The Gas Chamber

Somewhere around September 1990, my ship was scheduled to make preparations for deployment to the Mediterranean Sea in the beginning of 1991 by doing readiness drills. Instead, Saddam Hussein invaded a country called Kuwait and took over the place. This was soon followed by an international cohesion of countries for what had been done to this nation. Although the scope of our deployment was still foggy, as time passed it was becoming clear to us that we were going to become a part of this international coalition to remove the army of Iraq and retake Kuwait for her people. We would no longer be heading for patrols in the Med, but instead head to the Persian Gulf. Before we could do that, we had to make sure that our ship was ready; I mean war ready. This meant that we had to drill through different scenarios and prepare ourselves for what was about to come.

So we made our preparations to do so while we were in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Back then, there was no detainment camp, which is a clear violation of the constitution because of the lack of due process. There was a training facility, which in some was used as a show of force to the Cuban government. I am no longer a part of the Naval forces, so I didn’t keep up with what is down there, so I am unsure if the training facility that we used is still active or if it has been relocated because of the current detainment camps in place.

There were a few phases that we went through as a crew. I think that when we arrived, most of us were just too excited because this was Cuba. I mean the overall significance of this to me was huge. We had this little chunk of land which we were able to maintain somehow, and just over the fence was a country that we were enemies with. I mean that was just so cool to me. Here it was, about one year after the Berlin wall came down and I was in a land where it was possible to see peace between our two nations. This was the tail end of the Cold War and it held some historical significance to me as well as hope that one day I might even have the chance to visit Havana. It’s too bad that this day hasn’t come yet.

When we got to Gitmo it was hot. It stayed hot every day that we were there. There were always thunderstorms on the horizon, always on the horizon, never where we were. So we would never see any relief until the sun would go down. I’ll tell you what though, there is nothing like the night time in the Caribbean. You can feel the cool sea breeze blowing in to cool off the land. It would seem to always cool down to the mid-seventies shortly after sunset and stay that way the whole night time. It felt fantastic.

I was involved in three major training events that took place throughout our time in Gitmo. The first one was called CBR training. My Chief passed me by on his way to the electrical room and said something to me. I thought he said that I needed to go to CPR training; which is mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions and first-aid and all of that. I said I knew all about that and that I was already qualified in that. He just kept on moving and so I stopped what I was doing and followed him to the electrical room to let him know that he should pick someone else.

When I finally caught up with him he was in high gear handing out the rest of the assignments to those who were mustered in the work center’s main electrical room. I was reaching for my CPR card when he saw me come through the door. I had my speech ready and was not going to be dumped off to some lame program that I was already qualified for; I wanted to get my hands dirty and get in there with it, so to speak.

He asked me what I was doing here before I could get one word out, so I let him know that I was already CPR qualified and that he should assign me to something else. He quickly corrected me, “Not CPR,” he said, “C-B-R.” as he slowly mouthed each letter. “Charlie, Bravo, Romeo.”

“What the heck is that,” I said back.

He shot back, “The gas chamber.”

“Oh, poop,” was what I got out (only I didn’t say that, I am cleaning up this story so I can submit it). “Chief, I did that back in boot camp. I had a long ass loogie hanging from my nose to the deck when I came outta that thing back in Orlando. I am not going back in there.” I motioned what had happened back in boot camp as I was describing what I went through. Everyone in the shop busted out laughing.

As the chief was recovering he said, “That’s too bad, you are already signed up and everyone else is assigned to something. We need to send someone from the work center, and you are our man. There are no replacements; make the best of it. So go, and take notes and let everyone know what you learned about C-B-R.” He mouthed those letters real slow again.

I looked at my chief and sighed, “This is BS man.”

“I know it is, just make the best out of it,” he said.

I knew that it would be pointless to talk about it anymore, so I grabbed my paperwork from the chief and stuffed it into my shirt pocket. I went to my rack and retrieved anything that I thought was necessary for that day, notebook included. I stopped by the drinking fountain and took a long drink before I made my way to the pier.

For those of you who do not know, CBR training stands for Chemical, Biological and Radiological training. This is in the event of one of these types of attacks on a naval vessel, there are certain protocols that we need to do to keep the ship in a state of readiness so that we can continue to fight or fight back if necessary.

