April 19, 2018
Volume 48 - No. 16
By Pete Peterson
The scream of police sirens, the wonk, wonk, wonk of emergency vehicles, the stench of burning rubber filled the chill November air. For two days the Pakistani military, armed and dressed in riot gear, lined the barricaded streets. News accounts and intelligence briefings warned the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan would soon be attacked by as many as 10,000 protestors.
Inside the consulate, Master Sergeant Mullis, Non-commissioned Officerin-Charge, of the sixperson Embassy Marine detachment, The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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ordered all hands to don combat gear: brown battle fatigues, steel helmets with chin strap, body armor, and ammo belts. The Marines checked their gas mask’s fit and hung tear-gas grenades from their belts, making sure their 12-gauge pump action shot guns were ready to fire, then cleaned their standard -issue .38 caliber Smith and Wesson pistols one more time.
To Marine Corporal Vickie Gaglia and Lance Corporal Betty Jo Rankin, this combat readiness was a tense and unfamiliar action. They had joined Mullis’ detachment only two weeks earlier, the first female Embassy Marines Mullis had ever command-
ed. Wisely, he’d integrated them into the regular work schedule, treating them like any other well-trained Marine.
On 21 November 1979, Mullis posted L/Cpl. Rankin to the consulate’s exposed roof top - a key position if the consulate came under fire. Cpl. Gaglia was to guard the supply and communications center in the basement of the three-story consulate, with orders to radio each Marine within the compound every fifteen minutes for situation reports. That Wednesday morning at 10:22 hours, as expected, the protestors
attacked, discharging smoke cannisters, setting off fireworks, and hurling gasoline -filled bottles that exploded on consulate grounds, spewing sharp shards of glass. Rocks bounced off the building’s walls. Men with battering rams intent on knocking down the facilities’ doors, advanced, screaming. Th,e mob screamed, “Death to Satan America.”
The Pakistani military repelled the first wave. The protestors re-assembled, added reinforcements and returned, led by roaring motorcycles and pickup trucks. A tear-gas grenade
Marine Embassy Guards - See Page 2