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.

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.