When I got to the muster point I saw all ranks there from enlisted to lieutenants. Now for a frigate to send lieutenants to something like this, then it must be kind of serious. As far as the enlisted were concerned, Senior Chief was the highest rank involved in our particular class. The day started off with introductions to the staff and then quickly proceeded through the material. This was the most boring part of the day, but it was one of the most necessary parts. It had all of the information of what to do incase…

I think that something like this would remind people who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s about the stuff that they would have to do in the event of a nuclear attack. I think the film is called “Duck and Cover.” Lewis Black does a stand up talking about this issue where he questions the validity of duck and cover and how is this going to protect him from a F*** fireball that can incinerate a building. Lewis Black was not yet in the public eye during 1990, but I had the same thoughts about all of the information that we were getting. I think that one of the “agents” that was talked about to some extent were of the higher levels of chemicals that are used in militaries around the world; Iraq included. The most predominant indication that it had been used was that you were doing the “floppy chicken” on the floor and you had better do what you could to save yourself. This of course is a nerve agent.

My thoughts were, “What’s the point, your nervous system is shot so that if you can even do anything to save yourself, then your beloved family member would be wiping your butt for the rest of your life.” I am not a quitter though, so I think that no matter what I would try to save myself, but I think that from what was described, I might not be in enough control to do anything productive in this regard; all muscle movement would become involuntary.

I think that I finally resolved that if something bad happened to me, then something bad happened, but if it didn’t, then it didn’t. I suppose that a person could drive himself or herself crazy if they thought about it too long. I guess that is how I felt about it and that this was the only logical way that I could see to deal with it at the time.

After the morning class, we had lunch, then we had to come back to take a couple of tests. The first test was about the material that was covered in the morning. In many ways it was something that was going to stay with all of us throughout our naval careers. I guess that some of this material I still know about, but for the most part, the way it is presented to us it is made to stick with us. We are talking about life and death situations after all, and for the average human in the military, it sometimes comes to a moment-by-moment situation depending on the job; some more than others, but for the most part everyone has something that hits them in this way. This was one of those things that stuck with me.

The second test was the one that I was not looking forward to at all. This was the gas chamber that my Chief talked about. We made our preparations for this one as we were going through the other course material. We did other things different after the first exam was out of the way. The overall atmosphere was jovial. I don’t mean to put this training situation in a light manner, but if you look at life too serious all of the time, then you are going to miss out on some huge moments. This was one of those huge moments where a bunch of grown men were going to, on purpose, step into a chamber, release tear gas, breathe it for a while and then step out of this chamber. Of course the main purpose was to see if we knew how to use our gas masks properly.

The main thing that we did before we entered the chamber was to do a walk-through of what was going to happen. First, we put on our gas masks. Then, we pretended that we were in the chamber and that the gas had been released. Next, we took off our masks and counted slowly to ten. Finally we put our masks back on and “cleared” them.

This is what happened when it came time to go in. We put on our masks and headed for the gas chamber. The gas chamber was for all practical purposes about as big as an RV motor home. It was painted white on the outside and it was black on the inside. It must have been made of ¼ inch steel. It had one light that was in the middle of the room and kind of a bench area that was in the front of the room; this is where the gas was released. The outside of the gas chamber was painted white because it was so hot outside that this was the only feasible thing to do to allow for some cooling. I have no idea how hot inside it was, but I went in dry and came out soaking wet in just a few minutes.

We went into the furnace with our masks on and then the gas was released about a minute after everyone was in the chamber. We stood around as a group and were breathing in the gaseous atmosphere with our masks on and no problems. Everyone put them on correctly and nobody puked with the masks on. After we could see that our masks were doing fine, it came time to remove the masks and count to ten. Our ten-count took about twenty to thirty seconds to get through, and I still had thoughts of that big loogie hanging from my nose after the last time I was in this situation now, so I took in as deep of a breath that I could before I took my mask off. Everyone had to count out loud. ONE… TWO… THREE… FOUR… FIVE… I wanted to take a breath so bad at this point, but I resisted. SIX… SEVEN… Almost there; EIGHT… NINE… Just one more; TEN! I put my mask on as quickly as I could, and then pulled on the straps that were around my head and made sure that I had a tight seal between the mask and my face. Next, I covered the exhaust hole with the palm of my left hand and exhaled as hard as I could, the air that was now in the mask area was contaminated and needed to be expelled; this was the only way to do it. This is what is called clearing the mask. The next breath that I took would be crucial and determine if I were successful at making sure that I did not repeat what happened to me at boot camp. As I took in this breath of air I began to cough, but just a little bit, but I think that was just nervousness. The air was clean and I did it this time with no problems.

Very soon we exited the gas chamber, took off our masks, and walked into the wind. The last thing that we had to make sure to do was to keep our eyes open. It was so hard to do because all you wanted to do was to close them and start rubbing them. If you did it, you would make it worse because your hands were contaminated just by being in that atmosphere. So all you could do was to let your eyes clear themselves by having them tear up.

As soon, the class was over and one of the Senior Chiefs said that we were done for the day. We went to the ship to change our clothes and take a shower. Then some of us headed to the enlisted bar for a beer. After all, we felt that we had earned it.