War Stories 12

[ikar]

One day someone from our back office decided to pull an alarm exercise on the bank across from L.E. Control and very close to the main gate.

He waited until payday, walked across the street into the back and walked up to a teller window, past everyone in line. He handed her a note informing her that he was doing this and to press the alarm switch and then worked his way to the back door to go and hide to see how long it took to respond and find him.

As planned, the alarm was registered in Defense Control. They promptly sent out a all police frequency notification.

The nearest L.E. jeeps headed that way but I don't think our tester knew all the things that were put into motion.

When Defense Control sent the alert out it went to any vehicle on the road, not just Law Enforcement. The nearest L.E. jeep was a couple minutes away and when you consider how unstable the 151s were they had to slow down to move around in traffic or way down to take turns.

Unfortunately for our intrepid exercise puller, the Security Alert Team jeep Alpha 2 was down the street picking up a load of ice for his sector. All he had to do was leave the parking lot, turn right and go about a 1/2 block.

He hit the gravel parking lot of the back as an individual ran out the back door. The jeep skidded to a stop, the driver grabbed his GAU with its 40mm 148 launcher on the bottom and yelled for the person to halt. Either he wasn't herd or was ignored, I don't know, but the next sound he heard was a stream of .30 caliber rounds hit the dirt to his side.

He stopped, turned around and found himself looking at a M-60, and two rifles pointed ad him. He was on the ground and being handcuffed when the next vehicle, another S.A.T. in a M-715 weapons truck, arrived from another direction. He was picked up and walked across the street to L.E. Control where he was said to raise hell about being fired on and how he would have somebody's stripes for that.

Well that never happened. The Thai Guard on the gun got a letter of commendation along with all of Alpha 2. The officer got to spend some quality time with the commander. It seems that not only was he not authorized to run exercises, he didn't bother he was even going to do it.

Luckily the burst of fire that missed the officer also went through the traffic that was constantly coming and going on the road to the Main Gate and then went into the Thai Guard encampment area missed everything except some wood in the guard area.