Deseret News | Reader comments: Dugway tests weigh on former soldier's mind

Reader comments
Dugway tests weigh on former soldier's mind

sad | 12:27 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

My Dad worked out at Dugway. He had to take a vaccine for Anthrax. Amongst other things. He died 3 years ago of Cancer. I have my questions about it but no answers. How sad that the government looks at people as little more than sheep.

Steve Glaser | 12:45 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Mr. Bartling - Phosgene is a chemical warfare agent that has the odor of freshly mown hay. It decomposes in the lungs to hydrogen chloride and carbon monoxide.

I'm not a toxicologist, but my guess is that the biggest concern for long-term effects would be damage to the lungs by hydrogen chloride (it acts as an acid, and I can imagine that it would scar the lungs). Low concentrations of phosgene can be lethal, but any deaths would have occurred at the time that the "experiment" was performed.

I hope you find this useful - I can just imagine what it would have been like to have to watch this.

Laura | 6:32 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

The common citizen is now the new grunt.

Watch the skies. Watch as planes lace blue skies with 'something' that doesn't dissipate but spreads creating thin unnatural cloud type formations.

Some times planes are simply doing what comes naturally - contrails. They dissipate.

If you pay attention, you will see the difference. If not, just go back to sleep where all is well.

Comments continue below

Re:sad | 6:51 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Soldiers still get Anthrax vaccines today. I don't doubt your father may have been exposed to some harmful stuff, but vaccines typically protect you from potential dangers. Remember those Anrhrax scares from about 5 years ago? I imagine most universities across the nation with decent facilities have Anthrax on them. BYU does.

re: Laura | 8:45 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

There is a rumor, mostly from Laverkin, that contrails are chemicals being dumped from airplanes to give people sickness. I am a rocket scientist and have worked in the industry for nearly 30 years. What you see in the sky is frozen air that is being upset by a fast moving object (the airplane). The sky is filled with frozen air molecules. When they are acted on they turn white. It's like dragging a fork across a block of clear ice. Where the fork scars the ice you will see a white mark. The wing-tip vortices, created by the airplane, are swirling air. The temperatures range from 40 to 80 degrees below zero F. You will only see them on days when there are very few clouds in the sky. When the trails are straight then there is no wind in the sky however if the trails are being blown then they will appear bigger and in motion. They remain this way until they can naturally reform to their surroundings.

Dave | 9:15 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Laura's comments really amuse me. This is the first time I have heard that the vapor trails caused by high-flying jet aircraft are wreakng havoc upon the human population.

Kelly | 9:29 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

This is a good example of why the Bush small war policy is good because it gives us an opportunity to test our weapons of war against others in real live battle situations.

Re: Laura | 9:50 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

One more thing:

The altitude and speed of the airplane vs. the temperature and moisture present will determine the rate at which the molecules restructure themselves and go back to normal. This will appear different in some cases.

Here's an experiment:

Take a clear block os ice at room temperature and scar it with a fork. Take another block of ice and have it in a room with a temperature of minus 20 F and scar it with a fork. Watch how fast the room temperature one returns to clear and how long it will take the other block to return to normal again.

Sometimes the winds aloft will just have to blow the white ice around for a while until they fall towards the earth enough to melt back to clear moisture again.

Wayne | 11:38 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Many thanks to Stephen Speckman for publishing this important article. The atrocities are hard to imagine that they occurred, let alone even allowed.

A book recently published is one all should read:

"The American West At Risk," by Wilshire, Nielson and Hazlett

Being educated and informed to make sure our children are fully informed is our hope for the future.

Anonymous | 12:54 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

My brother and I grew up in Kearns when there was a release of nerve gas that killed sheep down wind. We both have dyslexia my hands have had tremors since childhood. I bet if you looked at reading scores and correlated wind patterns and use national scores as your baseline; you would see these tests caused neurological damage to children.

Anonymous | 1:10 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Wow, the nerve gas got clear to Kearns? Funny, it didn't harm the sheep herders or citizens who were in Skull Valley. Sheep grazed and concentrated the low levels of nerve agent in their stomachs. People don't do that.

This must be a slow news day to drag out this old story from 1968. All the details of that accident have been reported ad nauseum. I'm amazed at the paranoia of people who think that their government would purposely subject its soldiers to nerve gas. It never happened in the '60s and it certainly doesn't happen now.

