I know it’s just a simple mental twist but the urgency of the need always increases as the distance to safety decreases; my ruin nearly came when the first privy door was locked. A grumpy, straining voice instructed me to “Fuck off” while I was already on my way to door number two. At that point, the Pucker Factor was off the charts and I had broken out in a full-on, dripping sweat; I was truly afraid that I was doing permanent damage to my faithful rectum.

Were the second hole to be occupied, I knew that I’d be fertilizing the yard and cleaning it up later; it was a performance that I was quite sure that any and all passers-by would prefer to miss. Mercifully the second door opened and the hole was available - my trousers were at my ankles and my ass was planted over the hole faster than I would have thought possible.

So naturally as soon as I reached safety nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

Well until that bugle started up and with it came with a scrotum-shrinking cramp of pain.

Apparently someone had stuffed a bugle up my ass. When I began to relax the relief came as gas blowing out and it was blowing a tune on that invisible bugle which had somehow secreted itself in my sorry ass. That damn note was impressively long and loud, bringing a comment of accolade from my erstwhile shitter mate. That moment of grandeur quickly passed as the note got deeper in tone and ended in a loud ‘Blatt!’.

Then the smell hit us. A double holed out-house means that you share a septic hole with two seats on top of it and there is no courtesy flush available, to top it off the only privacy was a loose hanging piece of burlap. The experience was definitely a shared one. The odor that my body shared was beyond description; it was worse than the smell of the rotting dead, it was pretty much other-worldly in description. As I sat there in my incredibly awful smell, I reflected back on a bad middle school joke calling it ‘Marvin the Martian’s Revenge’ as opposed to ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’. Hey, we were in middle school; it was a stupid but acceptable pre-teen joke.

Regardless of the descriptor, the output of my nether regions was mind numbingly offensive and invasive. My unknown friend occupying the other hole cursed vividly and exited at extreme speed. Apparently the smell was nowhere near as funny as the sound that delivered that extremely noxious odor.

Then everything stopped. Just flat out stopped. The pain was gone, the pressure was gone and only the scent of the moment remained.

That seemed to have been that; seemed to, at least until I bent forward to latch the door. Apparently that was all it took.

The gates of hell opened and they opened wide. Pure misery for a good twenty minutes.

We even seemed to have a half-time break (sans entertainment) and I used that brief respite to light a cigarette in a futile attempt to drive away some of the horrific odor.

My joyous session ended in whatever the lower intestinal version of ‘dry heaves’ is called, seemingly nothing was left to expel.

I was sweat-soaked and weak, my vision was blurry and my thoughts were not exactly consistent. I was definitely sick. I cleaned myself and tried to rise unsteadily to my feet. I made it upright on the third try. I was unable to successfully manage the half-step down when exiting the outhouse and almost fell completely on my ass.

I fixed my sight on the reluctant rocker as my goal; looking around only made me dizzy and confused. I could still feel slight tremors in my guts with the occasional twinge of pain to remind me that this was far from over. Though it was a very short distance in reality, at that moment it resembled the road to Kilimanjaro. I was forced to stop twice to catch my breath and gather my strength.

I eventually made it to the porch and stood there, supported by the handrail, and stared at the two steps I had to climb to get to that chair. I was, by then, exhausted and very thirsty; my head had started to pound and keep time with the racing heart in my chest. I ended up finishing the journey by going full Yellowbeard, with crawl, crawl, stagger, stagger being the operative means of travel.

The rocker was a welcome relief. I hadn’t the energy to even drop my carry bag as I was collapsing into it. I simply laid my head back and sat there; I didn’t move a muscle, just sat there and tried to recover my energy and composure.

It wasn’t long before someone found me. Cook raised the alarm and in short order the well-intended pests buzzed around me. I was poked and prodded with questions and concerns, force-fed broths, concoctions and best intentions. I simply wished for a cave to hide in so that I could be alone in my misery. I managed to escape thrice with emergency trips to the outhouse to resume my torture. But after each escape I found someone waiting outside the outhouse door to escort me back into best intentions hell.

The Doc didn’t have much to offer except charcoal mix and most of the homebrew remedy teas were downright awful. The constant chatter was more painful than the symptoms and nobody there could give me the one thing that every person wants when they feel like that; I wanted my Mommy.

Gut disruptions are nothing new to military men; new environs, new food and strange new bugs will do that to people. It’s usually best just to leave them alone and let them rest in peace. Eventually I got that message across to everyone,. They left me alone with my requested water, broth and beer. Amos found me a stool so that I could put my feet up and Sinclaire covered me with a blanket. I simply ate two pills and went to sleep.

Of course I didn’t get a full night's sleep, I awakened several times to rush back to the outhouse in a middle of the night panic. Some kind soul had left me a small lamp and thankfully it was a pleasantly warm night. My dreams were all nightmares usually involving me searching frantically for a toilet, but that’s not uncommon when you are suffering from a severe case of the trots. My drinks were always refreshed and warm but I never caught whoever was doing that.

Morning eventually came.