{"id":32764,"date":"2012-11-17T10:42:05","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T14:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32764"},"modified":"2014-08-17T13:50:02","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T17:50:02","slug":"katies-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32764","title":{"rendered":"Katie’s Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author’s Note:\u00a0 some indicate that this article brings back memories that aren’t necessarily good ones.\u00a0 If you’re having a bad day along those lines, perhaps you might want to read this article another time.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Humans have five senses.\u00a0 But I\u2019m personally convinced that two of these \u2013 smell and hearing \u2013 are more deeply embedded in the psyche, and are much harder to ignore.<\/p>\n

Or to forget.<\/p>\n

While experiences associated with touch may be the most intense, their memories – both pleasant and painful – fade with time.\u00a0 One can remember pleasure and pain vividly; but the memories aren\u2019t anywhere as intense as the original experiences.\u00a0 The memories don\u2019t seem to produce the same visceral reaction.<\/p>\n

My guess is that\u2019s a psychological self-defense mechanism we humans have developed over time.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not a shrink; I could be wrong.<\/p>\n

Ditto for taste, and for sight.\u00a0 Memories associated with these senses seem to fade too; the memories simply aren\u2019t anywhere near as intense as original experiences.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s the case for me.<\/p>\n

But hearing and smell seem . . . different.<\/p>\n

There are some sounds in life you never forget; hearing them again grabs your attention with near-original intensity.\u00a0 You may not immediately recognize someone\u2019s face after several years \u2013 but once they speak, most of us have absolutely no doubt as to who<\/span> they are.\u00a0 There any number of other sounds each of us could name that are, for us personally, absolutely unforgettable and which hit home like few others.\u00a0 The voice of a close friend or a loved one; the sound of a crashing car; certain music . . . the list goes on.\u00a0 And the list is unique for each of us.<\/p>\n

Smells are similar.\u00a0 Some are similarly unforgettable and immediate.\u00a0 I suspect that is due to a different reason than for sound \u2013 my guess is that the tie-in for sound is more emotional and psychological, while that for smell is biological and evolutionary.\u00a0 But I could be wrong about this, too.<\/p>\n

While deployed, I discovered a few such sounds and smells.\u00a0 The sharp \u201ccrack\u201d of small arms fire, and the lower \u201cthump-thump-thump\u201d of a heavy machine gun.\u00a0 The low, sharp report of an explosion.\u00a0 The smell of small-arms fire. The simultaneous \u201cwhop-whop-whop\u201d combined with turbine-whine of rotary-wing aircraft.\u00a0 The \u201cclick-clack\u201d of a weapon chambering a round.\u00a0 The unmistakable \u201cburned-but-not-quite-completely\u201d petrochemical scent of jet or turbine exhaust.<\/p>\n

To that list, add a couple of sounds.\u00a0 And another smell.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s this got to do with Katie?\u00a0 And who the hell is Katie?<\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s my nickname for her – Katie.\u00a0 She\u2019s fairly slender, and she generally dresses in drab colors.\u00a0 She\u2019s of Russian ancestry.\u00a0 But she\u2019s traveled quite widely during the last few decades; she has relatives (and offspring) in many places.\u00a0 She\u2019s a grand lady in her own way.\u00a0 Some would call her beautiful.<\/p>\n

She’s also dangerous as hell.\u00a0 In many respects, Katie’s rather like a black widow spider:\u00a0 beautiful, but very deadly.\u00a0 Indeed, Katie\u2019s far more deadly than any spider.<\/p>\n

More formally, her family name is \u201cKatyusha\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some incoming whistles or shrieks.\u00a0 Not Katie.<\/p>\n

Katie sings.<\/p>\n

Katie has surprisingly strong \u201cpipes\u201d.\u00a0 She can be amazingly loud for such a slender thing.<\/p>\n

Her song has two notes.\u00a0 The first is usually reasonably soft.\u00a0 It’s a bit hard to describe, actually.\u00a0 It\u2019s a mixture of zoom, buzz, and whoosh, all at once.\u00a0 The tone drops with time, and doesn\u2019t start that high to begin with \u2013 think contralto vice soprano.\u00a0 The best approximation I can come up is the \u201czheu\u201d sound at the beginning of the French word \u201cjeune\u201d – but with the tongue allowed to buzz slightly, and pronounced drawn-out and slowly, in a normal conversational tone, with falling pitch.<\/p>\n

Katie\u2019s second note is fairly easy to describe.\u00a0 Depending on how close Katie is, it\u2019s faint, moderate, loud – or literally deafening.\u00a0 This note also involves the sense of touch, as the ground (and anything you\u2019re crouched down behind and\/or flattening yourself against) often shakes when you hear Katie’s second note.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoom.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some places, Katie\u2019s song is sometimes preceded by a sound you absolutely<\/em> want to hear first. It\u2019s harsh, rasping, and repetitive \u2013 and annoying as hell.\u00a0 But it damn sure gets your attention.<\/p>\n

Then again, an incoming warning klaxon is supposed to do that.<\/p>\n

If you hear Katie sing, you really<\/em> want to hear both notes – or only her second note, sung softly.\u00a0 You don’t<\/em> want to hear – or remember \u2013 only the first.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re close enough, you might even smell Katie\u2019s breath shortly after hearing her song.\u00a0 Katie\u2019s breath, unfortunately, is foul.\u00a0 It’s quite sulfurous; it smells a lot like small arms fire, but with a fair amount of the musky odors of dust and dirt added.<\/p>\n

Katie\u2019s song, once you\u2019ve heard it, is something you will never forget.\u00a0 Guaranteed.\u00a0 Ditto for the sound that often precedes her song.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I much care for Katie\u2019s song.\u00a0 But it does indeed get your attention like few other things in life.\u00a0 And you really don\u2019t ever want to find yourself close enough to Katie to smell her breath.<\/p>\n

But there is one good thing about smelling Katie\u2019s breath after hearing her sing.<\/p>\n

Smelling Katie’s breath tells you \u2013 definitively \u2013 that you’re still alive.<\/p>\n

— — —<\/p>\n

Backstory:\u00a0\u00a0 The above is an edited version of something I wrote in November 2007.\u00a0 It was originally posted to a site that is now defunct. I decided it might be apropos here.
\n<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Five years ago today, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq, was on the receiving end of a multi-rocket attack. Although all but one of my soldiers and I were fairly close to a couple of the impact points – some of my guys \u00a0were on their way out of a\u00a0 protected building, others of us were caught in the open – God was merciful.\u00a0 The warning klaxon gave us all sufficient warning to take cover.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

None of us were injured in the attack.\u00a0 But it was still just a bit too close for comfort.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Not everyone on base that day (and on a number of other days) was so lucky. <\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The incoming warning radars and klaxon at Camp Victory were working properly five years ago.\u00a0 Had either malfunctioned – and had the attack been 30 seconds to a minute later – most or all of us would virtually certainly have been standing together in a group talking.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

And we’d almost certainly have been standing on flat ground about 5 meters away from one of the impact points.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you, Lord – for the last 5 years and counting.\u00a0 On behalf of all of us. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author’s Note:\u00a0 some indicate that this article brings back memories that aren’t necessarily good ones.\u00a0 If … Katie’s Song<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}