Gas Chamber

It's been a little while since I reflected on the beginning days of Army life, back in the mid 1960s, and the combination of very cold weather today with a slightly runny nose reminded me of one reasonably unforgettable part of Basic Training -- the gas chamber.

Although I noted that during the early days of the Second Iraq War there was great concern that poison gas or some other aspect of the CBR (stands for Chemical, Bacteriological, Radiological) weapon set might be used defensively by the Iraqis, and thus we saw figures garbed like spacemen prepared for the retaliation that didn't come, I'm not sure trainees are introduced to the subject of poison gas the way we were.

Actually, I have to admit that I had already had a very limited introduction to poison gas before the Army ever got its hooks in me. That had happened a year or two before, when I had been at a rally for peace, disarmament, civil rights, or some other cause that back then was viewed as disruptive and un-American, and probably criminal. I had not been close to where the police had gassed the demonstrators, and all I had really gotten was a whiff of the stuff as it drifted over toward us. I remembered the smell, but it made only a slight impression on me, really, since back then one expected to get one's lumps from law enforcement if one even looked like one was protesting. (Sometime I'll tell in detail what a nightstick feels like when applied to a shin bone, and how easy it was to have something like this happen to one -- but that was in the pre-Army days, and today we are on the subject of the gas chamber in Basic Training).

Interestingly, there is a strong similarity between the smell of the tear gas known as CN (which I think is now considered obsolete, having been replaced with a gas called CS) and the smell of soft coal that was used to heat the barracks at Fort Gordon. So, when I arrived at Gordon I had a subliminal reminder of smelling tear gas earlier.

We had been issued gas masks when we arrived at Fort Gordon, but we didn't have to wear them around until around week four. Until then, they were just one more item to be out of place or dusty or not properly closed during barracks inspection. However, when CBR training started, that changed too. Suddenly we were wearing the damned things strapped to our legs everywhere we went. When you ran, they flapped. When you crawled, they got hung up on the barbed wire and on anything else you were crawling near. When you did the overhead ladder, they had the tendency to pull your pants down.

We drilled putting them on. Someone would yell "gas" or "spray" (the two ways poison gas was delivered) and we were to immediately hold our breath, get out our gas mask (which we were not permitted to call gas masks; they were only to be referred to as "protective masks" but we called them gas masks anyway) put them on, and, by blowing out, clear the mask of any gas that might have come along when donning the thing.

We had a small joke that involved the litany we were taught -- and which a lot of Army doctrine tends to get into. The litany went: "What do you do when you see that the enemy is launching a poison substance attack?" "Yell gas or spray and put on our protective mask, then see if any of our buddies needs assistance." The small joke we made of it was, instead of yelling either "gas" or "spray" depending on whether we were being gassed or sprayed as the litany intended, we would yell "gas or spray". Those of us with college educations found this kind of literalism highly amusing, but it does appear to have lost a bit of its humor over the decades. Sorry about that.

Finally, after a week of build-up by our platoon sergeants, one day we were marched to the gas chambers. It was a cold day, and nearly everyone had at least the beginnings of a head cold, and the march to the gas chambers didn't help much.

There were two rooms in the "gas chamber" building. By squads, we were first told "gas" and, once we had reacted correctly, we were led into the first room, and a gas grenade was set off in the middle of the floor. Then we were told to remove our gas masks.

That was a shock. Tear gas really does make you feel bad. Your eyes burn like mad and tear heavily. The skin of your face burns. What's almost worse is that your nose starts to run rivers -- real rivers! One guy in my squad had a stream of what is indelicately called snot descending from his nose almost at once. The sergeant yelled "if that snot hits the floor, you're gonna lick it up!" The trainee somehow sucked it all back in and it never hit the floor. That's a pretty good trick while you're crying, by the way.

Then, after we all had a few moments of real discomfort, we were led back out of the room and into the fresh air. Interestingly it took only a couple of moments before our mucus membranes calmed down and we had the enjoyment of watching the other squads go through the process.

The other room, we were told, contained a lethal agent, and, if we did anything wrong in there, we would be dead. One of the other guys in the platoon caught my eye and mouthed "Right!" since we had earlier had a discussion among ourselves about how this gas chamber thing was probably overrated, and in any case the Army did not routinely kill off its trainees.

In any event, room #2 really didn't make enough of an impression on me for me to recall what the sequence of events was. I do have a recollection of the smell of chlorine -- probably meant to simulate chlorine gas -- around the area. It wasn't a very strong smell, and probably could be duplicated by sloshing some Clorox around on the floor.

That was pretty much it for CBR training. We came from a generation that had learned to "duck and cover" in elementary school in the event of an atomic blast, so there wasn't much to teach us there. We got some textbook knowledge of atropine, which we would be issued in the event that a real enemy might gas us at some point the the future, but we never saw the stuff in real life. The bacteriological part was not covered at all, as far as I can remember, or if it was, it was in a brief mention in a training film that I (and nearly everybody else) no doubt slept through.

Actually, now that I think of it, we must have seen something about "germ warfare". One of the guys in my platoon had been a bio-chem major in college, and might even have had an advanced degree in it. Anyway, when we got our post-Basic assignments, he was assigned to Fort Detrick, Maryland. I remember that I, for one, had never heard of the place, and I asked him what it was and what they did there. Well, he HAD heard of Fort Detrick before, probably in grad school, and told me it was where the Army creates germ warfare weapons -- "You know, like in that training film we saw." So I guess we did see a training film about the subject. I had learned pretty early on that I could tip my helmet liner down onto the bridge of my nose and go to sleep -- as long as I didn't drool or snore.

Gas chamber was an interesting adventure, if nothing else. I'm reminded of it whenever I smell soft coal smoke, even today. I'm thinking that it's one more part of Basic Training that one really ought to experience if one is ever going to be in a position where you might order the use of tear gas -- or some other CBR agent -- on someone else in later life.

In view of recent events, maybe I should discuss how the Army introduced us to shooting rifles next without anyone even getting hurt. More useful knowledge.