A broken heart, and a strong backbone

This story by Danielle M. Crosier was first published in the Bennington Banner on Nov. 9, 2026.

PAWLET — In 1968, Garry DuFour was drafted into a war that he strongly opposed. More than half a century later, he has found that he never stopped serving. Disillusioned from the start, DuFour’s service became a private life dedicated to investigation, public action, and revealing the truth behind lies and cover ups. And, in the process, he has devoted himself to preserving the accounts of veterans who, he believes, were ignored and mistreated at the hands of his government. 

Now, after many years of heart and back trouble, DuFour is confronting a question that worries him deeply — his own looming mortality, and who will care for the archives and the truths that he has amassed when he is gone?

The skeptical soldier

Before Garry DuFour became a keeper of other veterans’ stories, he was a young man who did not want to go to war. Drafted into the Army in 1968, despite opposing the Vietnam War, DuFour said that he only ever wanted one thing — to go to Canada and marry his girlfriend. Instead, he did his due diligence and stepped up to serve.

Even today, the futility of the war still hangs heavy on him, “Vietnam was a lie,” said DuFour. “We didn’t belong there. It was a civil war.”

Serving with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam and earning a Bronze Star, DuFour said that he learned to rapidly adapt to military life, but he never lost his skepticism. That persistent instinct to think and to question what powerful institutions say — and to ask what happened to the people expected to obey — would shape nearly all of his later work. 

DuFour’s story is not only about what he says he found in veterans’ records; it is also about why he kept looking — it is about the fact that the people behind those records were still alive, still struggling, and often still trying to be believed.

From Washington to veterans’ accounts

After returning from Vietnam, DuFour’s path led to Washington, D.C. Working in the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, and later as a national correspondent for the Stars and Stripes National Tribune, DuFour said that he was appointed as an adviser in the Agent Orange lawsuit distribution process. And — that started it all.

The documents that he had organized in piles in his living room — letters, credentials, clippings, and congressional materials — span those years and more. They trace a life that moved from military service into the work of reporting on, and advocating for, those who served. Over the years, DuFour’s advocacy developed across multiple subject areas, including Agent Orange, LSD trials, and “atomic veterans” (service members involved in nuclear weapons testing), and DuFour said that he first encountered information on “atomic veterans” while working with veterans’ correspondence.

“I was shocked when I found out about them,” he recalled. “I didn’t know a darn thing about it [before that].”

What began as a shocking secret turned into a long effort to gather and to preserve — and later, to validate — as the government denied that the events had ever occurred. DuFour said that he read mail that had been directed to the committee, copied the records, and kept the veterans’ letters. He described making copies of official documents that detailed the testing in Washington and carrying them out of the Capitol, slid beneath the front of his shirt as he came and went throughout the day. “I knew it was so hot,” he said of the material that he held close to his chest. To DuFour, it was proof.

Then, he said, he put the papers away for 32 years. When he brought them out again, he began contacting television stations and veterans, “I knew I had some hot stuff,” he said, shaking his head. “These men — so many men.” 

He picked up a book and began flipping through the pages of testing sites, dates, and details. He pointed to the numbers — 1047 “volunteers” observed Operation Teapot, with 24 listed as “troop participation” — Shot “Wasp” on February 18, 1955, with a 1 kt explosion; Shot “Turk” on February 22, 1955, with a 43 kt explosion; Shot “Moth” — and more. That was just three pages in a thick binder of nuclear tests. And DuFour hung his head, adding that a longtime friendship had developed with one of the service members involved in this testing — Hank Bolden.

DuFour’s sense of purpose is plain in the way that he spoke about the work that he has done to provide evidence to the veterans whose stories have not been believed. 

“Atomic Veterans — my baby,” he said, holding the book and placing a hand on yet another stack of files and correspondence. Firmly, he believes that this matters — still. The papers that he has amassed are not simply a collection to him. They are a way to reveal what was hidden, and ensure that what was experienced remains visible — and a way, he believes, to challenge accounts that minimized what veterans went through while they served.

The archive — and what DuFour believes that it shows

The collection in DuFour’s home is crowded across tables and seating areas and during the interview he moved from one document to another — the volume that he called the “Bible” of U.S. nuclear testing, survey materials, veterans’ letters, government records, and even newspaper clippings.

DuFour, placing a hand once again on the “Bible,” said that the volume of documents details more than 2,000 U.S. nuclear tests that utilized the “volunteer” efforts of about 250,000 soldiers, as well as some civilians. 

He pointed to materials that, in his view, show gaps in protection, monitoring, and accountability — including the limits of dosimeter badges and the failure to account for some forms of exposure — and DuFore repeatedly made the case that the archives matter. They are a historical record. They are accessible to the public, through him. They detail a system of abuse of power. They are proof of what was initially a cover-up. And, they serve as a reminder of a lesson that should not be repeated.

DuFour’s collection also includes records related to Agent Orange. DuFour pulled out a congressional update, and pointed to a paragraph — one that he said he wrote, based on his own work with veterans. The passage describes veterans reporting indifferent treatment during examinations, and concerns that physicians did not know what to look for. One veteran, the text says, feared retaliation for participating in a simple survey.

In his work gathering physicals and working with surveys that were distributed through veterans’ organizations, DuFour said that the records contain reports of symptoms and medical problems. The value of those materials, he suggested, is not that every document answers every question. It is that they preserve what veterans reported, and how they were treated when they sought help.

