Preparations 2 - Gassing

One of many tedious aspects to going out to Bahrain is the need to get up to date in a whole load of areas which otherwise can happily be ignored.

Fortunately I am in date for my fitness test, had already booked a periodic health check and the dental check up was easy to fix.

One area that had been overlooked was the annual AGR (Anti-Gas Respirator or Gas Mask) check; er, this had actually been overlooked for about, ahem, 9 years! I was actually rather pleased I had remembered which bit of the garage roof the good old green bag was dangling from and glad to see that apart from a few spots of rust on the outside, a little bit of mold and quite a few cobwebs it was in quite good shape. There was some fear that I might find some fossilized remnant of an 'Action Snack' which I had been too busy to consume at the time and subsequently forgot about but fortunately there was nothing untoward in side.
Once I had found the NBCD training unit is was clear that this was all a bit out of date. So I gratefully handed over the ancient mess of an AGR that I brought with me and was issued a brand new one which now even comes with a camouflaged case. Only snag was that new AGR of course needs to be tested to make sure that it works and is the right size for ones face. This test incidentally no longer consists of being properly gassed with burning CS pellets but instead involves standing in a tent with a few candles and nodding your head – my times have changed. Actually, that was not the only snag as the second snag is that one can't get a seal and hence test the stupid gas mask if one has a beard – hence the recent re-exposure of chin to the world but at least I now know foolish AGR works if in the really very unlikely event of the worst coming to the worst and it is needed for real.