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From: Francis Hamit
Date: 7/1/2002
Time: 11:51:15 PM
Remote Name: 209.86.213.81
The 156th was working under the "Radio Research" cover. Every one of us was MI and cleared for Top Secret. We had our own platoon of MP's for security, one of whom offered to shoot the airfirld commander and his sergeant major when they tried to make an inspection of our ops center. This little stunt got the airfield commander thrown out of the army and the MP promoted. We were quite deliberately not calling attention to ourselves, so we pulled base chores right along with everyone else. We had guard duty on our assigned section of the perimeter, garbage truck duty, etc. We even had a VGS secretary in Flight Ops to type flight records. Our officers lived in a hotel downtown and came out every morning to fly their missions. We had a lot of Regular Army guys in the motor pool and aviation repair who were not ASA, so there was some tension. We all got one day off in 14 to go to Ben Xe Moi. Because we were short of clerks, I had six jobs. Ass't Flight Ops NCO, A&D clerk, Education & Training NCO, Mail Clerk and one of three classified couriers. I also ran the movie at night. We pretended to throw leaflets at the Cong urging their surrender (sometimes they even rembered to untie the bundles before they dropped them). It was an all volunteer outfit with everyone signed up for at least four years, enlisted side. I have lots of stories about this, which I'll spread around. (Short and funny being better than long and boring)