It was the 1970s in Southern California, and a teenage Laynie Roland could be seen most days surfing and boogie boarding along Newport Beach, about 40 miles west of her home in Ontario. With her long, feathered, bleached-blonde hair and wave-riding ways, Roland embodied the typical image of the Southern California girl.
She was active in high school — a member of several academic clubs including the yearbook committee and newspaper, and she worked in the school’s snack shop during the week when she wasn’t ditching school to go to the beach with her short board and a pack of friends. In those days, before bumper-to-bumper traffic became the norm in the arteries of the greater Los Angeles area, it was only a 45-minute drive to “the usual breaks,” says Roland, now a Portland resident.
Shortly after graduating from high school, Roland left her family behind and headed south to attend Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, where she would often watch people surfing along a beach that could be seen from her dorm room window. Her future seemed ripe with possibilities, and she felt a drive to do something of great magnitude. A psychology major at the time, she was only one year into her studies when she decided the path she was on wasn’t the one she was meant for. “I knew there was something bigger calling me,” she recalls.
As the daughter of a rough-around-the-edges Navy gunner, she was naturally curious about the possibility of a career in the military. Almost immediately, the service seemed to hold all the answers, she recalls.
“I knew that was where I wanted to be. That it was my calling,” she says. There was just one minor detail standing in the way — she would have to cut her long hair if she was going to join the Navy or her second choice, the Marines. To the 19-year-old self-proclaimed “beach babe” with waist-length locks, getting a short military haircut was simply not an option.
This is how Roland came to join the U.S. Army — it was the only branch of service that would allow her to keep her long hair. When she spoke with recruitment officers on that fateful day in 1981, it was apparent: The military wanted her. And she was hooked.
A portion of her training that winter included bivouac, which was “like camping, only you wear war paint and carry a gun,” says Roland. They set up tents and lived outdoors, relying on streams running through the encampment for bathing, cooking and filling up canteens with water for drinking. She isn’t sure if it was because she started off with a weakened immune system due to the respiratory infection, or if it was because she was training on a hurt knee, but Roland’s health suffered throughout training.
Just two weeks before she was set to graduate and step into her role as a military police officer, Roland’s superiors summoned her. “We noticed you’re having trouble, and it’s too late to recycle you,” she remembers them saying. “We’re sending you home.”
Her discharge was “honorable with erroneous enlistment,” because she says they had misclassified her when she was recruited. It was a small error, according to Roland, and she technically still qualified for military police training. “I’ve never been able to fully understand why they pulled me,” she says.
The discharge left Roland hurt and confused. Back home again, living with her parents, she attempted to pick up where she left off, and eventually returned to the waves and the short board of her youth.
But this time she couldn’t push up to a standing position, she couldn’t balance — she couldn’t surf. Even walking on the sand was painful.
After her failed attempt at surfing, she went to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital to have her knee examined. She says doctors there told her that her days of physical activity were over and that she would never be able to surf again. She soon filed a disability claim with the VA, but it was denied — which is common for someone with an erroneous enlistment discharge.
In the weeks that followed, Roland’s health faded. She lost 30 pounds during her first month back in California. Her parents attributed it to depression – and she was depressed – her newfound physical limitations coupled with her sudden ejection from the military were taking its toll. But she told herself, “I’m Roll-with-it Roland, damn it!” And she carried on.
As a single mother, she supported her daughters by working various administrative jobs around Portland. All the while her health was disintegrating further. She had a partial hysterectomy at 28 and another at 32, suffered from tinnitus, vision loss, insomnia, depression, stomach problems and other ailments that she says just weren’t explainable. She called in sick frequently, unable to get out of bed, making it difficult to hold on to steady employment. Temporary staffing agencies seemed to be the best solution. She liked that she could come in and work a job where she was needed and then move on to the next assignment before being told she was no longer needed.
After her daughters were grown, she continued working temporary jobs and her health continued its downward spiral.
“On Cinco de Mayo, 2009, I found myself in the hospital for an emergency gall bladder removal. The doctor said it was like pulling out a black pile of mush, and after that, the sicknesses just kept getting worse,” she says.
