Exclusive | Veterans exposed to toxic chemicals at Camp Lejeune urge Trump to deliver long overdue justice, as Melania and Usha visit military base

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.”The Camp Lejeune Justice Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in 2022, was expected to provide the justice long sought by veterans like Gergel, of Elmira, NY, who died in 2012 of bladder cancer.The legislation allows those affected decades ago by the base’s contaminated water to sue the federal government for damages.The Biden administration, however, fiercely litigated claims and was slow to pay out, settling only a fraction of the 400,000 or so cases brought by victims, which have moved at a crawl.“In 1978, my dad got orders to report to Camp Lejeune and served there proudly,” Gergel’s son, Eric, told The Post.

“He never thought for a second that the water he was drinking, showering in, and cooking with was poisoning him. “It wasn’t until more than 30 years later that we realized something was wrong.”Eric explained the symptoms his father began suffering in 2011 and his eventual cancer diagnosis “just didn’t make sense.”Bladder cancer was a disease “nobody in our family has ever had,” Eric said. “My dad passed right before my 26th birthday,” he said.“I have not had him for the majority of my adult life, and he never got the chance to meet my children or to be a grandad, which I know he always wanted to be.”Eric spoke out, ahead of a visit to the base Wednesday by first lady Melania Trump and second lady Usha Vance, because he knows “there are many other veterans who are still alive and who are suffering from debilitating illnesses and struggling to pay for their care, and thousands more who have succumbed to the injuries they got from the water, as my dad did.”In the late 1980s, the military determined that two water wells at Camp L...