Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (dirtyik1) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:05:24 GMT

Just wanted to say that I am truly happy that so many Vietnam Vets and Cold War Vets have replied to this post. I truly love hearing the stories , and want to say thanks:thanks for your service, and thanks for sharing your stories. Good to know that Privates, Nco's, and Officers were much the same then as now. I just wish we could get the Korea and WW2 vets that are still surviving savvy on the Inet and computers. Sad to think that so much history has been lost.

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (huffmanite) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:47:09 GMT

I well remember my first night of guard duty on a perimeter bunker when with the 2/47 Mech Inf Bn stationed at Bien Phuc, Vietnam. I had only been in our base maybe 5 days and I'm sitting on top of the bunker with a buck sergeant that was due to go back to the states in a few days. The bunker overlooked a huge rice paddy that bordered our side of our base. At about a 30 degree angle to the left of our bunker you could see a bridge over a small river, more than a click away. For the...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (MP1978) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:15:28 GMT

Just so you all know. My friend Bill wasn't at the nuke site. This was when I was a white hat MP in Stuttgart, Germany.

The group we were affraid of was the Bader Mienhoff Gang when at the nuke site. We also had to note, day, time, location and direction of travel, anytime we saw the yellow USSR tag on a vehicle. If anyone had ever seen a yellow tag inside the Depot heads would have rolled. If one was sighted it would have been outside the depot in the surrounding towns.
...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (dirtyik1) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:05:52 GMT

Solo guard duty was always the worst for me, having someone to talk to can make the time zoom by but being alone in a guard tower for hours on end is pure misery for me. Any time that I could choose or volunteer I always took the roving patrol, especially if it was cold.

For me the most boring was pulling AHA guard in Germany, specially the night shift, seems half the time we were guarding empty pallets anyway. A close second was guarding Serb churches in Kosovo against terrorist...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (nothernug) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:56:09 GMT

Chu, you lucked out that that officer decided to give you a break. He wasn't drumming his fingers on your door by coincidence.

Alibi, I was at Ft. Knox in '75 too, but as a cook I didn't pull guard duty. But I re-upped for arty FDC and that changed.

Jim, I went to Germany and was there the same time as you. I walked around the outside one of those Nuke storage sites at Kitzigen. It wasn't always peaceful. With the usual army brilliance, we were told...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (CHU Lai 68) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:15:18 GMT

You got it Curt!

Another time at Ft.Hood i was pulling guard at the Motor Pool and it was raining, so i slipped into a duece and a half and promptly fell asleep.What woke me up was the Officer of the Guard strumming his fingers on the fender and looking around. I waited till he walked away and slipped down and walked around the truck and hollered "Halt...Who goes there? Advance to be recognized!"

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (m1 talker) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:12:01 GMT

My guess is that it was empty!
Curt

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (CHU Lai 68) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:52:22 GMT

Pulled a solo guard duty one fridgid night at Ft. Polk walking around a single train boxcar out in the middle of nowhere...of course doing what soldiers always do i started nosing around and discovered it wasn't locked..sooooo i slid the door back and guess what was inside? You Army guys should get this!

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (MP1978) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:49:30 GMT

eagle 7,

Hey, I was in the military during that time period and I resemble that remark but not as much as my best friend Bill. He was also an MP who the CO finally sent to Psych. It had something to do with his invisable friend from Zargon and Salvador Doli pictures hanging all over his room. As it turned out Psych told him he needed to write a book and gave him an "all clear" as a nutcase. He framed the paperwork and hung that up in his room also. It seems he was the...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (eagle7) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:36:40 GMT

Budup's post is a reminder that the Army was a scary place from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.....lots of thugs and nutcases.

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (Budop) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:43:05 GMT

Wierdest guard duty I ever did was in the old SF area at Ft Bragg in 1970 just before I got out.

I was E6 and just drove the OG around to check on guys flanking posts.

There was a small WAC detatchment and an EM club there and often problems popped up.

The OG was a Captain and Combat A Team leader just back and I had just done two tours in the bush with 'Yards and Cambodes.

