Army Sergeant First Class Charles Frenzel has served in the military for more than 30 years; during the last four years, he has been stationed at Forts Jackson and Lee in America and at Camp Caldwell in Iraq. While he was on assignment in Iraq in October 2005, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and evacuated to Walter Reed, where an 8.5-by-4.5-inch nonmalignant meningioma was removed.

Asked what he thought had caused his tumor, Sergeant Frenzel offered several possibilities. “I think Saddam had a lot more advanced chemical programs than what was originally suspected,” he said. “I was exposed to daily oil smog. Iraq burns straight nonprocessed crude oil, and the smog was horrific. The water was contaminated, and we were bathing and washing our clothes in it.”

In June 2006, while undergoing a chemo treatment on Ward 65 at Walter Reed, Captain Stuart met Army Staff Sergeant Frank Valentin of the Transportation Battalion, a 34-year-old Brooklyn native who had been based at Camp Spearhead in the port of Kuwait City on the Iraq-Kuwait border for two years.

Situated amid two oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory, and a sulfuric acid factory, Sergeant Valentin and other soldiers who assisted at the camp knew immediately that their bouts of burning eyes, hot, red facial skin, and unrelentingly runny noses were caused by a cesspool of noxious fumes, he said.

The soldiers tried complaining, Sergeant Valentin said, “but nobody wanted to hear it - we just stayed quiet. They just wanted us to do our job.”

Sergeant Valentin was diagnosed with hemorrhoids eight times and sent back to work, but when the pain and discomfort did not abate, he instinctively knew something was wrong, he said. Finally, a reservist who was an oncologist diagnosed Sergeant Valentin with colon cancer.

The reservist oncologist told him that there were six other soldiers with newly found cancers in his unit, Sergeant Valentin said. The sergeant said he personally knew of two that had been diagnosed with cancer: one with leukemia and one with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And a third had had a nonmalignant brain tumor.

“Between the chemicals in the air overseas, the shots they give you, and not eating well or sleeping more than four hours a day … your body just isn’t strong enough to fight anything off.

“Right now, it’s cancer, cancer, cancer. A lot of these kids, 21 years old, are coming back with cancer. How did they get it? How did it happen to me when I was healthy?” he asked.

In 2005, Sergeant Valentin underwent surgery at Walter Reed. It was during that surgery that the doctors discovered the cancer had advanced. He woke to find himself with a colostomy bag and prognosis of incurable colon and lung cancer.

In contrast to soldiers who have lost limbs to explosive devices in Iraq, who qualify for Traumatic Servicemembers Group Life Insurance injury benefits of up to $100,000, “people like us don’t get benefits,” Sergeant Valentin said.

“Because cancer is a disease and not a war wound, we don’t qualify. No one even knows we’re on the oncology ward. The press, celebrities, and politicians go to the third floor when they want publicity shots with the amputee soldiers. But what about the seventh floor, Ward 71, with soldiers that are coming back with cancer?” he asked.

On July 23, Iraq’s environment minister blamed “at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing” with depleted uranium weapons for about 140,000 cases of cancer there and for between 7,000 and 8,000 new cases each year.

A U.N. Environment Program report states that depleted uranium poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground. However, no major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq, the report added.

© 2007 The New York Sun

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