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| "Somebody is going to get killed." Clouds form over Hon Tre Island (All photos copyrighted) |
It’s impossible to know how many pirate radio stations were
broadcasting to American servicemen in the warzone of Vietnam , but
it’s reasonable to assume that none could match the professional infrastructure
of WPOT Radio.
Operating at 99.9 on the FM dial, WPOT’s outlaw broadcasters
had a fully-equipped studio with RCA control board, turntables, tape deck and cartridge
machines; a powerful transmitter; a legal antenna and a choice selection of
rock & roll music preferred by younger GIs, including antiwar songs.
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| By day this studio was AFVN. By night it was WPOT. rf |
The brazen radio pirates operated with impunity for one very
simple reason: it was hidden within an official affiliate of the American
Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN). By day it was AFVN’s Detachment 4. After
signoff, mutineer deejays took control and cranked up music that was banned
from the approved play list.
WPOT was strategically located near the top of Hon Tre Island,
offshore from South Vietnam’s central coast, giving the signal’s 25,000 watts the
capability of reaching eastward into the South China Sea and westward to the
central highlands. The potential audience was vast, including many thousands of
military listeners based in the Nha Trang and Cam Ranh Bay areas.
I spent two months there, but only recently learned that
much more was brewing on the mountain island than forbidden radio broadcasts;
to include attempted murder, prostitution that may have compromised our war
effort and a troublesome drug predicament that gave commanders good reason to
crack down.
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| Bob Wilford at AFVN Pleiku. |
Marine Sergeant Bob Wilford was one of the after-hours
announcers on WPOT in 1969. “The Officer in Charge never said anything,” the
wily broadcaster recalls. “We counted on the fact that he slept pretty much
through the night like a little baby.”
The underground station’s phony call letters were entirely apropos.
The “P-O-T” is what some of the deejays smoked during the late night sessions.
Others preferred alcoholic beverages. All were lower ranking enlisted men. Wilford
told me, “We’d read the standard signoff, play the national anthem, wait 60 to
90 seconds, and go back on the air—‘Hi, this is WPOT Radio.’ ”
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| Arriving at Hon Tre. rf |
The 228th Signal Company shared the same elevation
with AFVN’s compound, and we were sometimes socked in by cloud cover—the summit
reached 1,600 feet. Our FM radio and TV station was the smaller unit, perhaps a
dozen or so men, and we generally kept to ourselves, but were allowed the
privilege of using the signal unit’s chow hall.
I readily acknowledge that mischievous deejays and innocent
newsroom high jinks are part of broadcasting history—even becoming a popular
media genre with the 1970s TV series WKRP
in Cincinnati and The Mary Tyler
Moore Show. The blockbuster movie Good
Morning, Vietnam tells
the story of AFVN’s radio predecessor in 1965 Saigon .
But what was going on at Hon
Tre Island
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| Photo courtesy Allingham |
The heyday for WPOT was in the final months of 1969 when
Captain Robert Sanders (seen at left with hands on hips) was the Officer in Charge. Not long after his arrival
there was a surprise drug raid. A helicopter landed, and a man who saw it said two
MPs and drug-sniffing dogs jumped off and searched an AFVN hooch. It was the
sleeping quarters shared by several broadcasters.
“Poor dogs just ran in a circle,” the eyewitness quipped,
“such a target-rich environment!” A drug stash was incinerated on the spot and
the chopper left. No one was punished, according to the onlooker.
Wilford told me that Sanders knew who the main problem was.
“That was (Army Specialist) CW
Lane . Sanders was like CW Lane ’s shadow,” according to Wilford.
“And if you were in the vicinity, and Sanders could even suspect anything was
going on, you’d have your own shadow.” Truer words were never spoken.
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| The newsroom where I prepared the evening TV news. rf |
I arrived on “the rock” in January 1970. One evening as I was
standing outside the TV newsroom waiting to go on-the-air, Sanders came
storming down the hill and caught CW
Lane smoking weed in the bunker. Since I was standing
in the entrance and chatting with CW, Sanders ordered us to drop down and do
push ups. We were both in trouble, even though I was not partaking. No case was
pursued against me. [The full story of my escape is told in the digital book Broadcasters: Untold Chaos.]
