Writes Dick Welling:

You had to remind me of Gerald Ford's Swine Flu hysteria!

I, along with the men in my infantry company in Germany were all victims of that crime. Soldiers are always the first to be experimented upon (well, maybe after prisoners, but I repeat myself) so sometime in 1976, as a twenty-seven year old company commander, I bared my shoulders and stood at the head of a line of over 100 men to receive not one but two flu shots. In the lobby of the theater at Ayers Kaserne (1st Brigade, 3rd Armored Division) near Frankfurt, and walking between two medics each wielding a pneumatic injector, we were simultaneously given Swine Flu vaccine and some other variant "just in case."

The effects were devastating. Returning to the barracks, men began feeling faint, vomiting and complaining of everything from joint pain to ringing in the ears. The next day fully two thirds of the company was incapacitated. Barely able to drive to work, I had a cot put in my office so I could get some rest between "making rounds." Of course, the treatment was applied to the entire 3000-man brigade and to all the rest of the US Army Europe. The Russkies couldn't have planned it better (as if the NATO-Warsaw Pact scenario had ever been real but that's another story).

Although never having had any allergy problems, I soon developed chronic sinusitis and tinnitus. The only benefit of the experience has been that I've since refused all flu shots (and have never gotten the flu, coincidentally). I hate to think of the effects on the other men.