Bloods by Wallace Terry

Author:Wallace Terry [Terry, Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83358-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

Staff Sergeant

Don F. Browne

Washington, D.C.

Security Policeman

31st Security Police Squadron

Tuy Hoa

November 1967–January 1968

Air Force Special Elements Activity

U.S. Air Force

Saigon

January 1968–November 1968

We thought we were really shit-hot.

There were eleven of us. All Air Force security police. It was a unique organization. It was called the Air Force Special Elements Activity. Our primary duty there in Saigon was to escort VIPs who worked in the American Embassy after curfew hours. But there were several other jobs.

The Army took care of the exterior of the American Embassy compound. The Marines took care of the lobby of the main building, the Chancery. We took care of everything else. So when the American Embassy was hit during the Tet Offensive and six Viet Cong got inside the Chancery, we had to go in and clean ’em out.

It was a suicide mission at the Embassy anyway. I don’t see any other reason for it. What was the purpose of them blowing a hole through the wall in the building and going inside? They had to realize that once they went in, they’d never come out, I would think. But then, Asian philosophy is strange.

I was career Air Force when I got to South Vietnam in 1967. And I was rather pro-military. Vietnam, as I was told and as I read at the time, was about us trying to prevent the Domino Theory, you know, the Communists taking South Vietnam and then the Philippines and marching across the Pacific to Hawaii and then on to the shores of California.

My folks are both ministers in Washington, D.C., and they had always wanted me to go into the ministry. I started singing in the church where my mother was the pastor when I was very young. And I still sing. I’ve won the Air Force worldwide competition for top male vocalist four times. But I never felt the call to be a preacher.

I went to Howard University on a football scholarship, and I was starting fullback right away. We were rolling along there with a three-game winning streak, and we ran up against Morgan State. And they taught us how to play football.

I didn’t do anything academically that first year and flunked out. After knocking around at a job as a laborer for a period of time, I decided that maybe the service could do something for me. It was July 1959. I’d always wanted to be in the Air Force. I was just fascinated with planes. I’m in seventh heaven when I’m flying even as a passenger. I wanted to be a pilot. But I could not pass the physical because of my eyes, and, truthfully, I couldn’t pass the written exam. I became a security policeman.

My first job in Vietnam was bunker security guard out on the perimeter of the air base at Tuy Hoa. We were there for three months protecting the F-100s. Through some disagreement with the host commander, the Korean troops decided that they would no longer provide security on the outer perimeter, so that burden fell on the security police, too.

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