James Loveless knew he was watching a ground assault, but to the 17-year-old seaman, the bursts of light looked like fireworks.

It was April 1966, and Loveless was on board the USS Princeton, on the coastline north of the Vietnamese demilitarized zone.

Loveless was spellbound by the spectacle on the beach, which reminded him of the nighttime fireworks displays at the fair in his hometown of Ionia, Mich.

But the colorful bursts of light soon gave way to the darkness of war, and medical helicopters carrying their bloody cargo. Loveless soon was experiencing the horrors of armed conflict, complete with dismembered bodies and Agent Orange. It gave way to insanity.

Leaving the war zone brought little relief.

Wracked by his new, awful recollections, Loveless became a different person. He drank, fought and collected dozens of naval violations. He spent most of his final years of service in naval brigs before receiving a dishonorable discharge.

Following his discharge, he continued to resort to alcohol to fog the images he collected as a stretcher bearer, carrying screaming men torn in half by shrapnel.

It took Loveless nine years to pull himself out of his drunken stupor. He realized post-traumatic stress disorder had made him lose his mind. He requested, and was awarded, a discharge upgrade, having it elevated to honorable. He avoided others for decades until his body failed him. In 2002, he began having trouble concentrating and keeping his balance. He has since been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Fellow veterans and doctors have suggested his illnesses are linked to his contact with Agent Orange in Vietnam. Yet despite receiving the discharge upgrade, Loveless has yet to receive a dime from the government to pay for his cancer treatment.

He has appealed the government’s decision, but hearings are continually delayed.

“They’ve had me on hold for a year and a half,” he said. “I don’t know what they are waiting ...

“Yes I do. They are waiting for me to die.”

The sea man

A sense of duty and a love of water compelled Loveless to enlist in the Navy.

“I believed in my country and I loved the ocean,” he said recently. “I loved the serenity of it, the peacefulness of it.”

Like the ocean, the Vietnam veteran is a picture of calm when he is at rest. His motions are slow and methodic. His bright blue eyes thoughtful. He measures his words carefully before they spill out in a gravely voice that is at once soft and powerful.

His outward appearance is deceiving. Loveless is often in a lot of pain, he said, both physically and mentally.

An unanticipated noise causes him to bolt out of his chair, his neck craning to locate the sound’s origin. Although his memory is riddled with holes, certain experiences cling to him, refusing to let him rest.

He remembers carrying an injured man on a stretcher who had lost his legs just below the hips. The man would attempt to sit up and grab where his legs should have been, only to fall back with blood flying everywhere. Loveless remembers him yelling all the way to sick bay.

“As a matter of fact, he is still yelling in my head. This was my first of many screaming stretchers and the start of a so far 38-year nightmare,” Loveless wrote in a claim report he submitted in 2004.

Stress was not Loveless’ only problem. He was volunteered, he said, to help train a new technician with the ship’s X-ray equipment. The next day, the technician apologetically informed Loveless he had accidentally been exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation.

On several occasions, he helped mix Agent Orange herbicide on ship deck at concentrations far higher than was recommended.

Finally, as the Princeton was heading home, the crew was ordered to perform a shipboard hazard and defense operation. The ship would be sprayed with biochemical warfare agents to determine their effects on the crew. He originally went below deck with most of the other crew mates, but he returned after several minutes.

“I looked around and everything was kind of wet, but not with water, it seemed like a light oil and I thought I could smell kerosene,” he wrote in his appeal. “That was when I snapped and thought, ‘What the hell was I doing up there?’”

According to his enlisted performance record, Loveless showed marked improvement as a seaman until he participated in the hazard and defense operation. Following September 1966, his spreadsheet is covered with courts-martial and nonjudicial punishments.

Loveless admits he cannot recall his later years in the service, but he knows he became disenchanted with the war effort.

“I decided what we were doing was 100-percent absolutely wrong,” he said. “Mass murder of civilians was unacceptable to me, and I couldn’t do it.”

Loveless said he was a law-abiding citizen before going to Vietnam, and his violent behavior was due to PTSD.

