Monday Music "Paint It Black" By the Rolling Stones

 

I was driving in to work and this song *Popped up* as a preset alert on my Sirius/XM so I listened to it several times back to back on the drive to work, I would remember things while I drive, especially my interaction with my Dad who really liked the series "Call of Duty" and the Stones were from his generation, and for me this song is the only song and of course "Sympathy For The Devil"  that I liked.  I ain't knocking the Stones, it is a personal preference thing and of course there is the belief that Pete Townsend will be there for the end of time since he seemed to never change, he is the real "Dorian Gray".LOL    I have ran this song several times in the past, it is one of the few I will run repeats on....

    Well anyway, I didn't post anything this weekend, was very busy.....I decided to make room...in my garage......for the F150....Shocker.....Took a lot of work...

A lot of rearranging....chunked some stuff.....moved some stuff to the shed....a LOT of lifting.....Man I was sore..but the results were cool

  I never was able to get my F150 into the garage, neither my 1999 or my 2021....until now....I was able to get my focuses in there....but never the trucks.

   I always associate the song "Paint it black" with the series "Call OF Duty" that the song was the opening lyrics for in the 1980's.   

 Vietnam was a taboo subject for a while the wounds that the conflict left on the American Psyche was deep.  We had won the battles but lost the war because we as a nation had lost the will to fight it thanks to the media and the hippies and the antiwar movement that was funded by the communist party and liberal donors.  it took several years before Vietnam could be discussed outside of the veterans.  My Dad was a Vietnam Veteran, he did a tour in 1968 and dealt with the tunnels of Cu-Chi and the Tet Offensive, then he returned in 1972 for a second tour.   For a while especially in the 1970's, the Vietnam vet was portrayed as crazy or dangerous.  The specter of Vietnam dogged every use of the Military or any support during the 1980's, from Grenada, to Beirut, to Honduras and Nicaragua.  The Ghost of Vietnam were finally laid to rest during Desert Storm. 

 

 I decided to roll with "Paint it black" It is a Rolling Stone song that was used in the opening credits of a TV series that we GI's watched in the barracks.  We liked the realism, the attention to detail,  they had used Vietnam veterans as advisers to ensure the realism and gritty reality...for 80's TV anyway.  When the show came on, the dayroom was full as everybody clustered around the AFN broadcast of the show.  This song is the only song by the Rolling Stones that I  really liked.....We would cheer when the soldiers would shoot up Charlie and the firefights.  The interplay of the people was very well done, we liked the way the new LT played by Stephen Caffrey was mentored by the platoon sergeant played by Terrance Knox.  All the other guys also played well on each other and at the end of the video, it showed the 3 soldiers standing at attention and saluting the flag on TV at the end of the broadcast day....when they played the national Anthem.   That was telling for me.  The simple patriotism showed represented the beliefs of the Veterans in their country..

 

"Paint It Black" is a song recorded in 1966 by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. A product of the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it is a raga rock song with Indian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European influences and lyrics about grief and loss. London Records released the song as a single on 7 May 1966 in the United States, and Decca Records released it on 13 May in the United Kingdom. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath, though it is not on the original UK release.

Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, all five members of the band contributed to the final arrangement, although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. In contrast to previous Rolling Stones singles with straightforward rock arrangements, "Paint It Black" has unconventional instrumentation including a prominent sitar, the Hammond organ, and castanets. This instrumental experimentation matches other songs on Aftermath. The song was influential to the burgeoning psychedelic genre as the first chart-topping single to feature the sitar, and widened the instrument's audience. Reviews of the song at the time were mixed and some music critics believed its use of the sitar was an attempt to copy the Beatles, and others criticized its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential.

"Paint It Black" was a major chart success for the Rolling Stones, at eleven weeks (including two at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including one atop the chart) on the Record Retailer chart in the UK. Upon a re-issue in 2007, it reentered the UK Singles Chart for 11 weeks. It was the band's third number-one single in the US and sixth in the UK. The song also topped charts in Canada and the Netherlands. It received a platinum certification in the UK from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and from Italy's Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI).

