"OPERATION SAFE SIDE" In The Beginning Safe Side began as a test of concepts to improve training and equip SPSs to defend bases against attacks by hostile forces; in other words, to field ground combat units instead of guard units. PACAF, sensing a problem as early as the summer of 1965, ordered a study of air base defense in SEA; participants from 2nd Air Division and HQ/PACAF studied the problems associated with ground defense of air bases and recommended that Marine modular battalions, 1,000 men strong, would be ideal for the job. Unfortunately, the Marines had no spare battalions to donate, but Lt Col William H ("Wild Bill") Wise, then at the Directorate of Security and Law Enforcement, HQ/USAF, began designing an alternative. He had gone to PACAF on TDY in 1963 and had noted the absence of any preparations for air base ground defense. As an ex-Army Ranger who had hit the beaches at Normandy and fought the rest of the war in western Europe, Wise had a weather eye for ground combat and its requirements. After returning to HQ/USAF, he began developing a concept that would use the Air Police to defend bases. In 1964, while at the Directorate of Security and Law Enforcement, HQ/USAF, he shared his views with Wing Commander Henry Reed Purvis of the RAF Regiment, then the exchange RAF Regiment officer. Of course, the RAF Regiment already was the sort of unit the Wise imagined and much that he later incorporated in what came to be known as the "Safe Side" project originated in his discussions with Purvis. Throughout his tenure at HQ/USAF, Wise offered his plan to whoever would listen, encountering many deaf ears along the way, but after the successful attacks by VC/NVA sappers on air bases in 1965 and the impractical PACAF recommendation for Marines to guard air bases, he found more receptive listeners, the most important of whom was the Inspector General/USAF, Lt Gen Glen Martin. In 1965, Gen Martin authorized Wise to form the cadre of a test unit of volunteers who would attend the Army Ranger School at Ft Benning, GA. Wise believed that that training was the best available to discover and develop combat leadership talent and those who graduated from it would become the leaders of the new Safe Side unit; he also believed it would produce "combat masters" equal to any task they might confront in SEA or anywhere else in the world. As such, they would not wait passively inside air base perimeters for the enemy to come to them, but would actively seek him outside those perimeters, engage him, and destroy him. The new test unit, in Wise's concept, would not merely defend a piece of real estate, but would take the battle to the enemy, as the Rangers did. U.S. Army Ranger training is among the most rigorous and demanding in the U.S. armed forces; as such, those who successfully graduate from it usually have made extensive preparations, both physical and mental, beforehand. The Safe Side volunteers, by contrast, had only one week of preliminary conditioning before beginning the course. Of the original 66 volunteers, therefore, only 16 finished the course, but of those only 9 qualified to wear the "Ranger" tab. Considering the rigors of Ranger training and the lack of adequate preparation for it which doomed many older Safe Siders to failure, the surprise lies in the determination of so many to complete the course. Although some would argue that the Ranger experience was a failure, others would emphasize that it was and is the best method for identifying potential leaders and, in that regard, was an outstanding success. Of the original troops assigned to the first Safe Side unit, the 1041st Security Police Squadron (Test), ten advanced to the rank of Chief Master Sergeant, twelve to the rank of Senior Master Sergeant, and twenty-four to the rank of Master Sergeant. Few, if any, units can boast of that degree of success in leadership production. Besides a high number of outstanding leaders, the 1041st and it successors in the 82nd Combat Security Police Wing produced a deep and abiding esprit de corps based on shared experience and the genuine competence it fostered; hence, in that sense, the training regimen was a resounding sucess. The latter was clearly the view of Wise and his superiors and, as a consequence of General Martin's enthusiastic support, The Air Force Chief of Staff (CSAF), Gen John McConnell, authorized the Safe Side Project in June 1966. This was the first of two projects named "Safe Side." More about the second later in this narrative. The "1041st USAF Security Strike Force Squadron (Test)" was activated on 1 July 1966. The unit, whose name was quickly changed to 1041st SPS (T) when an Army general remonstrated that only the Army had ground "Strike Forces," reported to the Inspector General, USAF, as a field extention unit, and was built on the 66 cadre trained at Ft Benning, GA. Col