…exactly 50 years ago this week
As one of the 25 Green Berets of the Advance Team aboard our C-123 from Pope AFB, NC, to Eglin AFB, we landed at around 6am on Wednesday September 2nd, 1970. It was typical Florida weather, hot and humid.
Now, I had never been on an Air Force base. I thought all military mess halls were the same. Let me tell you: I was wrong! This Air Force mess hall was more like a restaurant! I remember at breakfast the cook asked me how I wanted my eggs. I thought, “You must be trying to pull a joke on me.” In the Army, eggs were either cold & scrambled or warm & scrambled. I told him I’d like them over easy. He asked how many and I told him two would do it. I thought to myself, “I’m gonna like this.” They had several different fountain drinks and when they told me I could have seconds I was hooked.
They bused us to “Auxiliary Field #3” (today it is named Duke Field.) The other Ft Bragg Green Berets would be arriving in another week or so. One of our first tasks was to secure the Tactical Operations Center building, which was only about 200 yards from the runway. The OSI (Office of Special Investigations) guys swept the building for bugs and did their security checks. We placed three rolls of concertina wire around the building, creating only one entrance. We installed a field phone at the entrance for communications to the staff inside. From September 3rd on, this building was guarded 24×7.
Six of us were given that round-the-clock task of guarding the building. While on shift, we would rotate a guard every two hours: you’d pull guard duty for two hours, then you’re free to do other things for the 10 hours before your next shift. If I wasn’t on guard duty, I was training or sleeping. It was hard work keeping up with training events, and the PT events, AND guard duty.
This TOC building that we guarded was where a lot of the Top Secret planning for the raid was accomplished. I never entered it, but inside this building there would be a lot of brass spending the next few months planning the mission.
Read Sgt Terry Buckler’s full story in Who Will Go.
Click Here: The book.