"Paint It Black" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song number 213 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2011, the song was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "The Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". Many artists have covered "Paint It Black" since its initial release. It has been included on many of the band's compilation albums, and several film soundtracks. It was played on several Rolling Stones tours. 

In 1965, popularity of the Rolling Stones increased markedly with a series of international hit singles written by lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards.While 1964 saw the band reach the top of both the albums and singles charts in their native United Kingdom, other bands from Britain dominated the American market, such as the Beatles. In 1965, the Stones crossed over to the American Market with their first number one single, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and first number one album Out of Our Heads. That year also saw the Stones reach the top of the charts for the first time in countries such as Finland, Germany, and South Africa.

This success attracted the attention of Allen Klein, an American businessman who became their US representative in August while Andrew Loog Oldham, the group's manager, continued in the role of promoter and record producer.^[4] One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars. Their October–December 1965 tour of North America was the group's fourth and largest tour there up to that point.According to the biographer Victor Bockris, through Klein's involvement, the concerts afforded the band "more publicity, more protection and higher fees than ever before".

By this time, the Rolling Stones had begun to respond to the increasingly sophisticated music of the Beatles, in comparison to whom they had long been promoted by Oldham as a rougher alternative.With the success of the Jagger-Richards-penned singles "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) and "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966), the band increasingly rivalled the musical and cultural influence of the Beatles, and began to be identified as one of the major pillars of the British Invasion. The Stones' outspoken, surly attitude on songs like "Satisfaction" alienated the Establishment detractors of rock music, which music historian Colin King explains, "only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world – an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on".

 

"Paint It Black" came at a pivotal period in the band's recording history. The Jagger/Richards songwriting collaboration had begun producing more original material for the band over the past year, with the early model of Stones albums featuring only a few Jagger-Richards compositions having been replaced by that of albums such as Out of Our Heads and December's Children (and Everybody's), each of which consisted of half original tracks and half cover songs. This trend culminated in the sessions for Aftermath (1966) where, for the first time, the duo penned every track on the album. Brian Jones, originally the band's founder and leader over the first few years of its existence, began feeling overshadowed by the prominence of Jagger and Richards' contributions to the group.

Despite having contributed to early songs by the Stones via the Nanker Phelge pseudonym, Jones had less and less influence over the group's direction as their popularity grew primarily as a result of original Jagger-Richards singles. Jones grew bored attempting to write songs, and with conventional guitar melodies. To alleviate his boredom, he begun exploring Eastern instruments, specifically the Indian sitar, with a goal to bolstering the musical texture and complexity of the band's sound. A multi-instrumentalist, Jones could develop a tune on the sitar in a short time; he had a background with the instrument largely from his studies under Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar.

Over 1965, the sitar had become a more and more prominent instrument in the landscape of british rock. The Yardbirds had attempted to record "Heart Full of Soul" with the sitar as part of the arrangement in April, however they had run into problems getting the instrument to "cut through" the mix, and the session musician responsible for playing the instrument had trouble staying within the 4/4 time signature of the song. Ultimately, the final version of "Heart Full of Soul" featured a fuzz guitar in place of the sitar, although the song's distinctively Indian timbre remained. Following similar Indian-influenced experimentation by the Kinks on "See My Friends" that nonetheless still used guitar as the primary instrument, the first British band to release a recording featuring the sitar was the Beatles, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" released that December on the album Rubber Soul. Following a discussion with the Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison, who had recently played the sitar on the sessions for "Norwegian Wood" in October 1965, Jones began devoting more time to the sitar, and began arranging basic melodies with the instrument. One of these melodies morphed over time into the tune featured in "Paint It Black"

Initial reaction to "Paint It Black" was mixed. Some music critics found the addition of the sitar to be simply a case of the band copying the Beatles.n his book Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones, Paul Trynka comments on the influence of Harrison's sitar playing on the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" from the Rubber Soul album and draws parallels with Jones' droning sitar melody on "Paint It Black". Responding to claims that he was imitating the Beatles, Jones replied: "What utter rubbish", comparing the argument to saying that all groups using a guitar copy each other merely by using the instrument. Jonathan Bellman, an American musicologist, agreed with Jones, writing in a 1997 issue of The Journal of Musicology that the events are an example of concurrent musical and instrumental experimentation. Jones' sitar part on the track influenced the development of a whole subgenre of minor-key psychedelic music.

