1972 January: Transition to Seneca Army Depot

Posted on November 6, 2020 by Mike

Getting to and learning about SEAD. Continue reading →

My recollections of the period between my departure from SBNM and my arrival at SEAD are very sketchy. Someone on the base in Albuquerque must have helped with the travel arrangements. I am pretty certain that I did not bring my golf clubs, my stereo and speakers, my album collection, and other bulky items to SEAD. So, they must have been shipped to my parents in Leawood, KS. I assume that before I left I was also debriefed, which is the Army’s way of saying that I was warned me not to tell any communists about any of the mission-critical classified information and activities that I saw at SBNM.¹

I flew from the Sunport to KC, spent a few days with my family, and then on January 10 I flew to Rochester, NY, which is as close as you can get to SEAD using commercial aircraft. I don’t remember any of that.

The one thing that I clearly remember is that I was handed my own personnel file (called a 201) and told to hand it over when I arrived at my new post. This amazed me. If they let me do this, it seemed likely that each person who was relocated must have been entrusted with his own 201 file. I immediately looked through mine to find the letter of commendation from the base commander prainsing the heroic acts performed by me and my clipboard during the harrowing Siege of Sandia Base that is described here. I found it. What if there had been a letter of reprimand? I could conceivably have received one for my run-in with Capt. Creedon or my attire at the base EM committee meetings (both described here). Could I have just removed derogatory items at will? I don’t see why not. Computerized records were not yet ubiquitous. Paper still ruled.

The instructions on my orders indicated that after my plane landed I should board a bus for Canandaigua, NY. When I arrived at the bus station there, I was still thirty miles or so away from SEAD, which is located near Romulus, a bump in the road between Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake. I have no clear recollection as to how I made the last leg of the journey. I remember that there was no snow on the ground as we approached the base, but it had started to snow before I exited from the bus, van, car, or truck that brought me. Soon it was coming down hard. Incidentally there was snow on the ground all the way to the day that I left, April 10.

You can just drive in now, but the barriers were always down when SEAD was still operational. At least two MPs with rifles manned the main gate.

I remember that the main gate seemed to have a much more serious security detail than at SBNM. The MPs were armed with M16s, and they stopped every vehicle. There were three sets of fences; one was topped by rows of barbed wire and one electrified. At SBNM we ordinarily just waved everyone in.

Someone showed me to my room. The barracks were not nearly as opulent as the ones at SBNM. Every room had two occupants. My roommate was from Texas. I don’t remember his name—in fact, I only remember the name of one person whom I encountered in my three months at SEAD. This failing astounds me. I usually remember names.

He was a little shorter (in height, not less time remaining) than I was, but he was powerfully built. I later learned that he was the high school state champion weightlifter in his weight class. He had a temper, too. I gave him a wide berth.

I asked him if they had regular room inspections. He said that there were inspections, but they were not very common. So, I just piled all my stuff in my locker and locked it. I didn’t make my bed every morning either. My lack of standards for orderliness became a sore point with him. He might have resented the fact that I was so short (in the Army sense), too.

The next morning I was interviewed by a female² civilian in the MP office. This was something of a surprise to me. SEAD had a lot of civilian employees. SBNM did too, but there they almost all worked for Sandia Labs doing God knows what. Civilians at SEAD were hired for jobs that I would have expected military personnel to do at SBNM.

I handed my personnel folder to the lady who was interviewing me. She was shocked and disgusted when she discovered that I only had eighty-eight days before I ETSed. “April 10! What are we supposed to do with you for less than three months?” I had no answer. They decided to assign me to help with paperwork at the Intelligence Office, which required a walk of a block or two from the barracks. I never worked even one day as an MP at SEAD, but I still stayed in the MP barracks.

The commanding officer of the 295th MP company was Capt. D’Aprix. He gave a security briefing to a handful of newbies. Some might have been civilians. Some might have come from SBNM.

The first sergeant of the company (always called “Top”) may also have been there. If he said anything, it did not impress me enough to stay in my memory.

What could graduates of this institution be working on at SEAD?

Capt. D’Aprix emphasized that security was everyone’s responsibility at SEAD. A “depot” in military terminology is a place to store something. He said that “special” weapons were stored there. The actual nature of the weapons was—and still is!—highly classified, and we were not allowed to disclose what kind they were. He did not mention it, but the units of the soldiers who worked on SEAD were not classified. All the MPs and all the technicians who maintained the weapons wore patches with mushroom clouds on their sleeves identifying them as belonging to the Defense Nuclear Agency. The technicians all came from SBNM, an open base. The building in which they were trained displayed the words “DEFENSE NUCLEAR WEAPONS SCHOOL” in letters that were more than a foot high. Anyone who could not figure out what kind of weapons were in the depot was too stupid to be dangerous.

We were also told to be on the lookout for card-carrying communists and other shady characters who were interested in what went on at SEAD. It was not feasible for all areas to be guarded all the time. Therefore, the MPs patrolled the entire base (or at least the part within the fences), and the ever-changing routes that they employed were TOP SECRET. So, if we were in a bar or other establishment in one of the neighboring towns, we needed to keep our guard up and our mouths shut.

I was there in the winter. Unless a relative has died, absolutely no one goes to this part of the Finger Lakes in the winter. I guarantee that if any unfamiliar people appeared in Romulus (population about 4,000), they would be noticed by everyone immediately. I suspected as much even on that first day, but I later became certain.

I found the following interesting write-up at https://www.senecawhitedeer.org/index.cfm?Page=Military%20History.

This is a recent satellite image of the entire SEAD complex, which has pretty much gone to SEED since the Army abandoned it in 2000.

In the mid 1950s the north end of the Depot property was transformed into a special weapons area. These special weapons areas (19 in total in the United States) were designated as “Qs”. Becoming a Q area represented the highest security levels known at that time because their mission was to house atomic weapons which indeed were very special weapons.

The Q was built over two years and consisted of about one square mile of area, eventually resulting in 64 igloos, some of them atomic bomb blast resistant. The Q had its own security force, specially trained Military Police who patrolled the Q 24 hours a day. The Q area had a triple wall fence surrounding it, with the middle fence being electrified at 4800 volts. No one was allowed inside the Q without a heavily armed MP escort.

