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.