Missouri WWII veteran says he was exposed to mustard gas

By Chuck Raasch

In the final days of World War II, an 18-year-old Army private from Missouri named Arla Wayne Harrell was sent to Camp Crowder in the southwest corner of the state, where he said he was twice exposed to mustard gas.

He didn’t talk about it for years. When he finally did, he told his family that the Army warned him he’d be thrown in jail if he ever disclosed the experiments. Harrell, known as “Arlie,” has been rejected three times by the Department of Veterans Affairs for claims to help treat a lung disorder and skin cancer that his family believes are connected to that exposure, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Harrell, who turns 89 next month, is in a nursing home in Macon, Mo., 180 miles northwest of St. Louis, unable to walk or talk. But his family hopes his final appeal to the VA will get him the recognition from the government they believe he deserves.

The VA has said he needs more documentation — “new and material evidence,” as a 2006 rejection letter describes it
— to prove the claim. Harrell’s family said that’s impossible. He was 18 at the time and had been warned to never talk. At the time, Harrell was new in the military and didn’t know or doesn’t remember the names of other men exposed with him. His children think he purposely blocked out the experience.

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