After the Metropole Hotel was blown up late in '65, then the Victoria in April of '66, the MP Brigade Commander was hard pressed to come up with a defense against suicide car bombers. The MPs who were killed in both of those BOQ bombings were armed with M16s and they were useless in stopping a car. The solution came to him, or more probably to one of his staffers who used to be a "Rat Patrol" fan (early 60s television, sorry). MPs have jeeps...they have machine guns...they have shooters who are willing to ride standing up behind a pedestal mounted M60 while the jeep is tearing along (I am sure no OSHA representative was consulted on this)...they didn't have a desert but the streets of Saigon would be a suitable substitute. The plan was born and all that was needed was another attempt on a hotel and we would be off to the races proving that we COULD defend against suicide car bombers. (I must qualify here that both hotels were blown up by suicide bombers, however, the fellows who parked in front of the Metropole probably did not intend it that way...they jumped out and started a gun fight that they lost just before...BOOM. The fellow who drove the panel truck into the Victoria probably did know it was a one way journey...and this kind of dedication WITHOUT the promise of a room full of virgins)
I told you all that so I could tell you this...there I was...atop the hotel where I sometimes ate breakfast...when I heard the first gunfire of the big battle...little pops sounding like a small caliber pistol...usually the trademark of an Air Force female or a White Mouse. The Saigon police wore white uniforms with white caps and white leather Sam Brown belts...Sam White belts?...any way, that is why they were called White Mice by most GIs. White Mice were mostly relegated to trying to direct traffic around the many traffic circles in Saigon...they weren't much go at that...or anything else, really. I digress...small bore pistol shots. Enough so that the patrons of the buffet fell silent awaiting further developments. Almost immediately the small pops were joined by rapid thumping of a Thompson...Tommy Gun...which meant most likely that the fray was being joined by a QC...Vietnamese Military Police...much more effective than White Mice...not much smarter. M16s up close sound like a real rifle but from any distance have a sort of rattly sound that is pretty distinctive. When the rattling began, I figured something serious was afoot. I went out onto the balcony to see what was going on. Several of the officers and NCOs yelled at us ( I was joined on the balcony by a few other stalwart (or stupid) guys who wanted to see what was up) to get down...move away from the glass...find a corner...get under a table.
I didn't do any of the suggested things, instead I stood at the railing and watched what unfolded below...about 12 or 14 stories below. See, I knew a few things about bombings...my first experience with a VC bomb taught me what 25 pounds of plastic could do to a two story building. The Metropole was hit with just over 100 pounds and it was trashed. The Victoria was hit with either 300 or 500 pounds depending on which news source you believe ( I lean towards 500 cause I drove by that place just an hour or so after the blast and I saw how wrecked it was). The fact was that each bombing had increased in blast weight and the results were drastically increased...if this was a hotel car bombing...and it sure was shaping up that way...it really wouldn't matter what preventative measures you took...we would be bound from 12 or 14 floors up to ground level in a blink of the eye.
So any way, heres what we saw. An old Ford flat bed truck was rolling down Ha Bai Trung towards our breakfast spot. There was another hotel across the parking lot from us that could have been the target since both faced the street...but a truck that size could easily carry a ton of plastic in which case two hotels for the price of one. MPs from both hotels had left the cover of their posts and were standing out in the street blazing away at the truck. A QC further up the street was spraying just about everything in our direction...including the truck. I remember thinking I should have parked somewhere else. Despite all the best efforts of our defenders, the truck kept rolling...probably because it was slightly down hill all the way to the Port at the end of the street.
Then, around the half circle at the end of the street, came two M151 MP jeeps with pedestal mounted M60 machine guns blazing as they sped up Ha Bai Trung straight into the face of that truck. The M60 is an awsome weapon and two of them working in concert on a single target can cause unbelievable havoc. And the truck stopped. And we cheered. MPs get a bad rap...and some deserve it. But on that morning the Saigon area Military Police were great heroes to us...allowing us to remain on the 12 or 14 floor.
The truck was reduced to a bunch of holes held together with twisted metal...there was an awful lot of blood and related stuff dripping out of the back and cab, too. That seemed to be unusual to me, but hey...we won.
It was determined by the official investigation ( covered in a small article in the middle pages of the Stars and Stripes some months later) the there had been no VC gunfire involved with this incident...in fact...no VC presence or involvement of any kind could be proven. The truck belonged to Pacific Architects and Engineers...sort of the Haliburton of it's day..and was carrying laborers to the port to work on the docks. No one knows why the driver didn't stop when the White Mouse challenged him. The White Mouse thought he was justified in shooting at them...he didn't clear his line of fire very well and the QC thought he was taking fire from the old French Hospital across the street so he hosed it down with his Thompson...then for some reason turned it on the truck and sprayed it, too. The MPs at both hotels alerted by the gun fire and seeing the truck taking hits and not stopping went into "AW S***" mode and lit up the truck, too, while calling for the jeeps in back up. The jeeps did exactly what they had trained to do...they stopped the truck. The after action report allowed as how, with the exception of there being no enemy action at all, the operation was well executed and went almost exactly according to plan. The MP Brigade commander was to be commended on solving a difficult security problem.
Kind of a sad story...in the parlance of this day...it is what it is. What it is is a little way of saying thanks to all the good MPs who stood toe to toe with the ones that did go boom and all the ones they didn't know wouldn't go boom. On that morning, MPs were my heroes.