Wise set out to find the other authorized volunteers to fill his roster by requesting volunteers from every MAJCOM in the USAF; some of these "volunteers" were selected by their commanders while others came of their own accord. They made up an interesting collection of self-proclaimed "misfits" and independent thinkers given to innovative and creative ways of doing their jobs. The 1041st, unlike every other cop squadron, included several functional specialties besides policemen. In addition to the two hundred eleven cops, there were eighteen other personnel with other AFSCs: three armorers or gunsmiths (E-5s), two Vietnamese language specialists (1 E-4 and 1 E-5), one supply officer (0-3), one supply NCO (E-6), one supply specialist (E-5), one vehicle maintenance NCO (E-6), two vehicle maintenance specialists (1 E-4, 1 E-5), one communications NCO (E-6), and six medical technicians (E-4s and E-5s). They all reported to Schofield Barracks, HI, on or before 4 Sep 1966 where they all--cops and non-cops--trained in basic infantry tactics and jungle warfare from 5 Sep through 16 Dec 1966. Everyone in this squadron was first a shooter and then a specialist in one or another field. Setting these troops off from other Air Force personnel, Col Wise prescribed a distinctive uniform and equipment for his men. They wore the two-piece fatigue uniform with the shirt tucked into the trousers, combat boots with the trousers bloused at the top, a web pistol belt at the waist with a K-Bar sheath knife attached on the right side, and a light blue beret with a Safe Side unit patch on the left side. This unit patch was also worn on the right breast pocket of the fatigue blouse while in training. When the unit deployed to RVN, the men continued to wear the beret and the K-Bar knife as distinctive emblems of their unit. A brief side note on the beret: since the Security Police adopted a dark blue beret as their standard headgear, there has been much debate about its origins and significance. Some have ascribed its origins to Safe Side, whose troops certainly wore a beret before any other cops did. Others have noted that the British and French armies have issued their troops berets of various colors to denote which branch the wearer belongs. Yet others remind us that the Army was the first American armed force to issue berets to its Special Forces personnel ("The Green Berets") followed soon after with black berets for its Rangers. In light of such forebears and since Col Wise had conceived of his Safe Side project as a close copy of the RAF Regiment, which wore light blue berets, and as an Air Force elite unit comparable with the Rangers and Special Forces who wore berets as well, putting his troops in berets reflected his desire to achieve the same elite status those units enjoyed. Nor was this a hollow affectation; after completing their rigorous training regimen, he awarded berets in a memorable ceremony to each Safesider as a mark of achievement. That ceremony is probably the origin of the belief that today's Security Forces member wears his or her beret as an award or a symbol of the achievements of Vietnam era Security Policemen; however much they achieved and are deserving of reward and remembrance, the USAF did not originally nor does it now recognize the beret as anything more than distinctive headgear for its cops--just as the white cap cover was in its day. Berets proudly on heads, the 1041st had as its mission from Gen McConnell, the CSAF, the following stated goals: (1) to evaluate "advanced security equipment, including intrusion detection and surveillance devices, communications equipment, weapons, and vehicles, (2) to evaluate training methods and requirements for local ground defense of air bases, and (3) to acquire the experience necessary to develop Air Force doctrine for air bases located in limited war or insurgent environments." After the intensive training the 1041st was ready for the field and for the chance to meet these objectives. In Dec 1966, an advance party from the squadron went to Phu Cat Air Base, RVN, to construct a base camp consisting of cantonments, support facilities (such as water, electricity, and communications), and kennels for the dogs to accommodate the rest of the unit when they arrived the next month. On 16 Jan 1967, the 1041st deployed TDY to Phu Cat AB for a test on site. From that date until 4 July 1967, the squadron worked closely with the 37th SPS, the resident unit at the air base, but there were problems from the beginning. Col Wise once remarked half-jokingly to friends that he did not know whether he was fighting the Viet Cong at Phu Cat or the entire US Air Force. First, the joint operations of the 1041st and the 37th SPS had to be worked out and that took time. Second, the communications at their base camp, called "Safe Side Heights," had to be up-graded to