| Only after a 2014 Times investigation revealed that there had been numerous incidents of American service members |
| | | Dear reader, | | Last week I published a story on a previously unreported incident in which four Air Force combat search-and-rescue airmen were exposed to a chemical-warfare agent at Camp Taji in northern Iraq in 2005. After the exposure, all four of them developed health issues — including chronic migraines, breathing problems and muscle spasms — but the military didn't acknowledge that these symptoms all stemmed from the incident. | | Only after a 2014 Times investigation revealed that there had been numerous incidents of American service members wounded in Iraq by abandoned chemical weapons of the pre-1991 era did the Pentagon publicly recognize the issue and offer a fix. For the government, the case of these four airmen wounded at Taji should have been easy: In 2015, the under secretary of the Army set up a program to evaluate, recognize and treat troops who had been wounded by chemical agents. But Annette Nellis, Ronnie Walker, Brian Ornstein and Steven May seemed to have slipped through the cracks after their medical evaluations. | | Walker did not think much about the Taji incident until he started having health problems when he returned from a deployment to Afghanistan in late 2006. | | "I got back and started having bad muscle spasms in my back and shoulder," Walker says. "They put me in physical therapy for four months, and then they said, 'You can deploy again.'" When the problems persisted on another deployment to Afghanistan, Walker was told he was suffering from combat stress. He retired from the Air Force in December 2010 following 20 years of service. Before his retirement, a neurological consultation found herniated discs in his neck, so Air Force doctors performed a spinal fusion. | | |
 Matt Eich for The New York Times | | |
| But the shaking in his hands continued. "I had tremors so bad it was like I had Parkinson's disease," Walker says. Combined with chronic pain and intermittent numbness in his fingers, his condition worsened, and he spent most of 2012 bedridden. He went on disability. He sought help from doctors at a nearby Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, but found that the main relief the doctors offered was pharmaceutical. "The only thing the V.A. would do is feed me pain meds," Walker says. "They had me on 15 milligrams of morphine and five or six Vicodin a day." | | Damage to his airway worsened as well. "I had to have my sinuses carved out with a laser," Walker says. Rashes still appear intermittently on his skin from his elbows to his wrist — the same places that were exposed that night in Taji, where he had his sleeves cuffed to cool down in the stifling heat. The three other airmen exposed with him have experienced similar health issues. | | In 2016, Walker was evaluated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center under the Army's new system for identifying exposed troops. He should have received a letter from the Army Public Health Center summarizing the findings of his evaluation. Walker says that letter hasn't arrived. | | After my story was published, one of Walker's fellow airmen, Annette Nellis, told me that the Army Public Health Center had reopened all four of their cases. What happens next remains to be seen. | | -John | | John Ismay is a staff writer who covers armed conflict for The New York Times Magazine. He is based in Washington. He can be reached at john.ismay@nytimes.com. | | |
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