BULL | 2:32 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Those of us that have been exposed to this trash at the time had no idea what we were being exposed to, 40 years later we still don't know. We were threaten with our jobs if we didn't roll up our shirt sleeves, we signed forms that didnï¿½t allow the common man to talk about what he was being giving or how much. If we got ill from the injections we had to go to the Dugway hospital. Anthrax is the least of our worries now, I have close to 50 some odd pages of things I was exposed to, and more than that of friends that have died from different forms of cancers, alhemizers and MS. Save your time we donï¿½t need anymore lies we need the truth to be told.

Times are changing | 3:31 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Sure the test at Dugway may have hurt some soldiers, or citizens. And maybe killed some sheep. Does it really matter??? Take a look at everything that has changed over the past 40 years. Cars now have seatbelts. New vaccines and medical procedures have been created and refined. Paint no longer has lead in it. Come on, it was 40 years ago, and effected maybe a few hundred people. I agree with a previous poster, that it must be a slow news day to run this article. I do feel bad for everyone that was effected by Dugway testing, but as a veteran myself, there are a lot of things that happen in the military that the common public wouldn't understand. Have you ever tried to talk to someone about SERE school? If you know anything about it, I'm sure you have had your moments when people ask what happens there. Dugway is a testing range, if you don't like it, move!

Kearns, huh? | 3:35 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

That is interesting that the nerve gas got all the way to Kearns. Look at a map of Utah sometime to see where Dugway is. They do the testing 30 miles from the front gate. It is bordered by mountains. The gas cleared one mountain range to get out of the testing zone, then another range to get to skull valley. It must have skipped the Tooele valley, then crossed another mountain range and hit Kearns. Not Magna or WVC, but just Kearns. I'm sure your facts are completely correct and there is no way that your problems could be based on anything else.

Want us to vote to kill you? | 5:06 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

It's not like they had a choice anyway. The people of the U.S. elected representatives who appointed the officers who made these decisions.

If the Commander in Chief and General Officers chose to use our soldiers as guinea pigs then it is their role as our paid slaves to do as ordered and to not question our duly elected representatives and those they appoint to lead the military.

It's called a democratic republic and we the people have spoken. This man should be lucky we didn't decide to nuke his home and his family like we did with Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

By the way the above was sarcasm for the idiots who can't tell the difference. If anyone is to blame for this testing it is the American electorate. We can't claim to be a democratic republic and refuse to take responsibility for the actions of our government.

If a foreign nation or foreign national take issue with our government representatives they have the right to take issue with us as voters.

Anonymous | 5:36 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

My father proudly served as a worker in Y-12 one of the Oak Ridge, Tennessee nuclear weapons plant from 1944 to 1976. They were exposed to a number of chemical and radioactive hazards. Sometimes they knew it. Sometimes they didn't. They tried to be safe as they worked but didn't have the knowledge or equipment or attitude many workers have today. Their general attitude was that we were at war -- first with the Germans and Japanese -- then with the Russians,Koreans and Chinese. Their job was to rapidly develop weapons, so destructive that the other side would not attack us and risk us obliterating their country. They were doing their part in the wars, cold and hot, that I believe have kept us free. Complaining of hazardous working conditions to them would be absurd when their fellowmen were endangered by Japanese Zeros or Chinese machine guns. Was his health affected? Probably -- but he almost made it to 93 having not died earlier of heart, ulcer, and five types of cancer.

Lowell | 5:57 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

To "Anonymous" @ 1:10 and "Times are changing" @ 3:31, I am left almost speechless by your suggestion that stories like this are for "slow news" days, and would better be left in the past. Nevertheless, I will risk sounding like a broken record by reminding you that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I'd much rather have periodic reminders of things like this, than to have any elected or appointed officials thinking they can perform tests like this in my lifetime.

To "Want us to vote" @ 5:06, right on! We, the people, are collectively responsible for what our elected leaders do. So, as this is voting season, please pause for a moment before casting your ballot, search your soul, and make sure you vote your conscience!

