War Veterans

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has acknowledged in a new report that chemical weapons were detected as many as seven times in the first week of the 1991 Persian Gulf war near staging areas in northern Saudi Arabia, where tens of thousands of U.S. troops were housed.While insisting that it had no conclusive evidence that U.S. soldiers were ever exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons, the Defense Department said in the report that it was "further exploring the plausibility" that small amounts of chemical agents passed over troops after U.S. bombers destroyed Iraqi arms depots and factories north of staging areas near the Saudi city of Hafr al-Batin.

Herbert A. Davis, a Baltimore real estate broker and decorated World War II veteran, died Monday of progressive supranuclear palsy at Keswick Multi-Care Center. He was 87. "Herb was always very enthusiastic and just a great guy," said Dorothy F. "Patsy" Ross, who works in real estate sales for Chase Fitzgerald & Co. "He was enthusiastic, positive and was always thinking on the bright side, and he really knew the business," said Mrs. Ross. "He was a great salesman. " Judy L. Bushong, a real estate agent, worked with Mr. Davis for 28 years.

Baltimore has memorials to presidents, to poets, to the woman who sewed the Star-Spangled Banner. Now a city known for its monuments and statuary is about to build something new, and a bit off-the-wall: A memorial to a memorial. The Maryland Stadium Authority has approved a contract for construction of a $775,547 structure in the Camden Yards area to honor war veterans. But besides honoring veterans, this design also commemorates the city's last memorial erected in their memory: the recently demolished 33rd Street facade of Memorial Stadium.

William L. More, a retired Exxon marketing representative who fought during World War II with the 4th Marine Division in some of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific, died Saturday of respiratory failure at Bonnie Blink, the Maryland Masonic Home. He was 90. Nearly 40 years would pass before William Lynn More could bring himself to talk about Iwo Jima, the 36-day battle in 1945 for a rugged, uninhabited eight-square-mile Pacific island of gray volcanic sand and rock, where 6,800 Americans died and 26,000 were wounded.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved a $500 million package of veterans benefits yesterday, virtually guaranteeing that Persian Gulf war veterans will get retroactive pay raises for their time in the region.But the five-year plan -- negotiated with a cost-conscious Bush administration -- is less than half of what the House has voted to provide, and less than many senators had hoped to do.The package was part of legislation authorizing emergency funding for Operation Desert Storm, which passed 97-1.

WASHINGTON -- After years of Pentagon denials, a group of veterans of the Persian Gulf war is offering the first compelling evidence that U.S. troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons. The veterans say that nerve gas and other chemical agents have begun to ravage their bodies.The soldiers and former soldiers were members of the Army's 37th Engineer Battalion. Unlike thousands of other Americans who have complained that they suffer from the ailments collectively described as gulf war syndrome, the men of the 37th can pinpoint the time and place that they believe they were exposed to chemical weapons: 2: 05 p.m. March 4, 1991, when the battalion blew up 33 Iraqi bunkers in the southern Iraqi desert.

Nearly 100 people commemorated Veterans Day at the Longwell Armory in Westminster yesterday, many of them wearing reminders of their sacrifice.They saluted the flag in respectful silence as a Marine honor guard moved up the aisle. Two young soldiers followed the guard. One carried a red, white and blue wreath; the other held the black flag symbol of America's POWs and MIAs.Aging men and women recited the Pledge of Allegiance in loud voices and joined hands to sing "God Bless America."Russell Shaffer, 79, had pinned a "Pray for America" button on his white and purple cap -- a hat printed with "Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart."

WASHINGTON -- The doctor's diagnosis hit gulf war veteran William Kay like a bombshell.Mr. Kay, 52, a Naval reservist, had been exposed to chemical or bTC biological warfare while in the Persian Gulf war, determined Dr. Charles Jackson of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tuskegee, Ala.It was the first diagnosis of "Persian Gulf syndrome" among the 4,000 veterans who believe they were exposed."

The records U.S. federal agencies relied upon to conclude that Persian Gulf war veterans are no sicker than the general population excluded thousands of veterans treated for illnesses by doctors at federal clinics and by private doctors paid by the government.The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' statistics also do not include other veterans who chose to go to private hospitals or doctors and pay for their own medical care.In an interview last week, Dr. Frances M. Murphy, who is responsible for the Veterans Affairs Department's program to treat gulf war veterans, said the diagnoses of veterans who were treated by clinics and private doctors, rather than at VA hospitals, were left out of the department's computer databases.

