The Worst Job in Vietnam

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By 1965, the Viet Cong had expanded a pre-existing labyrinth of tunnels and underground chambers beneath their villages and the surrounding jungle.

For nearly eight years, they practically lived in this network of subterranean cities as they waged a war of endurance against South Vietnamese forces and their allies.

Thousands of miles from their own homes and families, the Allied soldiers and Marines who daringly entered into these claustrophobic passages were met with complete darkness, the smell of damp earth and rotting corpses, vicious booby traps, and enemy soldiers lying in wait.

This is the story of the Viet Cong tunnels.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

Known by the Vietnamese as the American War, this conflict is still mired in heated political debate.

Therefore, understanding why this war was fought, why the Vietnamese spent over 20 years digging tens of thousands of kilometers of underground tunnels requires a degree of understanding the root causes of the war itself.

Or, more precisely, the question of why millions of Vietnamese citizens found themselves in the crossfire as the armies of the French, Japanese, and then Allied forces destroyed each other in the dense jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam.

Invaded in the mid-19th century by Napoleon's forces, like so many other nations, Vietnam entered a long-standing fight to regain its independence from foreign exploitation and oppression.

Despite their initial defeat against expanding French colonization, remnants of the Vietnamese armies began a campaign of guerrilla fighting through the 1860s, a time when armed conflict raged worldwide, from the New Zealand wars to the Americans fighting a civil war half a world away.

Through the end of the Second World War, A lack of sufficient organization appears to have caused the repeated failure of Vietnamese anti-colonial uprisings against the now-established French government.

With the fall of Chinese dynastic rule at the turn of the century, the subsequent rise of communism, and its literary edification by Lenin and other pro-communist intellectual writers, it was during the 1930s that a man known as Ho Chi Minh was inspired by communism and successfully organized support of the ideology in northern Vietnam.

Taking advantage of the working class's hatred of the oppressive French government and of the invading Japanese, this newly founded Communist Party began recruiting a guerrilla army.

All they needed was an opportunity, which the end of World War II provided.

Following the surrender of the Japanese Empire in 1945, The confusion of ruling powers left behind in Vietnam allowed Min's Communist Party to seize control of the northern region, uniting into an alliance known as the Viet Minh.

Viet Minh fighters and other pro-communists joined to form the Viet Cong.

They rekindled the guerrilla war against French forces who were now attempting to regain their dominance of the region.

Tunnels were dug under the scattered South Vietnamese villages and hamlets, not only to disguise the coordinated Viet Cong movements, but for innocent villagers to escape capture, interrogation, and execution during the French military's sweeping raids through the region.

With casualties mounting on all sides, a treaty agreement was attempted in 1954.

Vietnam was then divided at the 17th parallel into the communist north and the non-communist south.

During this temporary peace, more than a million Vietnamese civilians, soldiers, Catholics, and other anti-communists fled the despotism of North Vietnamese policy with assistance from the U.S.

and Allied forces.

Meanwhile, pro-communists who remained in South Vietnam, as well as Buddhists and those who supported Vietnamese independence, continued to experience tyranny under corrupted French governance in the South.

The promise of French democracy had quickly devolved into dictatorship.

The peace was short-lived.

Irreconcilable differences between the North and the South led to continued fighting, as most Vietnamese people wanted total independence, whether communist or not, while the French continued to push for re-establishing complete colonial control.

From 1963 to 1965, the North injected an additional 150,000 Viet Cong guerrilla fighters into the southern region in an effort to overthrow the French government once and for all.

Civilian casualties continued to mount.

Those unfortunate souls who resided in South Vietnam and supported neither regime in favor of a republican democracy suffered political and religious persecution.

They were now executed and abused by both the Viet Cong and the French government.

Increasing involvement by French allies, largely the American military, seemed to only worsen the situation.

In a sad irony, the Vietnamese people ultimately inclined their loyalty toward those who oppressed them the least.

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The Allied forces' primary goal was to halt the spread of communism in Asia, believing in a domino theory.

