The New Guy - Phan Rang Air Base, Vietnam 1968

Guarding the perimeter of a base in Vietnam is quite different than guarding a perimeter in the USA. We had no enemy combatants or terrorists to worry about during the 60s inside the USA, but that is not a true statement about what lurked in the darkness of Vietnam. There was absolute darkness on the other side of the fence, while a patrolling sentry dog handler was back-lit by the bright lights of the base. Therefore, patrolling the perimeter of the base was a scary thing.

Each new handler learned on the job what was expected of him after arriving in country.  K-9 was the only group of guards that were allowed to chamber a round in their weapon while on duty.  When I became the Assistant Flight Chief, I stressed at guard mount during my weapons safety briefing that there was no reason to take your weapon off of safe unless you are going to use it and even then you should only use it on semi-automatic.  The CAR-15 was designed with the safety right by your thumb when your finger was on the trigger.

One warm summer night I was doing what every handler took turns at doing.  I had a new guy from the other flight on the post beside mine and I showed him around his post.  When I was done, we walked back along the fence line towards my post.  While we were walking he told me that he kept his gun on automatic while he was on the fence line. I grasped the meaning of that sentence immediately.  I had a scared soldier with a loaded automatic weapon pointed at my back with the safety off. I stopped, gave him my weapons safety speech, had him put the safety on while I then returned to my post. The rest of the night I stayed away from the fence line if I was near his post while patrolling. Okay, I stayed as far away from his post as I could and still do my job.

Typhoon

Everything seemed to happen on the one night a week I was in charge of the flight because our flight chief had the night off. A typhoon hit shortly after dark one night. The Officer of the Day made the decision to pull all the dogs off post because they would be ineffective and the dogs and handlers would be at risk of injury. The OOD, along with the Night Supervisor, also decided that 5 people from each flight should stay at the kennels to take care of the dogs in the event that the kennels got damaged. One person was required to stay awake and alert the others if something happened requiring help. The other flight chief chose 5 guys he did not like and he left with the night supervisor for the barracks.

I, on the other hand, asked for volunteers. I had more than I needed volunteer and I chose my three roommates and one other to stay with me. Yes, I could have left just like the other supervisors. If I was not willing to stay, why should I ask anyone else to stay? We discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of the night. Soon I was in my jeep headed back to the barracks. I picked up some board games, cards, sodas, and snacks.  No one slept that night and all of us had a fun time.

Sleeping on Post

Sleeping on post was a problem that became widely accepted and because it was not properly addressed several dog handlers were court-martialed and severely punished with jail time and a dishonorable discharge. Some of the guys would joke around and laugh and say, "I hear you were caught sleeping last night."

Eventually, the Kennel Master overheard the guys talking about it. Over a one week period, five or six guys were caught sleeping by the Kennel Master and the Night Supervisor. Ironic that the Night Supervisor was the witness with the Kennel Master who would send the sleepers to jail, because he had been one of the supervisors overlooking the previous dereliction of duty. This was not someone accidentally falling asleep because he sat down for too long. One soldier had his poncho spread out like a mattress and his boots off. He was planning on sleeping.

There was a shakeup of leadership in K-9. The ones who should have been replaced were not, but the Squad Leaders and the Assistant Flight Chiefs lost their jobs. Some of the guys, who outranked me, chose not to accept a leadership role because they did not want to work for the Night Supervisor or the current Flight Chiefs. I accepted the position of Assistant Flight Chief and I decided that I would work hard at making sure no one else went to jail, for any type of breach of duty.

It was my job to give the briefings at guard mount. Every night I would give a speech about weapons safety and about being continuously alert on post along with the intelligence report and the code words of the day.

It was important that everyone believed that I would send them to jail if I caught them sleeping, including my roommates. Then it happened. Base was trying to reach one of my squad leaders so that he would clear his post for a fire mission. He did not answer. I was taking someone back to the barracks, so I had a witness with me. As we drove down the post, the kid kept saying, "I won't be a witness for you." I had to finally tell him to shut up.

When we got there, sure enough my squad leader was asleep. I swapped out his radio and attributed his lack of communication to a bad radio. After we had cleared the area I had a heart to heart talk with both soldiers. I told them that they were to tell no one that I had found the squad leader sleeping and that I had better not hear it come back to me about what had happened that night. It never came back to me that I caught anyone sleeping on post. I did not have a problem with either of them after that. The squad leader was thankful that he did not go to jail and became one of the best dog handlers I ever served with during my four years in the service.

The Squeaky Wheel

After being promoted to Assistant Flight Chief, my Flight Chief told me that I could have one day off a week, the same as him. I kept my rotation the same as the troops, one day off every 30 days. We had to cover a minimum number of posts every night and we did not have enough handlers to give everyone one a day off a week. On the nights I assumed Flight Chief's duties, I did not walk a dog, but the other six nights of the week I did. It did not go unnoticed by the troops I commanded, that I stayed in the same rotation of nights off as them.

The troops had lost faith in their leadership because their friends had been sent to jail followed by dishonorable discharges.There was a feeling of betrayal by their friends in leadership, because they knew that their friends were sleeping while on duty and they condoned it by doing nothing to stop this egregious behavior. Because of the loss of morale, I took it upon myself to do what I could to help build the esprit de corps necessary for a unit to perform efficiently. I never had a lack of opportunity.

One such opportunity presented itself when the incident of the squeaky wheel occurred. We had two trucks and two jeeps assigned to the kennels for night time duty. I would walk to the motor pool and pick up the flight chief's jeep every evening, then pick up my squad leaders and drive them to the motor pool to pick up the trucks. We would then go back to the barracks where I would pick up the flight chief and the trucks picked up the troops assigned to duty that night. At the end of our shift, we did everything in reverse and I would then walk back to the barracks and take my cold shower because the troops had used up all of the hot water. This was not a hardship because the water was not all that cold and the weather was extremely hot.

One morning, when returning the vehicles to the motor pool, I reported that a truck had a squeaky wheel. The sergeant told me that it was the bearing and that we should continue to drive it until it failed. We did and one day it failed, but it was not a bearing.  The lug nuts were loose and it destroyed the rim and the wheel. The motor pool demanded to know who had driven the truck the night before. I was the acting flight chief that night and I refused to give them the name of the driver because he did nothing wrong. The other flight chief immediately gave up the name of the driver for his flight. The motor pool then attached my paycheck and the other drivers paycheck for the cost of the damaged rim and wheel.

This was a horrible miscarriage of justice. I immediately went to our Operations Officer and explained to him what had happened. K-9 did not have a lug wrench to check or tighten the lug nuts and only the motor pool had a lug wrench. The motor pool was informed about the squeaky wheel when it first occurred. The motor pool did not check the lug nuts and told us to drive it until the bearing failed. The officer corrected the injustice and the NCO who told us to drive it until it failed was never very friendly towards me after that. But the troops I commanded knew that I was there to support them and, for the most part, they did their job for me.