The Sheriff of Lai Khe - 1971
The timing of my second tour in Viet Nam happened to coincide with F Troop’s move from Long Binh, to Lai Khe, and back again, so I arrived in roughly February-March of 1971, and came home in like, January of 1972, shortly before the whole Troop moved North. As I recall we actually staged out of Long Binh in early 1972 before the big move North.
As with any Army operation there were all sorts of rumors about what F Troop was going to find when they arrived in the North. Quang Tri was the most common destination tossed around. Another pilot and I considered trying to amass all the entrenching tools we could because the rumors were that as soon as we landed, we’d have to dig a Foxhole so we’d have a relatively safe place to stay……
At any rate, after a very short stay for me in Long Binh, F Troop moved to Lai Khe, which was carved out of a rubber plantation, and had a runway, a Control Tower, a POL point, and a Rearm point. It even had PSP revetments around some of the living quarters, and it’s own Officer’s Club. Heck, a couple of the rooms even had flush toilets! As time went by in Lai Khe I realized that we had it pretty good.
At the risk of angering some of my fellow Troop members even after all these years, I wanted to recount an episode that happened one night when I was assigned as the Officer of the Guard. This was a duty that came up for junior Officers about once a month. We called it Sheriff. Briefly, the duties were to inspect the guards for proper uniforms, quiz them on their General Orders, conduct regular radio checks with the various outposts, and walk around the perimeter insuring that the posts were manned, and no one was sleeping. There was a Sergeant of the Guard too, who was much more familiar with the guards and procedures than the part timer “Sheriff.”
Most nights it was just hours and hours of boredom. Although Lai Khe had many amenities our Troop area was a little vulnerable in that there were rubber trees on like 50% of our perimeter which suggested to me that bad guys could get pretty 
close if they were stealthy and quiet,
One night while I was Sheriff, one of the guard posts called saying they thought they saw movement on the perimeter. Whoever had erected the concertina wire barricade on our perimeter had also laced it with trip flares. Just simple devices that when disturbed or moved, popped and lit up like big 4th of July sparklers.
Thinking that imagination had gotten the best of this particular guard, the Sergeant of the Guard and I decided to walk the perimeter wire from Guard Post to Guard Post. I was carrying a Car15 on full auto, with my finger on the trigger. At some point after passing one, or two Guard Posts, a trip flare went off in the wire like 20’ from us. That pop 
startled me so much I pulled the trigger on fully auto sending tracers into the night sky, and at that point the wire literally exploded with movement, people screaming, and more flares going off. Now, the whole base camp was coming alive thinking that we were under attack………….but nothing more happened. As hours went by and light began to approach, we could see black pants caught on the Concertina wire, as well as shirts in a variety of colors.
The next few days, as the story spread around it became apparent that those pants and shirts didn’t belong to sappers, or VC…….., they belonged to the local girlfriends, and prostitutes who would stay in the Troop area until the middle of the night, and then go home through the wire. One of them had set off a flare that started the whole thing. Some even went to the Flight Surgeon the next day to get stitched up.
Boys will be boys.