link the 1041st with the rest of the Air Force in RVN; meanwhile the 1041st remained relatively isolated. Third, the base camp was located at a place remote from the rest of the base; some thought it was actually off-base, but it was not. The Joint Defense Operations Center (JDOC) for the area established a tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) for every military unit in and around the air base to prevent accidental encounters between friendly units and the 1041st had theirs; hence, it was technically "on base" although it was far beyond the main line of resistence (MLR) or fence line of the base. To address the first problem, the 1041st developed plans for joint operations with the 37th SPS and soon put them into effect. Addressing the second, communications between the 1041st and the rest of the Air Force were established with landlines installed and maintained by the 1883rd Communications Sdqn at Phu Cat. Operating away from the main base gave the 1041st ample opportunities to patrol and set up ambushes for visiting VC/NVA units trying to infiltrate the base. Aiding them in these activities, their dogs played vital roles. The 1041st's dogs were the first "scout" dogs, as opposed to "sentry" dogs, in SEA and accompanied the squadron's patrols in search of enemy troops and facilities. Much of the squadron's success in finding the enemy derived from the work of these dogs and their handlers. After their camp came into operation, the men of the 1041st set out to pursue their mission. When the 1041st arrived at Phu Cat, they found several conditions that confirmed the need for their approach to air base defense. First, the enemy had constructed numerous heretofore undiscovered tunnels outside, but close to the MLR of the base; in those tunnels, he had stored large amounts of rice, munitions, and other supplies to support major assaults on the base; and many of the employees of the base contractors were acting as spies for the enemy. In other words, the VC/NVA were making massive and uninterrupted preparations for destroying the base. Yet, the resident SPS, confining themselves to inside the MLR had no knowledge of these preparations, hence, had made no effort to interdict them. Moreover, sniping from nearby civilian housing occured often as well, but since the snipers were outside the MLR, the 37th SPS personnel could do little about them. The 1041st, however, not only could do something about them, they set about the task quickly. Employing tactical security support equipment (TSSE; i.e., technical devices to detect intrusions and alert SATs) unavailable to their host SPS, the 1041st was able to fulfill their static defense duties on the base with a relatively few men, thus, leaving most of their numbers free for proactive activities. They engaged in reconnaissance patrols and ambushes outside the base MLR in what they described as "active defensive measure. In these operations, they discovered and destroyed tunnels and their supplies; they intercepted enemy patrols and killed them or chased them away from the base; and they sought out the enemy wherever he could be found in the vicinity of the base to eliminate heretofore safe havens for him. As Wise remarked in an interview, "we took away the night from the enemy and made it ours." The 1041st, operating with the express authorization from the CSAF to "evaluate" current methods of base defense and "acquire" the knowledge to improve those methods. That looked like a blank check signed by the highest ranking officer in the USAF and the 1041st cashed it in enthusiastically. While at Phu Cat, the 1041st kept the local VC/NVA units off balance with their aggressive seek-and-engage the enemy tactics. The first tactical operation of the 1041st occured on 25 Jan 1967 at 0025 hrs when Observation Post "Utah" observed two intruders in their area and the combat security operations center (CSOC) dispatched an immediate reaction team (IRT) to investigate; they chased the intruders away, but no shots were fired. Between that incident and their last contact with the enemy on 22 May 1967 when a 1041st ambush team shot and killed a Viet Cong Main Force soldier, the unit made contact with the enemy 43 times, and though they killed several VC/NVA soldiers, no Safe Sider was killed. All of these contacts, which occurred within their TAOR outside the MLR, kept the enemy off balance and unable to prepare his assaults with impunity. After a interim period of training the personnel of the 37thSPS, the 1041st NCOs led those so trained in joint patrols and ambushes. Coincidentally, while the 1041st operated at Phu Cat, the VC/NVA staged no attacks against the base. The Safe Siders returned to Fairchild AFB, WA, in May 1967 and filed their final report after which Project "Safe Side I" came to an end and the 1041st was inactivated. Wise and many of the