Down into the depths of the Vietcong tunnels

Today it was the day. I had really been looking forward to this event for most of the holiday already. Want to know what I am talking about? The Vietcong tunnels. It seems so alien to me that a situation can become so incredibly dire that people will leave their house and enter these kind of tunnels. The goal was mainly to, well, kill the Americans while surviving bombings. Also traps, there were lots and lots of the most dangerous traps one could possibly think of involved. Let’s see what I encountered;

Now the mud around the trap door looks very different from the fake grass. But back in the day these were so similar you would never notice the difference. Up until the point you stept on one though. The hatch would roll allowing you to fall in and would then close up almost soundproof. This devilish contraption would allow for several people to fall in and get pierced by the huge metal or bamboo spikes at the bottom of the pit. So but what I was wondering was why the local people were not caught by such traps. Apparently it happened every now and again as well, but it was prevented by a system. On all sides of the trap a nearby tree was marked in a subtle way. This was done so that only a person who knows what he or she is looking for would find the markings and avoid certain death.

Here is one of the entry hatches to the tunnels. It looks very small and it is. You can only wiggle in the tunnels by standing all the way upright and by keeping your hands above your head.

There were allways several entrances/exits in an area. Basically this allowed the Vietnamese warriors to “disappear into thin air” and manifest themselves on the other side of the battlefield once more. Wow, just wow. I am so glad not to have lived in such times of war, what horrors must both sides have endured..

After a while my tour group entered a clearing in the jungle. The clearing contained a huge white tent. Underneath was a huge tank. The tank was for the most part disassembled. Apparently the tank fell into a trap hole and was consequently used to generate power throughout the encampment, the tunnels. Earlier the whole tank was below grounds in a room especially filled with air wholes. The tank even survived some heavy B-52 bombing raids.

More on the Vietcong tunnels in my next post!