When I signed up to serve in the United States Marine Corps, I expected to face danger on the battlefield abroad. I didn’t expect that the most harmful threat I’d encounter would be here at home, on a military base in North Carolina.

Melania Trump and Usha Vance visit base where water contamination affected over one million people from 1953 to 1987

David Gergel, a former US Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, was poisoned to death by toxic water at the North Carolina military base, according to his son, who hopes the Trump administration will provide sick and dying veterans “ignored for years” a shot at “long overdue justice.”

Attorneys with Zois and Miller, one of the firms representing victims who are suing the federal government and the Department of the Navy for damages connected to illnesses cause by toxic water aboard the base, said the federal court has ruled that experts can use established science to explain why contaminated water likely caused a claimant’s illness, but if a report tries to introduce new studies or exposure models that weren’t disclosed before last December, they’ll be excluded.

Camp Lejeune’s victims are turning into ghosts haunting the federal judges and attorneys struggling with a flood of claims and lawsuits over harm from contaminated drinking water at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina from the 1950s to the 1980s.