Maine soldier gets much-deserved recognition years after service - Decades Delayed for Enewetak Atol
Chris Rose, WCSH 10:16 PM. EDT May 26, 2017
AUGUSTA, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- They are the unknown soldiers who served their country in an extremely dangerous environment. Maine veteran awarded Humanitarian Service Medal, WCSH news cast of award ceremony.
Now their stories are coming to light, including that of one man from Maine. Paul Laird of Otisfield was awarded on Friday his long overdue Humanitarian Service Medal, for his once classified work on a small island in the Pacific Ocean.
From 1948 to 1952, the U.S. tested more than 40 nuclear weapons on several small islands in the Pacific Oceans.
"We found out the equivalency of radiation that had been dumped there was supposedly equal to 3,133 Hiroshima bombs," Laird said.
Laird is talking about Enewetak Atoll, the island where he was sent as a 20-year-old, to clean up the radioactive debris.
"When you piled it up and dumped it in the back of the truck, it was like, poof, exploded out of the truck," he said.
Paul and the other members of the Army's 84th Engineer Battalion were sent to do the work without any protection.
"At the end of the day all you could see was the whites of your eyes and your teeth if you smiled," he said, "because you were covered in that stuff."
He did it for a month until the day his captain showed up wearing a full hazmat suit.
"I kind of looked over at him and I looked at me. 'What's wrong with this picture? What does he know that I don't know?'" he said.
Years later Paul would battle three different forms of cancer. None of his care was covered by the Veterans Administration because he could not prove his illnesses were directly related to his service.
"Well, my first reaction was, this is wrong. It doesn't make any sense and it's so clear there is a connection," said Maine Sen. Angus King.
Sen. King has submitted a bill to Congress that would change that. He also had his staff work with the Pentagon to finally get Paul the medal he deserved. During a small ceremony on Friday, he was awarded that medal.
"To me, personally, I am very honored to get the medal. I earned it. I feel I deserve the medal," Laird said, "but is the medal the most important thing to me right now? No. What's important to me, is to see the rest of my brothers and me get taken care of for what was done to us."
King's bill would extend VA benefits to those who helped clean up the Marshall Islands. Under the bill, illnesses contracted by people who served there will be presumed to be service-related.
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