Although the Army still does not acknowledge that storage of atomic weapons occurred within the Seneca Depot, other documents found by SWD suggest that the Seneca Army Depot was the US Army’s largest arsenal of atomic weapons and the second largest atomic stockpile in the entire United States. Besides atomic bombs, the Depot also housed atomic artillery shells for Atomic Annie, a long range artillery gun only fired once in Nevada.

Today, the Q is peaceful once again, this time being leased by Finger Lakes Technologies Group, as it recycles some of the igloos for secure document storage.

I never heard anyone talk about the Q area. I had no idea that there was anything else on the base besides the part that we patrolled.

After the base closed in 2000, a group of locals developed really ambitious plans to make it profitable, but very little came of it. The place is now a veritable wasteland.

Not in this man’s army.

1. In point of fact, the only thing that I did or saw that required a clearance was the night that I stood watch on Manzano Base. The irony is that at that time my clearance had not yet arrived. I described this incident here.

2. There were no female MPs in the Army in my day. This was the only part of the first half of the movie Stripes that I found outrageously discordant with my experience. Women were, in fact, allowed to become MPs in 1975, and the movie was made in 1981. So, I guess that inclusion of the MP babes was vaguely plausible. That they were attracted to two middle-aged (Bill Murray was 31 at the time, and Harold Ramis was 37) layabouts is questionable.

However, the entire second half of the film featuring the “Urban Assault Vehicle” was, of course, preposterous.

1971 SBNM March-June Part 1: Police Duty

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Mike

Police work for the Army at SBNM. Continue reading →

I don’t recall much about my first couple of weeks patrolling the base and standing guard duty alongside the other members of the second platoon. I remember that whenever I had to stand guard duty I listened to an FM station on the radio that I had purchased. The good reception was another unexpected benefit of being so close to a major city. When I was at the main gate I made up license numbers to record in the log that no one ever examined. The other two gates got much less traffic. I don’t think that we bothered with logs. The gates may have been locked at night.

The east gate is now called the Eubank Gate. The area around it still looks undeveloped.

Almost no one entered or exited through the east gate for the simple reason that there was nothing beyond the east gate except the scrub land that the natives called (mistakenly, according to Webster) “mesa”. If someone approached from the west you could see them coming when they were still several minutes away.

I have retained a couple of memories of being on patrol with more experienced guys. Once I remarked to my partner that I was disappointed that I had not seen a roadrunner. He quickly responded, “There’s one, and there’s one on the other side of the road.”

As a cartoon aficionado I naturally expected roadrunners to be about the same size as coyotes. They are actually are only about eighteen inches from tail to beak, and a very skinny tail takes up a good portion of that. Furthermore, the ones that hung around our base never had much need to demonstrate their speed.

One guy in our platoon was really short. He was a big Black guy from KC who was scheduled to ETS a few weeks after we arrived. He had already decided to reup, and he requested an assignment in Vietnam. He had already completed one tour there, and he told me that he knew how to make a lot of money there selling drugs. I would say that there was at least a 50-50 chance that he was putting me on, maybe even baiting me. I don’t know why he would have confided to a complete stranger a plan for illegal activity.

He was the only guy in the barracks who had a television in his room. I asked him where he got it. He told me the name of a discount department store near the base. He showed me a clipboard that he had. He claimed that he walked into the store, checked the packing slip on a box for a TV against a piece of paper on his clipboard, picked up the box, put it confidently on his shoulder, and walked out. Once again 50-50, but the clipboard idea could have other applications. I bought one at the BX.

The only other thing that I remember about him is that he really liked Sly and the Family Stone.

“Fix that gig line, soldier.”

The guys that guarded the gates and patrolled the base wore OD fatigues, but the trousers were starched, pressed, and bloused below the knees. The boots and belt buckle had to be polished. In Basic they had made us remove the plastic coating on the brass belt buckle. At SBNM most guys bought a new belt and left the coating on to prevent tarnishing. Some guys even bought patent-leather boots to eliminate the need for shining. They also wore their holsters, armbands, and white MP hats. Indoors the hats were ALWAYS removed. If it was cold, they wore gloves and field jackets. Hands were NEVER allowed in pockets. Of course, if no one was looking, …

I vividly recall one midnight shift that Russ Eakle and I were parked in one of his favorite hiding places near the Officers Club. He had already given a couple of citations for rolling through the stop sign at the end of the club’s driveway. The club was a good distance from any activity. There was seldom any traffic in either direction, and if there had been, the headlights would have been visible a mile away—literally.

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

Russ returned to the truck in a bad mood. He said that the officers whom he had ticketed had complained that it was petty for him to issue a ticket. “They should show respect for the badge,” said Russ I made some semi-commiserating noises without mentioning the fact that we did not have badges, just armbands. We then resumed our position again in anticipation of more vehicular crimes. Soon an erratically driven vehicle appeared. The driver was a naval officer with salad on his epaulets. Sitting in the passenger seat was a much younger woman. The car hardly slowed for the stop sign.

Russ turned on the siren and the cherry-top and pulled the vehicle over. He got out of the truck and did his Duke-walk toward the offending vehicle. Russ conversed with the driver for about ten minutes. When he returned to our truck I asked him what he charged the guy with. He said that he let him off with a warning because he had been very polite and respectful.

Try this: “Yes, sir. No, sir. Have you been working out, sir?”

I am quite sure that he was polite and respectful. He was probably afraid that he was going to be written up for driving under the influence, and the police report would probably include the name of the passenger. DUI is a serious offense. Even a ticket for rolling through a stop sign might cause him trouble with his superiors, and he might have a lot of explaining to do to his wife as well.

Russ never did get it. His approach punished people for trivial offenses and allowed those guilty of more serious things to grovel their way out of it. It disgusted me.

I really hated being on patrol, especially with Russ. I did not see how if I could put up with it for the 19+ months that I had left in my hitch. Fortunately I did not need to.

