Gas Attack, Gas Attack
Friday, February 14, 2025
I’m writing this because an online friend asked whether or not, as part of my military training, I had to go through the “gas tent”. The answer is: Yes. This is a process whereby newbies on receipt of fancy new NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) suit had to test it and their skills at putting it all on, in the correct order in under 9 minutes, and walk through a large tent or building filled with CS gas.
A test no one got out of doing.
Funnily enough on the day I had to do my training with a couple of other newbies, we had the newly arrived Group Captain and a couple of high up Senior Officers for training as well. Our little group sat on the same benches with the higher ups listening to the training sergeant drone on, while watching a very graphic video of soldiers and airmen dealing with fake injuries that included, among other things, disembowelment.
It was fun to watch the guys in the tent squirm at the vivid and graphic nature of seeing someone in the NBC gear trying to stuff what were pigs innards back into a writhing screaming airman. All simulated for us to learn what we might have to do in the midst of war. Not that we were there for emergency medical training. Not that that stopped them making us sit through 30 minutes of gore before we even started leaning about what our suits did, and did not do. And more importantly, how to put them on properly, while being timed with a stopwatch, and yelled at to go faster.
Yes, even those senior officers got yelled at.
We all clumsily ran through these manoeuvres several times during that hour till, coming up for our lunch break, they had us all line up to be filed through the gas tent, one by one.
This is without our masks on.
We had to put our masks on inside the tent while trying desperately not to breath in the CS gas, and, with eyes streaming, correctly put our masks on in less than 9 seconds. We were all told the precise process of how to put the mask on, pull the ties tight, check the seals and filter canister and then …. wait 3 minutes to see if we ended up choking or not.
If we’d done it right, we could exit the tent and go to recovery. If not, usually coughing a lung (or two) up, you had to go out where you came in and started all over again.
I’m proud to say that both the Group Captain and I were the only ones who walked through, unscathed, to the other side. Where, this big corpulent man, laughing, took off his mask, smiled, and clapped a big hand on my shoulder and said, “well done airman.” And, just so you know, we were all called airman back then in my day.
Also, I should point out, I never did tell anyone I was really good at holding my breath for well over 3 minutes. So, I cheated, sue me already.