BUNKER BUST

From August of 1967 to September of 1968 at Da Nang we had 32 rocket attacks. I was a mechanic, working in the J-79 jet shop, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The first two months in country, however, I was stationed at Phan Rang AB, where we had, up to the time I left, never been attacked, except by millions of rice bugs and mosquitos.

The danger of the rocket attacks was not so much in the bombs going off everywhere, but rather in the panic it created. We lived in luxury compared to those in tents, because we had two story wooden barracks with screen slats. The wind would blow in dust or rain, depending on the weather. When under attack, usually at about midnight, GI's would run out from their bunks, in the dark and slam into support beams or each other or off the wooden rails into the dirt two stories below, if they were on the second level. It got real interesting when troops would smash into the glass potable water jugs at the end of the exit, & bust glass everywhere, while those that followed slipped and cut themselves while running to the sandbag bunker. Unfortunately, every now and then, the bunker itself took a direct hit, as shown in the adjacent picture. When this happened, casualties were much higher.