The slide on top is back.

Before we went on duty for the swing shift we lined up in the courtyard behind the PMO for a “guardmount”, an inspection by an officer. Part of the routine was to make sure that nobody’s .45 was already loaded before the clip was inserted. One at a time we would draw our .45 and pull back the slide on the top. The officer would then look inside from the top to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber. He then said “Clear!”, and the guy with the .45 would pull the trigger to return the slide to the forward position.

One time Lt. Hall, second-in-command of the MP Company, was inspecting our patrol. When he had finished examining Al Williams’ pistol, he shouted “Clear!” Al pulled the trigger and his .45 fired. The bullet actually shot the hat off of Lt. Hall’s head! It was mostly the lieutenant’s fault; he apparently didn’t bother to look in A.J.’s .45 very carefully. We all just pretended that nothing happened.

Manzano Base was mostly located underground beneath the mountains in the lower right. Below the mountains is a mileage indicator. The arrow in the top left indicates the main part of SBNM.

One time I was assigned to spend a midnight shift on guard duty at Manzano Base. This assignment was peculiar in two ways. 1) Several miles from anything resembling civilization, it was by far the most desolate and boring assignment. The visible part of the base was surrounded by two high fences, one of which was electrified. By the time that the midnight shift started, no one else was in the facility; at least that was the case on the night that I was there. 2) The entire base was top secret. No one seemed to know what went on there. A top secret clearance was required for the guard that MPCO SBNM supplied at night. The thing was, my clearance had not arrived yet.

The duty itself was not very memorable. In fact, nothing at all happened other than intermittent buzzing sounds from the base. To stay awake I took a few walks around the perimeter of the parking lot gazing at the starlit sky and singing cowboy songs at the top of my voice: “Some boys they go ridin’ the trails just for pleasure …”

I was disappointed that no coyotes joined me. There were lots of roadrunners around here; there must be coyotes, right?

After the shift I went to the mess hall for breakfast. I bought an Albuquerque Journal. On the front page was a story about Manzano Base. It emphasized the secretive nature of the base and the ironclad security. I considered writing a letter to the editor explaining how the reporter had missed his chance because during the night that that issue of the paper went to press Manzano had been guarded by a guy with no clearance at all. I thought better of it.

A group of us was somehow chosen to make a road trip to Santa Fe, the capital and cultural center—it has an opera company!—of New Mexico. A military funeral was being held there, and MPCO SBNM was assigned the task of providing a three-volley salute. This was a very popular duty because it offered a rare opportunity to get off the base, have a free meal at a restaurant, and see a little of Santa Fe. I don’t remember who else was in this group of eight—seven enlisted men to shoot the rifles and a sergeant to tell us when to fire. I am pretty sure that we all wore our regular fatigue uniforms with our MP armbands and white hats.

We took a van. The drive to Santa Fe was a little over sixty miles. During the first half the Sandia mountains were on the right, and the usual desert scenery was on the left. In the second half we began the climb to Santa Fe, which is 7,199 feet above sea level.

General Patton called the M1 Garand “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” Ours probably just needed cleaning.

On the way the sergeant warned us about the M1 rifles, relics from World War II. Because none of us had even seen one of them before, he had to explain how to make them work.

Evidently they were not very reliable. He said that we should not be surprised if the weapon we were holding did not fire. We should just continue with the ceremony. As long as a few of them worked, no one would know the difference.

We arrived at the cemetery only a few minutes before the start of the ceremony. We all lined up a couple of feet apart. The sergeant called the command to take aim. We pointed the rifles into the air at a 45° angle. When he yelled “Fire”, we all pulled our triggers. Four or five rifles worked, including mine. The M1 had a little more kick than an M16. On the second command, only two or three worked. Mine still functioned. The last volley consisted of only one actual shot. It was tempting for the rest of us to yell out “Bang”, but no one did.

We were all very embarrassed. We had no intention of making a mockery of the poor guy’s funeral. We hurried to our van and made a quick getaway. We did not start laughing until we were far enough away that no one could see us.

The only thing that I remember about our lunch on the road was that we all enjoyed it.

My metabolism was not designed for shift work. I had only pulled one all-nighter in four years of college, and that was when a bunch of us were working on the dorm’s homecoming float. I really need at least four or five hours of sleep per night, and it must be at night. By the second night of every midnight shift I was a zombie.

I remember an unfortunate incident at breakfast at the mess hall, which was serve cafeteria-style. They gave me the plate with my omelet, and I placed it on my tray. Then I pushed my tray down to the end and right off onto the floor. I just forgot to grab the other end with my right hand.

On the walk from my room to the PMO on another day I noticed a piece of paper on the bulletin board near the MP Company’s clerical office. It asked if there was anyone in the company who knew how to type. In those days typing was an uncommon skill among guys. Why should they learn how to type? The secretarial pool did that kind of thing. As I recounted here, however, I had taught myself to type in high school, and I was actually pretty proficient at it.

I sought out to the clerk, whose name was Orsini², and informed him that I knew how to type. He was pleased to hear it and arranged for me to take a typing test the next day.

I was confident that I could handle a job in the military that required typing skills. However, I had never taken a typing test. I was not sure how it would be graded, and I was somewhat worried about a bad habit that I had developed. Typing books prescribe that the thumb should be used to press the space bar. I have always used my right forefinger.

Since I did not bring my typewriter to Albuquerque, I could not practice using my thumb on the space bar. Besides, you can type much faster and more accurately if you pay no attention to what your fingers are doing. A separate part of your brain knows where all the keys are. The best idea is to depend on it. So, I boldly resolved take the test using my usual deviant approach and forget about my thumb.

SP4 Orsini sat me down at a typewriter³ that had some paper already loaded in it. On my left side he placed a sheet of paper that had a few paragraphs of text on it. “Aha”, I thought, “I know this trick.” I moved the paper to my right side, glanced down to make sure that my fingers were properly placed, and typed the first couple of lines. I went at a pretty good clip, and I had not made any mistakes when …

Orsini stopped me. “Thanks” he said. “That’s enough.’ The next day I was told that instead of going on patrol or gate duty, I was to report to Lorenzo Bailey, the Desk Sergeant for the second platoon. Evidently Orsini just wanted to make sure that I did not “hunt and peck”.

