From
our first day we all knew we’d be put in the gas chamber. At Camp Telega, which is part of the larger
USMC Camp Pendleton, our DIs burned CS tablets on a table to saturate the
Quonset hut like a smoke house on a farm.
With a blanket covering the door and an occasional shaft of light
filtering in, the gathering looked like one of those old 1930s Chinese opium
den scenes from the movies. Over the
years the Marine Corps ditched the tablets and went to gas cylinders in modern
brick or concrete chambers like the ones at Camp Lejeune where my picture was
taken. Apparently, many of us had
figured out that if we waited for the tablets to burn off, the potency of CS
gas would too. So they modernized and
gave everyone an equal dose.
Like
their active duty counterparts, reservists can’t escape the nasty and
uncomfortable training. I guess it has
to be because gas is serious stuff.
It’ll make a believer out of you – nowhere to run or hide. You can’t breathe and begin to slobber. All you can do is rely on your raining and
use the gas mask and clothing as it was intended. When the picture was taken the temperature
was in the lower 90s and I was sweating profusely. The woolen shirt was full of sand and the
smell of CS gas from the last guy who had recently worn it. Underneath the shirt is a layer of charcoal
to absorb the gas like the face mask does.
When the filters eventually go, that’s it.
When
I transferred to the Seabees after Desert
Storm in 1992, Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare training
intensified. In our combat training
cycle, we dealt with MOPP levels which are stages of donning clothing and
equipment: gas masks with hoods, rubber gloves, rubber boots, and woolen
trousers with charcoal. MOPP Level 1 is
where you put on the basics. Subsequent
levels stop at MOPP 4 – the full complement.
By 1997 at Camp Hunter Ligget in California Pepper Gas was mixed in with
CS Gas. The valley was alive with Navy
and Marine Corps umpires setting off gas bombs that it looked like fog and the
big shots called so many MOPP Level alarms that many of us uttered a few
“expletives deleted” and kept ourselves at Level 4.
Being
retired, it’s hard for me to know what our Armed Forces go through now. Surely
NBC training includes Biological and nuclear, especially after 911 and the
anthrax scare. George W. Bush (by fraud)
warned us of the “mushroom cloud” in Iraq.
I suppose there will be a whole new cottage industry now that Ebola has
come to America. Survivalists will
update their caches and people will flock to the gun shows to buy old gas masks
and equipment. Clorox and charcoal will
fly off the shelves. With the relentless
spiral of threats, the American public seems to be poised for its own MOPP
level training.
