First aid, Nerve gas symptoms--antidote,
Scary. Lectures getting more interesting.
Estimate 6 hours sleep for Tuesday.
No guard duty tonight.
Ran 1-1/2 miles in morning.
Little to eat today--little time.
Ran perhaps another mile at night--
this time in boots--kills one's ankles.
I feel I'm weaker for push ups now.
Muscles sore--push ups tougher to do.
That's kind of depressing. Finished
letter to [fiance] today. No mail call today.
I can only assume that the courses were more on soldiering things. I do remember the gas movies. Real sheep and actors showing exposure to the gas. This was a constant part of training. Funny enough, gas isn't actually that deadly compared to other weapons a soldier might face. Well-trained troops can cope. Although if you are shot because you can't see or hear anything when fully suited up on MOPP (Mission-oriented protective posture) level 4, does that count as a gas casualty? But that was the point of training. Gas is much scarier than other weapons that in reality are more deadly. When I was in the Guard at a training exercise, I watched a bunch of troops flee a cloud billowing from a shack where a gas grenade had been set off and was leaking out massively. Every one of them was carrying a gas mask yet they ran. I put my gas mask on where I stood.
Making this type of attack and response routine made responding more automatic and made us less vulnerable to fear.
Although as a practical matter the gas masks were of most use when using latrines out on the firing ranges. The only thing worse about their smell was the fear that you'd drop your weapon into the miasma of filth below.
I'm a little surprised that I mentioned that I had little to eat that day. Usually food was plentiful. But perhaps my comment about "little time" was about one meal where I made the mistake of sitting down at a table where a bunch of troops had been sitting for a while (like perhaps a full ten minutes--not to imply one could linger over your meal and enjoy an after-dinner cocktail while trading amusing anecdotes with your squad mates). I had been sitting and eating for perhaps a full 30 seconds before a sergeant informed our table that we were done eating and had best get out now. So I did not eat that meal.
There was also the continuing obsession with how much sleep I was getting. I was always tired. No guard duty was a sleep bonus. Which was good.
And although the constant exercises made me feel like I was getting weaker, I'm sure I was not. But I was sore all over. Of course, that 1-1/2 miles was probably 2 miles already around that 1/3-mile track we used but were told was a 1/4-mile track.
The misery was now routine, it seems.