WASHINGTON -- The chairwoman of a federal panel investigating the illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war said yesterday that she believed that the veterans were clearly experiencing more health problems than other veterans, and that Iraqi chemical weapons and other chemical agents might be to blame for many of their ailments.The chairwoman, Dr. Eula Bingham, a toxicologist who is the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said it was too early to rule out Iraqi chemical or biological weapons as the cause of many of the illnesses of the veterans, given how little was known about the weapons' long-term health effects.

Frank Simms Dudley Jr., an Eastern Shore real estate broker and property appraiser, died of complications after surgery March 3 at the University of Maryland Medical Center. The former Baltimore resident was 93. Born in Baltimore, he was the son of Frank S. Dudley, a banker, and Edith Shriner, a homemaker. He lived on Roland Avenue and attended Roland Park Country School before graduating from Gilman School in 1939. His studies at the University of Virginia were interrupted by his service in the Navy during World War II. A lieutenant, he commanded a sub chaser and initially patrolled anti-submarine nets off the New York Harbor and later off San Diego and San Francisco.

Charles H. Latrobe III, a retired Koppers Co. executive who was a highly decorated World War II Navy night fighter pilot, died Feb. 16 of complications from pneumonia at Roland Park Place. He was 90. "He was a very private person who had the highest level of integrity possible and was intolerant of those who did not," said Joseph M. Coale III, a political adviser, Baltimore County preservationist and former head of Historic Annapolis. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Charles Hazlehurst Latrobe III was 3 when he moved to a home on Ridgewood Road in Roland Park with his family in 1926.

William Nathaniel Tate, a retired concrete worker and Korean War combat veteran, died of heart disease Feb. 16 at Frederick Memorial Hospital. The former Park Heights resident was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised on Division Street, he attended Booker T. Washington Junior High School. As a young man, he played sandlot football and boxed at gyms in the Pennsylvania Avenue neighborhood. He served in the Army from 1951 to 1953, and was assigned to Korea and fought in an infantry unit.

John R. Duffy, a retired Baltimore police officer and Navy veteran who witnessed the Japanese surrender that ended World War II, died Wednesday of a heart attack at Ivy Hall nursing home in Middle River. The longtime Perry Hall resident was 87. The son of a Baltimore police officer and a homemaker, John Robert Duffy was born in Baltimore and raised on Linwood Avenue near Patterson Park. After graduating in 1944 from Patterson High School, Mr. Duffy entered the Navy. He was assigned to the battleship USS Missouri, where he was a gunner's mate and coxswain.

John Morgan "Nemo" Robinson, a retired operator of a Chesapeake Bay summer resort and decorated World War II veteran, died Saturday of a heart attack at Anne Arundel Medical Center after undergoing brain surgery a week earlier. The Severna Park resident was 90. Born and raised in Catonsville, he was a 1938 graduate of Catonsville High School and spent another year at Polytechnic Institute. He gained the nickname Nemo as a child because he had long blond curls like a lion in the "Little Nemo" comic strip.

Joseph R. Castoro, a retired Baltimore businessman and a World War II veteran, died Dec. 5 of multiple organ failure at Brightview Assisted Living in Bel Air. He was 87. The son of a builder and a homemaker, Joseph Robert Castoro was born in Camden, N.J., and moved with his family to a home near Patterson Park. After graduating from Calvert Hall College High School in 1943, he immediately enlisted in the Army Air Forces. A musician who played drums and guitar and wrote music, Mr. Castoro dreamed of becoming a bandleader.

IRVINE, Calif. -- A number of medical professionals, who say they have become ill while treating Persian Gulf war veterans, claim the mysterious disease afflicting tens of thousands of soldiers is contagious and could pose a public health threat.Doctors, nurses and laboratory researchers, as well as others who come in casual contact with gulf war veterans, say they have contracted the same symptoms -- fatigue, fever, aches, rashes and respiratory problems -- that are generally associated with "gulf war syndrome."

LEBANON, Pa. -- Two new government studies show for the first time that veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war are far more likely to suffer from a variety of serious health problems than troops who did not serve in the war, a finding that appears to vindicate ailing veterans who have said that their service in the gulf has cost them their health.The studies -- one conducted by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the other by the Navy -- do not resolve the mystery of what is making most of the veterans ill.But they clearly show that gulf war veterans are having health problems in unusual numbers and that their illnesses can be disabling, even though they do not necessarily result in hospital admissions or death.