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The next morning I was posted on Buffalo gate, not much more than a hole in the perimeter fence that allowed people to enter the base for work or to get to Buffalo village that happened to be close to the clinic and across the street from the gate and last night's festivities. It also sat alongside the river that cut the base in two and had to be watched at night with starlight scopes in you had the gate.

I wasn't on duty more than a minute when a very large dump truck arrived loaded with rolls of barbed wire. It seemed that while everyone was watching the field, someone came in from the jungle and took about 100 feet of triple strand concertina wire. They took everything, wire, stakes, trip flares, even the razor bands that ran through the rolls of wire.

While they worked on that, Pedro came in close, looked like less than 30 feet above the area. For the first time I saw it was armed with a M-60 in the side door. I quickly grabbed my camera out of my equipment bag and god a nice close shot as the gunner waved at me. I put the camera back and went about my work, checking I.D.s and watching the guys on the fence as well as my assistant, a local Marine, armed with a M-1.

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Somewhere along the way, a kid came up and tried to get through without showing his card. I grabbed the bike and drought him to a stop. He got off and refused to show me his card. I pulled the cover off the box on his back rack and he had pieces of cammoflaged metal that could only have come off a B-52. I tried to ask him where he got it and the only answer I got was for him to say was "Maybe you die young in Thailand." I thought to myself "nuts", stepped back, brought up my rifle, charged it and set it for full auto. I could not take the chance he had one of their zip guns loaded with a 12 gauge shotgun shell. I held my weapon on him, hoping he didn't make a move toward a pocket and got on the radio and called for help. I had two people to watch, him, and the Marine who could e in on the whole thing. In a couple minutes, my flight chief pulled up with one of our guards to act as interpreter . The guard took his card, talked to him a minute, then loaded him and the bike into the jeep and drove away.

When I got back to the barracks I reached into the equipment bag for my camera. Gone. The Marine must have grabbed it during the situation or later when my back was turned.

The next day my flight chief and I took a jeep to the local police station to explain what happened and fill out a report for them. This is not one place you want to find yourself.

I heard later that he was convicted and received prison time.

I knew what would have happened to me if I pulled the trigger that day but fortunately I didn't have to.

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We never did, just figured he thought he could convince me to forget the whole thing or maybe my marine was a friend of his who might distract me so he could get through the wire. I thought he was taking it home to use on his bungalow, but you never know.

There were all sorts of things we had to keep in mind, like all flashlight batteries were to be turned it to the armory instead of throwing them away.

This was because there was an attempt to destroy a Thai checkpoint up north of us by using a 2.75 inch rocket. It had been placed on a length of bamboo and wired to a lot of old batteries that had been wired together. It might have worked nut there just wasn't enough power available and it fizzled out.

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