What ultimately happened to CW Lane remains a mystery. Various AFVN
veterans say he was sent to the brig, or went Absent Without Leave. Wilford
remembers Lane being demoted. Whatever his grand finale, CW did enjoy his
cannabis. A co-worker said he smoked “bodacious”
amounts of weed.
Sanders seemed to be on a campaign to clean up AFVN’s drug
problem. New arrivals were told they would be watched, including Specialist Jim
Allingham—who neither smoked nor drank. Jim shared a telltale warning during
his orientation from the top non-commissioned officer: “He said he knew some of
the guys at the detachment were doing (marijuana), but hadn’t been caught yet.”
There was gossip that Sanders was military intelligence, but
that didn’t ring true when I talked with him 50 years after he was commanding Detachment
4. “I wasn’t in the nature of being a tattletale,” the former captain
explained. “But I consider taking drugs on duty not minor. Especially if
someone was in a bunker and had guard duty.”
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| The perimeter just outside the AFVN compound. rf |
Sanders’ hooch was just outside the main bunker, and he made
his argument personal. “You know, if there had been any sappers (enemy
commandos) they’d have gotten me first, so I didn’t think that was very funny.”
One night, he was reported to have gone outside the
perimeter in order to sneak up on a bunker for a random drug check. This was
told to me by a combat veteran: “Remember, it was a free-fire-zone.
Fortunately, he picked a bunker that was fully alert and drug free, so he
escaped somehow getting shot.”
One wonders if a sentry on duty at the adjacent signal
company was stoned when he fell asleep on guard duty, and his rifle tumbled to
the ground. Numerous rounds misfired. Sanders remembers what happened: “They
all thought they were under fire and opened up with (their own) fire. There was
a full time war going on there for a little while.” The guard accidentally shot
himself in the leg and was evacuated.
Hon Tre was in sliding into dysfunction and ominous red
flags were embedded in the letters one broadcaster sent to his family in the Midwest . “Another 15 pounds of marijuana confiscated one
more guy in jail and the pressure is like electricity. This place is ready to
blow. Somebody is going to get killed.”
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| The enemy hits a U.S. target on the mainland opposite Hon Tre. rf |
It seems that our intrepid commander had been targeted in a
“fragging” incident. “Fragging” is military jargon for murdering an unpopular
leader with a fragmentation grenade. I was one of three Hon Tre broadcasters
who vaguely remember hearing about it.
Apparently, a grenade had been placed in a bunker—inside an
ammunition box—and was set to go off when the lid was opened. Sanders was tipped
off that he could find drugs in the ammo box, but when he opened it, the pin
was not fully pulled. Fragging attempts were often meant to be more of a
message than to do actual harm.
Sanders was unaware of the incident, but told me, “It could
have happened right under my nose. They might have tucked it in there in such a
way that I never saw it. That’s possible.”
The former AFVN commander did recall a fragging episode at
our neighboring unit, aimed at the captain of 228 Signal Company. “They took a
hand grenade, pulled the pin, and then wrapped the handle with electrical tape
and put it in his gas tank,” said Sanders. The gasoline was supposed to
dissolve the tape and allow detonation. Sanders struggled to recall the outcome:
“I don’t think it exploded, but it might have.”
Being ordered to the isolated radio and TV station was like being
exiled to AFVN’s Siberia for troublemakers.
Two of us were shipped to “the rock” for being whistleblowers—exposing AFVN’s
heavy handed news censorship in Saigon . The negative
media attention resulted in a congressional investigation.
Sanders once brought me in for an interview to evaluate my
satisfaction as an AFVN newsman. He composed a “Memorandum for the Record”
which included this closing sentence: “He (me) further indicated that he had
neither plans nor desire to create dissension at Detachment 4 or in the
Network.” I had earlier joined a group in Saigon
that actively opposed AFVN’s policy of news censorship (see Broadcasters: Untold Chaos).
