Reed said he's still trying to get his mind around how naive the soldiers were to allow themselves to be used as "guinea pigs." But it was a different climate back then, he said. "I guess we just totally believed that they would not do anything that could harm us."

Reed, who in the Army reached the rank of staff sergeant, said his "health issues" now are more related to age and weight and that he enjoyed 40 years of good health after Dugway.

"I have no ax to grind with the Army," he said. "I am proud of my service, strange as it was."

Gas and 'volunteers'

Davidson, 72, of West Haven, spent about nine months at Dugway in 1961, and he remembers how so-called volunteers were chosen for tests.

"They just said, 'You, you, you and you,"' Davidson said.

For one test, the former sergeant remembers everyone being lined up without gas masks in a field and being gassed by something, forced to gut it out until the gas cloud went away.

"We had to stay in it and then report back," Davidson said. "I tried to hold my breath as long as I could. When I took a breath, it took me right to my knees."

He isn't sure what the gas was and didn't dare ask back then.

"We were in the service," Davidson said. "We just obeyed. You did what you were told to."

When asked what health problems he has today, Davidson has to retrieve a list written on a piece of paper. Prostate cancer, kidney failure, skin cancer and congestive heart failure appear to be the worst among his maladies.

About a month ago, Davidson contacted the VA for help in paying for tests and treatments for his health conditions. But he has run into a glitch: He has been told there are no records of what sort of gas was used in 1961.

"Good grief! They used to take us out and gas us," he said.

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com