Basic Training: Gas Training

One of the more challenging trainings in BT is learning how to properly employ your gas mask.  How to use it isn't the challenge so much as the events associated with its use.  To this day, putting on a gas mask feels automatic for me:

Step 1-don the mask

Step 2-cover the filters and clear the mask

Step 3-seal the mask

Step 4-while waving your arms, shout 'gas' three times in order to alert others

You're supposed to be able to complete all of these steps in nine seconds or less and you better hope you can do this.  While on a night patrol, I expected to see an aerial flare since we'd just had a class about this and how such a flare indicated an imminent gas attack.  As DIs were running through the forest to get ahead of and ambush us, I popped one button on my mask carrier so I could get it out as soon as possible.  Then, boom!  The entire sky lit up and I smelled gas immediately!  I had my mask out, on, cleared, and sealed in what couldn't have been more than three seconds.  Yet, I still had gas inside my mask until I'd cleared it out.  When I picked up all my gear and looked around, I couldn't see anything through the gas.  Then, DIs started yelling at me to continue down the hill and attack some bunkers at the end of the field.  Later, I found out that only I and one other guy made it off the hill intact.  What happened to the other eight in the patrol?  Well, they didn't get their masks on in time.  Some of them began vomiting and dropped where they were.  The others tried to run from the gas but got caught up in the concertina wire on the edges of the trail.  They had to be cut out of it before they could proceed.  I had no survivor's guilt whatsoever!

The yearbook didn't have any pictures of my unit's gas training but did have some from other units.  In one of the pictures, you can see people entering the gas chamber.  That was the worst because there's no escaping the gas inside.  You enter the chamber, take off your mask, and then inhale the gas before you're finally allowed outside.  I don't know what the others felt, but I couldn't breathe at all for about 15 seconds; it was as if there was a plug in my throat.  I knew it was going to be bad because I could hear the screams before it was my turn to enter.  Still, you don't really know till you experience it yourself.