Grunts Without Guns (LONG!)

Reference "Another Ft. Hood Massacre", (which incident has been talked up much better elsewhere) ....  I'm still fuming about the practice of not allowing American military personnel to be armed "in camp".   This policy, established 20 years ago by President Bill "Willy" Clinton, actually goes back much farther.

Which explains part of my ire, which has been with me since 1969.

And which just might not be defensible.



During the Vietnam War, U.S. Army Infantry units (specifically the First Infantry Division enforced a similar policy in the Division Base Camp in Dian.  (That's a small village just north of Saigon.)


Typically, small-unit operations would be based out of "Night Defensive Positions", which is an odd name for battalion-sized positions which are semi-permanent and fortified.

By "Night Defensive Positions", I mean a camp outside of the large base, where infantry and armor units would stage operations which would last from a few hours on 'local security' searches of the area, to over a week on extended "Search and Destroy" missions.

When a unit ... frequently a squad or two, but typically a platoon, sometimes a company .. went out on a "Search and Destroy" operation, they started at an NDP and returned there at the end of the operation.  The operation would be to (1) move through an area to search for sign of enemy activity, and (2) at night set up an ambush at trail junction in "The Jungle".   Eventually, they would return to the NDP where they would clean their firearms, get a hot meal, and maybe spend a day or two resting and refitting.  At night, the troops would be assigned to 'security', which means they would occupy bunkers just within the fence-line.

While in the NDP, the troops retained their personal weapons.  In the bunkers, they had access to machine guns and the control devices to Claymore Mines ("Command Detonated, Directional Anti-Personnel Devices") which they used in their "in-camp" role as Security Forces.   They might have had their personal stash of Marijuana, but there were no sources of alcohol there.  (Had the Viet Cong attacked the November 2 Base Camp on New Years Eve, 1969, they might have found some semi-stoned troops on the bunker line, but they would not have found it an 'easy target'; which perhaps explains why the camp was never attacked.)

Back in Dian, though ...
About once a month, individual First Division units (at least Infantry) were rotated back to Dian for a "Stand Down".  Purpose: decompression.  There were clubs in the Division Base Camp ... Enlisted Mens' Clubs, NCO Clubs, Officer clubs.  If you were willing to pay for the privilege,  you could sometimes hitch a ride on a "Huey" helicopter to Saigon, where there was a Class Six Store.  They sold booze there, which was NOT available 'by the bottle' in the Base Camps.

At the clubs in Dian, you could buy beer for a dime and booze for a quarter.  Military pay was very small, and most married troops had most of their pay going to their family.  But even retaining $20 on payday allowed enough drinking money for a real falling-out-of-the-jeep binge, for an Infantryman who rarely had the opportunity to get an honest drink.

It was an odd experience, and I cannot relate to Desert Operations where (if I understand correctly) the military culture is somewhat different.

But when the Big Red One was pulled out of country, I transferred to the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropical Lightning") and ended up in the Division Headquarters company.

I was in the Division Base Camp all the time.  And there I became aware of a curious situation.   "Field Troops" were still rotated out of the field on a regular interval, just as occurred in the First Division, and before they even got to go take the first shower they had had in a month ... they turned in their arms.

All of their guns, ALL of their munitions (specifically including hand grenades, claymore mines, demolitions such as C4 and small arms ammunition) was turned in and LOCKED in CONEX lockers ... similar to the Cargo Containers which are used for overseas shipping, if smaller.

Then the troops were released to showers, re-issue of clothing (ragged, but freshly laundered), a hot meal, issue of pay, and then hit the Clubs.

As a member of Permanent Cadre at that time, I had another look at the arrangements for Base Security.  Sometimes I was Sergeant of the Guard, and there I discovered that the base camp was assigned to other Permanent Cadre ... Specialist Fourth Class and Privates .. who actually manned the bunkers.

One of the main duties of the Division Base Camp in the 25th was to provide "Rest, Recreation and Refitting" for field units.