men of the 1041st remained in limbo about their next assignments. Would there be another Project Safe Side to follow up on the successes of the 1041st or not? It was all up to Gen McConnell and his evaluation of the report. After reviewing that document, Gen McConnell, the CSAF, ordered a functional study to assess the work of the 1041st in RVN and determine the future nature and scope of combat security police. This was the first step in "Project Safe Side II," but not knowing that at the time, Wise and his men waited on tenterhooks for results. He called this waiting period, "the middle of next month" phase. That is, no one knew then if there would be further commitment to combat security police, let alone what the direction that commitment--if any-- would take. All queries to higher headquarters got the same response: "we'll know by the middle of next month." Those familiar with the Air Force will recognize that vagueness, a common phenomenon in USAF history. When the study of the 1041st experiences was completed in the fullness of time and after the Tet Offensive made the decision obvious, the CSAF approved the study and ordered the implementation of the Safe Side II program for world-wide deployment. Among the items approved by the CSAF were activating five CSPSs of 559 men each, establishing a training base for them and also a staff to manage the program. These squadrons would also have their own translators, communications technicians, vehicle maintenance, and supply personnel attached to them, as the 1041st had. All were assigned to the Tactical Air Command, since their units were most likely to come under enemy attack in war zones. The plan approved as "Project Safe Side II," envisioned a force that could deploy anywhere on the globe to bare bases in hostile environments. The bases in SEA were not, of course, bare bases; they already had SP units operating there and that would pose problems for all concerned, but the plan at least noted that CSPSs should be able to (1) provide augmentation for other SPS under emergency conditions as well as (2) provide security for minor installations such as radar and mobile communication units, (3) aid the civil authorities in protecting U.S. interests and property, (4) provide security for USAF units on deployment exercises, (5) develop and evaluate tactics, doctrine, and equipment for air base defense, (6) provide ground combat training for other USAF units, (7) provide security and search parties in the event of a nuclear events, and (8) provide additional security forces for CONUS dispersal plans and to furnish emergency security for SAC Missile sites. All these tasks went much further than the original concept of Project Safe Side. No doubt one of the reasons for its expansion was the success of the 1041st, but there were others as well, including the obvious fact that the USAF had no choice but to summon up the resolve and resources to defend its own bases in wartime because the Army and the Marines were surely not going to do it. That overdue realization soon brought two others; namely, (1) that such a force was extremely expensive to build and, given the fiscal limitations imposed by Congress, could only be raised and maintained in exchange for equally necessary resources (such as aircraft, munitions, or both) and (2) that the manpower ceilings imposed by Congress on the forces in SEA made it very difficult to add CSPSs to the order of battle there. In the first instance, no Air Force commander in his right mind would ever trade aircraft or munitions for ground defense assets; after all, his job is to put aircraft in the air and their munitions on enemy targets, not merely defend his base. In the second instance, Congress set a limit on the number of military personnel stationed in SEA at any one time; therefore, if additional troops came into the theater,then an equal number had to leave so that the total force would remain under the Congressional ceiling. Under those circumstances, no Air Force commander in his right mind would happily increase his Security Police beyond the minimal number on hand because he knew that he would have to send home an equal number of his other personnel, all of whom were vital to his combat mission. Moreover, his combat missions went on every day and were theoretically winning the war; however, enemy ground assaults only happened occasionally and the cops on hand, however narrowly, contained them. Nevertheless, base commanders and their SPS commanders continually called for more SPs during the months prior to Tet, 1968, and the USAF responded by setting in motion the Safe Side II project. Lt Col Bill Wise, with a dedicated staff, had already proved the viability of the Safe Side concept with the 1041st. The next step came that summer. On the 24th July 1967, the CSAF, approved the formation of the 82nd Combat