While temporary employment seemed ideal, it wasn’t a perfect solution. In 2010 she became homeless because she was unable to afford a place on her own, even though she was employed at the time. Prior to that, she had been living with her youngest daughter who, then in her early 20s, had already moved out on her own.
Stories she’d heard from other women made her fearful of staying in homeless shelters alone, so Roland slept where she could for the next two and a half years. She bounced between couches, old trailers and garages, and often slept in her 2006 Toyota Tundra.
“The one place I never went was under the bridge,” she says.
Most mornings Roland would use gas station bathrooms to wash up, apply her makeup and get ready for her day at the office. Gas stations also served as a good place to park. She would get acquainted with the graveyard shift so they would watch her truck while she slept in it with her tabby cat, Missy, and her .38 revolver, which she kept loaded with hollow points. Throughout her bout with homelessness, her health made it nearly impossible to escape her situation.
“I would get really sick, and I didn’t understand why. I would have problems with my stomach and just attribute it to stress. It was really hard to keep a job because I was sick so much. I just couldn’t understand why my body was shutting down,” she says.
But regardless of her own situation, Roland maintained her lifelong position as the caretaker to her family. She took care of her sick brother and ran errands for her aging mother. Her parents had moved to Portland shortly before Roland’s father passed away in ’92. She watched over her daughters and two grandchildren and joined up with groups such as Soldiers’ Angels and No Soldier Left Behind, greeting veterans returning from deployment and volunteering where she could. Some days are better than others, and when she’s feeling well, she’s quite capable. She worked as an executive assistant, in payroll and as an office administrator. “I’m really good at what I do,” she says. She even started her own online business making “cube roofs” that filter the flourescent lighting that hangs above cubicles. Last year she traveled to California to audition for a pitch on Shark Tank. But there are many days when she feels groggy and confused, and when the stomach and body pains resurface, it’s difficult to get much done.
Roland was living in the cab of her truck, parked at a 76 gas station in Southeast Portland, when she sought the help of Rick Rutherford, a Veterans Service Officer at Clackamas County. Rutherford encouraged her to appeal her denied disability claim with the VA — after all, it was an injury she got in training and it was still bothering her. As the two went through her extensive health history: two hysterectomies, a gallbladder removal, intestinal problems, tinnitus, vision loss, several miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, Rutherford suggested she file compensation claims with the VA for every single item on the list.
Roland recalls what he told her next as if he’d uttered the words only a moment ago. He said, “We’re going to file a claim for all of it, because — I hate to tell you this — but at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala., you were toxically, chemically poisoned — you are literally being eaten from the inside out.”
The fort closed in 1999 — nine years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the area a Superfund site (the agency’s designation for the country’s most toxic sites in need of cleanup). Chemicals employed during training exercises, such as depleted uranium, Agent Orange, Agent Blue, nerve gas and mustard gas, have contaminated the soil, groundwater and streams on the premises. The same waterways that soldiers like Roland bathed in and drank from while stationed at the fort.
But soldiers at Ft. McClellan were exposed to much more than just the toxins found in chemical weapons and pesticides employed by the Army — in the neighboring town of Anniston, Monsanto had been poisoning the environment for decades.
In its 2002 segment, “Toxic Secret,” 60 Minutes called Anniston the most toxic city in America. PCBs were not only invented in Anniston, Monsanto produced them there for decades. According to CBS News, Monsanto dumped tons of raw PCBs directly into a creek that ran by its facility and buried another 5,000 tons nearby. Fumes from the buried poison continued to seep into the air for years. In 2003, Monsanto settled with the citizens of Anniston for $700 million, but veterans of Ft. McClellan were excluded.
In addition to the area’s PCB contamination from Monsanto and the toxic chemical leakage on the base, nearby Pelham Range, which many Ft. McClellan veterans trained on, was radioactive.
According to the Army’s own assessment of Pelham Range in 1999, the level of radioactive cesium and cobalt found present indicated radiological health hazards. The level of cesium — a byproduct of nuclear fission — was 7 million times the acceptable limit. Veterans who trained at Ft. McClellan up until 1999 were literally slopping around in chemical soup during their training. Drinking it, bathing in it, washing their clothes in it, cooking with it and breathing it in. The long list of toxins they were exposed to comes with an equally long list of physical ailments and disorders that studies have linked to those same toxins.
