My father is a Vietnam Veteran—a real combat veteran unlike the stolen valor Senator from Connecticut, “Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal, who lied about his service on multiple occasions.
My father got drafted into the U.S. Army on April 9th, 1966; he didn’t have a choice.
He completed basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia, before getting sent to Vietnam, where he served in the 2nd Armored Division “Hell on Wheels” for a year. After returning stateside to Fort Hood in Texas, he got sent straight to Detroit as part of the Army’s Civil Disturbance Plan known as Operation Garden Plot. There’s no rest for the wicked, as the saying goes.
When my father landed in Vietnam, he was assigned to man the “open burn pits” in which the military burned absolutely everything: old equipment, chemicals, unexploded ordnance, medical waste, human waste soaked in diesel, plastics, rubber, paint, solvents, and massive amounts of Agent Orange–contaminated material.
Nearly all (90 percent) of Veterans on burn pit duty cited concerns about their exposure.
Yet as of May 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has still not specifically researched whether there is any association between Veterans’ health effects and exposure to open-air burning in Vietnam.
Hellbound and Down 