2D  NICE TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON

On August 15, 1968, the Viet Cong, in a coordinated night attack, destroyed the Nui Ba Den remote signal site. The attack cost the lives of twenty-four American defenders and sadly demonstrated the site’s vulnerability. The mountain’s various rock formations, plus its steep incline, made it impossible to stop an attack by a determined enemy. The large field of boulders on the western side of the mountain was especially hard to defend, and the Viet Cong knew it. Whenever the Viet Cong probed the perimeter, they deliberately stayed away from that sector, giving the defenders a false sense of security. The Sappers’ platoon-sized force caught the defenders by complete surprise; it was a massacre. In as little as ten minutes, the Viet Cong systematically went around the perimeter, killing soldiers and blowing up any radio equipment they could find. It was a well-planned and thought-out attack, with the Viet Cong proving they could take on the U.S. and beat them.
Around seven months after the August massacre, I received orders to report to Nui Ba Den Mountain, and took on the dual roles of executive officer, and signal officer for the entire mountain. I was determined that a repeat of the previous year’s attack was not going to happen on my watch. I did everything humanly possible to ensure that if an attack did happen, it wouldn’t end the same way. One of the 1968 defense weaknesses was not knowing soon enough where the enemy had breached the perimeter. Each of the eighteen perimeter bunkers had a landline phone to contact the command bunker during an attack, but it was not realistic to expect someone to stop shooting to place a phone call. I recognized this deficiency and corrected it, designing a new alarm system which would instantly alert the command bunker as to which bunker was under attack. The new alarm mechanism was an uncomplicated design, using an ammo can, various relays, toggle switches, and red indicator lights. I cannibalized all the necessary parts from old radio equipment that was lying around the Tay Ninh Base Camp. Initially, the alarms were for the western perimeter, but after testing and realizing how quick the response times were, the system quickly expanded to cover all eighteen bunkers. The heart of the system was a fifty-caliber ammo can mounted to the top of the switchboard. On the face of the ammo can were eighteen numbered red lights—each one assigned to a different bunker. During an attack, all any individual bunker needed to do was simply throw a toggle switch and the command bunker immediately knew which bunker was under attack. The system was combat tested during the June 1969 attack, and it worked flawlessly. The new alarm system gave my Reaction Team those extra seconds needed to find and destroy the enemy; one more reason the Viet Cong’s 1969 Sapper attack did not complete their mission. During that attack, not a single U.S. Army relay site went offline due to enemy action.