Booby trapping the Ammo bunker started long before 1970. When I first went to Dong Ha in early 1967 we used to booby trap our ammo buncker all the time. The reason was other squadrons would swipe our M60 ammo belts. We at VMO-2 would spend a considerable lenght of time reconfiguring our belts so that every other round was a tracer. We would put them in our Ammo bunker and the next morning they would be gone.
Sooo one night we put some CS granades in the bunker and set a trip wire. Guess what? no more problem with missing Ammo.

Are you referring to the grenade that was found with the pin pulled out and wrapped with tape found in a jar or can filled with jp! It was found between hml167 and hml267 about that same time frame!!

I don't think there were any HML's in existance in 1967 and we would never do anything to hurt our fellow Marines. We just wanted to keep the fruits of our labor for ourselves. A little CS up your nose is a good deterred but does no permanent harm.

I was refering to dewantho's post No#1. He was talking about the the 70-71 time frame. Both HML 's were side by side at the time. and it did happen!!! as I stated. Sorry to say!!!

Joe Lent and Me Were The Ones They Tried To Kill

I remember this incident very well. I was in the HML-367 Ordnance Shop working night crew (me and Joe Lent). We were working all night putting together rocket motors and war heads in the "squadron ammo bunker" (we called it the revetment).
Early in the morning a jeep pulled up out in front of the revetment and the men motioned for us to come out. Then one of them went inside and came back out with his hand in a can. We were told that there was a grenade in the can, the pin had been pulled, and the spoon was wrapped to the grenade with black electrical tape. The only reason that it didn't blow was because the spoon was resting on the bottom of the can.
Later that day I went back into the revetment and counted that there was over 10,000 pounds of explosives in there, including mini-gun rounds, 40 mm grenades, flechettes, 10 and 17 pound high explosive war heads, White Phosphorus, etc...
I remember that the men were Navy Intelligence, but they did not interview Joe or me. Guess they figured that we would have to be really fucking stupid, if we were involved.
On a side note, Joe was my buddy, a Piute Indian from Porterville. Ca. We were on night crew a lot (usually just the two of us) because Gunny Griffin figured that it was a good way to keep us out of trouble. And we did manage to get into quite a bit of trouble, mostly crawling under the machine gun tower and hitching a ride down the road to one of the whore houses or into Da Nang (we might have been in a war, but we were still teenagers).
On another night we took out Ordnance tractor and trailer loaded with explosives from by the Ordnance Shop and drove it back to the revetment while under heavy rocket attack. Our Gunny told us that he was putting us up for a medal of some sort for what we did. But we got into trouble again, so he forgot about the medal. Anyway Joe's dead now (died young from a heart attack) but I would have liked to see him get the recognition that he deserved.

I'm curious why this has stuck in your mind for so many years. Please let me know.

Thanks
Steve LeBard