My new assignment involved a slightly different uniform. I did not carry a nightstick. The holster for my .45 was attached to a webbed belt. During all of the time that I worked on the desk I never inserted the clip in the pistol. I always kept it in my pocket. No one ever noticed that the handle was empty, or, if they did, they did not care.

The desk sergeant and his assistant(s) used the police radio to dispatch patrols to whatever required attention. Since Sgt. Bailey did not type, the assistant(s) were required to type up incident reports as well as the log of all activity for the shift. Sgt. Bailey’s assistant was Randy Kennedy, who had just been promoted to sergeant himself. Bailey (no one ever called him Lorenzo) needed another assistant because Randy was scheduled to ETS (leave the military) in a short time.

For the guys on the desk the three shifts were quite different. The day shift was almost always busy. Some civilian employees assisted us on patrol, but they were not easy to work with. They were all Mexican-Americans; several were named Gallegos, apparently relatives. They always drove the black and white sedans; they never touched the trucks. They could patrol, but we could hardly use them for anything else. I don’t think that they ever relieved anyone at a gate or escorted a “run” from the commissary or BX to the bank. We never sent them on anything that might require judgment, such as a reported crime or a traffic accident.

We had to let everyone have time for lunch. The most challenging aspect was to make sure that there was sufficient coverage during that period.

The swing shift had two busy times. There was a lot of vehicle traffic when the people from Sandia Laboratories went home between 5 and 6. Later there could be incidents at the two bars, the Officers Club and the NCO Club. Domestic disputes, everyone’s least favorite, could occur near the end of the shift.

Usually we only had two people on the desk for the midnight shifts.

The most challenging was when the ‘Officer of the Day” decided to make a nuisance of himself. At night, when the Base Commander was not readily available, an Officer of the Day was in charge of the base. This assignment rotated around all of the unmarried field-grade officers on the base—Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Most officers dreaded this duty, but one guy relished it, a naval officer named, believe it or not, Lieutenant Commander Commander. Yes, Commander was both his title and his last name; I don’t know if Commander was also his first name. However, I do know that both major (in the Army, Air Force, and Marines) and lieutenant commander (in the Navy and Coast Guard) have the same pay-grade, O-4. So, our Commander Commander had the same rank as Bob Newhart’s Major Major.

Commander Commander liked to inspect the gates. He would call the PMO and ask us to send a car to pick him up. This was the last thing that we wanted. Our most responsible guys were seldom assigned to gate duty, and it was best not to think about what amusements the other guys had brought with them to help kill time.

The second time that Commander Commander did this on our shift, we were ready for him. We sent Charlie Antonelli⁴ to escort him. Charlie was the shakiest person I have ever met. He was nervous about everything. He always was dressed and ready for duty more than a half hour early. He would then walk up and down the hall asking people if his gig line was straight and his boots were shiny enough. He was always concerned about any of the dozens of rumors that were circulating, and he constantly sought other people’s opinions about them. Charlie was a nice guy, but it did not take long for this to become annoying.

One other important fact needs emphasis. Charlie’s shakiness contributed to his standing as—by far—the worst driver in the platoon, probably the company, and maybe the whole base. Charlie was never allowed to drive a police vehicle. We always found a partner for him, and the partner always drove.

When we got the call from Commander Commander, we sent Charlie to pick up him up. I don’t remember how we got rid of Charlie’s partner. Maybe we claimed that we had a “special project” for him.

Charlie picked up Commander Commander at the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ), which is where he was staying. Charlie called in on the radio and said that he was en route to the main gate with Commander. About fifteen minutes later Charlie drove his vehicle to the PMO, parked, and came inside. He told us that Commander Commander had told him to pull over to the side of the road. He said that he would walk back to the BOQ. They never even made it to the main gate. We considered it a small victory.

I did not know Randy Kennedy too well. He did not live in the barracks, and he ETSed a short time after our group arrived. However, I became pretty good friends with Sergeant Bailey. He was a lifer, but he was anything but gung ho. I don’t know how long he had been in the service, but at this point it was just a job for him.

I remember that there was an incident that happened just before I started working on the desk. I don’t remember the details of it, but Bailey was worried that he would get in a lot of trouble over it. We were working mids together, and he asked me to type his statement for him. I helped him compose it in a way that emphasized the positive aspects of his involvement. He was very appreciative. He explained that in one of his previous assignments he had been guarding a prisoner and for some reason he used the nightstick on him and caused permanent damage. He had not been punished, but a letter about the incident was in his permanent record. If he had another black mark, he could face some serious discipline. As far as I know, nothing happened to him.

By the way, Bailey was Black, and Kennedy was white. There were quite a few Black guys and some Mexican Americans in the MP Company. I never heard of any racial incidents.

I can remember a few peculiar events when I was working on the desk. Once there was a traffic accident during daylight hours only about a block away from the PMO. We had no patrol vehicles available. So, I abandoned my typewriter and walked over to handle the accident. I brought the forms with me on my clipboard, but it was a very minor incident, and the two parties agreed not to report it. Since it was our policy to give a ticket whenever there was an accident. I was pleased with this resolution.

The only time that I ever gave a ticket was the day that someone way above my pay-grade decided to set up a speed trap on Wyoming St., the main drag. So many cars were caught that they directed them over to the parking lot near the PMO, and they enlisted everyone they could find to write tickets. They only did this once.

During the day the PMO received quite a few telephone calls. Bailey answered most of them, but occasionally he was busy with something. I was required to identify myself: “Provost Marshall’s Office, Private (later specialist) Wavada speaking.” In the pursuit of plausible deniability, I practiced saying this until I could say it as fast as I could say a Hail Mary. My debate training helped. No one ever asked me to repeat my name.

