This long hut-like structure was built to show tourists some of the entrances of the tunnels. One you can see Nicky is squatting next to. Kathleen is trying to make sense of what the video is saying about the Americans in the war. Unfortunately for us sitting there, the video of what happened here was VERY one sided. It actually called Americans "devils" at one point! There were Vietnamese government workers/soldiers all around and it seems this is the Communist view of what happened. It would anger any American, whether you fought in the war, had freinds in the war, sons in the war, brothers in the war or even if you were against the war! Our guide DID tell us that the video could offen, and he was right.
After the video, we were off to the tunnels. The jungle was full of large centipedes. To imagine soldiers walking through these think jungles at night with snakes, spiders, booby traps, the sounds in the jungle whether it be gunfire or creatures of the night or sounds of fellow Americans being tortured and Vietnamese soldiers and sometimes Vietnamese civilians waiting behind any given bush or tree.....
Can't you hear our guide saying "You are here"?? That is exactly what he was saying. Plus the fact that the winding tunnels ended up being 120 miles in length. Just like Birmingham to Atlanta!! However, it was not a straight line. These tunnels meandered through jungles and at one point even went UNDERNEATH an American base!
The guide told us the Americans won the war during the day, but at night it was a whole different war. The Vietnamese would come out of the tunnels and raid camps wearing nothing but black. While we were in these jungles, when the sky opened and flooded us, the thought of what it would have been like to be 18 years old, in this jungle with all the sounds we were hearing plus the sounds of the night creatures, the intense heat...too hard to imagine really. They now have a firing range that "tourists" can go to and shoot rounds from an automatic weapon, some sort of bazooka thing and more. The rounds were $1.20 US to shoot them. We did not participate. However, the sounds of other people shooting them was eerie at best.
The vertical tunnels. Those tunnels were about the size of the a/c vents on the floor at your house and adding about 6 inches around! Really small. Getting into them and getting down them must have been much easier for the Vietnamese people! The American soldiers that were trained to find these and go into them were called tunnels rats. That must have been the worst job in the entire war.
As if the tunnels were not enough, the booby traps. They were sneaky. They had grass patches that were in hinges and would give way when you stepped on them and the person would plunge to their death on a bed of 3 foot long steel spikes. Or there were foot booby traps that would catch your leg and harness it like you would a small animal and you'd have to cut your foot off to get out of it. The torture that the American soldiers endured here makes every soldier that served here a hero.
Crawling through the tunnels is like duck walking for three short blocks in New York City and the heat and humidity of Vietnam combined. Just lovely!! By the time you emerge, you are soaked from sweat and feeling like you need to run through an open field to get air in your lungs again! I duck walked into a Vietnamese government soldier. He offered me a flashlight. Do you think that would have been the case in the 1960'sand 70's??
When we finally made it through the abbreviated version of the tunnels, the sky opened and we were in a lightning storm and rain coming down so hard that rivers formed on the dirt paths we were on in the jungle!! It was a scary feeling for sure. We managed to RUN through the jungle back to the entrance where we purchased Vietnam flag t-shirts! Not my favorite thing but they were dry. If anyone would like these as souvenirs, let me know. First come first serve! The picture of Kathleen with the towel. This was especially made for our sweet friend Sondra. Bring a towel!! You never know when you will need it!!
So much to share. Too tired to keep posting...Here's a "peek"
No comments:
Post a Comment