2315 Hours Local, 29 January 1966
Non-Commissioned Officers Club
Bien Hoa Air Base, Republic of Vietnam
Over at the NCO Club, after Colonel Friedlander had arrived, M/Sgt Booker Washington Smith stepped outside to confer with his boss, LTC Fox H. Bernard, commander of the 3rd Air Police Squadron. They both had been edgy and uneasy. Counterintelligence from local sources had reported VC recce teams nosing around the area all week. Their assigned external base defender, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was off on a search-and-destroy mission leaving the area beyond the outer base defense perimeter guarded only by regional Vietnamese forces under the command of the VNAF (Vietnamese Air Force).
"What do you think, Smitty?" Bernard asked.
"I think something's up, Sir, and tonight might be the night. You know, some of our Viet people at the NCO Club walked out early tonight."
Bernard's head swiveled sharply to look at his sergeant. "So did those at the O’ Club. Let’s go look around."
Smith at the wheel, they sped off in one of their "self-help" vehicles, a camouflaged M-151 jeep with a pedestal-mounted M2 .50-calibre machine gun. The name Bertha Baby was stenciled in black letters on the front bumper.
Due to a devastating lack of appropriate weapons and vehicles, somebody in the USAF dreamed up the "Self Help" program for the Air Police squadrons charged with internal base security in Vietnam.
The program, suggesting a Spartan can-do attitude, was in effect because the APs had screw-all in the way of heavy weapons, off-road vehicles, or even adequate training to go to war and repulse enemy ground attacks. Thanks to an idiot order in the late ‘50s, thought to be from a certain SAC general who believed himself a fighter pilot, the USAF had purged all heavy weapons from the AP inventory leaving them with little else than the .30-caliber carbine and the .38-caliber revolver. On top of that, Dodge pickup trucks and International Harvester Scouts, even with the doors removed for ease of entry and exit, didn't even come close to providing the type of armored and armed transportation required to relieve guard posts at a defensive perimeter in a fire fight. Unable to promptly correct the situation, "Self Help" was in effect telling the USAF Air Police in Vietnam, "You're on your own, baby."
Bernard and Smith had studied both airpower usage and counterinsurgency. In drawing upon the lessons learned from studying Sun Tzu's Art of War written 2500 years ago, they decided that a 20th Century variation of Douhet's dictum could be perfectly applied to meet the conditions of modern warfare in that it would be easier to destroy the enemy's aerial power on the ground than in the air. The Viet Cong would know this dictum.
They also knew that, regardless of the proclamations of their Commander in Chief, president Lyndon Baines Johnson, American troops were moving out more and more on offensive maneuvers. They were not defensively hanging around to protect USAF bases. Ergo, VC attacks were ominously probable so they had best prepare for them.
So, if Self Help was the name, then Self Help would be the game, and by God they would play it their way.
Using MIPRs (Military Interservice Procurement Requests), bartering, hoaxes, cons, and just plain midnight supply channels with the United States Army, Smith and Bernard, along with other selected Air Policemen, had amassed an impressive collection of weaponry. Their unauthorized inventory boasted M-60 machine guns, M-16 rifles, M-79 grenade launchers, several M18A1 Claymore antipersonnel mines that threw 700 steel balls ahead of them in a 60-degree arc, lethal out to 50 meters, and two M-151 jeeps named Bertha Baby and Big Bertha each mounted with an M67 90mm recoilless rifle. They were particularly proud of these gun-toting vehicles because Smith had won them in a poker game from an Army warrant officer at the supply depot at Long Binh. Playing a hand of hi-lo split, he had bet two VNAF A-1 aircraft engines. No one doubted Smith could produce the 3350-horsepower engines upon demand.
Yet heavier vehicles were necessary, so Bernard and Smith had set up a "maverick" hunt wherein all vehicles on or coming onto Bien Hoa Air Base without proper paperwork were "impounded." Though the maverick hunt had netted a Six-by, so far no one had been able to turn up an M113 APC (Armored Personnel Carrier).
Parts for what vehicles and weapons the 3rd Tac Fighter Wing APs did have were always in short supply. As LTC Bernard wrote to his boss at Tan Son Nhut in a scathing indictment of the system, "A 601B Supply Request Form won't stop Charlie at the fence, no matter how vigorously the sentry waves it."
And people were in short supply, too. Bernard and Smith had recruited several would-be cops, augmentees they called them, from base units such as Food Service, Administration, and the Postal Squadron. Over thirty augmentees had been trained and assigned to report to designated internal positions should the base come under attack.
In addition to their purloined weaponry, Bernard and Smith had rigged up a few unique surprises to defend the air base against ground attack. They called them Totem Pole and Fire Drum.
