Gate Guard by Dan Hertlien

Talking about gate guard incidents. I never went into the village but I did pull a few nights at the gate with the Koreans. Most people just walked out the front gate and said "I'll be be back soon. No hassel from me and the Koreans didn't care. I just told them to give a yell when the approached the gate so we knew who was comming. One jerk decided to try the shortcut through the wire and set off a couple of trip flares. It mad me mad because now the flares were out of service and created a hole in the defence perimiter. We never did report the flares going off. The guy who tripped them thought he was a gonner when that first flare went off. Good thing for him we didn't have any quick trigger Koreans with us. Guarding the perimeter around Lane was easy compared to the problems we had at Phan Thiet. Twice sappers came through the wire. Once to blow up the ammo dump. (what a mess that was) and another time to set up mortar aiming lights focused back out at the ocean. When they left they set off some of their homemade claymores and blew holes in the tops of a few unoccupied tents. A little later the motars came. The mortars went straight for the headquarters and then turned down the middle of the road, not hitting anything. At Lane, with the Koreans all around, there was little to worry about in 1968 from May to Oct.