I'm Lost

As the Assistant Flight Chief, I was in charge of keeping the records for all the dogs.  I scheduled what posts all of the dog teams would patrol each night, the hours they worked, recorded their obedience training, attack training, on-post training and probably other things I can no longer remember. The Air Force was good at keeping records.

Once a week the Flight Chief had a night off and I ran the flight. Each dog had to have on-post alert training twice a year. That meant that I had to run two on-post problems almost every night I ran the flight. It helped the night go by quickly. This also allowed the crazy medic that rode around with me time to chat with the closest tower guard to the post where I was running the post problem.

I liked to run the post problems in the Juliette sector because it had been cleared of brush and was just tall grass. At guard mount, I always informed whoever it was that they were getting a post problem that night. It was my routine to call the dog handler and inform him that I was ready to start the post problem. I did this for three reasons.  The was first totally selfish; I did not want the handler shooting me because he thought I was the enemy. The second reason I called him before walking on his post was so that he would know when I was coming and not mistake his dog's alert for me when it was really the enemy. The third reason I called the handler was so that the dog and handler had a greater chance of success. The purpose of the on-post training was to keep the alerting skills sharp for both the dog and the handler. It is just as important that the handler be in tune with how his dog alerts as it is for the dog to find the intruder. I would check the wind, locate the handler and then set up the post problem for a high rate of success. If a dog did poorly, I would document it and rerun the problem in a different area of the base in a few days.

Now let me explain why I titled this story I'm Lost. On the night in question, I went to the tower closest to the post where I was going to run the post problem to see if I could see the dog handler. I saw him and then called him on the radio and told him that I was ready to start the post problem. His response puzzled me, "I'm not ready. I'm lost."  Really, how lost could he be? His post was 100 to 150 yards long and was 50 feet wide starting at the fence line. The fence line was about 150 feet from the perimeter road. There is a post marker on the perimeter road and a matching one at the fence line. He was dropped off at his post marker, he was supposed to walk to the fence line and then patrol between the marker for his post and the marker for the next post. How do you get lost on a post just covered with tall grass?

I told him to stay where he was. I walked out to him and asked what was happening. He said that after he got off the truck he set down his duffle bag someplace and walked out to the fence line. When he went back to get his duffle, he could not find it. He had been wandering around looking for it and now did not know where he was or even whether he was on his post. He was still between the markers for his post, so I walked him to the perimeter road and found his post marker. I had him start a sweep 50 feet wide and we started working our way towards the fence line. His dog found the duffle bag in a small barren patch of ground next to a rock about halfway between the fence and the perimeter road. A perfect spot to take a break and eat your C-rations, if you could find it again.

I had the handler grab his duffle and we went out to the fence line. We walked his post so that he knew where it started and ended. I told him that we would run the post problem later in the week. This handler and dog was one of the dog teams that were on a low-priority post the night we were attacked. The Kennel Master thought I should have used this handler to sweep the search area for the enemy. (If the last two sentences do not make sense, read the previous story, Red Alert, Part 2.)

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Phan Rang Airbase, 1969 - Red Alert Part 2

The penetration was stopped. The surviving enemy retreated. The night duty officer called me to the kennels. He explained what he wanted to do and how we were going to accomplish it. I was to select eight handlers and dogs and take them to the Juliette sector of the base. At daybreak we would sweep the area between the perimeter road and the rapid response bunkers, a width of about a quarter of a mile. I was instructed to choose any dog/handler I felt would be best for this sweep and disregard the priority of the post. Normally, when choosing to leave a post unoccupied, the lowest priority posts would be the ones left empty.

I did as instructed. I chose eight teams of dog handlers. I chose the best teams possible for the job. I only chose good handlers with good dogs. We had some good handlers with poor dogs, like my first dog Duke. We also had some poor handlers with good dogs, like the kid who had the loaded automatic weapon pointed at my back on the fence line. If the poor team combo were on a low priority post, I left them on duty on the low priority post. They were less likely to get shot or shoot one of us.

We took a truck from post to post and picked up the teams I selected. At daybreak we assembled at one end of the Juliette sector and I instructed the teams to spread out in a line from the perimeter road to the bunkers. Each handler should be able to just see the handler to his right and left.  If anyone picked up an alert, he was to raise his hand and stop the line moving forward. Each member of the team would relay the signal until the advance was stopped. The dog handler with the alert would then determine what the dog was alerting on. He would call it into Control if he discovered enemy combatants or release the line to advance if it was a false alarm.

We had about two miles of perimeter to sweep. About half way through the sweep one of the dog handlers gave the alarm for the line to stop advancing. He advanced with his dog and called out to a rustling bush. The person hiding in the bush did not answer him, but suddenly burst out of it. Thankfully, the dog handler did not shoot that crazy medic who loved to ride with me on his night off. The medic wanted to help with the sweep and had gotten ahead of the advancing line and had been picked up by one of the dogs. We then continued the sweep and discovered no one hiding in the bushes.