Once I was called upon to investigate a reported crime. A lady called the PMO to report that someone had broken into her house. Sgt. Bailey asked me to drive one of the spare vehicles to her house and fill out a report. She told me that nothing was missing, but sh wanted to show me the door through which the intruder had allegedly entered by breaking a glass panel. There was indeed a broken pane, but the glass was on the outside of the door. It seemed unlikely to me that the miscreant had caused this as he made his escape. He certainly did not enter that way.

The guys on patrol often forgot that anyone with a police-band radio could listen to their transmissions. We had cut to short many conversations that had drifted into taboo topics with “10-21”, which told them to call us on a telephone. It was frustrating when the patrol responded with “What does 10-21 mean? I left my ten series card in my room.”

I was considered very good at typing up incidents using the various forms, especially the traffic accident reports. No brag; just fact. I had two skills that got my work noticed. 1) I could write clear, grammatical declarative sentences with accurate spelling. 2) I had perfected the skill of fitting n+1 letters into n spaces. This latter skill was invaluable. The reports had to be typed, and there could be no scratch-outs. So, if you left a letter out of a word, you had to start over. It was, however, possible to Wite-Out the erroneous word. Then I was sometimes able to key in the corrected version by partially depressing the backspace key while typing each letter so that the spaces between letters were reduced, but the word was still legible.

At some point in May I was removed from my duty as a desk clerk for the second platoon, Instead I started working in the Law Enforcement Office. I still lived in the same room amidst the guys in the second platoon. I don’t remember who replaced me on the police desk, but I do remember that Sgt. Bailey was not happy with this development.

By the time that I assumed my new role I had been promoted to Private First Class. This had nothing to do with my performance. Because such a long time with no new personnel had passed before the five of us arrived, MPCO SBNM had a supply of approved promotions ready to give to the first people who had enough “time in grade”. Because Ned Wilson and I had been promoted at the end of AIT, we both got promoted to PFC before the other guys in our group.

Ned and I also got promoted to SP4 as soon as we were eligible. The number of available SP4 promotions was smaller. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but the rest of the guys had to wait some time before they achieved it. I calculated that I earned several hundred dollars extra, and I owed it all to the lie that I told my platoon sergeant before the “white glove” inspection in AIT.

I never met anyone at either of my two permanent duty assignments who had been promoted as fast as Ned and I were. I only know about the MPs at SBNM, but at Seneca Army Depot I had access to all the personnel files.

1. The Manzano facility was integrated into Kirtland AFB in 1971. Its function has changed, and it is no longer classified. An account of its history can be read here.

2. I did not know it at the time, but the Orsini family in Italy has produced three popes and at least ten cardinals.

3. All the typewriters that I encountered in the Army were manual models. The IBM Selectric had been around for a decade, but I never saw one until in my Army career.

4. I have no way to verify it, but I think that Charlie died in 2020, just as I was beginning this project. The obituary is here.

1971 March-December: Military Life in Albuquerque

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Mike

Background information. Continue reading →

Climate: New Mexico is a very big state, and most of it is desert. Albuquerque, its largest city and by far the most developed area in the state, averages only 9.5 inches of rain per year! When I arrived in Albuquerque there had been no measurable precipitation in eight months.

On most days it was sunny and windy with very low humidity. One day the wind was blowing so hard on the golf course that balls that had come to a stop on the green were subsequently blown down to the fringe. Rain does not come to New Mexico often, but when it does, it usually arrives via a tremendous storm that deposits copious amounts of water for a short time.

Grass or almost any vegetation can grow there, but it must be watered every day. If not, the land will quickly revert to the desert scrub that people in those days called “mesa’. It was more like very rough sand than dirt. A few native plants can survive in it. Golf balls hit beyond the rough that was watered every day ended up on the mesa. Hitting the ball out of the mesa is possible, but one’s clubs get badly scratched very quickly.

During a storm it becomes evident that some parts of the sand are not packed as tightly as they appeared. Rivulets, called wadis, can suddenly appear out of nowhere. One on the southeast side of Sandia Base was several feet deep, and it appeared repeatedly during my sojourn there. During dry periods the land looked flat.

When I first arrived, I felt that I could understand why pioneers came to New Mexico, but I could not understand why they stopped there. However, by the time that I left I did not find the adjustments as burdensome as they initially seemed. Exercising outdoors required a few precautions to avoid sunburn and dehydration. Since these were necessary all year long, most people became used to them. The big plus was that outdoor events can be planned with little worry of the weather. Home games of the Albuquerque Dodgers are seldom rained out. For me the summer weather was like KC but more so. I did not really experience one, but I suspect that the winters were a good deal milder than those in KC.

Morale: The climate in the Pentagon in 1971 was stormy all year. Morale in the armed forces, especially the Army, was the lowest ever. The War in Vietnam was supposedly “winding down,” and the Army was told that in 1971 and future years fewer troops would be allowed. Early in the year the details of the “Reduction in Force” were still being worked out. Rumors abounded, but a persistent one, which turned out to be true, was that all draftees would have their active duty requirement shortened by from two years to only eighteen months. In addition a lot fewer men (and, of course, no women) were drafted in 1971 than in 1970.

The Army realized that recruitment had become very difficult, and most of the draftees were terrible soldiers. In MP units like ours, half of the enlisted men had as much education as the officers and much more than the NCOs¹. Furthermore, these draftees had spent the last several years on college campuses that encouraged freedom of expression, critical thinking, and creativity. No one gave them orders in college, and they resented the Army’s insistence on mindless obedience.

The Army had tried to go a little easier on the recruits. For example, the hated inspections were much less frequent. My friends and I certainly were treated better than enlisted men were a few years earlier. I can’t say that we were very appreciative. We still felt like prisoners.

In the end the Army decided to take the drastic steps of abandoning the draft, releasing draftees from commitments, and starting over with an all-volunteer force. There were a few gung ho guys in MPCO SBNM, but no enlisted man with whom I worked, with the exception perhaps of Russ Eakle, was happy with his condition. For most of us the enemy was Nixon and the stupid federal government. Its proxies were the lifers. Furthermore, reducing the amount of senseless activities aimed at instilling discipline had the unintended effect of provoking resentment in the very guys that had played by the rules that were openly subverted by arrogant newcomers.