Lindy Shannon of the La Crosse Tribune felt "Paint It Black", the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Beatles' "Rain" were straying from the "commercial field" and instead "going into a sort of distorted area of unpleasant sounds". Staff at Melody Maker lauded the track, calling it "a glorious Indian raga-riot that will send the Stones back to number one".Writing for Disc and Music Echo, Penny Valentine praised Jagger's singing, writing that it was "better than ever" but was critical of the track's sitar Guitar Player's Jesse Gress cited "Paint It Black" as originating the 1960s ragarock craze.In a review for New Musical Express (NME), Keith Altham considered "Paint It Black" the band's best single since "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was released the previous year. A reviewer for Billboard predicted that Aftermath would become another hit for the band, citing "Paint It Black" as the focal point of this hard rock album and praising Oldham's production. The Herald News considered the song a "top record ... for teeners", and in The Sunday Press Nancy Brown described it as a "pulsating, blues-soaked romantic tear-jerker".In the San Francisco Examiner, Ralph J. Gleason lauded the song for its "hypnotizing tone" and "same qualities of ambiguity and obscurity as some of the previous Stones hits". In April 1967, while hosting the television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard Bernstein praised the song for its "arab café" sound, and cited it as an example of contemporary pop music's ability to evoke disparate moods through instrumentation.

In a retrospective review, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called the song an "eerily insistent" classic that features some of "the best use of sitar on a rock record", and in another AllMusic review wrote it is "perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song". Writing on the song's 50th anniversary in 2016, Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock considered the song, like its parent album Aftermath, to be a major turning point in artistic evolution for the band, noting: "'Paint It, Black' wasn't just another song by just another rock group; it was an explosion of ideas presented in one neat three-minute package." In 2017, ranking Aftermath as one of the best albums of the 1960s, Judy Berman of Pitchfork described the song as "rock's most nihilistic hit to date".vid Palmer, editor of the Cullman Times, wrote that the "attitude" songs on Aftermath – particularly "Paint It Black" – influenced the nihilistic outlook of punk music. Stereogum critic Tom Breihan praised the song as a strong example of the band's brand of "swirling doom-blues", and praised its heavy sound and dark lyrics as ahead of its time when compared to the landscape of popular music in 1966.

"Paint It Black" inspired almost four hundred covers.It has placed on many "best songs" lists including those by Rolling Stone, Vulture magazine, NME, and Pitchfork. The Recording Academy inducted the song into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018. It is ranked number 213 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,and according to Acclaimed Music it is the 115th most celebrated song in popular music history.

Which WWII Generals Personally Lead their troops in Battle.

 

Only one that I knew about was Rommel,   I'm sure there were others

While most WWII generals led from the safety of the rear, a defiant few fought on the front lines. One even landed in the first wave of D-Day at age 56, armed only with a pistol and a cane.

That man was U.S. Army Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. As the deputy commander of the 4th Infantry Division, he had repeatedly petitioned his superiors to let him lead the assault, arguing his presence would steady the men. His request was finally granted, and Roosevelt stepped off his landing craft onto Utah Beach under heavy fire. When he realized the landing craft had drifted a mile off course, he personally scouted the area and redirected incoming regiments, declaring, "We'll start the war from right here!" He survived the assault but died of a heart attack in Normandy a month later. Here is some details"General Roosevelt", He had big ties with my division, the 1st Infantry Division.

German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel built his reputation on abandoning his headquarters to ride with his vanguard. During the 1940 invasion of France, he commanded the 7th Panzer Division—nicknamed the "Ghost Division" because even the German High Command often lost track of its location. Rommel drove right alongside his lead tanks, sometimes personally helping soldiers operate anti-tank guns or bridging equipment. In North Africa, he continued this aggressive style, directing battles from a forward command vehicle or flying low over the desert in a Fieseler Storch observation plane to spot British positions.

