I mean, other than the guys who are on fire. :eek: Anyway, it’s a common cliche in war books and movies: A guy in combat sees a lull in the action so he lights up a cigarette. I’ve been a smoker myself so I can see how you sometimes just need a smoke but some of these men do it in a time and place where they are endangering their lives and the lives of those around them with something faster than secondhand smoke. For instance, I just finished The Guns of Navarone. In it the men sent to destroy the guns are hiding in a cave because a German searching for them is close by. Things are still tense but they aren’t running so one or two of the guys light up a cigarette. Uh, cigarette smoke has a distinctive smell, more distinctive since the British commandos, unless somebody back at HQ was REALLY thinking, would be smoking cigarettes with fine, American tobacco and not the crap issued to the Alpenkorps. So you can assume that the smoke could be smelled from quite a great distance away as well as recognized to be foreign yet I have NEVER seen a movie or book where a soldier’s cigarette smoke gave away his position. Does anybody in real life combat smoke? Is cigarette smoke the dead giveaway I think it would be?
**“yet I have NEVER seen a movie or book where a soldier’s cigarette smoke gave away his position.” **
I’ve seen several where the instructor warns the recruits NOT to smoke because it will give them away. Not so much the smell of smoke as the lit tip eaqsily visible at night.
I’ve never been in combat, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the movies I’ve seen.
Are you kidding? In Recondo (commando school) they warned against not just the smell of your cigarettes, but even against bathing just before you went on patrol, because western soap could be smelled at great distance (and I can personally confirm this: in the woods of East Germany in the 1970s, I smelled an Englishman’s lavender soap a good 100 yards away [the then-Communist East Germans didn’t use Western style scented soaps back then]. It was really rather jarring.
I think it comes down to the combat role most soldiers (esp. infantry) play. They are usually behind (or on) their own lines, not behind enemy lines. They aren’t so meticulously aware of giving away their presence, and if they ever need to be, they just might slip. The glowing red “shoot me” ember at night may really be more dangerous (depending on the situation) than the drifting aroma of American smoke.
I heard that “three on a light is bad luck” stems from trenchfighting, where if you kept a light lit long enough to light three cigarettes, the enemy would have enough time to get you in their sights and shoot you.
Anybody else ever hear this?
I have been in combat - Marines, Vietnam. Nobody would light up at night but during the day, sure, did it lots of times. Why not?
A lot of “combat”, even during a firefight is, so to speak, downtime. As a general rule there is a varying length and intensity of fire at first where you’re not smoking as things are up in the air, too much going on, other things on your mind than your nasty habit, etc. Then it’s off and on fighting for for another varying period of time until one side or the other slips away, gets beat into submission, or killed.
Also there’s the idea of, “giving away your position.” Not a problem during the day. Everybody knows generally where the other side is by the firing. If they can’t figure out where you are by a bunch of rifles and so forth blazing away as fast as you can pull the trigger my guess is they won’t notice a cigarette.
My guess would be you don’t smoke. As a, supposed, non smoker it might be hard to realize just how good a grip that habit has on you.
Now that I think about it, I have never seen anyone under fire smoke. But then I haven ever seen anyone under fire eat either. Other priorities.
I have seen lots of people smoke in staging areas and so on.
Of course smoking is simply going out in the modern (U.S.) Army. I doubt many people took up the habit in combat.
In Viet Nam, seemed like everyone smoked in combat.
It’s initally lighting the cig that creats a glow, and the glowing tip of the cig when one takes a “pull” at night that gives off ones position more than the smoke.
When I was in combat, the smokers all smoked.
Don’t know about today though.
In the movie Ronin De Niro’s character asks another character not to smoke, and the comment is made by yet another actor that this is to preserve night vision. A criticism of one of Tom Clancey’s books pointed out that he had a character smoking when any professional soldier would know not to smoke.
Hearsay: In Th’ Army I had a bos who swore that he’d once spotted a bad guy at the National Training Center (war games arena, if you didn’t know) because of a cigarette. Seems Boss was on guard duty one night scanning his surroundings with his night vision goggles when he noticed a light on the opposite side of the valley (2-3 miles away?). He got the Bradley that was camping out with him to go over and investigate it. They got within a couple hundred meters and fired it up. Upon returning they said he’d seen the glow of a cigarette being smoked by an Opfor spotter. Given the number of stars you can see with night vision goggles on a clear moonless night, I have no trouble believing the story.
Yes, I did. According to the story, when the match is used for the first cigarette, the ennemy soldier shoulders his weapon. When it used for the second cigarette, he aims, when it’s used for the third cigarette, he shoots.
Well, in my (fictional) example the men are well behind enemy lines and the enemy is nearby and looking for them.
Not true! I carried that monkey around for eleven years:
By the way, it seems things are different in the service than they were when we were young. I recall friends stocking up at the PX because it had the cheapest cigarettes around while, just recently, a local radio station collected cartons to send to the guys in Iraq. Jeeze, can’t they just go down to the 7-11? 
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There was an individual who broke in the top 100 in pro tennis who smoked during the side changes until the sport banned the practice. About ten years ago.
I don’t recall his name or seeing him smoke during any televised matches, but I do remember his left handed serving motion. Spectacularly unique.
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While travelling through Yugoslavia (where I belive “The Guns of Navarone” was filmed and set) in January, 1986, the train car I was travelling in filled up once we reached Zagreb. It seemed that immediately every single person who sat down immediately lit up. They even closed the window that gave me a modicum of fresh air. I was a smoker at the time, but was suffering a horrible sinus infection. I thought I would die. It would seem to me that when fighting where cigarette smoking is rampant, it would be less likely that you would be discovered. From personal experience, people who smoke heavily don’t have a particularly acute sense of smell.
Additionally, I have heard that the Mujaheddin who fought in the war with the Soviets were known for a particularly heavy use of tobacco. I think I read it first in a Ken Follett book, “Lie Down with Lions,” but have subsequently heard and read of others who made similar observations. I’ve heard it said that the tobacco helped dull the hunger pangs since food was so scarce.
Tobacco is the best diet aid since amphetamines.
OK:
Here’s how ya smoke in combat.
Ya take a C ration box.
A c ration box is 10" x 4" x 6" and ya poke a hole in the side to stick your cig in.
Then ya cut a hole big enough in the bottom that one can put their zippo lighter through and flick and light the cig.
Ya keep the cig in the box, and when ya puff, the enemy can’t see the glow, nor the initial lighting.
Hell, it worked,
american ingenituity
We were taught the same thing, but it was about general movement under fire. Basically if you don’t want to get shot, and you’re moving from one covered position to another you’ve got about four seconds. “I’m up, I’m moving, he sees me, I’m down,” was the chant. Any longer than than that, and “down” means you’re dead.