The Gas Chamber....

Well, I just got done with the gas chamber and I'm on my lunch break now. Yeah, it sucked. The purpose fo the training is two fold. One purpose is, obviously, the use of the mask to protect yourself from chemical and biological agents. The other purpose is to help the Marine gain a trust of the mask. Since biological and chemical weapons are invisible and not readily avoidable, they can be the most unnerving enemy that a Marine will face. No matter how big or how many the enemy may be, as long as the Marine can shoot to kill, he's usually okay, but the invisible threat of chemical and biological weapons can break the nerves of the most mentally stable Marine. The "gas" that we use is not a gas. It is called "CS Gas" but it is really an airborn crystaline irritant. It's crystaline nature makes it extremely dangerous under certain circumstances. There have been accounts of Marines who did not heed the command to remove their contact lenses before entering the chamber and the CS agent became lodged underneath their contacts and made them nearly blind, permanently. CS also is more agrevated by rubbing than other liquid agents which makes the gas chamber a good excercise in self-control. The one good thing about CS is that it tends to dissapate very quickly, so once we leave the chamber, the discomfort only last a few more minutes. One of the drills that we do practices putting on your mask under pressure. We entered the chamber with our masks on and stood against the wall. When the time came, we took a breath, closed our eyes, removed our masks for 10 seconds and put them back on again. Ideally, one should be able to take the back straps off of the mask without breaking the seal that is keeping the CS off of your face, and with your eyes and mouth closed, the exposure is extremely limited. When I pulled the straps loose I also took my preperatory breath and unfortunately was not able to keep a good seal and got 2 lungs full of CS. But this is part of the training, so I kept my composure and waited until the instructor told us to put our masks back on. Once my mask was on, it was still full of CS from when I had it off and I then had to "clear" the mask before I would be able to breath without feeling the effects of the CS. Unfortunately, "clearing" your mask requires breathing, but I was eventually successful and finished the training evolution without further duress. I did a slightly more demanding version of this training while in bootcamp, but the stress of the situation made it difficult to think about anything that time. This time I learned 3 things. 1) You still need to put your mask on fast 2) If riot control starts lobbing canisters of green gas at you, take my word for it, just run 3) Above all, remain calm. This is one of the two things that most Marines have over everyone else. We can do our job under the most demanding of circumstances, no matter what the enemy throws at us, we're not going to lose the ability to do our jobs. The other thing hat we have over other guys is that a Marine like me (6ft 1 inch 120 lb) might not actually be abel to whip a guy in a fight, but I can convince him that I'm going to win. I don't actually have to be bigger than him, I just have to be able to make him think that I'm going to beat him. Shock and awe, as it has been called in recent days. The old term is, intimidation.