German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel studies a map in his forward command vehicle during the North African campaign in 1942. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

U.S. Major General Maurice Rose commanded the 3rd Armored Division, nicknamed the "Spearhead" division, and lived up to the name by riding in a jeep at the very front of his armored columns. Rather than managing the advance from a rear command post, Rose preferred to be close enough to hear small arms fire. In March 1945, his hands-on approach cost him his life. While moving forward to locate a cutoff unit in Germany, his command group unexpectedly encountered a column of German Tiger tanks in the dark. Rose was shot and killed while reaching for his weapon to surrender, making him the highest-ranking American killed by enemy fire in the European Theater.

Details from "Wiki about Major General Rose"

Accident report on the Voepass Flight 2283

 

damm, forgot to put a title on this one.....was rushed.

Some Background, the "ATR Series" of aircraft is a regional turboprop built in France/Italy and utilized around the world for regional service and has a good reputation for reliability and safety. 

    Here is the "WIKI" details on the flight in question."VOEPASS Flight 2283"   We in the aviation industry study all accidents to ensure that the accidents and incidents improve the industry and makes it more difficult for the next accident to happen.  The statistics bear it out.  Flying is safer than driving.

Credit: CENIPA

LYON—All 62 occupants of a Voepass Linhas Aereas-operated ATR 72-500 died on Aug. 9, 2024, because of reckless behavior by the carrier’s managers, maintenance technicians and pilots, Brazil’s air accident investigation bureau has determined.

In its final report on the accident, Brazil’s Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) found abundant evidence of safety lapses within the company, which it described as contrary to the safety standards upheld by the air transport industry.

Brazil’s national civil aviation agency (ANAC) suspended Voepass’ operations in March 2025, after it noted persistent problems at the regional turboprop operator. ANAC permanently revoked Voepass’ air operator certificate in June 2025. CENIPA’s recommendations target ANAC, as the supervising body for air transport in Brazil, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and suggests improvements to ATR aircraft.

The final report says the crew knowingly flew the aircraft into severe icing conditions, although it was not certified for such circumstances and the airframe deicing system was inoperative. The resulting ice accretion increased drag, triggered alerts and eventually caused a stall. Voepass Flight 2283 originated in Cascavel, in the state of Parana, and was bound for Guarulhos, in the state of Sao Paulo. The crash took place in Vinhedo, in Sao Paulo state. None of the four crew members or 58 passengers survived.

The report describes the widespread violations of safety rules and common-sense obligations in maintenance activities as “jaw-dropping” for a company that operated 15 commercial turboprops.

“At some secondary bases, limitations in maintenance resources were identified, as well as ... restrictions on access to the aerodrome apron due to the lack of airport credentials,” CENIPA says, noting the mechanics had only a few hours, usually during the night-shift period, to perform corrective and preventive maintenance on the aircraft.

CENIPA says technicians performed maintenance in a superficial manner, without completing the required documentation and delegating critical activities to assistants without proper oversight. Some of them did not have the right qualifications to understand a manual’s content, the report says.

Standard Practices

Aircraft may be dispatched with inoperative systems, as long as they comply with their minimum equipment list (MEL). CENIPA points out that at Voepass, this was standard practice, not the exception, adding that some malfunctions were recorded as resolved, without the corrective action being performed.

“There was also the practice of replacing an inoperative component with another known to be malfunctioning and dispatching the aircraft for flight,” CENIPA’s investigators said. “As a consequence, a new malfunction entry would be recorded on the subsequent flight, allowing a new dispatch based on the MEL.”

The investigation found deficiencies in flight crew and managerial behaviors in which pilots routinely did not report malfunctions in the technical logbook, a deviation encouraged by the company. That was the case with the accident aircraft’s airframe deicing system, the investigators noted. Pilots and maintenance technicians just communicated verbally—another aspect of an organizational culture the investigators describe as permissive.

Between 2022-24, ANAC issued notices of irregular condition to Voepass and suspended several aircraft from flight. CENIPA investigators determined ANAC’s risk management process was insufficient for the strategic decisions that would have been necessary, and the agency’s report recommends a revision of ANAC’s methods.