While the VA acknowledges that Ft. McClellan is a poisonous wasteland, it does not extend medical coverage to what are likely to be exposure-related illnesses brought on from training on the base. Nor has it reached out to let the veterans who trained there know they were training in a toxic environment. Because of this, many military personnel and civilians who worked and lived on the base are still unaware of the potential health risks associated with their time spent at Ft. McClellan.
Roland found similarities between her health problems and the health problems of other Ft. McClellan veterans when she joined a Facebook page whose following comprises thousands of Ft. McClellan veterans calling themselves “toxic soldiers.” It was through this online group that Roland discovered she wasn’t the only Ft. McClellan veteran whose gall bladder had turned to “black mush,” she says. Many others also told of multiple miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other health disorders similar to Roland’s.
In 1989, at the age of 18, Ted Methvin Jr. was sent from Redding, Calif., to train at Ft. McClellan. Like so many others, he too drank from the toxic streams frequently during training.
“We used it for our coffee every morning,” he says.
It wasn’t until February of this year when he searched online for some old Army buddies and stumbled upon the Facebook group that he became aware of his own exposure to toxic chemicals.
Now a filmmaker and screenplay writer, Methvin Jr. and his business partner, Jason Loring, were determined to make a film about the toxic soldiers. They dropped what they were working on and within weeks were in production of a documentary called “Toxic Service: The Soldier’s Story,” which is slated for release by the end of this year.
Methvin Jr. and Loring went to Washington D.C. in July to meet with five members of Congress who had agreed to be interviewed for their film. In all five cases, the filmmakers were met by staff members instead of the representatives they had traveled from California to speak with. Additionally, they were told that no part of their conversations with staff members could be filmed, recorded or quoted.
Methvin Jr.’s multiple attempts to get statements from the VA and Monsanto also failed. “For some reason, nobody wants to talk about this,” says Loring.
Methvin Jr. says he’s heard from more than 3,000 veterans who believe they are experiencing health problems directly resulting from their exposure to toxins at Ft. McClellan. “That’s a small number compared to the number of vets who went through there. As of right now, the rough estimate is 650,000,” says Methvin Jr., and that’s not including civilian employees and children. Because exposure to some of the poisons found on the base can change a person’s DNA, the effects can be passed on for generations, resulting in birth defects, autism and other malaise.
“Some of these vets and the stories they have to tell about their health problems and the things they’ve experienced due to exposure from their training at Ft. McClellan are just so utterly heartbreaking,” Loring says.
Some veterans’ groups are pushing for legislation, introduced two years ago, that would create a Ft. McClellan health registry to test and chronicle soldiers’ impact from exposure. Another bill that’s been introduced in the House of Representatives would extend benefits to the children of toxically poisoned veterans and create a center at the VA that would specialize in diagnosing and treating toxic exposure. However, lacking any political priority, both bills continue to languish in committee.
“That’s part of the problem with these veterans trying to get the medical care that they need at the VA,” says Loring. “There’s no attention on it, and no one cares if there is no attention on it.”
While the military recognizes that Ft. McClellan is highly toxic, it does not recognize the link to health problems it’s caused veterans, say Methvin Jr. and Loring. They hope their film will bring the issue to the forefront so that sick veterans can get the medical care they deserve.
On Jan. 17, veterans of Ft. McClellan plan to march from the Washington, D.C., Department of Veterans Affairs to the White House to raise awareness of the issue.
In the meantime, veterans like Roland file claims with the VA that may never be approved. Around Christmas her appeal will have reached the 420-day mark — the average amount of time it takes to hear back on a claim from the VA, she’s been told. Now living in an apartment in Milwaukie, she says getting the compensation claim approved would be the best Christmas present she could hope for. Her credit cards maxed out and her savings gone, she’s already put some of her belongings back in storage in case she ends up living out of her vehicle again in January when her lease ends and her rent goes up.
She often wonders what her life would have been like if she hadn’t been so stubborn about cutting her hair 32 years ago and had followed in her father’s footsteps and joined the Navy instead.
“I signed the dotted line. I was willing to die for my country,” says Roland. “I just never thought I’d be dying like this.”
A toxic legacy
emily@streetroots.org
