Semper Cool: One Marine's Fond Memories of Vietnam by Fixler Barry

Author:Fixler, Barry [Fixler, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780982518427
Publisher: Exalt Press
Published: 2013-12-29T16:00:00+00:00

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Long after the siege, when my ears had quit ringing, I still thought sometimes that I could smell the gas.

Anyone who ever has been gassed will tell you that things can’t get much more fucked up. Unless you’ve experienced it and found the discipline within yourself to apply your training and overcome it, you can’t control yourself. You can have the best rifle in the world, but it’s worthless against gas.

The night the NVA overran us, I was moving from off watch to on when the skies lit up and we scrambled to organize and fight back, and then I smelled the gas. The odor is distinct and unforgettable. I didn’t know that we were using the gas. I assumed it was the NVA gassing us, or that a Marine had been blown up and his gas grenades exploded with him.

I was seasoned then and thought I was cool, and I’d let my hair grow nice and long. I didn’t panic, but as I held my breath and put on my gas mask as I had learned in boot camp, the band of it tangled in my hair, and the only thing that I could do was start yanking my hair out by the roots. It was like pulling clumps of grass out of an overgrown lawn.

My head had been shaved during boot camp, the last time that I had do the gas mask procedure, but doing it with long hair while under enemy fire was a whole different matter. I cleared the tangled spot, fit the mask on and blew to clear the gas from inside and I was ready to fight, but I was pissed at myself for not getting a haircut.

Fighting a real enemy while wearing a gas mask is more than difficult. You’re looking through goggles, and it doesn’t help when one of the first things that you can see is that a lot of your guys are dead or seriously wounded. We lost a lot of Marines that day. They can’t simulate that experience in boot camp.

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