Roosevelt Woods, who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, says the government is again ignoring veterans' complaints. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

For a soldier in the Persian Gulf War, Steven Hegley couldn't have gotten stuck at a worse place at a worse time on March 4, 1991.

That was the day Army engineers carried out the first of two large-scale weapons demolitions at Khamisiyah, Iraq, the week after the ground war ended.

Mr. Hegley, a sergeant with the Army's 3-58th Aviation Regiment, was part of a convoy that had halted along Iraq's Highway 8 after the lead Humvee triggered a land mine when it veered off the road to pass a burned-out Iraqi tank.

He and five other men were along the edge of the road waiting for an airlift when the bunkers exploded a few miles away, erupting in mushrooms of fire and smoke. They heard the wailing of chemical alarms in the distance.

ADVERTISEMENT   Click here to contact us.

Soon after the war, Mr. Hegley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disabling disease of the central nervous system. He was medically discharged from the Army in 1997 and was awarded 100 percent disability for a service-connected illness by the government.

He now lives bedridden and heavily medicated in his Martinez home. He blames the fires of Khamisiyah.

"That's what caused my disease," he said. "I was exposed to sarin nerve gas."

His story is one of many shared with The Augusta Chronicle after a series of articles ran earlier this month on the 1148th Transportation Company's experiences in the war and the health troubles that followed. The Chronicle tracked down 102 of the 166 men and women deployed with the Army National Guard unit, 75 of whom claimed to have ailments they attribute to gulf war service.

Photo of Steven Hegley from his service in the Gulf War. SPECIAL

It is estimated that more than 100,000 veterans have been afflicted by gulf war-related illnesses, most of whom, unlike Mr. Hegley, have yet to receive or seek disability benefits from the government.

Most calls came from veterans of other Augusta-area-based units who wanted to say that they also suffer postwar illnesses.

LINDA DeGUTES is one of those. As far as she is concerned, she's the poster child for those gulf war veterans who didn't see action during Desert Storm but are suffering from unexplained illnesses.

The war ended before she could be shipped out to join the 382nd Army Reserve Field Hospital unit out of Augusta. When the unit of about 350 members returned from Saudi Arabia in March 1991, though, it brought back something Mrs. DeGutes says has prevented her from doing what she loves: being a nurse.

"I can tell you that the 382nd brought back a lot of their equipment, gas suits, field gear, gas masks - you name it," she said. "We spent a long time cleaning desert sand out of everything.

"I really believe that there was something brought back, and it was biological."

Mrs. DeGutes, 59, recalls that her health problems started in 1993 after a field exercise with the unit. A week later, her joints and muscles ached so much she could hardly walk. She started having memory problems.

Nowadays, Mrs. DeGutes keeps a note in her wallet detailing her physical problems and medicines she takes in case her memory fails. The list has grown to include chronic fatigue, rashes, thyroid problems, vision problems (her eyesight has gone from 20/20 to 20/200) and a heart attack in 1999.

An incident in 1995 opened her eyes to how bad her health had become. Mrs. DeGutes said she was teaching a nursing class at Augusta Technical College when she forgot why she was there.

"It came on insidiously. I'm teaching a class at Augusta Tech of nursing assistants, and I'm thinking, where was I," she said.

Mrs. DeGutes left Augusta with her husband shortly afterward to become the director of nursing at LaFayette Health Care in LaFayette, Ga. She quit the $45,000 job in 1998 because of her health problems. Since then, she has been unable to work.

Steven Hegley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis shortly after returning from the Persian Gulf. He and his wife, Doris, moved to Augusta to be near the VA's spinal cord injury unit. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

Mrs. DeGutes resigned her commission as a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve last year because she feared it would interfere with her getting Social Security. She now gets a monthly check of slightly more than $1,000.

"I have all this knowledge, but where can I use it?" Mrs. DeGutes said. "Who's going to hire a nurse who can only work a few hours?"

WHEN CALVIN COOKS returned from the war in July 1991, those closest to him saw the changes right away.

He had problems concentrating and was more distant. His unit, Aiken's 450th Ordnance Company, had spent 251 days in the Saudi desert, which was more time in the Middle East than any of the 14 units to leave Fort Gordon for Desert Shield/Desert Storm.

