Because Anderson didn't serve overseas, he never felt worthy of approaching the VA for benefits. The new Web site and his worsening financial situation have changed his opinion.

"I can't get it out of my mind that ... this is related to what happened to me at Dugway," Anderson said.

Anderson told his buddy Amos E. Long about the new Web site. They were at Dugway at the same time in 1955. They now keep in touch.

Long, 76, lives in Alabama. For years, he has suffered problems with his feet. One doctor told him he has nerve damage.

"When I wake up, it feels like my ankles are the size of volleyballs," said Long, who left the Army as a first lieutenant.

Long's job was in meteorology, to go out into the field at about 2 a.m. and test surface wind direction and speed prior to tests, as well as during or after tests. He recalled a road being closed when one cloud of chemicals drifted off base.

"I don't have any idea where it went," Long said about the cloud. "All we had to do was to protect our people."

Long had his own experience with being exposed to something, he doesn't know what, and being decontaminated afterward. He has been unsuccessful so far in getting the VA to pay for testing and treatment for his feet.

"I have no idea what I was exposed to," Long said. "They should have let us know what we were close to."

'Chemical School'

Despite what went on at Dugway and the risks soldiers took during tests, at least one man isn't claiming any related health problems.

Jerry Reed finished "Chemical School" in Alabama in 1959 near the top of his class, earning him a trip to Dugway in June 1959. He can still remember arriving.

"When they put us on that old Army bus and took us out past Saltair and down Skull Valley, I was convinced it was the end of the world and I would never go home again," he said.

Reed, 67, contrasted growing up in rural Arkansas surrounded by green trees and waist-deep grass with coming to a "forbidding" place at Dugway.

"The NCO that met us at the main gate said, 'We don't worry about you going AWOL, we just watch you walk away for three days and then go out and pick you up,"' he said.

Reed and Anderson have stories about tests using mosquitoes and fleas. Neither man knew exactly how the insects were being used, but they guess it may have had to do with finding a way to spread chemical or biological agents.

For other tests, Reed donned a rubber suit and would decontaminate an area where animals had been exposed to nerve agent and had died within seconds or minutes. He said the animals were doused with gasoline, burned and buried in a trench.