Vietnam Day 2, Part II: Cu Chi Tunnels (Slaughter)

Before heading into the intensity of the Cu Chi Tunnels, here’s a look at my lunch, which I think was called Lemongrass Chili Fried Soybean Custard:

With the side salad and a bowl of rice, this lunch was scrumptiously balanced and satisfying.  I like eating this soft-textured tofu in the same bite as some chewy rice, with the flavors of the sauce (tomato, onion, garlic, chili pepper) mixing it all together.  Tofu and rice – two mildly flavored, lightly colored foods that are such a big part of my diet.  Concocting a tasty sauce to bring them together  - the varieties are endless.  This one here was a new combination for me, and I loved it.

Now for a telling and a showing of a region 70 kilometers southwest of “Saigon” (as HCMC was called at the time), where jungles, tunnels, bamboo, bombs, Vietnamese and American all intersected for years as a pivotal place in what Americans generally call “The Vietnam War.”  Let’s jump right in.

It’s a little easier to jump into this hole than the original ones from the war.  This hole is a “model” of what the tunnel openings looked like.  It’s a bit larger than the real ones, and edged with concrete for preservation.  The actual holes were only 20 x 30 centimeters and obscured with branches and leaves.   And there were about 1,000 of them in the 150 km² area that comprised the whole Cu Chi Tunnel complex.

Actually, before we jump in (if you can fit!), let’s go back in time a bit before “the Vietnam War.”  Americans weren’t the only ones that brought war and domination to Vietnam.  Under the Han dynasty, China began ruling over Vietnam in 206 B.C..  After a millennium, the Vietnamese people succeeded in throwing off Chinese rule.  Over the next 900 years, the Vietnamese thwarted China’s numerous attempts of re-conquest.  Then in the mid-1800s, France came to the region and carved up Vietnam into three regions, and Vietnam was again living under the harsh hand of a foreign occupier.  When the Vietnamese attempted to throw off imperial France, the struggle was bloody, but successful.  Vietnam became independent again.  My guide at the Cu Chi Tunnels told me one detail about the French colonial period that relates to the tunnels we saw.

French soldiers often didn’t know (or didn’t care about) the difference between soldier and civilian when it came to encountering young Vietnamese men.  So even unarmed young men working on their farms would be killed by the French soldiers.  To protect themselves, Vietnamese farmers started digging secret holes in the ground of their fields.  They were 3 square meters in size (about 80 cm high by 70 cm wide), just large enough to jump into and hide if a soldier suddenly approached the farm.  These worked quite well.  They could hide.  But it was easy to be caught and killed if a soldier found the hole.  So then the Vietnamese started digging holes with a backdoor escape route.  This was the beginning of the tunnel system.  One village was connected to another through these tunnels.  Villagers could then communicate with and warn each other.  These types of strategies were key in defeating the French imperialist power.

Now let’s jump forward to the period between 1955 and 1975.  I can’t even imagine how many bombs were dropped over Vietnam during this time period that my country fought here.  I can somewhat imagine the damage that a bomb would cause to whatever area it landed on: smashing through trees and rocks, creating a massive hole in the ground, most certainly demolishing any human-made structure, as well as any human in the near vicinity.  That was its purpose.  And it was done in massive quantity all over Vietnam.

So it’s no surprise that the tunnels dug during French rule became a safe haven for the people of Vietnam during the war.  They could escape from the immense air and land onslaught, as well as carry out counterattacks.  The tunnels in Cu Chi were located five kilometers from an American military base.  And their depth and scope was largely increased during the time they were under American attack.  Within the 150 square kilometer region of Cu Chi Tunnel complex, there were 200 kilometers of tunnels, including one that ran completely undetected the whole five kilometers to the American military base.  So close that Vietnamese soldiers could hear conversations going on there and prepare for attacks.

The tunnels existed on three levels – 3 meters deep, 6 meters deep and 8-10 meters deep.  According to my guide, they were built and used for a total of 22 years as a method of survival and eventual victory against the French and the Americans.

During the war against the Americans, a group of soldiers would typically live in a tunnel system like the one above for three to four months.  Civilians would bring them food through a connecting tunnel.  Usually there were ten men and one woman.  Yes, the men were soldiers and the woman was their sex slave.

But it wasn't always all soldiers living in the tunnels.  In some areas, whole villages of people would live underground.  For many people, for years on end, life was lived in these tunnels.  People fell in love, got married, and even bore children in these tunnels.  All the while, they hid from bombs, made weapons, and fought back.  I can imagine that for many people, there was no difference between soldier and civilian.  Everyone was fighting to survive, whether they sided with the Communists or the Americans.  The war went on for so long, that after so many years, I bet it didn't even matter what you believed.  You lived in the midst of a war, and you fought to survive in whatever way you could.

The day I was here, it rained.  It made it a little easier to imagine what American soldiers experienced in this dense jungle area.  Muddy, wet, humid, deadly.  I imagine it to have been like hell.

Being in an unfamiliar climate, an unfamiliar landscape, with traps everywhere, like this one:

 

You can see in the left picture how a trap would be hidden with brush, but when you stepped on it, it would swing, leaving you to fall into these stakes.  Some stakes were made of bamboo, others of metal.

The bamboo, of course, came from the jungle.  Much of the metal came from American artillery recast into new weapons.

I don't know many details about how much fire power the Vietnamese who fought against the Americans had.  But it was interesting to see the piles of American bombs, and even this tank:

And then to see the types of weapons that were used against the Americans.  There was this whole area displaying all the hand-made spike traps.  They all looked torturous, the pictures can't even convey it.