Anonymous | 6:03 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

Heart disease is the most common ailment in the U.S. Cancer is No. 2.
Just because someone develops cancer later in life is not proof of where they contracted it.
There were NOT 6,000 sheep killed in 1968. Uncle Sam may have paid for that many, because of unscrupulous ranchers who inflated their stock figures, but the figure is closer to 4,000.
How do I know? Because I've spoken to a man who was there, who saw the Army counting each and every sheep meticulously.
He noted, with interest, that no dead coyotes, rabbits or other animals were found.
What killed the sheep? Personally, I have doubts about the "nerve gas" claim. Contaminated feed, feed purposely poisoned by enemy agents, poisonous weeds are all suspect.
For a cloud of agent to move as far as it did, over two mountain ranges, and still be concentrated enough to cause injury would require a cloud of gigantic proportions -- far larger than any canister could likely deliver.

virginia | 8:50 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

RE: Laura
Ever watched a planes con-trail suddenly stop, but the plane continues on? Real con-trails don't turn off like a faucet! Would you say he hit a thermal? Common sense goes a long way, but we're NOT stupid!

Anonymous | 9:13 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

I worked as a contractor at Dugway for 7 years, during the nineties.
I mainly left because I felt I was underpaid and under-appreciated for some very valuable innovations I had made.

I was given a generous offer to return as a government employee in the early oughts, but turned it down because a former supervisor and several colleagues had died of cancer, since I'd left.

Anonymous | 11:20 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008

My husband was one of the privates who "volunteered" to have testing in the summer of 1961. I remember him driving from Dugway to our little apartment in Tooele and telling me about going out in the desert and being gassed and not being able to put on a gas mask. At the time I was naive, we both were, and didn't think our military would do anything to hurt him. He was a young strapping healthy young man raised on a farm. He has kidney disease, sleep apnea, heart failure, has had prostate cancer and diabetes.
Joyce

Myrna Harker | 11:42 a.m. Nov. 3, 2008

I was a teacher at Dugway Proving Ground for 6 years and lived at the testing site when the sheep were killed in Skull Valley. This drop should never have been made because the wind was blowing more than 30 knots per hour. If the wind had suddenly shifted, none of us would be here to tell the story. The people and animals were of no consequence. In fact, the test was to see just how the area wild animals reacted to the gas and how long it took them to die. I am stunned by how many people who were exposed to chemicals produced at DPG have serious illnesses and just how many have died at young ages. Two of my three children (ages 47 and 50) have life threatening cancers. I would like to see a study completed and the government take appropriate action. However, I am sure the government would remain silent on the subject and/or deny any wrong doing just as they did at the time of the sheep incident. We were all so naive and trusted our government to insure our safety.

Chas "Chuck" Simmons | 4:27 p.m. Nov. 22, 2008

I was stationed at Dugway's Michael Airfield as the military's signature for Page Aircraft Maintenance. I also served as crewchief for Michael's aircraft, not the F-4's testing VX spray.. After this incident happened I flew with our pilot flying congressmen and federal/state officials reviewing the sheep burial and area.

It is doubtful that Kearns was effected even remotely by this incident.

Myrna, did you ever visit the NCO club? know Elaine Fuller, civilian secretary at DPG?

The sheep incident scared me.. I got out of aviation and crash rescue and went to chemical school at Ft McLellan Anniston Ala just because I wanted to understand more about the tecnology underlying the sheep incident..

WOG & MG | 10:03 p.m. Nov. 29, 2008

Hi Myrna,

We often wonder too. M has had MS for 30 years. Sorry to hear about your children. We recently attended the funeral of 48 yr old Jeff who died of cancer. He lived at Dugway all his life.

We are doing pretty well. Hope you are doing well. We still live in Idaho. Stop by on your way to Canada.

Jack Melcher | 12:59 p.m. Aug. 6, 2009

I was stationed at Dugway from Oct 1956-Aug 1958 and was in the 45th chemical company smoke genertor company and painted the 45th chemical company sign that was in front of the baracks I was in company A comunications division. I played baseball for the Dugway team.A couple of friends I remember are Nick Speros Bob Marrah and Rich Held..any one know how I can contact Nick or rich?

Jack Melcher | 1:51 p.m. Aug. 6, 2009

The only thing I remember about the different testing done on Dugway was nerve gas and naphom.a plane would fly low over the Dugway range and drop Naphom and we would view the effects of the boming etc. and as nerve gas goes the only thing I was involved with was the washing of the uniforms from the gis returning from Dog area and getting their uniforms washed out etc. I remember the sheep dieing in skull valley but this was after I left Dugway

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