"My wife knew something was happening to me. My children could see it," the Trenton, S.C., resident said. "I was kind of in denial."

Now Mr. Cooks, a manager at Savannah River Site, acknowledges a variety of health problems, which he attributes to his gulf war service. He says he fatigues easily, has joint and muscle aches, hardly sleeps and has short-term memory loss and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is giving him 20 percent disability compensation for the disorder but has denied his claim for the other ailments, which the federal agency classifies as undiagnosed illnesses.

Like many other units deployed to the Persian Gulf, the 450th was exposed to a number of elements some researchers link to gulf war illnesses. The 196-member Army Reserve unit came within 50 miles of the Kuwaiti oil well fires set by fleeing Iraqi troops.

Members of the 450th also were injected with anthrax vaccine and took pyridostigmine bromide pills to boost their immune systems in case of a nerve agent attack.

This photograph of the explosion at the Khamisiyah site appears in an online report at the government's gulf war illnesses website. SPECIAL

Perhaps even more germane, as an ordnance unit in support of the 7th Corps, the 450th handled about 140,000 rounds of ammunition containing depleted uranium. U.S. forces used the slightly radioactive heavy metal in bullets and shells because of its effectiveness in piercing armor.

As a retired 23-year veteran of active and reserve military service, Mr. Cooks frets that similar health problems will befall U.S. troops if there is another war with Iraq. It galls him that the government hasn't determined - or revealed - what's causing the first gulf war veterans to get sick.

"They keep dishing out money for studies and tests for 12 years now, and we're still in the same spot as we were before," Mr. Cooks said.

AS A VETERAN of both the Persian Gulf and the Vietnam wars, Roosevelt Woods sees an unfortunate parallel between the two.

Soldiers in both conflicts had problems getting compensated by the government for health problems they believe to be service connected.

"They screwed with Vietnam vets, and they'll do the same thing with the Persian Gulf vets," he said recently at his south Augusta home. "It took them 20 years before they recognized Agent Orange. Now we're going to gulf war syndrome. By the time they recognize it, people will be dead."

Mr. Woods, 55, said he fears that he could be one of those. He almost was.

Mr. Woods was a platoon sergeant with the 319th Transportation Company out of Fort Gordon, an Army Reserve unit that hauled fuel and water during its five months in Saudi Arabia.

The unit returned from the gulf May 21, 1991, and it didn't take Mr. Woods' wife long to notice something different about her husband.

"He was very, very jumpy all the times," Dianna Woods said. "The least little thing gets on his nerves."

Soon, the man his friends call "Cadillac" started experiencing periodic rashes on his arms, stomach and back. He still has difficulty sleeping and has concentration problems.

Those problems pale in comparison to what happened to him two years ago. He began having constant headaches. In January 2000, his head began hurting so bad that he couldn't go to work at his job at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. His wife rushed him to the hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery for a brain aneurism.

The VA has denied Mr. Woods' claim for disability. Mr. Woods, who left the unit in 1998 after 25 years of active and reserve duty, said that he knows some veterans are trying to beat the government out of money but that he isn't one of them.

"I want what I know, and I believe, that is due to me," he said. "That's all I want. I don't want no more."

MR. HEGLEY WAS able to get the compensation he needs thanks, in part, to photos he took along the roadside of Highway 8 - some showing the thick, gray smoke emanating from Khamisiyah.

Years later, the Department of Defense conceded that the bunkers, warehouses and the munitions dump known as "the Pit" destroyed at Khamisiyah contained chemical weapons. It mailed letters to veterans whose units were in the area at the time, explaining that they might have been exposed, but Mr. Hegley didn't receive one because his unit wasn't stationed in the vicinity.

A Pennsylvania native, Mr. Hegley moved to the Augusta area with his wife, Doris, 42, and their two sons to be near the VA's spinal cord injury unit. He leaves his home only for trips to the VA. His wife provides 24-hour care.

Without the government's help, Mrs. Hegley said, she doesn't know where they would be.

"We're getting the best care," she said. "We couldn't ask for more."

Reach Mike Wynn at (706) 823-3218 or Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225.