If Vietnam fell, as China and North Korea had, others would soon follow.

Operation Rolling Thunder was the initial effort to discourage communist aggression and stamp out the infiltrations of Viet Cong troops and their supplies entering South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Beginning in 1965, American forces began a three-year campaign of heavy aerial and artillery bombardment.

American troops, who were stationed in Vietnam at the time, report that the ground shook so violently during the routine bombing, they did not even have to stir their morning coffee.

Tens of thousands more civilians were killed as a result of this American effort to destroy the Vietnamese jungle and its dense foliage with a relentless dropping of explosives, destructive herbicides, predominantly Agent Orange, and napalm.

The villagers in Viet Cong dug their tunnels even deeper to survive the obliteration of the earth above them.

Realizing the insufficiency of these attritional bombing efforts, and on the apparently falsified premise of a North Vietnamese attack against an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin,

American leaders began pouring troops into Vietnam, reaching nearly half of a million by the end of 1968, partnering with an existing force of some 600,000 South Vietnamese troops.

Additionally, these were joined by smaller military contingents from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and South Korea.

For some time during their initial movements into Vietnam, Allied troops felt as if they were fighting an invisible enemy, completely unaware of the expansive network of fortified Viet Cong tunnels underneath their very feet.

Tunnels were even dug underneath American military installations, allowing for surprise attacks to occur within their guarded perimeters.

Many tunnel openings, trenches, and battle posts were strategically built along tree lines, lines, concealed by brush and high grass, a tactic which fooled Allied fighters.

Many unsuspecting troops were killed so close to the tunnel entrances, VC fighters, known phonetically by Americans as Victor Charlies, could easily retrieve weapons from the fallen troops without being noticed.

Advancing forces were then startled at how the enemy could have appeared and then disappeared so quickly.

Unable to see the tunnel openings, they assumed the gunfire was coming from deeper within the jungle or from nearby villages.

Without ever encountering a single Viet Cong fighter, daily patrols suffered numerous casualties as the terrain was littered with tens of thousands of concealed booby traps.

Over 11% of the Allied deaths were caused by these traps.

with thousands more survivors still maimed and injured for life.

Explosive mines were buried in the ground or otherwise attached to tripwires.

Devilishly placed, some were even hidden amongst attractive flowers which Americans were known to pick, or otherwise attached to irresistible souvenir items like Viet Cong flags and weapons.

Tripwires caused tiger traps, heavy objects covered in long spikes, to fall from trees.

The most effective traps were the large concealed pits filled with sharpened bamboo or steel spikes.

Impaled through their feet, legs, and torsos, even if victims survived the horrific injuries, the sticks were often coated with animal and human feces or plant poisons left to fester in the sweltering heat of the tropical climate.

Some of the large spiked metal traps were designed in order to cause even worse damage if a soldier attempted to remove them.

The wounded men then had to be carried away along with the trap.

The Allied troops' primary mission was search and destroy, locate and either kill or capture the enemy.

Unlike other wars, when troops in Vietnam defeated the enemy in a certain area, they would not remain there.

After they soon departed, the enemy would move back into their tunnels, which remained full of supplies and munitions, quickly re-establishing their fighting positions.

Many Allied soldiers and Vietnamese would die, seemingly pointlessly, fighting repeatedly over the same piece of land.

Unbeknownst to many Allied troops, the Vietnamese were just as persistent as they, entirely willing to fight to the last man.

In frustration, some among the Allied soldiers, resorted to more gruesome tactics, such as the decapitation of Viet Cong corpses, stuffing an Ace of Spades card in the mouth, and then displaying the severed head to prevent the superstitious enemy from returning to the area.

Since they were unable to visualize a victory over ground, Allied troops began reporting body counts, the number of dead enemy fighters, so they could determine some form of progress in a seemingly endless fight.

While seen as grotesque by many of their peers, some American fighters went so far as to cut an ear from every man they killed, displaying these trophies on necklaces or keychains.

The Viet Cong had their own versions of debauchery, as they would award honored titles, such as American Destroyer Hero, to their fighters who succeeded in killing a certain number of Allied troops.

