Have DU — Will Travel: Interview with Tim Hix

‘That reminds me of the ash with Mount St. Helens. It darkened the skies in different continents.’

ICONOCLAST: When were you in Vietnam? HIX: ’66, ’67, and ’68.

ICONOCLAST: Then, did you know that you were exposed to Agent Orange?

HIX: Not at that time.

ICONOCLAST: When did you find out?

HIX: Well, I suspected when my brother died from it nine years ago and he and I had been stationed together.

ICONOCLAST: Where were you stationed?

HIX: All different places. We were on the rivers and in the different harbors. Actually, we were up in the estuaries.

ICONOCLAST: You said your brother passed away nine years ago and up until that time you didn’t think of Agent Orange?

HIX: Not really. Here about four years ago I started thinking that he died of it and I had heard them talking about the Agent Orange registry. You have to sign up for it. I just went down and signed up and they do all kinds of testing on you. They told me that everything was fine. Well, that night, the Central Texas Agent Orange doctor, this oriental lady called me and she said that there was an abnormality in your blood, but it is nothing to worry about. So they did more testing and stuff and then said that I had cancer. I was diagnosed in June of 2002 with prostate cancer and in the lymph nodes too. That’s how it started. Now, not only do I have the cancer from it, but I also have the type two diabetes, which is also caused from Agent Orange.

ICONOCLAST: How long was your brother sick before he passed away?

HIX: About seven or eight months. They first thought he had pneumonia and then they found that it was mesothelioma.

ICONOCLAST: Have you had any trouble getting any of your treatments?

HIX: No, I haven’t had any trouble that way.

ICONOCLAST: Did they have to establish that you were sick from Agent Orange.

HIX: No, I’m fighting that to this day. That’s what my appeal is. They’re saying that I wasn’t. These things are caused by Agent Orange and that is presumed by the VA to be true, but because I was in the Navy, they say if you didn’t walk on the ground, which that wasn’t my primary function. Had I been in the infantry, there would be no problem. You get it automatically. Air Force and Navy have a problem. The thing of it is that Agent Orange was airborne. They sprayed it. That is my contention. One of the guys that I served side-byside with has been drawing 100 percent compensation since 1996. They arbitrarily changed the rule, the VA did. They didn’t change the congressional law, but they changed their manual.

ICONOCLAST: Why?

HIX: So they don’t have to pay. It encompasses hundreds of thousands.

ICONOCLAST: So, now, you are getting all of your medical care through the VA?

HIX: I still pay for it. I had to have a radical prostatectomy in September of 2002 and I got the bill and consequently ended up filing bankruptcy. This stuff is only paid for by the VA if it’s service connected and that is what I am fighting, to get the service connection.

ICONOCLAST: They say that your cancer was not a result of your time in the service in Vietnam.

HIX: Yes, and I even have a letter from my radiation oncologist at the Dallas VA Hospital. He is Vietnamese. He was in the very same places I was and he wrote a letter that is now in my file in Washington D.C., that in his professional opinion it was caused from Agent Orange in my military service.

ICONOCLAST: What do you know about DU?

HIX: Not a whole lot, but some. It’s going to cause all kinds of cancers and things like Agent Orange did.

ICONOCLAST: There is a study that has just come out about the DU showing up in England.

HIX: That is another thing about Agent Orange exposure. For a long time, they wanted you to prove where you were. I have a friend who had a cotton crop that was killed by diaxon, which is the active ingredient in Agent Orange. It had drifted over a hundred miles, right here in the state of Texas, from one guy killing some brush with it. It drifted over one hundred miles and killed their cotton crop and they collected on it. What is the difference there from Vietnam. It could drift a hundred miles there the same as here.

ICONOCLAST: Going back to Vietnam, you weren’t given any information to alert you to risks?

HIX: No. We were gung ho. They are now, too, and we just have another Vietnam. I don’t disagree that Sadaam should have been ousted, but we should have done it differently.

ICONOCLAST: I had an interview with Daniel Ellsberg and one of the first things he said to me is that he wished he had done what he had earlier and it would have made more of a difference. He also compared Iraq to Vietnam. If you could do something to get information out there to others…

HIX: I already do, but I’d like to get through this legal stuff and help other guys in my same situation. There are a lot of people who need help and answers. I’d like to see something like that happen with this depleted uranium. I think DU is like Agent Orange. It kills every living thing. The vegetation it kills quickly, the people, it takes years to manifest.

ICONOCLAST: With DU, studies show that it is traveling around the globe.

HIX: That reminds me of the ash with Mount St. Helens. That cloud of ash traveled everywhere. It darkened the skies in different continents.

Tim Hix is a Vietnam veteran exposed to Agent Orange, dying of cancer.