CS Gas And Sinuses

A snotty stream of random memories

Why do certain random experiences in life stand out more than others?

I remember being part of a field training exercise in the Army. We knew that there’d be CS gas. So we had our gas masks handy.

One of the sergeants — who I knew was on “the other side” — came by our humvee and threw a CS grenade.

It was anti-climatic. I knew what was going to happen as soon as I saw him. I slipped on my mask as he threw the grenade. Then, I reached my arms out like we were taught. I yelled, “gas, gas, gas” while waving my arms up and down.

If memory serves, the wind was in my favor. The gas never even made it the three or four feet in my direction.

But it wasn’t about that anyway. It was about whether I would remember what to do in the “heat of the moment” which, strangely, it wasn’t. My heart might have beat slightly faster when I saw the “insurgent…” but not to the point that I forgot what I was supposed to do.

What’s surprising about that is that I was naturally a very anxious and nervous person back then. Everything scared me. And I had a hard time thinking on my feet. So why didn’t this bother me?

I think I even smiled internally as it was happening.

In Army Basic Training, they taught us how to deal with CS gas. They brought us into a building and filled it with CS. It was, for all intents and purposes, a “gas chamber.”

You could see the CS gas because it had a strange, greenish tint. We had our masks on, but then we were told to remove them and go through several breathing exercises, say a few things.

By the time we were let out and told to let the air cleanse the gas off of us, we all had snot dripping down to the floor. Our eyes were watery and burning. And our lungs…

When you breathe CS gas in, your lungs feel like you’re breathing in sharp needles.

I wonder sometimes if that CS gas had some part in me developing asthma later on in life. If it was a sort of catalyst. I’d never had lung issues before that.

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