Former marine becomes face of new Vieques battle

The headaches began just after Hermogenes Marrero arrived on Vieques, the small Puerto Rican island where the young U.S. Marine guarded stores of Cold War-era chemical weapons.

The retired sergeant, now 57 and terminally ill with cancer and other ailments, blames exposure to toxins released while he was stationed there from 1970 to 1972. By coming forward to support similar claims by island residents, he has become the public face of a new and bitter battle over Vieques, the Navy bombing range-turned-tourist destination off the U.S. territory's east coast.

"I've been sick since I left Vieques," said the wheelchair-bound Marrero, who now lives in an apartment cramped with life-support equipment in this small town in northwestern Puerto Rico.

Marrero is a key witness in a lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in compensation for illnesses that past and current Vieques residents have linked to the bombing range, where the U.S. and its allies trained for conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq.

The range closed in 2003 after years of protests over the environmental risks and the death of a Puerto Rican civilian guard who was killed in 1999 by an errant bomb. Many had long complained about clouds of smoke and dust wafting toward populated areas and explosions echoing across the hilly, 18-mile-long island of less than 10,000 people.

The U.S. has denied any link between illnesses and weapons that rained down on the island for six decades. With independent studies suggesting otherwise, however, a federal health agency recently began a new analysis of the situation.

Marrero, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New York City, has had colon cancer twice. He is losing his vision and suffers from more than dozen other illnesses, including Lou Gehrig's disease, that he believes are lingering effects of his 18 months at Camp Garcia. He said he was recently diagnosed with a new bout of cancer that is inoperable in part because of a lung disease that requires him to stay on oxygen around the clock.

He is not party to the lawsuit because it is limited to Vieques residents, and involves more than 7,000 of them. But he has been fighting his own battle to have his ailments recognized as service casualties.

The chemicals he handled included canisters labeled "112" — a reference, he later surmised, to the secret Project 112 program that tested chemical and biological agents and was declassified by the Pentagon earlier this decade.

During some of the tests, he said, the military assessed how long it took an aerosol spray of chemicals to kill animals such as tethered goats. Though superiors said he was a safe distance from the tests, he was overwhelmed by a smell like roach spray every time he opened the door to the chemical warehouses. He said he vomited constantly.

"I asked 'How dangerous is that stuff? I'm watching animals drop dead,'" Marrero said. "They told me I'd be fine."

The military also experimented with napalm, depleted uranium and agent orange, besides the millions of pounds of ordnance that Navy aircraft and ships dropped annually on Vieques. A cleanup began in 2005 to clear thousands of unexploded munitions from the former training range site that is now a Fish and Wildlife Service refuge, and the island has placed new emphasis on tourism.

The Mississippi attorney for the plaintiffs in the Vieques lawsuit, John Eaves Jr., said Marrero's account is crucial to understanding the legacy of contamination.