An Army colonel described it pretty well. “Today, the NCOs—the lifers—have been made strangers in their own home, the regular service, by the collective malevolence, recalcitrance, and cleverness of college-educated draftees who have outflanked the traditional NCO hierarchy and created a privates’ power structure with more influence on the Army of today than its sergeants major.”²

It was bad. I have always told people that the Army in which I served could not have defeated the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The Army had traditionally engendered cameraderie in its troops by instilling devotion to the unit. Guys did not fight and die for the flag or for some obscure policy goal or even to stop a heinous dictator. They fought for the other guys in their unit because they all had endured hardship together. In contrast, there was no esprit de corps at all in my unit. Nearly all of the enlisted men knew at all times exactly how many days they had left in active duty. They bragged about it to those with higher numbers.

Only a few guys were complete jerks about it. The rest of us did what was necessary to get the job done. However, if someone with a higher rank made us go through hoops for no good reason, we did what we could to make his life miserable.

The Navy, Air Force, and Marines were a little different. The active duty commitment for an enlistee was four years as opposed to the three years required for those who enlisted in the Army and two years for draftees. So, most of the enlistees in the four-year services must have had some interest in either pursuing a military career or an interest in using the service as an aid to a civilian career.

Most guys in the Army have very little contact with people in the other services. SBNM was unusual in that my friends and I dealt with people from other services on a daily basis. We considered all of them as lifers unless there was evidence to the contrary. I considered Dave Madden and Dean Ahrendt, the two Air Force sergeants³ that I worked with after the merger, as regular guys, but to me every other zoomer was a lifer.

Security: What about the hundreds of people who worked in top secret jobs at Sandia Labs? They might as well have been on the moon. We had no dealings with them whatever. We did have to work with a few civilian SBNM employees, but they were special cases with clearly defined rules. They had no authority over us, and we had very little authority over them.

All of the guys in the four police platoons at SBNM had undergone FBI top secret security checks called BIs⁴. I don’t know about the guys in the other platoons; nobody talked about it. I don’t think that the Security Police on Kirtland required clearances at the time of the merger. For some reason my clearance came later than the ones for the other guys with whom I trained, but I definitely had it long before the merger.

In the ten months I was at the base, we never had any contact with any material that was classified. In theory no one without a clearance was allowed on Manzano Base, but our only duty there was to sit in the guard shack on midnight shifts. If we had needed to respond to an event at Sandia Labs or the Nuclear Weapons School, we might have needed the clearances.

Socializing with the locals: Finally, the proximity of Albuquerque needs to be emphasized. The MPCO building was within easy walking distance of the gate, and on the other side of the gate was Albuquerque. Quite a few guys had cars. When we were not on duty our activities were not restricted. We were allowed to participate in just about everything available in the city that was both the largest city in New Mexico and the home of a major university. Some guys even lived near the campus.

We were NOT, however, part of the community. We all⁵ had military haircuts. In 1971 we were clearly marked as outsiders at any university event or anything that was aimed at people our age, such as the Jethro Tull/Mott the Hoople concert. I knew of no one who socialized with UNM students or, for that matter, teachers.

1. NCO stands for non-commissioned officer, which in the army essentially means the sergeants. Since it is somewhat unusual for someone to become a sergeant in one’s first hitch, most NCO’s have reupped (no one I knew ever said “reenlisted”) at least once and are therefore considered lifers.

2. Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr. “The Collapse of the Armed Forces”, Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971. He died in 1979.

3. The ranks in the Air Force are similar to those of the Army. A sergeant in the Air Force in those days wore three stripes as does a sergeant in the Army. However, the pay-grade of the AF sergeant is E-4; the Army sergeant is an E-5. This seems to have been changed. An E-4 in the Air Force is now called a senior airman. There is no rank called sergeant.

4. BI stands for Background Information. FBI agents were sent supposedly around to interview some of our contacts. No one ever told me or my parents that they talked with an FBI agent about me.

5. The unbelievable exception was Doc Malloy, but to my knowledge he did not hang around with anyone from UNM.

1971 March: Getting Settled in MPCO, SBNM

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Mike

The top secret base that welcomed the public. Continue reading →

The army allowed us a few days before to transit from Fort Gordon to Sandia Base (SBNM) in Albuquerque. I flew from Augusta to KC and stayed at my parents’ house in Leawood, KS. At the time my sister Jamie was a freshman at Bishop Miege High School. I cannot remember anything that we did. I remember that a photo was taken of me and my dad standing on the patio in back of the house. It is probably in a bag or a box somewhere in our house in Enfield, CT, but I have not seen it in years.

Bob Willems drove his Volkswagen from his house in New Jersey to our house and stayed overnight with us. The next morning we began the 780 mile journey to Albuquerque. Riding with Bob was a big advantage for me. I could easily bring a lot more stuff than I could take on an airplane. I loaded my golf clubs, my set of posters, my stereo with the AR speakers, all of my record albums, and some books.

Bob did all the driving. Since we were required to report on the day after the morning that we left, we were in no great hurry. Nevertheless, we never considered taking the scenic route down from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque. The route we took offered no scenery to speak of. We took I-35 south to Oklahoma City and then I-40 west to Albuquerque. On the drive through Kansas we saw virtually nothing but farms on both sides of the road. Oklahoma was similar, but there were more oil “crickets”. New Mexico was mostly the parched landscape shown in cowboy movies. At least 90 percent of the drive on I-40 was uphill, not steep, but steady. At times Bob’s car seemed to be struggling.

We had a lot of time to converse in the car, but I cannot remember that we conclusively addressed any of the pressing issues of the day. We knew almost nothing about Sandia Base, and so we did not know what to expect when we got there. There was no Internet, of course, and so we had no way to get much information about it in the few days allowed for travel.

Perhaps we should have been alerted by the word “Base”. Most US Army installations are called forts or, less commonly, camps. The other clue was that our orders told us to report to “the MP Company”. Usually a military company is designated with a number as well as a number for the brigade and battalion. Neither the brigade nor the battalion was specified in the orders.