Anyways we were cruising around and got a complaint about some guys in a...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (7GREEN) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:10:11 GMT

Interesting stories, I almost feel deprived, all the times I had Guard Duty as an EM/NCO it was pretty humdrum and routine, even as an officer there were no incidents worth noting. I found the stories about Fort Ord interesting, when I was on AD 1966-1972 Fort Ord and Fort Lewis were considered the worst places to go through BCT due to recruits being restricted to their company areas and having to wear a large white stripe on their fatigues to ensure compliance.

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (Alibi) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:31:36 GMT

I can't imagine that there are alot of places where guard duty is agreeable, there are certainly posts that are more desireable if you must stand guard duty.

Guard duty of course has a purpose, but the assignment of personnel to guard, CQ, details and KP is too often abused. While in BCT at Ft. Ord in 1970 I had been suffering from the "Crud" or URI (upper respitory infection) and I decided to go on sick call on a Saturday, so I wouldn't miss any training. I was...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (ParrisIsland79) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:59:02 GMT

I'll share this, with my utmost respect to the other Marine involved in the story.

I got a call in the middle of the night while on duty in Okinawa, to come pick up one our PFCs that was drunk. He'd raised hell out in the 'ville and the MP's at the gate corralled him when he walked back through on foot. They tell me he's already writen up for disrespect to a SNCO, to come get him, and take him to the barracks so he could sleep it off. I took off to pick him up....

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (sgt K) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:33:48 GMT

I recall a 24 hour guard duty at Fort Knox, in about 1971. From 4pm to 4pm, two on, four off. But the four off were spent waiting for the bus, riding the bus, looking for food, and trying to sleep. If you got an hour of sleep it was good. Chow was supposed to be at building 27, but it was closed, had to go to building 39, mile away. They were down to toast. Guard was standing outside a big old warehouse surrounded by a thousand acre tank and truck park. Absolutely no where to get out...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (MP1978) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:07:59 GMT

Y'all should try being a Military Police "Tower Rat" at a nuke site. 12hr. shifts and you can't leave your post with the runs till your replacement arrives. Then you still have to run between the fences till you get to the latrine. 16 months of that and more will definately shape your impressions of military life. I was in the Black Forest area of Germany so the temp was similar to Graf. I'm glad I never had to be in a war zone but you should get a medal for having to...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (eagle7) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:36:28 GMT

The Bavarian army used Graf before WWI, but it was only 37 square miles back then. IIRC, there is a fancy tower on the Grafenwoehr main post area that the royal bigshots used to observe artillery fire during training.
Did you ever see the maintenance guys on Graf and Hohenfels that wore the old American Army OD green staypress uniform? They were of Polish background and were sometimes referred to as Polish labor service. Evidently the WWII Germans used Polish POWs to do range...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (dirtyik1) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:03:56 GMT

Eagle 7,
No commo, No heat, No Food, Freezing temperatures, and a good case of the "squirts" is definately a miserable experience. Am happy to hear that you had a decent Psg. As miserable as it is , it definately builds some character, and made you into a better leader I am sure. It is true that if at all possible never leave the welfare of your soldiers in the hands of someone else.
I didnt mind being an NCO , posting the guard force, but as a private pulling AHA guard...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (eagle7) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:07:58 GMT

Dirtyik 1, I have a Graf ammo guard story for you. My unit had a winter gunnery at Graf in February 1986. I was a brand new sergeant E-5. My very first guard duty assignment as a NCO was a 24 hour guard duty at the ammo holding area (AHA) right across from the LAW range.

Since there was a shortage of SSGs, a 2LT from S2 was the overall big boss of all the guard posts, to include mine. The 2LT dumped me and my three junior enlisted guards off at the AHA. The four guys that we...

Re: Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (dou 44) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:19:05 GMT

i had guard duty on a fenced in motor pool of tanks ,we were told to phone in every 2 hours from the guard tower and when we went to call in the door was locked that was one cold long night.

Guard duty.

feeds@yuku.com (dirtyik1) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:33:46 GMT

As a veteran of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq I have pulled my fair share of guard duty and S.O.G. The other day I was setting back and having a few beers being bored to tears. Had i cleaned my pistols recently? Check. Rifles? Double check. Hmmmm..... What did I used to do on guard duty to pass the time, stay awake, stay warm? Not really thinking of the times when life and limb was at stake, even though those can also get boring when being afraid goes away and the stark reality of being exhausted...