In an act of twisted generosity, Some fighters with excess kill counts would even offer their extra kills to a friend, so they could both receive a promotional title.

Regardless of the violence and booby traps, the foreign allied fighters battled with the unfamiliar environment itself, enduring humid temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, thick jungle and razor-sharp plants, plagues of mosquitoes, centipedes, and other biting insects, poisonous snakes, and festering wounds from leeches.

When they did encounter enemy soldiers, soldiers, it was by sporadic ambushes, sniper fire snapping by their ears like so many steel mosquitoes.

As Allied casualties mounted, so did their frustration.

They rarely found themselves with an opportunity to fire back, unable to see the guerrilla fighters firing from their concealed tunnel entrances.

During jungle firefights, it was not uncommon for Allied fighters to inadvertently shoot and kill their friends as they began firing in all directions, not knowing from where they were being attacked.

Other Allied soldiers report that while patrolling in the dark jungle, they would see nothing but empty and quiet forest,

only to glance behind them, shocked, to find dozens of Viet Cong.

Mounting uncertainty, known as the fog of war, led to heightened suspicions and paranoia among Allied troops.

The only people they could see were the villagers themselves, the local Vietnamese, especially those young men and women of fighting age, residing in the grass and bamboo villages they passed through as they received enemy fire from unknown locations.

Since many tunnel entrances could be found in and around the villages, Viet Cong fighters often used this concealment to initiate firefights.

Despite many of the Allied troops' better judgments, confused at how to fight an otherwise unseen enemy, the only available course of action at times appeared to be destroying the villages, setting fire to them, or calling for airstrikes.

A hellish landscape of increasing civilian casualties began to unfold.

Though innocent civilians were often caught in the crossfire, many villagers were indeed Viet Cong fighters.

Otherwise, they may have been the aging parents, spouses, or children of communist fighters, who loyally supported the Viet Cong how they could.

Many stories from Allied troops tell of friendly villagers offering to clean their laundry or provide them meals during the daytime, only to be caught attempting to slit an American's throat later that night, or otherwise their bodies being recognized among the Viet Cong dead after an intense firefight.

Yet any villagers who opposed the Viet Cong now found themselves under suspicion, arrested, beaten, tortured, interrogated, and murdered, their homes and land destroyed by both Allied and Viet Cong soldiers.

They soon grew to hate the Allied troops as much as they did the Communists.

In early 1966, almost an entire year after they began arriving in Vietnam, A combined party of Australian and American troops were engaging the Viet Cong in an immense firefight near a rubber plantation about 25 miles northwest of Saigon.

As with previous skirmishes, they combed the area, finding evidence of a company-sized group of enemy fighters, at least 100 men.

Frustratingly, they had again seemingly vanished into thin air.

Taking a moment to rest, Sergeant Stuart Green sat on the ground.

Shouting with pain, he immediately jumped up, as if he had been bitten.

He had sat on a nail, which protruded from a small wooden trapdoor.

He had inadvertently discovered the Viet Cong's secret tunnels.

Being a wiry, 130-pound soldier, he dropped into the tunnel and reported spotting 30 Viet Cong hiding just feet below the troops searching the jungle above.

When efforts made with smoke and tear gas to evacuate the hiding rebels failed, the Allied forces resorted to explosives.

They soon realized that throwing explosive charges into the tunnel entrances would be largely ineffective.

These tunnels were an incredible feat of primitive engineering.

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During roughly 21 years of digging, using only small shovels, tin bowls, and wooden baskets, many villages within South Vietnam had developed their own network of tunnels, the location of which was known only to the inhabitants of each respective village as a security measure in case one of them was captured and interrogated.

Every house might have its own trapdoor entrance, hidden underneath a large cooking pot or outside the home in a pig pen, unlikely to be discovered under a pile of manure.

Over the years, these tunnel systems criss-crossed the country, from Saigon to more than 400 miles north beyond the DMZ.

New tunnels dug by the Viet Cong connected the existing village networks, allowing them to move several kilometers without ever surfacing.

