My skin began to burn and sting, my lips were numb, there was a very strange taste in my mouth, my nose ran uncontrollably, and my eyes watered quite a bit. As I was feeling my own symptoms, I saw my buddies and realized that they also were experiencing the same thing that I was, some even worse. After a long day of questions and wondering what had happened, we were informed that we had simply experienced a sonic boom. To my knowledge, sonic booms don't cause flashes and cause reactions to skin and eyes. When I spoke with the decontamination leader from our camp later on, he advised me that his test kit detected mustard gas and lewisite.
Lewisite vapors cause stinging and burning and irritation to the eyes and upper respiratory tract.
Its smell could be confused with ammonia. The injurious effect of mustard gas is associated with its ability to inhibit many enzyme systems of the body. Death is associated mainly with necrosis of the tissue of the central nervous system. The FOX accurately detects 60 known chemical agents simultaneously using a highly sophisticated, laboratory-quality mass spectrometer. On the evening of the first day of ground attack, we detected Lewisite blister vapors in the vicinity of N28 50' E47 50'.