My dad was stationed in Spain at Torejon(sp) AFB in the early 60s and he told me a hell of a funny story...
The USAF base was situated inside a larger Spanish military base, so there were essentially two perimeters: the inner one guarded by the US and the outer one, guarded by the Spaniards.
There had been some concern that the buffer between the outer and inner perimeter wasn't as well guarded as it might be, and that the Spanish had a lackadaisical approach to base security there, so one bright young lieutenant one night had the idea of investigating this and catching the Spanish perimeter guards slacking off so he could file a formal report. He took a hapless corporal with him in a flight-line pickup truck...
Now as an interlude, (and pop personally witnessed this) when you drew weapons for guard duty in the USAF, you were issued an M1 Carbine and a sidearm, you signed for them, for the ammo, and you returned them afterward. The Spanish base security guys...not so much. You walked up, asked for a weapon, took what you got handed. You might get a grease gun, an STG-44, a bolt-action rifle, or, in some cases, a BAR.
So back to our lieutenant...out into the perimeter they went.
At a guardpost, some of the Spanish guards were doing their thing (which usually involved cooking and girlfriends), and our Lieutenant ordered his driver to, as they went into a gully, kill the headlights and then as they got to the top of the rise, kill the engine and coast up to the guard point, and they'd just see about all of this nonsense...
As soon as they topped the rise, everyone on that side of the base heard a fusillade of shots that seemed to go on for a minute or two (so dad says). He was close enough that he'd actually heard it - and before the sirens started, right after the shooting, they hear this voice shout: "ALTO."
Amazingly, the Lt. and his driver were unhurt (as soon as the fire zeroed on them they got small behind the engine block of the flight line truck they were in), but the front end of the truck was utterly destroyed by BAR fire.
Needless to say, no more questions were raised about the efficacy of the Spanish Nationals and their perimeter guarding capabilities...
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