“I was insane.”

Two Bears

Loveless was dishonorably discharged on June 17, 1968, an old man at the age of 20. He assumed the moniker Two Bears, claiming his former self had been destroyed in the violence of the war.

Two Bears cannot remember anything until 1977, the year he gave up drinking.

“I was drunk from Vietnam on,” he recalled.

It was in 1977 when he applied for a discharge upgrade, noting his condition had been a result of his experiences in the service. On Sept. 12, 1977, he received a letter from the Department of the Navy, awarding him the designation. Satisfied with this outcome, Two Bears abandoned the conventional lifestyle. He took to living in the woods, finding shelter wherever he could.

“Tree roots worked the best,” he said.

Two Bears’ nomadic years ended in 2002, when the latest effects of Vietnam began to manifest.

He contacted the Department of Veteran Affairs, only to learn the Navy’s 1977 upgrade did not entitle him to benefits. They cited a decision from 1972, making no reference to the Navy’s finding.

Then, in May 2005, the VA reversed its decision, notifying him his discharge was honorable and he qualified for benefits. Before he could establish a claim, however, another ruling was sent his way, saying, once again, he was not entitled to benefits.

Victor Diaz, director of Southwest Oregon Veterans Outreach, said it is not unusual for veterans to have trouble getting benefits.

“Oh yeah, I have a file cabinet full of (cases),” he said.

Two Bears’ case gave Diaz pause. Although by law, the VA is barred from giving a veteran with a dishonorable discharge benefits, if Two Bears received an upgrade, the government shouldn’t have denied him.

“I could make a case that the VA erred,” he said.

Frank Roberts, a fellow Vietnam veteran and a lawyer practicing in Gold Beach, assisted Two Bears in trying to acquire benefits. He directed Two Bears to a VA representative hired by Curry County to assist veterans in such instances.

The case went nowhere.

“It makes absolutely no sense because all of his health problems are recognized by the VA as caused by Agent Orange,” Roberts said. “He’s a guy that keeps falling through the cracks.”

During his compensation battles, Two Bears visited the VA clinic in Bandon. He was seen by Dr. Rodolfo N. Trevino, who, in a letter dated Jan. 1, 2008, diagnosed his cancer.

“Since he has a history of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, there is a possible direct cause/effect connection to this diagnosis,” Trevino wrote.

Two Bears’ primary care doctor, Dr. Thomas Pitchford, also thinks he  deserves benefits. Pitchford said Two Bears came to him because of an elevated white blood cell count.

Originally at 17,000, Two Bears’ count within a few months had climbed to more than 100,000. A healthy person has a white blood cell count under 11,000. Pitchford said Two Bears also has demonstrated memory problems, fatigue and being prone to infection, all symptoms of exposure to Agent Orange (see sidebar).

Receiving benefits and treatment may not save Two Bears, Pitchford said.

“That I don’t know. I’m not an expert in lymphoma.

“But he is definitely sick.”

Roberts said it is not fair that Two Bears would be denied treatment due to behavior influenced by his service.

“When soldiers go through serious combat situations and are in areas that are saturated with chemicals like Agent Orange, it creates some serious problems for them,” he said. “It’s sad. It’s another one of those ugly situations and no one understands why the VA doesn’t remedy it.”

Waiting to die

Two Bears has resigned himself to his fate. He expects to be dead in a matter of months.

“I’ve had enough. (Death) does not scare me,” he said.

Rather, his concern is for soldiers currently involved in foreign wars who might face the same fate.

“They are going to have 200,000 Iraq vets who are going to go through the same thing,” he said, swiveling in his chair, his voice conveying a sense of anger. “If they haven’t taken care of the Vietnam veterans, how can they take care of Iraq veterans?”

Two Bears understands it is difficult for people to believe him, given his mental problems. All he has to offer are his memories and the documents he has collected over the years. He keeps a firm grip on the dog-eared pages, which he flips through and thrusts forward to make his point.

“I understand I have a lack of credibility,” he said. “But I know. I was there.”

—Staff Writer Jolene Guzman contributed to this article.