart gave out. She had a bleeding ulcer and lost a lot of blood. After the transfusion, her heart couldn't take any more fighting to stay alive, any more than her spirit could take fighting the government for her claim to finally be honored. Irish never stopped fighting for the veterans of this nation and the truth. This tiny fighter died in service to this nation but few will ever know her name.


Jerry Ensminger was trained as a Marine to battle the enemy to prevent them from killing other Marines. Little did he know at the time, Camp Lejeune was killing the Marines he had taken an oath to never leave behind. His daughter Janey was 9 years old when she died of leukemia. The Ensminger family was only one family out of a million Marines. Will anyone count Janey in any of the accounting of a price paid for serving this nation? Will any of the other children be counted from Camp Lejeune? Will any from the Vietnam War when Agent Orange came home embedded in the cells of the warriors?

Marine battles over contaminated Lejeune water
BY MARTHA QUILLIN - Staff Writer
Published: Sun, May. 31, 2009 04:53AM

WHITE LAKE -- The U.S. Marine Corps taught Jerry Ensminger to be a tenacious fighter, a dogged investigator and an arresting public speaker.

"They created me," the retired master sergeant says. "And now I've turned this weapon on them."

Ensminger, a crew-cut career Marine now retired and living outside White Lake, is one of a handful of leaders in a nationwide fight to get the Corps to release information about contaminated drinking water that circulated through Camp Lejeune for decades before poisoned wells were closed in the mid-1980s.

He and others spend countless hours digging through records, presenting their findings to members of Congress and posting them on a Web site, The Few, the Proud, the Forgotten. They have kept the issue alive, they say, in hopes of getting help for people made sick by the water or who lost loved ones to illnesses caused by it.
Ensminger's daughter, Janey, died in 1985 of leukemia, which Ensminger believes she contracted from exposure to the water at Camp Lejeune. She was 9 years old.

In 1997, a federal agency that studied the contamination and its possible effects issued a report that said adults who drank, bathed in and cleaned with the tainted water faced almost no increased risk of cancer or other illness. This month, Ensminger and his cohorts claimed a victory when the agency retracted that report.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry also acknowledged for the first time that the water contained benzene, a known carcinogen. And it is working on a modeling project expected to show that tainted water flowed to the spigots of many more people than the Marine Corps originally reported and for much longer.

By some estimates, 1 million people -- Marines and their dependents along with civilians who lived and worked on the base -- are thought to have been exposed to a stew of chemicals known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders and other illnesses.
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Marine battles over contaminated Lejeune water

For more reports go here
Camp Lejeune Marines get help online for toxic water exposures
Friday, June 20, 2008
Camp Lejeune and contaminated waterCamp Lejeune Water StudyJun 19, 2008June 18, 2008 - The Marine Corps is concerned about your health. We ENCOURAGE all former Marines, family members and civilian employees who resided or worked aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune between 1957 and 1987 to REGISTER with the Marine Corps for information regarding past water quality.https://clnr.hqi.usmc.mil/clsurvey/This is a huge number of people involved here!

Saturday, May 31, 2008
500,000 at Camp LeJeune may have been exposed to tainted water
MONEY DISPUTE THREATENS TOXIC TAP WATER STUDYMay 28, Associated Press – ( North Carolina )Money dispute threatens toxic tap water study. Continuation of a long-running government study on whether contaminated water harmed babies at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, hinges on a half-million-dollar payment that is due Sunday. The Marines estimate that 500,000 Camp LeJeune residents may have been exposed to the tainted water, including thousands of Vietnam-bound Marines. Federal health investigators estimate the number is higher.The U.S. health agency conducting the study, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said its research would be jeopardized if the Navy does not pay $522,000 to keep the study going beyond Sunday.Health problems blamed on Camp LeJeune ’s contaminated water were the focus of reporting by the Associated Press in June 2007 and congressional oversight hearings.