The TOC at C-2 was a standard bunker. Although not entirely under
ground, you can see air and light vents at ground level in the preceding
picture, it was roofed with 4 feet of sand bags (the mound on top is
actually an above ground fox hole, manned if the base is under ground attack).
The bunker could withstand a direct
hit from a 122 rocket but it would not have been a nice way to start the day
for those inside. It was manned 24 hours a day and transcriptions of all
radio traffic were made and kept. In fact the US Army has copies of them
to this day. This really was the brain box of TF 161 while in AO ORANGE and
along with the medical bunker had the only "authorized" electric generation
system on the base.
To the left is a view of the VIP pad outside the TOC. The log pad is too busy and dusty for the ranking visitors to 1/61. The rose was painted by a PFC that CSM Q found somewhere. Up close it looks like blobs of color. A few feet in the air it becomes a perfect rose. I will never tell who Rose was/is.
To the right is a picture of one type of sensor monitored from the TOC. Once planted (air dropped or by patrols) they reacted to ground vibration, sounds or magnetic fields and radioed the information back to a receiver. Artillery fires or air strikes were then called to attack the sensed target.
[RETURN to TEXT]
[APPENDICES]
[INDEX]
Webmaster