John Conger, 68, was drafted when he was 25. He served one tour with the Army’s 532nd Services and Supply, and, during his service, Conger was one of many veterans exposed to Agent Orange in the field. This is his sacrifice.
“I came down with (prostate) cancer from Agent Orange. For a lot of us, that was our sacrifice,” said Conger, a Specialist E-5 who served from 1967-68 in south Vietnam at Cam Ranh Bay. “We all made a lot of sacrifices.”
  
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Shortly following their military service in Vietnam, some veterans reported a variety of health problems and concerns attributed to exposure to Agent Orange or other herbicides. (For more, see information box).
There were plenty of tense moments for Conger, whose base was hit in January of 1968 during the Tet Offensive. During that battle, he said they captured 19 Viet Cong.
Conger worked in the mess hall, preparing three meals a day for 365 troops every day. And while he was one of the lucky ones to return home to his wife of 6 1/2 years and to his former job on the Denver water board (he retired after 36 years there before moving to Montrose eight years ago), Conger’s cousin, John Edward Conger, Jr., wasn’t so lucky. John Conger Jr. was killed in action and his body was never returned.
“He’s still over there — buried there somewhere in Vietnam, 41 years later,” Conger said. “It’s sad.”
It’s also why the Moving Wall coming to Montrose is special for Conger.
“We can’t let people forget these veterans and the sacrifice they made for this country even though it was an unpopular war,” he said. “We still feel we did the right thing over there.”
Conger’s son has served 21 years in the Air Force, which included stints in Iraq. Conger said the two wars have some similarities, and called both political wars.
“They’re not letting the military do their job. If they aren’t going to let them do their job, they might as well bring them home,” he said. “Politics have to stay out of it.”
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Agent Orange
When and where Agent Orange was used in Vietnam:
Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military in South Vietnam used more than 19 million gallons of herbicides for defoliation and crop destruction. Several types and combinations of chemicals were used. These mixtures were identified by the color of the stripe on the storage drums.
The three most common mixtures were Agent Orange, Agent White, and Agent Blue. Fifteen different herbicides were shipped to and used in Vietnam. Most of the herbicides sprayed in Vietnam were Agent Orange, which was used between January 1965 and April 1970. Herbicides other than Agent Orange were used in Vietnam prior to 1965, but to a very limited extent. The total area sprayed with herbicides between 1962 and 1965 was quite small. However, some of the herbicides used in the early years contained greater concentrations of dioxin.
Spraying occurred in all four military zones of Vietnam. Heavily sprayed areas included inland forests near the demarcation zone; inland forests at the junction of the borders of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam; inland forests north and northwest of Saigon; mangrove forests on the southernmost peninsula of Vietnam; and mangrove forests along major shipping channels southeast of Saigon.
Health and exposure:
In the 1970s some veterans became concerned that exposure to Agent Orange caused health problems. One of the chemicals in Agent Orange contained minute traces of TCDD (dioxin), which caused a variety of illnesses in laboratory animals. More recent studies have suggested that the chemical may be related to a number of cancers and other health problems.
Source: U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs
Chris Wilson wrote on Jan 29, 2010 6:29 AM:
Mabel Maggard wrote on May 27, 2009 12:39 PM: