t's hard for me to believe that the Marine Barracks at Subic Bay has been closed now for 10 years! I served there as a young lance corporal about 15 years ago. I was with "C" Company. We were a bit secluded from the rest of the barracks, as we had our main company area about 20 west of Subic at a little communications station called San Miguel. We also had a small detachment about 40 miles north of Subic, just outside of Clark AFB called Capas Tarlac.

There weren't that many of us at Capas, maybe 30 Marines total. To augment our meager numbers, we had about 20 Filipino guards who were with DoD. These guys were great. They worked extra hard for about $5 to $10 per day. Since the job was so high paying and had all of the DoD perks (PX etc.) these guys kept their jobs for years, and often had their children take over when they retired. It is with one of these guards, names Rosales, where the story begins.

Rosales was in his late 50s, and had glasses that were as thick as coke bottles. He was almost always assigned to a post called "Patrol 7" because that area had decent lighting.

One day we were really pissed at our detachment commander and SNCOIC. They had us go out into the antenna field and dig fighting holes. Well, someone failed to mention all of the new fighting holes to the DoD guards walking their posts. You can probably see where I'm going with this.

That night, I was assigned to an area around "Patrol 6". At about 0200 or so, the following came over the radio net:

Rosales: "Four Bravo (COG/Armorer for DoD guards), dis ees pa-trol seben, be advise I fall into a hole, ober."

4B: "Roger Patrol 7, what is your location? Over."

Rosales: "Uh, four bravo, be advise that I am located on dee bottom, ober"

You could hear the laughter coming from all over the antenna field!

Semper Fi!

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