We expected them to get drunk.  And they did .... every damn night.  Falling down drunk.

But they were not armed, unless a few of them had a knife.

Okay .. most of them had knifes.  I had four of them; two folders, a hunting knife, and a K-Bar knockoff.  Guys got mugged in Division Base Camp by the REMFs, who found drunk soldiers to be a never-ending source of "disposable funding".

The thing that griped me at the time, though, was that the Army trusted their field troops with guns, ammunition, explosives including mines, and any sort of personal weapons they could get their family to ship to them from home.  But not on Stand-Down.

On Stand-Down, they expected their troops to be out of control, violent, aggressive, short-tempered, hard-boiled and just plain mean.

The brass were never disappointed by their troops, although the reverse is not true.

So, when I watched the troops being disarmed for Stand-Down, it always pissed me off!  "You trust the troops with weapons in the field, but not in Stand-Down.

Yeah.  You already figured it out.  The "Brass" trusted troops with weapons in the field, but not "at home".  And rightly so.  We would have had murders, shooting every night if all the guys in Stand-Down had access to their weapons.  We still had murders in the Division Base Camps .. but they were with knives.   In the 25th, we once had a nurse murdered in her hooch with a knife.  The killer left a bloody palm-print at the scene.  Every man in the camp was lined up and required to provide an ink-blot palm print as the MPs searched for the killer.  They never found him.

There were hundreds of killers in the camp at the time; they just didn't find the Right One.

So here's the point:

Men in a Combat Zone are stone cold killers.  Well ... maybe not so much in the 21st Century, but in the 1960's?  You put men in the jungle, feed them on WWII C-rations, the only water they get is from rice paddies contaminated by human waste ... they have to put Bromide pills in their canteens to kill the germs but their canteens are still filled with water that smells and tastes like shit ... walk them through jungle all day as they watch their friends collapse from Heat Prostration (literally) if they don't get enough hydration ... send them on missions where they don't know the goal or the reason for braving booby traps and ambushed, and then send them into "Free Fire Zones" where they are required to shoot at rice farmers because they are attending to the Paddies too early in the morning, and their best defense is to set up boobie traps that maybe they can't find the next morning so they are never disarmed, and .. yeah, you get a lot of crazy MF'ers.  You do NOT want them running around your Division Base Camp with access to guns.  Makes the Brass just a little crazy, because they're in close proximity to privates who are a LOT crazy.

So, guys on Stand Down in Viet Nam get all the all the booze they can drink for almost free, they can fall in a 6' drainage ditch and drown, they can get mugged by the REMFs .. but they can't  have a gun while they're on base.  Because .. hey!  They might shoot somebody.  (And they will!)

----  Which brings us "full circle" back to the concept of unarmed soldiers in a military base on American soil.

These guys live at home.  They have wives and kids that they get to see every night.  They have a regular job with regular hours.  Sound like the Post Office?  Maybe they will "Go Postal"?

---  I don't know.  Maybe they will,  In the meantime, they are NOT allowed to defend themselves, in a politico-social climate which obviously includes their fellow solders who WILL freak out and start shooting their fellow soldiers.

Given the choice, I'm thinking that I would much rather preserve the choice to defend myself in a military setting, than to feel like a target in a real-life-cum-virtual shooting gallery.  Booze on Base?  Frankly .. that's "Bad".  Take away the intoxicants and the sense of disenfranchisement from military bases?  Not quite so bad.

As for the choice to disarm soldiers on American military bases, I'm not entirely convinced that it is the best decision.  Experience has not supported the policy.

I would rather trust the solders, as a unified body, to defend themselves and each other.  As opposed to trusting the "lone nut" who would turn on his buddies with murder in his heart.  And Brother, there are plenty of them out there .. but not as many as responsible Americans who have no greater love than their love for their fellow man.

Trust in the human spirit.

Or, in the words of Ronald Reagan:

"Trust .. but Verify".