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The Smell
TEUFELHUNDE
Member Posts: 130 ✭✭✭
I don't see anything else on this so I am hoping it hasn't already been covered.
I have heard about flashbacks or what ever you want to call them, where something, a smell, sound, or even a song, for example would trigger a memory of an experience and for 30+ years I have never experienced any.
Now, all of a sudden and old song or an animal sound at the zoo will cause a very brief memory at the time. But, within the next night or so I will have a dream so real I can smell the experience when I wake up in a cold sweat.
Is that a "flashback".
Now here is my real question/request. Please describe what the jungle smells like? Now for me it is not smelled like, I swear I can smell that rotten, wet, after the flood stink after I wake up. It's even got "streams" of overpowering sweet flowers or an old fire. Or diesel so thick I can't breath.
I don't mean to bring back anyone else's demons, I just had the term flashback pictured more like watching a home movie then being back in it.
Semper Fi
I have heard about flashbacks or what ever you want to call them, where something, a smell, sound, or even a song, for example would trigger a memory of an experience and for 30+ years I have never experienced any.
Now, all of a sudden and old song or an animal sound at the zoo will cause a very brief memory at the time. But, within the next night or so I will have a dream so real I can smell the experience when I wake up in a cold sweat.
Is that a "flashback".
Now here is my real question/request. Please describe what the jungle smells like? Now for me it is not smelled like, I swear I can smell that rotten, wet, after the flood stink after I wake up. It's even got "streams" of overpowering sweet flowers or an old fire. Or diesel so thick I can't breath.
I don't mean to bring back anyone else's demons, I just had the term flashback pictured more like watching a home movie then being back in it.
Semper Fi
Comments
Tropical zone jungles will have a number of aromatic chemicals in the makeup of smells. Even more if napalm had been used in the AO, or the "burn out" latrines we used- diesel fuel to burn the crap- and humidity makes smells linger. They are intense, and connected to a significant event in your life. Expect that encountering a similar smell will trigger memories of when you encountered that smell before. Especially if you don't get that smell often. If you lived in the Mississippi Delta, or near Kaneohe in Hawaii, jungle smells would be an everyday thing.
I had the memory trigger thing (accidentally) demonstrated to me a couple of years back- I was in a cluttered antique shop- picked up a dark purple box and opened it- and I was 5 years old again. Lost my Mom when I was a little kid- she and my Dad loved to dance- and I remembered when she would be getting ready for Dad to take her dancing. The box held the smell of the cologne that she always wore- Evening in Paris. I had not smelled it in years- and she never wore it except when going dancing.
Something like that seems to go straight to the brain- no filtering, just a direct connection. Flashback? I dunno- sort of your brain saying "Hey! That reminds me of when....."
Yup, that's a flashback, Marine. I think everybody who saw action has them - from any war. Mine largely went away after I wrote the books, in what I call the "mental laxative" effect. But not completely. Like you, though, even the oddest things can put me right back in the cockpit. Not as often at night, but vividly even in daydreams.
I used that olfactory trigger in the first line of my first novel. That opening sentence hits every Nam vet like a hammer.
Yup, that's a flashback, Marine. I think everybody who saw action has them - from any war. Mine largely went away after I wrote the books, in what I call the "mental laxative" effect. But not completely. Like you, though, even the oddest things can put me right back in the cockpit. Not as often at night, but vividly even in daydreams.
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In the last five years or so, the smell of gun powder has started to bother me, consequently I don't shoot anymore. The smell never really bother me much until I got in my late 50s.
Go figure.
About 10 years ago I was deer hunting, I live in the Cascade mountains of SW Washington state. We have alot of mexican people that come here and pick bear grass in the fall.
Late buck season and I'm slipping through the woods when a smell hit me, garlic and fish sauce. Anyone that was over there knows what I'm talking about. There I am, gun in my hands, smell in the air. I went prone, started crawling, stop, listen. I hear the chatter, the same chatter, the same smell stronger. Anyway I crawled closer and finaly saw a camp of Vietnamese bear grass pickers. I watched them for what seemed like a long time. Finaly got myself together and stood up, scared the sh..t out of them, 2 of them ran. I turned and walked off without a word.
I went home and thought about it for a week or more. I still think about how close that was. Thats the only time it's realy all came back.
W.D.
Diesel fumes do it for me.
It's rare to get a whiff of anything in this world that resembles the idyllic perfume of a Delta canal: combining rotting foilage, heavy humidity, dead fish, human sewage, and nuoc mam sauce. But if something comes close, like a septic tank and flowers nearby, it really throws me.
It's been 40 years. The nightmares gave way to dreams. The flashbacks used to make me sweat, now they almost make me smile.
But they're just as intense.
Occassionally I will be surprised afterwards at being triggered, most often it is no surprise to me at all.
Been through it too often. Sort of like walking on black sun during the bright sun on a hot day.
Not very surprised when the bare feet get singed.
Sometimes we blister. [V] [:(] [:(!]