From what I recall from living on lackland for almost a year the base security isn’t all that great. We used to step over a barb wire fence to go off/on base. Sure made the trip to the pancake house a lot shorter.
I remember it that way too. Canine school in 1979 or 80 I was there.
In Richard Feynman’s book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, he talks about working at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, and they had long security lines to get on and off the base.
He noticed that there was a hole in the fence within sight of the gate where the lower level/non technical workers (housekeeping, maintenance, etc.) would just walk on and off the base through that hole.
So one day, he walked through the gate, the officer there scrutinized his face and ID, waved him through, and he walked over through the hole and got back in line, doing this three or four times.
After he had been waved through a few times the officer looked confused, seeing him step up again, and began asking him what he was doing. Feynman pointed out the hole, and the guy was pissed.
When I was eight years old living as a Naval dependent in Yokosuka, Japan back in the Sixties, I was too young to get an ID card of my own, so I used to go to the part of the base where the dreadnaught Mikasa (From the Russo-Japanese War) had been preserved, and there was a hole in the fence down near the water that I could squeeze under to go off-base.
When I came back on base, the Marines at the main gate would pass me right through, apparently figuring I must have had an ID to get off base, so letting me in without checking was no big deal.
One day, as I sauntered back through, they stopped me, and when I couldn’t produce a military dependent ID card, they took me into the shack and interrogated me. It went something like this:
MARINE GUARD: Okay, why were you off base without an ID? We can’t let you in without one, you might be a spy.
ME: (sitting in metal folding chair in the middle of the guard shack with several Marines standing around me) Nobody ever stopped me before, and I’m not a spy!
MARINE GUARD: How do we know you aren’t a spy?
ME: Well, I’m not!
2ND MARINE GUARD: Okay, if you’re not a spy, who is your father, what is his phone number?
ME: (not wanting my parents to know I was going off base) My dad is away, and we don’t have a phone!
MARINE GUARD: Okay. Who won the 1967 World Series then? A spy wouldn’t know that.
ME: It was the St. Louis Cardinals! Lou Brock plays second base for them! (he was my favorite player)
MARINE GUARD: Okay. You’re not a spy. You can come aboard.
Heh, up until he asked me that question, I really thought they might have thought I had some nefarious purpose for coming on the base, as a kid might think. It was only later, I realized they knew full well who I was, since my Dad was the Security Officer on the base and was very likely their boss...and they were just giving me a hard time to pass the time!
In the early '70s a friend and I decided to visit a closed down Nike base in RI or southeastern MA, can't remember. We tied the barbed wire at the top of the chain link fence and climbed over. Walked over a hill and saw a whole bunch of uniformed folks in formation. We retreated quickly.