The CENIPA report also says Voepass’ managers, including those in charge of safety, failed to use flight data monitoring. The ATR 72’s aircraft performance monitoring (APM) system issues three levels of advisories when it detects the effects of icing: Cruise Speed Low, Degraded Performance and Increase Speed. Those alerts indicate a performance degradation due to ice accumulation on the aircraft’s surfaces. CENIPA compared Voepass’ data with that of five other ATR 72 operators and found Voepass had significantly more frequent occurrences of such alerts than its counterparts. Pilots did not always activate protection systems after ice was detected, they add.

The day before the crash, the aircraft’s airframe deicing system malfunctioned and the crew attempted three resets, without success. “After the first system reset and the occurrence of a new failure, the flight crew should have followed the deicing airframe fault procedure, which instructed the crew to exit icing conditions, avoid them and turn off the system,” CENIPA investigators said. The pilots informed the maintenance team verbally, which did not check or repair the system.

Accident Sequence

The system failed again on the day of the accident, during the two flights that preceded the accident. Fault messages were displayed accordingly. The crews, including the one operating the accident flight, did not follow the deicing airframe fault procedure. Faced with speed alerts (Degraded Performance and Increase Speed), the crew who would later operate the accident flight only requested a descent to FL140 (approximately 14,000 ft.), from FL160. Air traffic control approved the request, and the speed alert warnings eventually disappeared. The crew’s response, however, did not comply with the standard procedure, which includes increasing airspeed, the report says.

Before the accident, the flight crew and Voepass’ operations control center had access to a weather forecast of severe icing along the planned flight route. They took off despite the predicted conditions and the airframe deicing system’s known malfunction, which stemmed from the right wing boots. During the climb, crossing FL130, the aircraft’s electronic ice detector indicated ice accumulation. The pilots did not follow the prescribed procedures for the deicing system’s fault or the three successive speed alerts from the APM system. The recommendation was to exit the likely severe icing conditions immediately, since aircraft performance and maneuverability would be severely affected after only a few minutes of exposure. After a stall warning, the crew did not follow the stall recovery procedure and lost control.

ATR Improvements

CENIPA recommends that EASA engage with ATR and consider an improvement in the Degraded Performance speed alert procedure. Speed should be increased by a greater margin above the minimum maneuvering speed in icing conditions. Moreover, ATR could extend the use of the Low Bank mode, which prevents the increase in stall speed due to aircraft bank angle, the investigators suggest. The flight data recorder should register more parameters, including deicing system failure. The Increase Speed alert should be upgraded to a Warning message, up from Caution, the investigators add.

Since the accident, ATR has designed a new version of the APM system software, which EASA certified in June 2025. Speed alerts are now based on the airspeed margins relative to the minimum maneuvering speed in icing conditions, rather than the theoretical airspeed values, CENIPA says. In a simulation, the last Degraded Performance alert was activated 31 seconds earlier than in the accident flight.

"Why are Pistols dropped during a hit, but keep the Canolli's"

 

    I have an affinity for movies that deal with payback and revenge for wrongs dealt to the person in question.  Part of the reason why I like the "Godfather", the 1984 version of "Dune", and others, I think it is part of the American psyche for Justice to right the wrongs kinda thing I suppose.

                                                      Here is the scene in question.                  

     This question was asked on Quora...

Why do gun owners in movies and TV shows always drop the gun they used to make the hit? They often do it in the Sopranos and there's the famous scene in The Godfather where Al Pacino does it after shooting two men in the restaurant.

When Michael Corleone drops his gun in The Godfather, it isn't just cinematic flair. A fleeing man caught with a warm weapon is a murderer. Empty-handed, he's just a panicked bystander.

This cinematic staple—often seen in The Sopranos and Goodfellas—reflects a real-world tactic employed by organized crime syndicates to break the physical chain of evidence immediately after a murder. The highest risk of apprehension occurs in the minutes immediately following a shooting, when responding police lock down the perimeter and stop anyone fleeing the area. Abandoning the weapon ensures the shooter can survive the getaway.