Identifying a pattern of institutions failing to protect veterans, or take their accounts seriously, DuFour’s collection indicates that there was a purposeful effort to bury the truth and deny medical coverage to damaged veterans. 

For DuFour, the larger pattern is a failure to value the people asked to serve — and, afterward, to listen to them. He believes the documents help to establish a history that could otherwise be denied or forgotten. Asked what he had uncovered, he answered, “The trend is — look what happened, and look what they did.” He then described the letters as testimonials of those trying to document their own service and its consequences. 

“I have so many letters here from veterans saying, ‘This is what I did. This is what it did to me,’” he said. “And — there’s the evidence.” 

DuFour is clear that not every case that he has documented could be considered deliberate experimentation. 

When asked whether examples such as asbestos and lead exposure meant veterans were treated as guinea pigs (as he had earlier defined those who participated in atomic testing), he called some situations “severe carelessness.” 

The distinction matters. His archive covers different events, different risks, and different claims — and each requires its own evidence. What connects them for DuFour is a concern about whether the people in uniform were valued and protected, and whether anyone listened when they said something had gone wrong.

A friend on the phone

That concern became tangible when DuFour reached for his phone, and called his friend Hank Bolden. He placed the phone on speaker, and introduced the atomic veteran that he had known for years. Bolden described his own account of being taken to a Nevada test site without knowing what would happen, and of later struggling to prove that he had been there at all — and that the test had been a reality, after his and other’s military records had been lost. 

DuFour prompted Bolden to tell his story, and he listened as Bolden described what he remembered — and answered questions that were posed. The conversation was not only an interview between a reporter and a source; it was also a call between two old friends.

“I’ll see you again,” DuFour called out, at the end of the call, and the two exchanged pleasantries with a commitment to catch up again soon.

That exchange carried the human stakes of DuFour’s work. Behind the documents are the military personnel who served under orders, suffered real consequences as a result, lived with uncertainty about their health, went uncovered for medical care, and sometimes had to assemble their own proof. 

Behind DuFour’s archive are real-life relationships that were built by years of sharing those accounts. The work could be defined as an act of defiance, but it is also an act of care — of listening, of remembering, and of refusing to let someone’s experience become a forgotten page.

A heart that has been broken, and restarted – again and again

DuFour’s own body has become another reminder of how fragile time can be. He described a serious heart episode in 2023, noting, “I died, and they brought me back.” Later, he confided that he had undergone 33 cardioversions, in all, and he spoke about mortality without pretending that it frightened him, “After all this, I am not scared to die,” he said. 

One thought, though, does trouble him — what will happen to the research that he has amassed?

“That worries me — that does worry me,” DuFour said, adding that he has no family left. He brought up the name of another friend — a newer acquaintance than Bolden, and one who has made it a point to secure the stories of veterans. He is hoping that this individual might now help him preserve and organize the larger collection — and this was a possibility, not a settled plan. However, it serves to illustrate his concerns.

The worry is understandable. DuFour has spent years trying to keep other people’s histories from disappearing. Out of sight, afterall, is out of mind. Now, he is given very real thoughts as to who will keep his story — and his work — alive.

What survives — and the larger arc of his quest

DuFour’s story holds two kinds of human nature in tension. There is the harm he believes that institutions have inflicted or failed to prevent, and there is the loneliness of veterans who have had to make themselves heard. But, there is also persistence — veterans who kept writing, a friend who kept listening, and one man who gathered paper after paper because he believed that the stories presented were too valuable to let go unheard.

DuFour’s life has been devoted to speaking up for those who felt silenced and invaluable — a life of questioning the integrity of the very authority that we all live under. However, an even deeper and unanswered question still lingers, and it is this — what makes a patriot? With the very definition of the word, three core principles emerge — a personal devotion to one’s country, the belief that one must stand ready to defend its constitutional values and the wellbeing of its citizens, and the trust and hope for continued constructive improvement. 

DuFour wants young people considering military service to be careful, be knowledgeable, and be politically engaged, “Be careful who you’re voting for,” he said. The message beneath that advice is perhaps more broad — service carries obligations that do not end when a person leaves the military. Care, accountability, and a trustworthy record are an integral part of that trust, and administrations and their policies are built out of individuals.

With several titanium reinforcements, DuFour has a strong backbone, but his archive is not self-preserving. It needs care, it needs tending and organizing, and it needs people who are willing to examine it. The documents that he has amassed may help to tell the story of what happened to veterans in the past, but its value is in ensuring that this type of situation does not happen again in the future. 

For DuFour, this involves the willingness of an administration that does not fear accountability, and DuFour’s account of administrations is a personal and politically critical view that has been shaped by his work with veterans and their records. He described some changes in Washington as affecting his own career, and judged administrations by what he believed they did — or failed to do — for veterans.

DuFour’s comments suggest that his view of administrations is tied to a continuing question — whether veterans are protected during service, believed when they report harm, and cared for afterward — and he described collecting records and veterans’ accounts to preserve what he believes institutions have overlooked.

Across the administrations that he discussed, his account combines personal experience with more inclusive judgments — a political change that cost him his Senate job, a law that he saw as important progress, and a continuing worry that veterans’ needs can be subordinated to political priorities. 

His archive — as he describes it — is his effort to keep those experiences and questions from being truly lost, as a human life is not disposable. It is of value, and it has meaning.

A heart can falter, DuFour knows. The work that he has built is an effort to make sure that the record does not.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A broken heart, and a strong backbone.