Transcript
I had a top cover bloke in the aeroplane. One of whom didn't come home. He got killed in action, too. Steve Scrivener. Loveliest fellow that ever walked the earth. He was a 24 year old American fellow who had been trained up in F16 fighters and now he got sent to Vietnam as a forward air controller. He was a beautiful man. Didn't come home.
His name's on the wall in Washington D.C. It's a very sad occurrence but a lot of guys got really screwed up about it and illnesses, psoriasis, eczema, some of the skin complaints. Alf Argent, Lieutenant-Colonel, aviator. I think he might have been right back to the Korean time as well, lovely fellow, major skin problems from the Agent Orange and we also had a lot of very, very toxic insecticide type stuff sprayed on us.
And it was done in particular, I was there in May of 71, they were spraying our base and this left blobs all over the helicopter. Now we subsequently learned that there was Dieldrin, Lindane, Chlordane, these various chemicals they were using, most of which are damn near banned in Australia. Really, really dangerous stuff and some bureaucrat had the hide to say recently, "Oh, no, it probably didn't do any harm".
Crap. I bet he wouldn't put his family out and let us spray them. It was Malathion and I think Dieldrin is over 260 times more dangerous than DDT. Dreadful stuff...Well, that was sprayed on us. And in fact, I think the blokes, well, whether they're in the base or out in the field they all got sprayed at some point. Anyhow, that was the after. I've been pretty healthy, I have had cancer.
The rate of prostate cancer was studied in the United States, on 50,000 Vietnam veterans. Discovered that the rate was double that of the national average. Here, there was a study done, it's greater but not to that extent. So I got lucky. I got diagnosed and I got the prostate removed. I'm fine. That was six years ago. So I got lucky.
