MILWAUKEE — It’s been nearly three years since TMJ4's Andrea Williams boarded a Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. with Mr. Mynelious Magee, but she remembers the conversation as if it happened yesterday.
On that plane, Magee—a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran—spoke quietly but powerfully about his ongoing health battles: prostate cancer, kidney cancer, and relentless back pain. His voice was steady, yet every word carried the weight of a long, hard fight.
Magee was drafted into the Marine Corps at 18, pulled from his Mississippi home and sent to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in 1966.
Like so many others, he had no idea the base’s water supply was laced with toxic chemicals—mercury, benzene, and other carcinogens. These poisons, leaching into everyday life for more than three decades (1953–1987), would go on to impact over a million Marines, civilians, and their families.
“They told me not to drink the water when I first got there,” Magee recalls. “Said it wasn’t good.”
The warning, vague and too late, did little to stop the exposure. Marines bathed in, cooked with, and drank the contaminated water daily—unaware of the lasting damage it would inflict.
Magee, now 77, lives in Milwaukee with his wife and is a father of 12. His story is one of service and survival.
Another veteran, Lewis Cain who is 80, has a nearly identical story. Stationed at Camp Lejeune in 1967, Cain was newly married and expecting a child.
“I didn’t think they’d send me somewhere where the water was contaminated,” he said.
His son was born at the Naval Hospital on base. Today, that son, now in his 50s, suffers from a chronic skin condition and remains under medical evaluation. Cain and his ex-wife both have kidney disease. “But we still here,” he added.
Both men are now plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit made possible by the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, which allows victims of the contamination to sue the federal government. The Department of Veterans Affairs also offers disability compensation for affected individuals. But for many veterans, the wait has been long, and faith in the system is wearing thin.
“I think the government is waiting on us to die,” Cain said. “So they don’t have to pay us.”
The scars of war are not only physical. The emotional wounds, especially from Vietnam, remain raw for many veterans.
"So, at 80 years old, all that stuff still vivid in your head?" Cain is asked."Just like it was yesterday." Magee added, "People were dying every day. So, it became commonplace? yes."
Their stories are reminders of what so many veterans carry—physically, emotionally, and generationally. They fought a war abroad and now face a new battle at home: for justice, recognition, and healing.
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