To make this strategy work, the firearm must be a "drop piece"—a weapon that cannot be traced back to the killer. Organized crime members traditionally use stolen guns and file off the serial numbers to prevent law enforcement from tracing the purchase history. Before the hit, the weapon is wiped clean of fingerprints. In The Godfather, Clemenza covers the trigger and grip of Michael’s .38 caliber revolver with special tape so it will not hold prints, ensuring that when the police inevitably recover the gun at the restaurant, it provides them with no actionable leads.

Taking the gun home introduces massive, unnecessary legal exposure. Every firearm leaves microscopic, unique striations on the bullets it fires. When crime scene investigators recover the bullets from a victim’s body, they can definitively match them to the weapon used. If a hitman keeps the gun and their home or car is raided weeks later on an unrelated charge, discovering that weapon provides prosecutors with the physical link needed to secure a murder conviction. Leaving the gun at the scene hands the police a dead end, forcing investigators to rely on witness testimony—which, in cases involving organized crime, is notoriously difficult to obtain.

A Smith & Wesson Model 642 compact revolver. Organized crime hitmen often preferred snubnose revolvers because they were easy to conceal and did not eject spent shell casings.

"In Vietnam Could a Soldier Smell their enemy in the jungle?"

 

I had a couple of senior NCO's in my first unit"Big Red One", we had most of the division at Fort Riley and the rest of it forward deployed in Germany scattered over several Kasernes and barracks in the "VII Corp" area of responsibility in the 1980's.  They were serious about the smell thing and the leaving trash.  I had eaten an orange and chunked the peels out of the cargo hatch of the "Track", we were on maneuvers,   Well I fessed up when he asked about it, and he had me dig a grave for the peels and do a service for the peels and for the crew because my stupidity got everyone killed.  They were serious about the smell and trash thing, needless to say, the lesson stuck.  From what I saw, not everyone was serious about the trash and smell thing.

By RJ Holland

 

Yes. But it was more the NVA and VC smelling us instead of us smelling them.

American soldiers smelled like their rations; meat and dairy products gave them a distinct and different body odor than local citizens.

 

Cigarettes also gave Americans a distinct scent. Winston and Pall Mall cigarettes, which were packed with the C rations, gave a particularly strong odor that clung to clothes.

Guns had the scent of oil, cleaner, and protectorant. Gear like packs had an army smell, as I called it: musty, dirty, sweaty canvas. I can still smell it now. Wet canvas smelled like misery, musty mildew and muck. Every combat US soldier would know that smell. So did the enemy.

 

Another giveaway that GI’s were in the area was the smell of pot and weed, or Bleu de Hue and Cambodian Red. I knew a tanker that called it JC, Jazz Cabbage. That stuff clung to the clothes like crazy. There were no skunks in Vietnam, if you know what I mean. Weed contains sulfur compounds as does skunk. The human nose is extremely sensitive to sulfur compounds, meaning even tiny amounts create a very strong, noticeable punch.

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters often reported that they could detect U.S. troops from a distance due to these odors.

 

What did the NVA and VC smell like? If GI’s were close enough to smell them, which wasn’t that often, and if they were, they would be in trouble. The NVA and VC would carry the scent of steamed rice, fish sauce called Nuoc Mam, which was made from fermented fish among other things, and Chinese cigarettes. This was very rare, though. The NVA and VC were good at covering scents. When an American soldier said he could ‘smell the enemy,’ he really meant that he had a feeling, a sixth sense, the enemy was near, not that he actually smelled them. [he could have smelled their cooking fires]

Our TC would often say into our tank coms, “They’re here, they’re around, I can smell them.” I always felt those words chilling. Well, he couldn’t really smell them; he could feel it. They were close, and he was usually right. He was good at that. Usually the ones with that sixth sense were lucky; it kept them alive. They were the ones that usually, I say usually, made it home.

 

‘Fee Fie Foe Fum, I smell Wrigley’s chewing gum!’ (We got those with our C Rations)

This post was taken from Quora.

 

Admin addition: When returning to a firebase or the rear area after a lengthy stay in the jungle, we could smell the cleanliness and soapy smell of those soldiers within the camp. In turn, we smelled ripe and vinegarish to them. In the bush, one could also smell the bug juice, which left a hint of alcohol in the air.

Any more examples or disagreements?