Tunnels dug right into the French-controlled city of Saigon allowed communist spies and saboteurs to enter and leave the city unnoticed.

Where the soil permitted, tunnels extended to depths beyond 30 feet below the surface, with some systems having as many as four separate levels.

Along with strategic emplacements at tree lines, other entrances were hidden in the high grass, under dense ground cover and bushes, or even, like that of a beaver's dam, underwater along riverbanks.

The trapdoors were often padded with rubber or mud, creating a ground-like feel underfoot when stepped on.

During construction, dirt brought to the surface was concealed in order to avoid detection.

Dumped into American bomb craters, the river, or otherwise spread evenly along the ground, it was carried up at night with plastic bags and taken as far from the tunnel openings as possible.

The tunnels opened into subterranean rooms ranging in size, with a larger cavity, for instance, measuring approximately six feet high by 15 feet wide.

These many rooms served as a variety of sleeping quarters, supply caches, armories, kitchens, briefing rooms, movie theaters, and even rudimentary hospitals.

Although often insufficient for proper circulation, small air vents were channeled to the surface, the openings hidden beneath bushes, at the base of trees, or disguised as ant and termite nests.

Pepper or other masking smells were used in these vents.

to confuse the tracker dogs which Americans used during their search and destroy patrols.

The smells of cooking and burning wood were channeled through multiple smaller vents in order to better disperse the odor at the surface.

Increased artillery bombardment and foot patrols by Allied forces forced the Viet Cong and villagers to remain underground.

Life for those living prolonged periods in the tunnels was hardly enviable, as they often faced starvation, suffocation, and crushing death from collapsing tunnels.

Some women were forced to give birth in the tunnels, while massive explosions ravaged the earth above them.

While doctors were present in some of the makeshift hospitals, limited access to medical supplies meant that rudimentary methods were used.

For instance, if a blood transfusion was required, Some doctors report rigging a bicycle pump together with rubber hosing and glass bottles to conduct the procedure.

More serious injuries like broken arms and legs resulted in amputation with no available anesthetics.

Damaged bones would have to be cut using pliers.

When they were not fighting, building traps or improvised explosives, or bleeding out on an operating table, tunnel occupants were limiting their movement, lying face down on the tunnel floors to conserve oxygen.

In spite of the miserable miserable circumstances, the Vietnamese, like their enemies, would look for ways to remain creative and keep their minds active, distracted from the reality of their situation.

As the GIs would write letters to their families in the daylight above, so too would the VC fighters write by candlelight, their last wills, letters to their loved ones, memoirs, and stories.

They too often wondered if they would live to see their work published.

As with the tunnel discovered by Sergeant Greene, many of them were intentionally engineered to be disorienting with many bends and twists.

This design also helped diminish the destructive effect of explosives, especially those charges and grenades that Allied troops would attempt to toss in without actually entering the tunnels.

Additionally, the Viet Column viewed straight tunnels as impractical.

Adding blind corners provided concealment of booby traps and for escaping fighters, giving them time to disappear into many concealed trap doors in the floors or ceilings or other niches, where they could then wait to ambush a pursuing enemy.

Allied forces soon realized that entering the tunnels would be required to effectively destroy them, as well as to kill or capture the enemy and obtain potential intelligence within.

Since the Vietnamese were of smaller stature than the Allied men, the tunnels were exceedingly cramped and difficult to move through.

Their initial attempts at using trained dogs to clear the tunnels failed, as many of them were killed by the numerous booby traps.

American, Australian, and New Zealand commands began recruiting and training volunteers from their ranks who were small enough to enter the tunnels, combat engineers and infantrymen, typically shorter than five and a half feet.

Appropriately named the Tunnel Rats, even the Viet Cong begrudgingly acknowledged their bravery for entering the tunnels, as fighting inside them was a terrifying experience for both sides.

In addition to the mental fatigue was the physical exhaustion.

So extensive were the tunnel systems, after hours spent underground clearing them, disoriented soldiers may find themselves surfacing miles away from the point at which they entered.

