Vietnam-+Tunnels

Vietnam Tunnels By Elliott Pate

Tunnels were a big part of the Vietnam War the tunnels provided an escape hatch for the Vietnamese men that were fighting. People started digging tunnels in the Indochina War. They used these tunnels as bomb shelters and places to put ammunition and other things that they needed to store. In the Vietnam War they were used a lot more, than in the Indochina War. The tunnels in Vietnam were mostly used by the communist people in North Vietnam, where most of the fighting was going on. The people who used these tunnels usually lived in them for months at a time, without even getting to see a slither of daylight. The longest of the Vietnamese tunnels was called the Cu Chi Tunnel. It had a length of 155 miles long and sometimes going from 2-3 levels deep. This tunnel was located 45 miles north of Sagon. Cu Chi consisted of sleeping rooms, kitchens, ammunition and food depots, hospitals, air shafts, and meeting rooms. Other tunnels had under water entrances and captain’s headquarters. The hospital was usually at the bottom of the tunnel so if a bomb was to go off at the ground level it would not affect the people getting worked on in the hospital. There was usually no power in the tunnels but in the hospital there was a light bulb in the dirt, that was the ceiling, that was powered by a training bike. The kitchens had wooden powered stoves and had smoke tunnels that would let the smoke out miles away from the tunnel so that the United States troops would think that the tunnel or camp was somewhere when it really wasn’t. It was really hard to find one of the tunnels entrances. Some would be covered just as if it was regular ground and others would be false entrances and lead you on a wild goose chase the whole time. We would send in a small person into the tunnel, if we found the tunnel, to see if it was being used. If it wasn’t being used we would see if there was any food or ammunition still in it. The small soldiers that were sent into the tunnels carried a Kabar Knife, a gas mask, goggles, flashlight and a .45 Pistol. We sent the person in with goggles and a gas mask because we would throw a tear gas grenade into the tunnel before we entered. We thought that if any guard was standing near the door he would be blinded and we would catch him off guard and get a free walk in. The reason that we would only get to sent one small person in at a time was because the Vietnamese people were so much smaller than the U.S. so we had to get a small person to go in. We wanted to send only one person in first because all of the tunnels that were occupied had a guard at the door. Before you even got to the door with the guard you would have already set off a booby trap. Some of the booby traps were trip wires with mines at the end, step mines, or just a hole that was covered with some dirt and sticks. The worst booby trap of all were poisonous snakes that were kept in bamboo tubes so that when you stepped through a trip wire, that was not attached to a mine, the bamboo cylinder would be knocked over and the snake would come and bite you and you would die right there. If you got caught in one of the holes that were covered with sticks and dirt, there would most likely be some kind of spear at the bottom that would stab you and there was no way to stop it. Some other holes though, will just be a deep mud hole and you will just be stuck there without any food or water. This is how the Vietnamese fought, Gorilla Warfare, they would all come out of the tunnel at the same time and make an attack and then when they knew that they were going to lose they would go back into the tunnel like nothing had happened. This was what was so hard about fighting in Vietnam. You really wouldn’t get to see your enemy they would just be back into their hole again before you can even fire your weapon. Once that you got into one of the tunnels, and you found out that it wasn’t filled with Vietnamese, you would probably realize that the reason that the people left was because of the tunnel rats. The rats would be everywhere. The .45 pistol was the Tunnel Rat’s worst enemy. That was the favored gun to kill the rats with. Vietnam was a hard fought war. The tunnels were really what made it so hard.

Print Sources: Vietnam War- Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Books

Web Resources: E-library- Vietnam War http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-conflicts-periods/vietnam/tunnels.htm