A training shallow trench through which trainees and officers must crawl at night
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Title (Dublin Core)
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A training shallow trench through which trainees and officers must crawl at night
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Taking the jumps out of Army nerves
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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QUARTERMASTER combat forces at
Camp Lee, Va. have a brand-new
jitter killer. It's a 275-foot, shallow trench
of horrors through which trainees and offi-
cers must crawl at night. This twisting,
slimy passage--suddenly alive with sounds
and smells that rival the worst war can
offer—accustoms men to unexpected hap-
penings and prepares them for situations
faced in actual battle.
Awakened in the middle of the night, you
are told to don class X fatigues (old com-
bat togs). You make as little noise as pos-
sible as you join a detachment that moves
off swiftly and penetrates about a mile into
the woods. Then you are ordered to start
crawling. By that time you should know
that you're about to be subjected to the new
nerve-conditioning course.
You grope your way through a wooden
funnel. Out of it you wriggle into sticky,
ill-smelling mud. You move in silence, won-
dering what's coming next. Then, without
warning, sounds of battle burst about you.
You hear the rattle of machine guns, the
scream of dive bombers, and one deafening
explosion after another. These sounds come
from loudspeakers and from booming can-
non crackers tossed into huge oil drums
hung overhead for that purpose.
Proceeding slowly, you feel your way on-
ward. Water falls on you. simulating rain.
and then, a few wriggles farther, you slide
head first into a pool of muck at the bottom
of a shell crater. When you come out, sand
blows in your face. You crawl under
barbed wire, twist down a steep bank, and
go forward in the cold dampness. Without
warning, you are struck by a stench, and a
star shell reveals what appears to be a body
in an advanced stage of putrefaction. It's
actually a dummy saturated with foul
smelling butyric acid. But looks and odor
are real enough. The last lap of the course
is a gas-filled chamber that compels you
to put on your gas mask.
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1944-04
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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98-99
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public Domain (Google digitized)
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Lorenzo Chinellato
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Marco Bortolami (editor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 144, n. 4, 1944