Totem Pole was a creation for high intensity lighting of the base perimeter using "rejected" and "surplus" aerial flares set in concave reflectors facing outward from the tops of tall poles. The triggering devices for these lights had been installed at the guard posts. That an unusual number of flares had been declared rejected or surplus didn't seem to bother a supply sergeant who was one of the top augmentees.
Fire Drum, in particular, had the 3rd APs cackling and giggling to themselves. Someone with a particular talent for this sort of thing, a record search would reveal no name, discovered napalm and white phosphorous made a marvelously deadly mixture. The APs called it phougas and poured it into metal containers (remarkably similar to those used by the Army to ship 175mm propellant charges) which they stuck into the ground at an outward angle. They covered the open end with a weather-proof plastic membrane. An electrical circuit touched off an explosive charge under a plunger at the bottom of the drum instantly expelling the phougas which was then ignited by a phosphorous grenade. The burning material could fly out to 120 meters in front with side coverage of 60 meters. So far, there had been no opportunity to use Fire Drum, and the APs had been so secretive that not even the VC, much less higher headquarters, knew about it.
The Air Policemen were ready and eager to activate Fire Drum. They remembered their two men who had been garroted during a VC night probe and the three dogs that had been poisoned. The suggestion from one of the handlers, whose dog had been poisoned, to use a Claymore mine as the propelling charge had been joyously implemented. Fire Drum now had steel balls, they said to each other.
After Bernard and Smith had checked in with AP Operations on the jeep radio, they headed off base to check the surrounding Vietnamese guard posts. The results were not good. The first two posts had only one VNAF guard each. Smith, in pidgin Viet, found out that the four additional regional forces due on duty in each post that night never showed up. On hearing that bit of ominous intelligence, Bernard got on the radio to AP Operations.
"Go SACON Yellow," he commanded. The two men sped back on base, turned Bertha Baby over to its regular driver-gunner crew, and dashed into AP ops.
"Sir," the desk sergeant said immediately, "the dogs on the east perimeter are raising hell."
"Go SACON Red I. Put the word out," Bernard ordered, "safeties off, blast anything that moves."
"Does that include Totem Pole and Fire Drum?" M/Sgt Smith asked to make sure.
"Damn right, Smitty." Smitty corroborated the word on the radio net. Instantly two Totem Poles lit up on the eastern perimeter. Ten seconds later the radio from Post Three, one of four out there, was heard from.
"They're on the wire," the operator screamed.
"Sound SACON Red II," Lieutenant Colonel Fox Bernard ordered.
At the Officers Club, Rawson stood deathly still in the doorway. Before anyone could move or say a word, and as if sparked by Rawson's presence, the base siren began moaning up to speed signaling with its peculiar warble that Bien Hoa Air Base was now on SACON II, Security Alert Condition Red Option II, meaning a ground attack was imminent if not actually under way. As the siren wound up, a series of heavy explosions started in the distance, and in seconds ever louder ear-shattering blasts rippled directly toward the packed Officers Club. The concussions caused dust to puff from joints in the wooden walls.
"Incoming," someone shouted.
"You don't say," someone else replied.
The pilots broke for the doors and windows to get to the bunkers. Doc Russell took off for the hospital. A blast close to the Officers Club sent small fragments ripping through the wall back of the bar. Nancy Lewis felt something hot sting her left leg. She looked down in amazement at the widening red spot staining her slacks. Court put his arms around her, scooped her up, and ran out the door toward a bunker. Reaching it, he ducked to enter the dank sandbagged hole behind Toby Parker, Sally Churna, Charmaine, and a dozen or so others unidentifiable in the dark.
The bunkers on Bien Hoa Air Base were uniformly erected over a 10 by 20-foot rectangle dug to a depth of four feet. Cement covered the floor and formed walls to ground level. Sandbags piled on shelves of PSP (Pierced Steel Planking) rose four feet above ground to support the roof composed of timbers and sandbags. A few jagged corners of the PSP protruded into the blackness cutting into those unfortunate enough to brush against them. There were no lights or supplies in the bunkers. In fact, a previous Base Commander had almost ordered them torn down during a base beautification plan he had originated. His boss, the Wing Commander, halted that nonsense along with the rock painting plan in a torrent of verbal abuse that gave the Base Commander the trots for a week.
Sounding in the night sky over the sound of the whooshes and cracks of rockets and mortar shells, the base siren shrieked and warbled the note signaling, in case one was in doubt, that Bien Hoa Air Base was now officially in SACON Red II signifying that enemy forces were actually attacking the installation.
After hustling Charmaine into the bunker, Wolf Lochert climbed on top of the structure. Facing east, he lay prone with the M-16 he had retrieved from the club along with his pistol belt. His 7.63mm Mauser and his stiletto were still strapped to his ankles. Stepping on the sandbags while climbing to the top, Wolf Lochert noticed the small wooden sign saying he was at Bunker Six.