The duty officer thanked me for a job well done as we loaded the trucks to take the dogs back to the kennels. When I returned to the kennels, I was grilled by the Kennel Master as to why I did not pull the dogs from the lowest priority posts. I explained my reasoning and the instructions I had received from the Duty Officer. I was told never again to do what I had just done and to vacate the posts according to their priorities. No thanks for doing a good job, and the teams I chose did a great job! All I could think is that the medic could have been shot by a scared panicky kid if I had chosen the wrong teams for the job. What would you have done if you were in my position?

Phan Rang Airbase, 1969 - Red Alert

I have added an additional paragraph at the end of this story.

The Juliette sector of the base was the worst area to patrol for a dog handler. There were no trees or shrubs to hide ones movements. A soldier was silhouetted by the lights of the base. Other posts had trees or hills between the flight line and the fence line, but not the Juliette sector. There were bushes on the other side of the perimeter road, but it was not enough to give the dog handler any suitable shadowing of his silhouette. This was my least favorite area to patrol and not because it was the area that the tower guard wanted to shoot me. The Juliette area had one other very bad feature. A canal ran along the perimeter just outside the fence allowing the enemy to approach the fence line virtually undetected.

Because the Juliette area was so vulnerable, trip wires were connected to small flares attached to the concertina wire in the hopes that an intruder would set off the flare and illuminate himself as he crawled through the concertina wire. We did have a few false tripping of a flare every now and then, but nothing tripped the night we got attacked in the Juliette area. Every flare had a pin in it that prevented it from being triggered by the trip wire. Apparently the local kids, who would scurry along the perimeter scavenging unopened C rations, had crawled though the wire and put pins in all the mechanisms of the flares prior to the attempted penetration of the base.

Naturally, the attempted penetration of the base occurred on the one night of the week that I was in charge of the Flight. It started off with a tower guard calling Control and saying that he saw movement in front of his tower. Control asked the dog handlers to make a sweep of the area. Just as the Security Alert Team (3 men in a jeep with an M-60 machine gun, an M-79 grenade launcher and flares) arrived at the tower, the dog handler closest to the tower called control and informed them that his dog had an alert. The Security Alert Team told the dog handler to take cover and they popped a flare. The handler had no place to hide, so he flattened himself on the ground in the tall grass. 

There were sappers attempting to crawl through the concertina wire and more coming up out of the canal. A grenade was launched in the direction of the penetration. The M-60 machine gun stopped the enemy from advancing. Several of the enemy were killed. It was unknown if any of the intruders were able to get across the perimeter road and into the cover of the bushes. Even if they had, the rapid response teams were dispatched to the bunkers which were between the fence line and the flight line. They would not reach the flight line if they had gotten beyond the perimeter road.

We did have one person wounded during the attack. It was the dog handler that took cover in the tall grass. Apparently he was not visible, because the USAF soldier that launched the M-79 grenade put it right between his ankles. Fortunately, it explodes upward and it did not strike the dog and only one small fragment struck the handler. It was not life threatening, but I do not know if he was able to have children after the shrapnel was removed from the base of his penis. His tour of duty was over and he was sent home to the states.

I am breaking this story into two parts in order to keep the story shorter.  Next week I will explain how the duty officer had the K-9 units respond to clearing the area between the perimeter road and the flight line.

Click Click The Sound of a Round Being Chambered

After Guard-mount the dog handlers get their dogs in the kennels and take them to the trucks.  The trucks then take them out to their posts and drop them off, one by one.  A canine post is between 100 and 150 yards long and 50 feet wide, right at the fence line.  Every 300 to 500 yards stands a guard tower set back about 150 feet from the fence line along the perimeter road.  During the day the guard towers are manned by cooks, flight line mechanics, administrative staff, etc.  These are the troops that joined the Air Force so that they would not have to carry a gun and were still trying to figure out where their plan went wrong while they stood guard duty. That could have been me if I had become an office clerk.

At night the towers are manned by Air Force Security Police. The day shift tower guards are relieved between 9 and 10 at night, well after dark. All of the K-9 posts had a post marker at the perimeter road and at the fence line.  I was dropped off at my marker, about 100 yards from the closest tower. The truck, now half full of dogs and handlers, rumbled by the tower and dropped the next dog and handler further along the perimeter, while I walked Duke and my gear down to the fence line. Duke was ready for a break, but I thought I should make a sweep of the area first. So we started walking down the fence line and just as I was about in front of the tower, I heard the click click of a round being chambered in the tower. 

That round was being chambered because the scared person in the tower had seen some movement in front of him. I was that shadowy movement he had seen in the darkness. He chambered that round in his M-16 so that he could shoot me. I quickly spoke up. He failed to give me the verbal challenge, used to identify friendlies at night, but did allow me to approach the tower. It must have been my Boston accent that convinced him that I was not the enemy.

When I got to the base of the tower, he could see my dog and me. We started talking. He told me that when he was posted, no one mentioned that dogs would be posted out in front of him after dark. No, he had not noticed the dogs in the the truck that had just passed by a few minutes before.  He cleared his gun and was clearly relieved that he was no longer alone.

Footnote:

The verbal challenge is used at night to identify friendlies after dark, when you could not see them well enough to identify their uniforms. It was usually a two word combination that belonged together, so that it would be easy to remember, but might have several answers, but only one correct one.  For example, the security words for the night could be Snow Flake. The challenger would say SNOW and the correct response would be FLAKE, not ball or man. The security words were changed everyday.