BoobyTraps+(JWL)

Vietnam, this war was full of bloodshed, tragedy, new opinions and most of all the war was full of many new and almost inhuman ways of killing. According to the dictionary, a booby trap is any hidden trap set for an unsuspecting person and in this war both sides have showed abut many of the clever but horrific traps that may have been waiting for someone when they least expected it. In the war there were about 3 basic groups that different kinds of booby traps could be classified into. Those categories are trip wire traps, spiked or sharpened traps and last of all ballistics traps. Trip wires, often consisted of a small, or transparent string, which if moved or broken would trigger any sort of device. The lines could be hidden anywhere both on the jungle floor and hanging in many sorts of ways. Trip wires were often used to trigger such things as land mines grenades concealed ammunition and sometimes even used to ignite a liquid or flammable substance such as napalm or gasoline. Many of the traps put in place by the Vietnamese were almost inhuman and very barbaric. For example during the tet offensive while holding off north Vietnamese regulars a young soldier steps on a bear trap that instantly closed on his foot. The trap was chained to a block of cement measuring about 3 by 3 and totally buried in the ground. This is just one of many examples of clever but vicious booby traps set by the Vietnamese. Next there are the spike pits. The traps in this group include those such as punji stakes, concealed poison spikes and the most gruesome of all the rolling spikes. These pits could be filled with any sort of thing to cause a soldier harm and the Vietnamese would often cleverly hide them or cover them up with sticks and pieces of earth so that they blended in with the surroundings. Getting stuck in a spike pit usually meant a slow painful death, the traps would often lock into place or have poison spikes pointing forty-five degrees downward so that one someone gets stuck the whole trap has to be broken or taken apart to free the victim. Unfortunately most of the traps were lined with cement or strongly attached to the ground so by the time it was broken apart the person in the trap was usually dead or in critical condition. One or the more well known of these groups of traps consists of two rolling loges with about 12 inch spikes going all the way around both loges. When a soldier stepped into or fell into this trap his body weight would push the lower part of his body into the trap while the bamboo steaks impaled him and rolled into a locked position. If not killed almost instantly the dirty bamboo sticks would slowly infect the wound and really the best-case scenario is that only one leg would be lost. Lastly, is the ballistics group of traps. This group includes such things as land mines, bouncing betty’s, rigged hand grenades and such. The ballistics category was most definitely the more common traps set during the war due to the fact that not only could these traps kill ground troops but could also take out anything from supply trucks and many other kind of vehicles unfortunate enough to set of an explosion. Jumping land mines or “bouncing betty’s” was one of the most effective booby traps in Vietnam. When triggered these mines would spring up about 3 feet of the ground and explode in mid air. These mines where most effective on ground troops for when the mines exploded they would send flaming shrapnel in every which direction causing any number of puncture wounds. Many conclude to the fact that the ballistics booby traps where the most effective of any of the other groups which may very well be true but these exploding traps seem to be the more human of the 3 groups. Overall these Vietnam war period booby traps were killing machines. These weapons often meant a slow and horrific death and may very well have been the toughest thing a soldiers family could have gone through. Many of the gruesome trap ideas came from medieval fortifications and it is in human fir these traps to have been used on troops in this modern era. Tragically the world has obviously not leaned from many of the horrors of these death traps because they are used commonly in Iraq to this day.