Security Police Wing which would open and staff a school for the further training of future combat security policemen who would be assigned to one of the 21 CSPSs subsequently to be raised under the wing. Actually, this grand and fiscally ambitious scheme never came into being; instead of 21 CSPSs envisioned by Gen McConnell in his authorization of Safe Side II, only three were activated: the 821st (composed of volunteers and a handful of1041st personnel, most of whom became the staff of the CSP School at Schofield Barracks, HI), 822nd (composed of volunteers from all over the USAF and assigned to it TDY), and 823rd (trained at Ft Campbell, KY, in the newly transferred CSP Training School). A wing required a full colonel for a commander; thus, Col Les Gaskins became the first commander of the 82nd CSPWg and Lt Col Bill Wise became his deputy commander. They had much to do to get the wing up and running and little time to do it. The haste with which these squadrons were formed and trained worked against them. The 821st, for example, only began training on 15 March 1968 and a month later arrived at Phan Rang AB, RVN, not on a permanent change of station (PCS), but on a 179-day TDY to evade the manpower ceiling. That ceiling could thus be circumvented briefly, but not ignored. The CSPSs served sequentially in RVN--first one squadron, then the next, and the next, and finally back to the second again. For reasons yet unexplained, while in the RVN, all CSPSs were known as the "821st." Their cantonment area retained the 821st's sign; their stationary retained the 821st designation, as did their communications and vehicle identification. So, in a sense, every combat Security Policeman, regardless of his actual squadron assignment, was in the "821st" while in the RVN. This subtlety has been lost on those who have so far written about the war and Security Police. Perhaps the reasons for the misapprehensions and misconceptions about the CSPSs in RVN lie in the looseness of the USAF's record keeping. For example, the official "lineage and honors series" kept by the Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, AL, reports that the 821st was activated as the 821st Combat Defense Squadron on 2 Aug 1961 at Ellsworth AFB, SD and remained there until inactivated on 31 Jul 1972. Theoretically, it never left SD; it was never in RVN. Both of these perceptions are wrong, of course, and can be explained by the TDY deployments: while TDY, the squadron remains officially at its home base. The 822nd, according to its official lineage and honors record, was activated on 22 Mar 1968 and organized on 15 Apr 1968 at Fairchild AFB,WA; it moved to Seymour Johnson AFB, NC, on 1 Jun 1968 where it remained until inactivated on 31 Dec 1969. The 823rd was activated on 15 Oct 1968 and inactivated on 31 Dec 1969 together with the 822nd. On the day it was inactivated, the officers and men of the 822 CSPS were in the RVN blissfully unaware that they had actually become the 821 CSPS. Immediately after the 821st left for SEA, the 822nd went into training with troops drawn from all over the USAF and in August 1968, replaced the 821st (as their 179 days TDY ended) which rotated back to the CONUS. In August 1968, the 823rd was activated and began training at Ft Campbell, KY. At the end of the 822nd's TDY, the 823rd replaced them in March of 1969 and were themselves relieved in turn by the 822nd in December 1969. Curiously enough, in that same month, December 1969, the 822nd and the 823rd were inactivated as part of the USAF budget cuts and its withdrawal from SEA. The 822nd personnel--known in RVN as the 821st CSPS and the only Safe Side unit to go PCS to RVN--remained in RVN until Dec 1970 when they were replaced by a group of men called Safe Siders, but who did not have the training of the former Safe Siders. In fact, their only claim to the name was that they had been trained at the Small Unit Tactics and Weapons School at Phan Rang. This composite unit kept the school open and the "821st" present in the RVN with a diminished strength of 250 until inactivated in February 1971. From the first, Safe Side was a crash program that by-passed the conventional planning and preparation procedures; so, mistakes and inefficiencies dogged it throughout its history. Arriving in-country with a doctrine alien to conventional USAF base defense concepts, its close association with the Rangers predisposed it to tactics and strategies wholly inappropriate, in the view of most in the career field, to the air base defense mission; what does long-range patrolling, land navigation, rapelling down mountain sides, and ambushing have to do with defending an air base? Wise, as we have discovered, selected Ranger training, not to make assault troops out of SPs, but to discover and then develop leaders for the Safe Side units. In his judgment, no other