Vietnam Veterans Kids fighting Agent Orange War of Their Own

Denise Crosby: Health problems plague Vietnam vet’s daughter
By Denise Crosby

January 8, 2012 2:44AM

Craig Carson has dodged plenty of bullets so far in life.

He was one of just two surviving officers from the company he led through the boonies of Vietnam where, as a company commander in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, his orders were to “search and destroy” the enemy whose units were often “five to six times larger” and carrying more firepower.

“There were times you just knew this was the day you were going to die,” he says of the 11 months he spent in operations north of the city of Qui Nhon. “It was heavy combat ... I was lucky to walk out.”

At age 65, the 1964 West Aurora High grad — his family once owned the land where his alma mater now stands — and who went on to graduate from West Point, appears to have dodged yet another bullet.

Trampling through the countryside of central Vietnam, he got plenty of exposure to Agent Orange, the powerful exfoliate the U.S. government used to rid the enemy of the thick vegetation that was its greatest fighting asset. Carson is in good health, even as he has watched so many of his West Point classmates and fellow Vietnam comrades succumb to rare cancers and other illnesses associated with dioxin, the Agent Orange chemical now considered the most toxic ever created by man.

His daughter, however, has not been so fortunate.

Now in her mid 30s, she suffers from a host of maladies, including auto immune disorders that, Carson since learned, mirror the health problems of a generation of offspring whose parents served in Vietnam.
read more here