Years after war, a son is lost

There are 58,245 names of the fallen on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Many more have died prematurely as a result of injuries, illnesses and emotional suffering that was a result of the war.

One such casualty, a Spokane native and former scout pilot for the 1st Air Cavalry, will be honored Monday at “the Wall” in Washington, D.C. George Bartol died in October of brain cancer linked to his exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange during two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was 59.

Bartol’s name will be one of 137 veterans’ names to be read at the memorial and added to the “In Memory Honor Roll” by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to build the Wall and to preserve its legacy.

“The Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands for all who fought and died in this war, but government regulations restrict whose name may be inscribed,” said Jan C. Scruggs, the fund’s founder and president. “Nevertheless, they are heroes whose shoulders carried the burden of the war long after their return from battle.”

Bartol, a graduate of Gonzaga Prep and Eastern Washington University, enlisted in the Army in 1965, according to his daughter, Heather Bartol, of Orlando, Fla. A short time later, he was sent to Vietnam as an aircraft mechanic.

“Following the end of his first enlistment in the Army, my father was forced to make a decision that would change his life forever,” his daughter said.

Flying was Bartol’s lifelong dream, and the Army offered him the chance to go to flight school. He accepted, although he knew it meant another tour in Vietnam. He returned to the war in 1968 as a scout pilot with the legendary A Troop, 1st Battalion of the 9th Cavalry Regiment.

Flying a helicopter gunship just above the treetops to locate the enemy “was one of the most dangerous jobs anyone could have had in Vietnam,” Heather Bartol said.

One of George Bartol’s most vivid memories was of a 1969 incident in which he was guiding a company of U.S. soldiers back to base camp as they were being pursued and fired on by the enemy, Bartol’s wife, Sue, said in a telephone interview this week from her home in Perdido Key, Fla.

The helicopter gunship provided protection for the desperate soldiers, but as the men neared the base perimeter, Bartol told his wife, a U.S. soldier was cut down by friendly fire.

“It’s what bothered him the most,” Sue Bartol said of her husband, “knowing that guy was so afraid, and working so hard to get him so close, and then to see him shot.”

She said her husband sometimes wondered if the United States did the right thing by going to Vietnam.

“His biggest concern is that we didn’t go into it to win,” she said. “Somehow, we lost our focus,” her husband believed, “and unfortunately it was all these young men that paid the price.”

Bartol flew 180 combat missions to complete his second tour of duty in Vietnam and was discharged from the Army in 1970. His military honors included the Bronze Star, the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal.

He survived enemy fire only to succumb, 34 years later, to a poison of his own nation’s making.

Agent Orange was the name given to a mix of two herbicides, 2,4,D and 2,4,5,T. When added to kerosene or diesel fuel, the mix could be dispersed to rob the enemy of ground cover. According to military and the Department of Veterans Affairs documents, more than 19 million gallons of it was dumped on South Vietnam before its use was discontinued in 1971.

Numerous studies have determined that Agent Orange, so named because of the orange band around the 55-gallon barrels in which it was stored, was contaminated with TCDD, a highly carcinogenic dioxin.

Federal law prohibits veterans from suing the government for injuries sustained while in the military. Federal courts have thwarted attempts to sue the manufacturers.

The Department of Veterans Affairs offers service-connected compensation for certain diseases believed to be associated with Agent Orange exposure, including Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, sarcoma, various other cancers and diabetes.

In Vietnam, the substance was sprayed around U.S. military installations and from aircraft. Bartol often flew his open helicopter below such aircraft, Sue Bartol said.

After his career in the Army, Bartol flew for Petroleum Helicopters in Florida for 33 years. Many of the company’s pilots were Vietnam vets, Sue Bartol said, and an alarming number of them have various types of cancers.

In April 2003, when he was 58, George Bartol was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and was given a 100 percent service-connected disability by the VA, which recognized his illness had resulted from his exposures in Vietnam to Agent Orange and aircraft fuel.

According to his wife and daughter, Bartol was never bitter about the diagnosis.

“I’ve never seen anybody make peace that quickly with anything,” Sue Bartol said. “I’ve never seen anybody handle death with such dignity.”

He died Oct. 16, 2004, while living in Winter Park, Fla. He was the third son his parents, Jack and Wanna Bartol of Spokane, have lost. Two of their sons were murdered in 1982 by a gunman as they left a Seattle cinema.

Bartol is survived by his wife and three daughters, all of Florida, his parents and four sisters.

They and more than 1,000 family members and friends of the deceased Vietnam War veterans to be honored Monday will gather for the seventh annual In Memory Day ceremony at the Wall, which coincides with Patriot’s Day on the third Monday in April. With the inclusion of these 137 soldiers, 1,500 names will be listed on the In Memory Honor Roll.

Many of them have died as a result of Agent Orange exposure, said JoAnn Mangione, a spokeswoman for the Vietnam Memorial Veterans Fund. Others are suicide victims “whose emotional wounds were so heavy they could not take it anymore.”

“Many more have passed away that we don’t know about,” Mangione said. “There could be thousands.”