After more than two decades of appeals and denials, and involvement by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the Department of Veterans Affairs has granted benefits dating to 1991 for a Missouri World War II veteran exposed to mustard gas at a war-time camp in the southwestern corner of the state.
The family of Arla Wayne Harrell was informed last Monday by McCaskill’s office of the decision, by a VA appeals panel, that Harrell had proven exposure and that it had led to some of the health problems he had experienced since 1945. He is in a nursing home in Macon and his family planned to inform him of the decision either last Monday night or Tuesday.
Harrell, 90, and later his children, had spent years in multiple appeals, but the government denied exposure and argued that even if exposure had occurred, that Harrell had not proven that it led to cancer and pulmonary emphysema.
The VA, whose current administrator, David Shulkin, said he believed Harrell, reversed itself in this latest decision. Mc-Caskill got legislation passed that shifted the burden of proof toward the government for the few surviving veterans out of hundreds of thousands exposed to mustard gas in once-secret experiments during the war.
In a “findings of fact” document, the VA concluded that “the veteran was subjected to full-body exposure to mustard gas while he was stationed at Camp Crowder, Mo., during World War II.”
The document goes on to say that “the veteran has been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a disease that is presumed to be associated with mustard gas exposure.”
It also said that the emphysema was proven to come from the exposure, as well.
Beverly Howe, one of Harrell’s three daughters, said that the family had been denied so long that the decision came as “a shock.”
“I think he is going to be thrilled that the VA is recognizing it did happen,” Howe said of her father.
“I look at it as historical, actually, that this is a part of our history, our family’s as well as our nation’s,” Howe, a nurse trained in chemical exposures, said. “To me it is a huge deal that the VA is finally coming to terms with these veterans.”
Harrell was 18 in 1945 when he enlisted at Camp Crowder and was twice exposed in experiments that the Army had kept secret for decades after the war. They were done, in part, in anticipation of the Germans or other enemies repeating the widespread use of chemical weapons in World War I.
Harrell’s children said he had struggled with his breath and stamina throughout his adult life. He did not talk about the exposure for decades. He’d told his daughters he had been treatened with military prison if he did.
Howe, and McCaskill aides, said Arla Harrell would receive a lump-sum payment dating to 1991, when he first filed claims, and monthly assistance from now on. Howe said her mother, Betty, had to sell the family home because she use the proceeds to keep her husband in a private room.