Being in The Shit

This story is not for the squeamish. I want you to hold your nose. Don't smell, this story will last as long as you can do that, and then maybe a little longer.
Last night we stopped our vehicles and dismounted to do a patrol through one of the local Mahalla's. No I'm not saying thanks in Hawaiian, that's mahalo. A mahalla is Arabic for subdivision. It's basically like a zip code. I get out of the back of the truck and the standard operating procedure is to move to a place with better cover and out of the middle of the road. I started to mosey my way over to the right side of the road, and noticed a puddle that was quite long, but not very wide.
I took a preparatory step and then a leap to clear the puddle, and mount the sidewalk. It being dark and all I wasn't sure how fresh the mud was that I leaped at, and couldn't be certain whether or not I would sink in or stay on top. It was neither. The mud ended up having a little more viscosity than I had predicted and my right landing foot started to slide. Not a big deal was what was going through my mind, because in the darkness to the left was solid ground, plain old sand colored dirt. My recovery step with the left was quite shocking. It confused me greatly, because as I planted the foot I felt a dash of cold fluid on my knee. As I tried to process that my leg was in fact in a puddle up to my knee, I couldn't help to stop the momentum of the right foot, now wanting to plant closer to my recovery foot and be out of the mud. As it caught the water two feet out in front of me, I realized that I was in for a bad night. I thought surely though it would just be some boots and pants wet. As my right foot entered the water I had come to the realization that this now would be the foot to balance me. I drove it down, not on purpose, with the weight of myself and the nearly 50 lbs of equipment that I bear. The water level rushed past my knee and I hit the panic button in my head.
My arms began to flail, and my left foot tried it's best to push me forward and over the obstacle in which I was being sucked into. It wasn't enough and I found myself waist and then chest and then neck deep in water. Somehow I had flailed, and in as gay a way as you could imagine, my arms and rifle and caught the far side of this pond, I had now fallen into. My feet had kicked for the bottom and not found any. I pulled myself up grudgingly and got out of the hole of Iraqi urine, and poop and water. I was about four inches from having been fully submerged in that hole, and probably, because of my equipment, drowned.
Despite being thankful that I didn't drop my weapon, or any of my sensitive items in the water, and didn't drown in the hole of stinking excrement, the fact that the rest of the night I was in these stinking wet clothes. The dismounted patrol lasted about another 4 hours. And I want you to imagine what I was going through at that time.

The Smell. Lock yourself in a porta-potty that hasn't been cleaned in a week.
The Cold. The temperature is around 60 degrees, and you're in wet clothes for roughly 4 hours.
The Pride. Hurt

It was the second time I've fallen into some kind of hole of shit. The one prior to this was a sewer hole that I fell through the makeshift man hole cover. Fortunately that time my left boot was the only casualty. The lesson I learned, try not to do it again is the best I can come up with. Let me know if you have any hints or suggestions on how to stay out of such holes.