mechanism brought out the leadership potential in men like the Ranger system and events proved him correct. Out of the 216 enlisted men in the 1041st, as we have seen, the Safeside Association has managed to locate 120; out of that number, 46 (or 45%) retired from the USAF in the top three grades. Few other units can boast of that degree of success in developing leaders. Perhaps even more important than leadership, Wise taught first his Safesiders and then all those who came to their Small Unit Tactics School at Phan Rang how to organize troops and train them to fight effectively on the ground. Here is another lesson the USAF has to relearn in each of its wars: how to conduct ground combat. The Air Base Security Battalions learned these lessons for WW2; the Air Base Defense School at Parks AFB taught these lessons from 1953 to 1956; but the Air Force disbanded both and promptly forgot about ground combat until Col Wise reminded them with his Safe Side regimen. Until Wise reintroduced the them to ground combat tactics, the cops just put armed men on posts and instructed them, if attacked, to fire at the enemy. These posts were supported by other armed men in vehicles who rushed to reinforce them in case of attack. Clearly, men responding thus clumped into a firing line and, facing to their front, not only were they oblivious to enemy movements elsewhere, but they could not effectively respond to them when surprised. As the SATs and QRTs arrived at the point of contact, they merely added to the uncontrolled mass of shooters in the line making effective maneuver even more difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, this method worked most of the time, mainly because the VC/NVA attacked air bases in highly unimaginative frontal assaults. Had they feigned frontal attacks, drawn the reserve SATs and QRTs into the shooting line, then flanked it with a counterstroke, at the very least they would have killed and wounded many more cops than they did and might well have overrun some air bases--something they never managed to do. Military history is replete with battles fought on one side in rigid lines, the troops in them unable to maneuver effectively to meet unexpected enemy attacks; Napolean, for example, made an illustrious career out of feigning frontal attacks which froze his enemies in such lines which he then rolled up with flanking attacks. The VC/NVA never figured out that their frontal assaults on fortified emplacements doomed them to enormous loss of life and limb with very little to show for it, but one day they might have read about Napolean or reinvented his tactics. It is never wise to depend on your enemy's current ignorance or stupidity; therefore, Wise retaught the cops who attended his school at Phan Rang a new and better set of small unit tactics, developed by the Rangers for quite different purposes. Until Wise came along, fighting in lines was all SPs knew how to do. The first major change in doctrine came with the introduction of the "fire team" organization into defensive tactics. Fire teams consisted of 3 to 7 members and they fought on the principle of laying down a base of fire directed at the enemy assault; this forced the enemy to deploy and slowed the assault. While the team automatic weapon--usually a M-60 machine gun--fired at the perceived threat, the rest of the team maneuvered to place the enemy in a crossfire--thus, taking the initiative away from the enemy and throwing them into a defensive posture. All of this occurred under the command of the fire team leader; the leader controlled the team's action throughout, thus, retaining the iniative away from the attacker. Consequently, he had to respond to the cops' initiatives. When two or more fire teams joined to engage the enemy, one of the leaders assumed overall command, but still had a chain of command down through the team leaders and the ability meet any challenge the enemy threw at him. The flexibility of this arrangement--in changing directions by fire and manuever, taking advantage of the enemy's weakness, and turning them into advantages for the fire team or teams--substantially reduced the chances the cops would be caught flatfooted by an enemy counterstroke. Whatever surprise the enemy threw at the defenders, the base of fire would shift to meet it and the rest of the team, at the commander's orders, would adjust to inflict on the attackers the most damage possible. The flexibility afforded by the fire team arrangement meant that SPs, even if surprised by the enemy, still retained the ability to respond. Out of this ability came a sense of confidence based on sound principles competently mastered. John W Brokaw, PhD (Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas) Historian, Air Force Security Police Assn. This is Falcon Country

Camp Phu Cat photo courtesy: Gerard Hester 1041st SPS (T)