My squadron was VMCJ 1 in Danang Vietnam but our particular group was from Cherry Pt. N. C. This happened right after the tet of 1966 or 1967. We hadn't been at the beach very long when the 1st Marine Division came through our area on the way to the ocean with full gear on. They had lost a lot of men going through the Aschua Valley trying to clean charley out of it . I mean we were there just as they finished the cleanup and went by us on there way to the ocean. They dropped there gear on the beach and walked into the ocean clothes and all. We watched them go by and we all just quieted down as a sign of respect for what they had just done. Well about this time an m.p. cruised up on the beach in front of 1st and headed toward red beach . He hadn't went but a little ways when we noticed he stopped in front of a group of several hundred toward a thousand or better Black sailors which had decided to demonstrate there frustrations at the Navy then and there not knowing the 1st was there ahead of them on the beach. By the time the M.P. had stopped talking to the front 25 or 50 black sailors or so. The 1st didn't know what was going on for sure but quite a few of them came back out of the water and started setting there machine guns and mortars and every thing they had with them and started laying down behind them with all weaponry pointed down beach toward the black sailors. By this time the ones of us that had witnessed this had taken our beers over to tables to watch what happened next . The M.P. finished his talk with those in the front ranks and came over to where we were to also see what happened next. Well those boys in back didn't know what had happened up front so they were shoving the front forward and there eyes were getting pretty large facing the 1st. Word finally got to the boys in back and they quietly dispersed and went back the way they had come back down the beach . Probably for the best. Thanks for listening to something that could have been pretty serious but turned out pretty funny, at least for us spectators.
Thanks from at that time Lance corporal Dan Rawstern