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| Photo courtesy Allingham |
When we talked in 2019, the former OIC had a good grasp of
censorship—when it is necessary and when it is not. Sanders’ conclusion was
this: “I trust you guys. I have confidence, I think you’re good journalists,
and that’s all it took. I never had a bit of trouble with them.”
Soon after I was banished to Hon Tre, Army Specialist Jim
Allingham (photo at right) arrived. Also an anti-censorship newsman, he was unceremoniously put
on a plane in Saigon —Jim was the only
passenger—and ended up on the island with me. A third troublemaker was already
there: Sgt. Wilford, who was transferred from the American Forces Vietnam
Network’s station in Pleiku.
Wilford’s exile came after a stunning on-air protest at the
end of his TV newscast. Wearing a black arm band and a peace symbol on a chain
around his neck, he told viewers “On a final note…” and then read an antiwar
editorial in Time magazine. The
commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division at Pleiku saw it, complained
and wanted something done. A couple weeks later, Wilford was transferred to “the
rock.”
WPOT radio was not broadcasting for long and the hours were
irregular. “Mostly it was for us to hear music that we were not allowed to
play,” asserted Wilford. “We thought, ‘we can’t be the only ones who miss these
songs.’ ”
One example given was “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,”
which included the lyrics, “It wasn’t me that started this whole crazy Asian
war.” The version by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition had just come out in
1969.
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| Michael Mankey on-the-air at Hon Tre. Courtesy Wilford. |
Another Marine Sergeant, Michael Mankey, was a Wilford
sidekick who also wore two hats: one for spinning music on AFVN, and one for
WPOT, according to Wilford. CW Lane was also in the studio, as well as other
guests who were invited in from time to time. Wilford insists there was never
any pre-planning, “We’d run out of things to do, and we’d go, ‘let’s go play
some music in the studio.’ ”
Wilford, whose favorite libation was Southern Comfort rather
than marijuana, admits that the enlisted men who gathered for the illicit WPOT programs
understood what they were doing was very wrong. “We were all pretty paranoid,
but we didn’t care. What were they going to do, send me to Vietnam ? It was
just a few of us with a huge, dangerous prank.”
One reason they got away with it was by keeping a low
profile—even among the AFVN staff. Wilford put it this way: “Nice guys didn’t
get invited to the clique parties.” During this time, Specialist Tom Benintende
was program director for FM radio. In an email, he said, “I have absolutely no knowledge
of anything nefarious going on.” Tom must have been a nice guy.
I suspect the scandalous behavior was winding down by the
time I arrived in January 1970. I too was oblivious to the misbehavior,
although the haze of smoldering weed was still in the air, and I was implicated
when CW Lane
was caught. But if WPOT was still broadcasting at that time, I was out of the
loop.
Prostitution was another problem on Hon Tre, according to
Air Force Captain Daryl Gonyon, who wrote an account at americanveteranscenter.org.
He said they were hired as maids, but could well have been enemy agents. When
Gonyon plotted to get them removed, 21 “suspected Viet Cong” prostitutes were
sent back to the mainland.
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| Photo courtesy Ingle. |
Gonyon’s allegations did not mention AFVN, but one of our announcers added this observation: “They would swarm off the ferry every Sunday morning, ready for work,” according to Army Specialist Chuck Ingle (right), “I think they used to get $20.”
One principle reason why the bootleg station went undetected
is that AFVN remained an effective operation, by and large, and a reliable link
in the network’s countrywide operation. There were eight radio and television
stations scattered throughout South
Vietnam to serve more than a half-million Americans
who were deployed in 1969.
A half-century after WPOT was on-the-air, marijuana is on
its way to becoming legal. But 50 years ago, it was used, along with booze, to
relieve the demoralizing boredom which was a common affliction on Hon Tre. “The
rock” lacked the social outlets found in large military installations: clubs,
theaters, restaurants, bowling alleys, gymnasiums, libraries, etc.
In spite of the tumultuous times on Hon Tre Island
Today, Hon
Tre Island
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| The panoramic view of Vietnam's coastline from Hon Tre Island in 1970. rf |