In point of fact, SBNM was not an army base. We later learned that it was run by a separate organization called the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). It was part of a large military complex that occupied the southeast corner of Albuquerque. Situated between SBNM and the Sunport, Albuquerque’s airport, was Kirtland Air Force Base. Kirtland had everything one would expect in an Air Force base, including runways. No one talked much about the other base, Manzano. It was in the southeast corner, and very secret stuff reportedly transpired there. Policing and a few other things at SBNM were assigned to the Army. The Navy and Air Force had their own assignments.

Why would anyone stay at this horribly overpriced motel in Tucumcari?

We decided to stop for the night at a ma-and-pa motel on Route 66 in Tucumcari, NM, 234 miles east of the base. At one time Tucumcari was rather famous for its motels. When I googled the town in 2020, it still showed a motel sign as the image for the town. We found one that neither of us could believe. We were smart or lucky enough to make our way from the interstate to Route 66. It was lined on both sides with motels with “Vacancy” signs. We picked one of them more or less at random. My recollection is that we only paid $6 to stay the night. They gave us a suite of two rooms with a bathroom that was accessible from both rooms. In the morning they brought a newspaper, coffee, and donuts. What an enchanting welcome to the Land of Enchantment!

The drive to Albuquerque was a little tense. We did not know what to expect. The city lies at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. Its elevation is 5,312 feet, a little higher than Denver. Sandia Peak, 10,679 feet, is just off to the northeast. You never lose your bearings in Albuquerque. If you feel disoriented, just look for Sandia Peak. It is almost always visible. Clouds are rare in New Mexico.

We found our way to the base’s main gate on Wyoming St., which is one of Albuquerque’s principal north-south arteries. I had assumed that SBNM would be a little way out of town. It was not. Residential Albuquerque was right outside the gate. Furthermore the soldier standing guard on the gate, who was wearing an MP arm band, just waved us—and everyone else—through.

Bob parked his car somewhere, and we made our way to the MP Company, where we were warmly welcomed. We learned that the company was horribly understaffed. We were the first group of new people that had arrived there in many months. The guys in some platoons were not allowed to take days off. If anyone got sick or injured, they had big problems. Fortunately a fairly large number of new people arrived within the next few weeks.

Four platoons did all the police work in shifts. A platoon worked the day shift (6:00AM-2:00PM) for three days, then the swing shift (2:00-10:00PM) for three days, then the midnight shift (“mids”: 10:00PM-6:00AM for three days), then three days off. There was also a traffic platoon, a headquarters platoon, and a platoon for guys with special assignments such as security escorts.

Al Williams, who had driven down from Boston in his Toyota, and I were assigned to the second platoon under Sgt. Glenn. Bob and Dave Zimmerman went to other platoons; I don’t remember which ones. In some ways Ned Wilson got the best deal of all. He was assigned to traffic duty, which meant that he worked only in the daytime and had weekends off. He lived with his wife in an apartment that was near the base.

The above image is the part of the former Sandia Base that functioned as a town center. I labeled the old MP building in area #21 with “PMO”. I lived in the west wing of that building and worked in the Provost Marshall’s Office in the center. The similarly shaped building across the courtyard and the tan building on Texas St, were not there in my day, but a much smaller library was. I think that the MP building and the similar building across the courtyard are now dormitories. The Air Force moved the police headquarters to the building labeled #11.

The library was a stone’s throw away. Within a few blocks were the mess hall, the commissary (grocery store), BX (department store), a small gym with all kinds of sporting equipment, the ANAF club for enlisted men and women (weekly bridge games), and a bowling alley. When we arrived a nine-hole golf course far to the south had just been completed well to the south.

This is a military base?

I was astounded to learn that the largest buildings on the base belonged to a private company, Sandia Laboratories. They still do. Its facilities are a few blocks southeast of the above map. Everything done on the base was top secret, and so I may still be prohibited from revealing what they did there. I am allowed to tell you that the building in front of the Sandia Labs complex had a big sign on it that said, “Nuclear Weapons School”. Also, of course, all of the military personnel wore a Defense Nuclear Agency patch on their sleeves.

I did not expect the base to have so many permanent residents. Surrounding the business area depicted above were three nice residential areas. Most of the inhabitants were families of retired military personnel. Few were senior citizens; you could retire from the military after twenty years. So, nearly all of these people were under sixty. There were a lot of children. It felt like a suburb in which Beaver Cleaver would be comfortable.

The base itself was huge. It occupied 47,000 acres, which was over 73 square miles, over 39 percent of the total land area in Albuquerque. This did not include the 3,000 acres each contained by Kirtland AFB and Manzano base. Most of SBNM was several miles south of where we entered and consisted of undeveloped desert.

At some point we were also provided with MP arm bands and patches for our uniforms with the DNA symbol on it. They also gave us a little card with the ten series used on the police radio transmissions at SBNM, a nightstick, a holster with places for both a .45 caliber pistol and the stick, and a white MP hat.

Someone escorted me to my room, which was in the middle of the south side of the first floor on the west wing of the MP Company barracks. From the outside it looked flat, but there were two or three steps to the left of my door. I could hardly believe it. I had a room to myself. The door could even be locked! There was a dresser, a closet, a couple of chairs, a desk, and a bed. It was even air conditioned. By army standards of the sixties it was luxurious.

Everyone who lived on our floor was in the second platoon. When our group moved in there were quite a few empty rooms.

The first night in my room was memorable. About 2:00 in the morning I heard a pounding on my door. I stumbled over to the door. Two guys were there. One, a guy from another platoon named Grandmaison, brought a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. They both had already obviously consumed quite a bit of it. They demanded that I take a couple of tugs on the bottle with them. I had never tasted bourbon before, but I was a little afraid to turn down their offer. They let me go back to sleep a few minutes later. I think that they stopped at Al’s room next.

Al and were I scheduled for duty on the midnight shift the next day. There was no orientation, no handbook, and no training. Before going on duty we had to report to the armorer to check out weapons. We each got one Colt .45 model 1911 and one clip with six bullets. If we faced seven or more bad guys, we would need to depend on the nightstick.

