THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Bad enough that combat troops have to beware of enemy fire and friendly fire in combat, accidental deaths from the tools of their trade and suicides from lack of proper support when they get home, now there is a new killer appearing on the scene, cancer.

Coleen’s husband, Army Sgt. Maj. Robert Bowman, 44, was an Army Ranger who deployed to Iraq in 2004 with Recon platoon of the Fort Lewis, Washington-based 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment. His armored Stryker was hit by enemy fire at least 13 times during his 12 months overseas. Each time, depleted uranium in the Stryker’s armor would absorb the attack.

In retrospect, Coleen wonders what harmful particles shook loose in those blasts, what her husband breathed in. Bowman went back to Iraq in 2007 for another 15 months.

Once home, he started to feel ill. Visits to doctors suggested he had the flu. Finally, in 2011 Bowman got the diagnosis: cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer. It is a rare cancer in the general population, and very rare for someone as young as Rob.

But it’s not unusual to see rare cancers in younger service members anymore.

“It just was more and more families coming forward with exactly the same story,” Carroll said. “Stories of young service members who went into deployed areas perfectly healthy, and then came home and at a young age who were suddenly Stage 4 with very rare cancers.”

The stories don’t surprise Coleen. Her husband was a respected senior enlisted leader who was very close to his platoon. She has stayed in touch with the majority of them. Many of them are ill.

“Over a third of them had something wrong with them or have passed away,” Coleen Bowman said. She’s heard of several cases of brain tumors and other “strange tumors that they don’t even know what it is.”

For now, most of the data is anecdotal. It is stories passed from one spouse to another or by veterans in online forums or private support groups. The various databases run by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Defense Department that track cancer-related entries for health care are unwieldy or inaccessible for compiling trends.

There are also government registries where service members can self-report. But getting holistic, specific information on what units may have been exposed to, what illnesses its members are suffering from, and tying those illnesses to military service is difficult.

For certain this administration will do nothing to determine if there is a problem. But perhaps the real problem is the boy wonder who thought that depleted uranium was safe to use. Lord knows we have acquired a huge pile over the years but there is a big difference between no longer usable for nuclear purposes and no longer radioactive. And the dust is small enough to go all kinds of oplaces it shouldn't be. Maybe now someone will make sense of what is now anecdotal and get the proper measures and treatments in place sooner that usual.