Getting even...

... reading Dax's tale this morning, I was dragged back into the mists of my memory... and found lying crumpled amongst the Camel cigarette packets and empty Copenhagen tins, was one of my fondest Military memories... a memory of snuff...

... it was November 1992 and I had been picked to participate in Mountain Training with 45 Commando (Royal Marines)... I wrote a bit about it here a while back, but from a slightly different angle... and here's a pretty cool article about it, if you are curious...

... anyway, those Commandos were a hard bunch... well trained, motivated, and in peak physical condition... me?... I was a scrawny little Tennessean who was in way over his head... and I was truly struggling to hang with those animals... I had pushed myself about as far as I could go... humping equipment up those mountain tracks was old hat to them, but new ground for me... Hell, I was an Intel guy...

... there were quite a few of us US Marines there, though... and we took a fairly large ration of shit from the RMs.. all of us were from non-combat specialties, and they were all ground-pounders... we survived though, and they were impressed...

... one thing that I saw near the summit of one mountain never ceases to inspire me... I saw a young Royal Marine take a pouch of loose tobacco out of his pocket in a driving sleet-storm... roll a cigarette... light it with a match, and smoke it while being pelted with frozen clods of water and forty mile-an-hour winds...

... to this day, that still amazes me... the desire for a smoke just won't be denied, I suppose... not even by an arctic blast...

.... but like I said, I felt for old Dax this morning... see, I had dipped snuff for years before discovering the wonders of smoking, and my body was acclimatized to the effects of the nicotine rush.. plus, my stomach had gotten used to the occasional swallowing of some tobacco juice... or, indeed, an entire chaw gone awry... it was all no big deal... something that probably 75% of all the local rednecks from my community could do... well, on the last day of the training, I was putting in a dip of snuff while being ribbed about looking so miserable, when one of the grunts asked what I was doing... I explained it to him... he was curious and wanted to try it...

... even though I'd been ridden pretty hard, I still didn't hold any ill-will... but the temptation was just too much for me... my heart filled with evil at the thought of teaching this fellow a lesson... still, I tried to explain that he'd get ill if he tried it... and he assured me that if I could do it, then HE could too... heh heh... and with that and a grin, I handed him the can of snuff...

... in less than two minutes, the once proud vision of machismo was literally green around the gills... within five minutes, he was puking up old chunks of our breakfast.. beans and franks, as best I can recall.. I have to hand it to him, though... he never broke ranks... and he never fell out of the yomp... just keep trudging along puking as he went... what a sight he was at the end of the trail... frozen bits of vomit dangling from his unshaven chin... a trail of black, Copenhagen tobacco snaking down his chapped cheek and disappearing down the neck of his gore-tex parka.. shades of green and yellow showing on his face...

... for me, that was a moment I'll remember forever... for him, I'd say it is one that he will never forget... as much as he'd like to try...