You can watch this video of my guide demonstrating how each one worked.

This trap below was called the "clipping armpit trap," because when you stepped in the middle, the sides would snap up just as you fell down, so the spikes would land in your armpits.  Awful.  What I thought was, this kind of trap wouldn't necessarily kill a person, immediately or even soon after.  It was like a torture chamber.  I don't even know how a person would begin to get out of this trap.  Can you imagine your comrade falling in here?  What would you even do to help?

Here's my guide showing the "durian" weapon.  Durian is a fruit found in Southeast Asia.  It's big and heavy with hard spikes coming out of it (google a picture of it).  (It's also known as the worst-smelling fruit in the world.  Some people like to eat it.  I think it's ok.)  This contraption would be suspended or held high in a tree and dropped to swing into and gouge an American soldier.

After seeing all of these traps and imagining all the horrors of what happened in this area, the next part of the tour was a gift shop / firing range.  Yes, actual guns from that time period were not only on display, but you could pay to shoot them.  It was bizarre.  I think it cost about $2 per bullet (about the same price as one dish at a restaurant).  It was odd to see that some of the other tourists in my group wanted to pay to blast more metal into this area that was pelted and destroyed for so many years, where so many people were killed and wounded.  We saw firsthand how it all happened.  The last thing I wanted to do at that point was touch a weapon.  As the shots echoed through the air, I thought about how the only other time I’ve actually heard real gunshots was when I was living in Harrisburg, PA and there were a couple drug-related shootings in my area.  As I wandered around the gift shop looking at “souvenirs,” I felt a bit sickened.

It seemed ironic, as well.  Just 35 years ago, people from my country came here for war.  Now here I am as a "tourist."  I felt odd.  How about the Vietnamese people who work here every day, what do they think?  Well, I got up the courage to ask my guide, An, this question: "what do you think about Americans coming here many years ago for war and now as tourists?"

"No problem," he said, "The past is the past.  Everyone is equal - Vietnamese, American, Australian...."  I asked him if he thinks Vietnam would be different now if the Americans hadn't have left.  He paused for a minute, and I wondered if he was willing to be open, or if he even felt safe to give his opinion.  He said, "yes, probably.  Maybe better."  Then he told me how his dad was a soldier in the Southern Army, fighting with the Americans against the Vietcong.  And his grandfather drove a vehicle to take American soldiers around the area.  When the war ended, his father wanted to leave the country, go to the U.S., but he didn't have any money.  And he was a soldier, not a general, so the U.S. Army didn't take him to the U.S. like they did with many others.  So he said he can never work for the government because he comes from a family that sided with the Southern Army.  He can't even be a policeman.  I said, "oh, the government knows?"  He said, "yes, they now."  I asked, "What about your children?  Or your grandchildren?"  "Nope."

I felt fortunate to hear about his family history and his personal views.  As a traveler, I always appreciate opportunities to hear locals' perspectives, to see something from a point of view other than my own.  In Vietnam, they don't call it "The Vietnam War."  They call it "The American War."  So simple.  But so striking.  And then it was time for the final part of the tour: a documentary about the American War, from the perspective of Vietnamese.  It was, indeed, unabashedly, the Vietnamese point of view.  Probably not the perspective of An's family (and others like his).  But, it's a truth of our world that those who win the war get to write the history.

After An showed us some artifacts and handtools that were used to dig the tunnels, we watched the documentary.  The narration was in Vietnamese, but dubbed over in English.  I wrote down as quickly as I could words and phrases that stuck out to me.  They are striking in their perspective - so different from any documentary I would watch from the U.S..  We do have freedom of information and expression, but I doubt I'd be able to get ahold of this documentary from home.  I'll close this post with the bits and pieces of the documentary that I was able to write down, mostly all direct quotes:


150 square kilometers = Cu Chi Tunnel Area
200 km of tunnels
70 km from Saigon


Merciless American bombs decided to ruthlessly...
wanting to put their foot in...
This area where people just wanted to live peacefully, have picnics [Saigon city people came here on weekends], where fruits are ripe all four seasons.
Like a crazy batch of devils, they [American soldiers] fired into women, children, schools, bushes, chickens, pots and pans, Buddha images... from Washington D.C..


With love of comrade and hatred of American bombs...


[A Vietnamese woman] received an award for killing 100s of Americans [after her father and brother were killed and she took up arms].


American Killer Hero named Banee - [also received an award] for killing 16 American soldiers and [destroying] 3 tanks.


American Killer Hero [teenage schoolgirl]


With a high spirit to keep their homes and countryside...


Cu Chi guerillas:
- bombshells made into weapons strong enough to kill tanks.
- but never stopped using traditional weapons, like bamboo tiger traps.
- Even though they had to live in poverty, they wouldn't give one inch at night.  In the morning, fight.  At night, plow.  A rifle in one hand, and a plow in the other.


The Americans wanted to turn Cu Chi into a dead ground.


They had underground markets.  They lived underground.
The tunnels were considered by the West as a huge complicated system.


Although day after day the Americans wanted to take over Cu Chi, they didn't.  (It was the gateway to Saigon.)


Cu Chi guerrillas preferred to die in the Communist Circle killing Americans.
(Communist Circle = counter-plan to American strategy)
Never afraid of hardships, and always found ways to kill Americans.
The life of guerrillas in the circle was wonderful.  They came together to eat and bathe.
Fighting in the morning, working at night.

Kết