When Maj. Gen. Alcide LaNoue relinquished his command at Fort Sam Houston 10 years ago to become the Army's surgeon general, he spoke of his commitment to study mysterious ailments reported by Persian Gulf War veterans.
Today, however, military leaders and the Department of Veterans Affairs still cannot explain the baffling phenomenon known as Gulf War Syndrome.
"The symptoms are hard to define, so I expect it's going to take months to years to analyze and understand what's happened here," LaNoue, later promoted to lieutenant general, told reporters upon his departure from Fort Sam's Health Services Command on Aug. 17, 1992.
Born in 1934 in Tonawanda, N.Y., LaNoue earned degrees at Harvard University and Yale University Medical School. He served in Vietnam, and was commander of Eisenhower Medical Center at Fort Gordon, Ga., before coming to San Antonio.
While leading Fort Sam's Academy of Health Sciences from 1986 to 1989, LaNoue oversaw distribution of bullet-resistant protective eyewear that became standard issue by the Gulf War in 1991. The academy, the largest school of its kind in the world, then was training more than 60,000 men and women annually in various professions and specialties.
LaNoue worked briefly in Washington as the Army's deputy surgeon general, then returned in 1990 to lead Fort Sam's Health Services Command. When he left again for Washington in 1992 to become the Army's top medical officer, full investigation of Gulf War illnesses was among his top concerns. Doctors then suspected petroleum poisoning from billowing black clouds rising over burning oil wells in Kuwait to be the cause.
About 60,000 veterans returned complaining of a variety of symptoms, including chronic fatigue, diarrhea, migraines, dizziness, loss of balance and eventual birth defects in children. Some have been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease.
By 1996, Pentagon officials were questioning the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, and were speculating that most of the illnesses were psychological, or were contracted before the war. LaNoue had still not reached any conclusions.
"There has been no data that's been presented that establishes a Gulf War illness, but I think there's substantial numbers, and it's incumbent upon us to continue to search," he said during a Defense Department briefing in January 1996. He retired later that year, and moved to Tampa, Fla.
As Army surgeon general, LaNoue was an advocate for better sanitation for soldiers dealing with rats, lice, ticks and other insects in Bosnia. He sought replacement MASH hospitals with less-cumbersome mobile surgical units, and spoke against deep cuts in defense health care in an era of post-Cold War military downsizing.
He also kept an office at Fort Sam, in a secondary role as leader of the U.S. Army Medical Command, before retiring.
It was his experiences as a surgeon in the Vietnam War, and work with amputees in the states after that conflict, that LaNoue cited as the driving force that kept him from becoming a civilian doctor.
"If it hadn't been for Vietnam, I think I would have been out of the military," he told the Express-News before his retirement. "I saw the soldiers' needs, and I very much got involved with what their needs were."
Last year, military officials announced results of a study showing Gulf War veterans were twice as likely to come down with Lou Gehrig's disease. Additional studies now are under way.
A panel of the Veterans Affairs Department recently proposed spending $450 million over three years on research, once a plan to coordinate studies is established, and timeline and objectives set.