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 non Vets, a click was a 1000 meters. At night the bridge was lit and guarded by ARVN troops. About 200 yards away and slightly to the right of our bunker was a small Vietnamese graveyard with stone markers.

About 2 AM, the field phone in our bunker rings. It is the engineer G.I.s in the bunker to the right of us and they tell me they think they see movement in the graveyard. We have a starlight scope on our bunker and I take a look and see nothing, which I tell the engineer guy waiting on the phone. The engineer guy asks for a flare to be dropped from our base 4.2 mortar platoon to be sure there was nothing out there. The buck sergeant OKs the request and I ring up our TOC for a flare. About a minute later, the mortar goes off and I again look through the starlight scope while the buck sergeant is looking with a pair of binoculars. We see nothing in the graveyard.

Well, the engineer guys again ring us saying, with the flare, they were sure they had seen something and they requested permission to fire some rounds. Now in order for some bunker to cut loose with shooting a few rounds, permission is needed from our TOC. I tell the buck sergeant what they wanted to do and he replies, "all they got in their bunker is M16s, so let them fire a few rounds." "No need to bother the guys in TOC for permission." So, I give the engineers permission to shoot a few rounds.

Unknown to us, the engineer guys had acquired a 50 cal machine gun and cut loose with it. Big difference between an M16 and a 50 cal Browning and I said to the sergeant, "uh, M16s only huh?" He shrugged his shoulders and said, "guess they traded for one." Almost immediately the base alert siren goes off and the 4.2 mortar squad on duty is dropping flares all over the place. The engineers first burst with the 50 cal. landed nowhere near the graveyard. It was the dry season and the tracer rounds of the 50 cal. bounced across the hard ground of the waterless rice paddies. So you could tell what direction they were shooting. Their 2nd burst was in the same direction as the first and it dawned on me they were aiming in the direction of the bridge. I swung the starlight scope on the bridge just as the engineers fired their 3rd burst with the 50 cal. The 2nd burst had hit about halfway to the bridge. I could see the ARVN soldiers dive off the bridge into the river to avoid the third burst of rounds that hit the ground about 150 yards short of the bridge.

A couple of minutes later, someone is yelling at the buck sergeant and I from behind our bunker. I turn around and look down to see our battalion commander who is standing there in his underwear, with his steel helmet on his head and armed with an M16. He demanded to know, who gave that bunker permission to fire. He seemed to be very irritated. Downright mad would be a better way of putting it. The buck sergeant never turned around or said a word, so I admitted to telling them to fire.

The Colonel then proceeded to chew on me pretty good and threatened me with punishment. The chewing of my butt came to a quick end when the buck sergeant turned around and told the Colonel "that was enough chewing, to leave me alone, that he had told me to give permission to fire." I was stunned by the buck sergeants remarks to the Colonel. The Colonel squinted at the buck sergeant and asked, "is that you Sgt. Jones?" "Yes Sir, the sergeant replied." "Awe Jones, you know better than that", said the Colonel and then he turned away and left.

The next day I told the guys I worked with about what happened and the exchange that took place between the sergeant and the Colonel that got me out of trouble. I was told, the sergeant had been the Colonel's APC driver for a number of months and had maybe even saved his life a couple of times when they were out in the field on operations. That was why the Colonel left so quickly with so few words to the sergeant.