The gate shack looked pretty much liked this.

During the first night I was stationed at the main gate on Wyoming St. My instructions were to wave everyone through. That’s right; in those days Sandia Base was a top secret security base that was almost always open to the public twenty-four hours a day. My instructions had three other components: 1) If an officer in uniform was driving, I was required to turn the wave into a salute. 2) We were supposed to write down license numbers in a log. The guy who drove me out to the gate told me not to worry about it. If I missed one, I should just make up a license number. 3) For other issues I could call the police desk from a phone in the booth.

I guess that I should mention that the gate could be closed and locked. Someone would call to tell the guard to begin that process, which required about ten minutes. Such a call only occurred a couple of times in the ten months that I was at SBNM.

Gate duty on the midnight shift was extremely boring. Cars were few and far between. The only diversion was the police radio. I had only been there for a few minutes when the man at the police desk, Sgt. Lorenzo Bailey, ordered Al and his partner to deal with a domestic dispute. This had a big impact on me. I did not want to deal with things like domestic disputes. This was a military installation. The people who lived here were mostly lifers. Lifers love weapons. I was strongly motivated to do whatever I could to avoid going on patrol. I did not want to get shot, and I definitely was not going to shoot anyone.

Mine was three eggs with ham and Swiss.

At the end of the shift Al, who had stayed on patrol all night, and I walked over to the mess hall for breakfast. Because it was so early, most of the diners were from our platoon. They made omelets to order at breakfast. It was the best meal of the day. To tell the truth, the food at the mess hall was pretty good. Most guys only went out to eat when someone had a craving for Mexican food.

My first time on patrol was, I think, on a day shift with Russ Eakle. Most of the time there was not much to do on patrol. We occasionally had to escort a manager of the BX or commissary to the bank. If someone posted at a gate needed a break, one of the guys on patrol would relieve them. The challenge was to think of something to do for the rest of the time.

I doubt that the real Duke would have specialized in Mickey Mouse ticketing.

I doubt that the real Duke would have specialized in ticketing for such Mickey Mouse offenses.

Russ liked to drive south into the open spaces that were still part of the base. Some horses were fenced in out there. Maybe there was a riding stable. Russ had swiped an apple or two from the mess hall to feed the horses. I just watched.

Russ fancied himself as the John Wayne type. He asked people to call him Duke. He showed me how he liked to give tickets. His specialty was citing drivers for rolling through stop signs. He showed me where he hid the truck so that he could surreptitiously catch the desperados performing these heinous acts. That first day he issued a few tickets using this technique. Then he told me that I should do the next one. I refused; he was not in my chain of command.

I asked someone, maybe Russ, about room inspections. I was told that they never inspected the bedrooms. This was music to a slob’s ears.

After a day or two I began to think about what I would buy with my first E2 paycheck: a rug for the room and a radio for when I had gate duty. The latter was not technically legal, but as long as they were not visible or audible to those driving through, no one objected.

I purchased both of these items. I think that I got the radio at the BX and the rug at a discount department store that AJ or Bob drove me to. When we were not on duty, we were on our own. We could wear civilian clothes and leave the base whenever we wanted.

I had at least a dozen like this one.

Our platoon had two sergeants. The platoon sergeant’s name was Glenn, who was an E6 (staff sergeant). He basically just went through the motions, which was fine with us. The other sergeant was an E5 (plain old sergeant) whose name was Chambers or something like that. He actually supervised the units on patrol. He was both a nice guy and quite competent. He had been stationed for a while in Vietnam, but he was reluctant to talk about it. The only thing that he told us was that MPs were often used as guards for convoys. He was “short”, which meant that he would be getting out of the army1 in a few months.

At the BX I obtained everything that I needed to decorate my room. Within the first week I put up my Russian posters on the walls of my room. The copy of Michelangelo’s centerpiece of the Sistine chapel was on the ceiling over my bed. It was the first thing that I saw when I woke up in the morning (or afternoon if we were working mids).

I bought some green shelving paper and cut out twenty-one letters to put on the wall. I got the idea from Chapter 5 of the book of Daniel, the proverbial writing on the wall. MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN: The days of your kingdom are numbered; your leaders have been weighed and found wanting; your kingdom will be destroyed by the Medes and the Persians.

It was beginning to feel a little like home. One thing was still missing: a table for my stereo and speakers.

At some point in those first few days we met Captain Dean, the Company Commander of MPCO SBNM, and Lt. Hall, who was second in command. There must have also been a First Sergeant, but I don’t remember him. Captain Dean liked to run. He held the company record for the mile, and he was proud of it. His best time was a little over five minutes.

The captain wanted all of us to run a timed mile, and he made sure that we could all attend. We were allowed to wear sneakers and athletic gear. This was a new thing for us; in Basic and AIT we always ran in fatigues and combat boots.

Ned Wilson, Bob Willems, Dave Zimmerman, and I speculated about how much Al Williams would beat the captain’s record by. He was the state of Maine mile champion in college, and his best time was around 4:20. Captain Dean himself held the stopwatch. When he learned of Al’s prowess he was giddy with excitement.

Al ran at a pretty good clip for the first three quarters. He was on pace for a 4:40 mile, which would have been a fair result for someone who had not been able to train rigorously for four months. By then he had lapped the rest of us.

The big question was whether Al would have enough left in the tank for that last quarter-mile. Captain Dean shouted out Al’s time as he finished the third lap. Al waved to him, and then he turned around and ran the last lap backwards, which slowed him down to something close to the speed of the rest of us. As he passed them, he waved cheerfully to the lifers in attendance. Al wasn’t going to give any of them the satisfaction of thinking that he cared about this activity. It was a classy move.

1. This process is called ETS, which stands for Expiration of Term of Service. It can also be used as a verb: “He is ETSing next Thursday.”

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Tag Archives: Manzano Base

1972 January: Transition to Seneca Army Depot

1971 SBNM March-June Part 1: Police Duty

1971 March-December: Military Life in Albuquerque

1971 March: Getting Settled in MPCO, SBNM