VIETNAM WAR–THE OTHER SIDE

Another few words that conjure up images from our youth and probably a war that we know a bit more about than the Cambodia killing fields and Kymer Rouge.  Even though we got the Westernised version of events, enough of our generation remember that the Americans seemed to be in the wrong much of the time – probably because our counterpart students and middle class families did not want to go to war.  And with good reason – around 58000 Americans lost their lives – and even more shocking, the huge numbers who have committed suicide since the war ended.  Not a lot of support from the guys who sent you there, then – and suspect the same applies to many veterans of any war – the scars run deep.

Certainly, if you came up against the traps and night time operations of the Viet Cong, you would be rightly scared to death for yourself and comrades.  We took a very interesting tour of the Cu Chi tunnels where the Viet Cong hung out for 13 years – we couldn’t handle 13 yards, and that was in specially widened tunnels for big Western tourists. 

Even though it was full of coach tours and groups, the area still showed enough to educate and give some idea of what went on – mostly above ground, with the few minutes set aside to experience an actual tunnel itself.

They built a complete network at different levels for miles around  in the jungle and lived, ate, slept, built weapons and hid for all that time, only coming out under cover of darkness to attack. Many of the soldiers were women from the farms and villages around the area




This is a photo of an actual tunnel and the other is the sample trapdoor that they used - Graham nearly got stuck!!





Typical jungle area












The tour showed around 15 horrible traps made our of sharpened bamboo with different trapdoors, hidden gates that made you fall in and be pierced like the animals they used to trap - pretty nasty but you had to use the methods at hand - was this more or less cruel than carpet bombing and napalm?