Even exiting the tunnel was concerning.

Not knowing where they might come up, they could be mistaken as an enemy fighter and shot by friendly forces.

While newly issued M16 rifles were already notorious for jamming after firing only three or four rounds, they were also twice the length of the tunnel's narrow width, making them difficult to maneuver.

Tunnel rats resorted to carrying only their.45 caliber pistols and bayonets.

Unfortunately, those who fired the.45 in the tunnels were often left with ruptured eardrums or disorienting hearing damage.

The men began using issued or improvised silencers, or small caliber pistols sent from back home, to reduce both the blinding muzzle flash and the deafening sound created in the confined space.

Entering into a tunnel often required a strong stomach, as well as ignoring any sense of fear or foreboding.

After skirmishes, Viet Cong were known to drag their dead inside the tunnels, sometimes burying them into the very walls in order to deceptively hide their death counts from the Allied forces.

The moisture in the dank tunnels quickly rotted the corpses, the stench drifting heavily into the upper levels and entryways.

Although disturbing, encountering actual rats inside the tunnels, some the size of small dogs, was sometimes considered a welcome sight.

Viet Cong fighters were known to eat the rats.

Their presence was an indication that the tunnel might be empty.

If it wasn't, a tunnel rat could abruptly encounter an enemy fighter hiding in a small alcove, or suddenly speared in the body or throat from a concealed hatch or false wall, or even from behind as he reached a dead end.

having passed an enemy hiding behind a concealed entrance.

Many tunnels were designed with concealed booby traps at their entrances and along the tunnels.

If not simply a Viet Cong fighter waiting to shoot the first soldier who tried to enter, there could be wired explosives attached to the small trap doors, or possibly worse traps just inside.

Some tunnel rats, entering headfirst into the narrow opening, experienced sudden terror.

as the tunnel floor gave way under their weight and they plummeted into a concealed punchy stick trap.

Grenades and other traps were embedded in the walls with tripwires.

Many of the non-lethal traps, boxes loaded with painful insects like scorpions, hornets, centipedes, and ants, were meant to scare rather than to kill.

To many fighters, the psychological fear of injury was often more chilling than the thought of death.

Poisonous vipers were starved and tied to the tunnel ceilings.

Passing by, unnoticed by the crawling soldier, the snake would bite their unsuspecting victim, often in the face or neck.

He might make it back out of the tunnel, but would eventually succumb to the painful neurotoxins.

Tunnel rats could find their throats being slashed or garotted, strangled with wire, as they pushed their heads through small trapdoors leading into lower tunnels and chambers.

Other sections of tunnel, dug vertically, allowed waiting enemy fighters to drop grenades down onto approaching tunnel rats.

U-bend portions flooded with water were designed to protect the Viet Cong from tear gas or other attempts to flush the tunnels with smoke.

Passing through these gooseneck portions of tunnel required a tunnel rat to hold his breath for an unknown amount of time.

with the thought of reaching the other end to possibly find it blocked or otherwise being suddenly impaled by a waiting enemy spear.

Sometimes, without warning, the tunnels themselves would simply collapse, crushing or pinning the now helpless soldier.

Standard operating procedures evolved throughout the war.

At least two soldiers would enter the tunnel, one crawling a few meters behind the other, to prevent both from dying as the result of an explosive booby trap.

The other would then laboriously pull his friend's body back to the surface.

When they did fire their weapons, they tried to never fire more than three consecutive rounds before reloading, preventing the enemy from determining how many shots they had left.

Studies conducted during the war indicated that these men gradually developed a superior sense of hearing and smell.

They avoided overwashing, the use of fragrant soaps, or anything else that might result in a distinguishable odor.

Although they carried flashlights, tunnel rats in training were advised to adopt a standard operating procedure.

Do not turn on the light.

Rather, experienced rats would become adept at using their other senses, hearing, smell, and touch, to move through the tunnel, constantly feeling for booby traps and sensing the presence of enemy fighters.

Telling the story of his first enemy encounter in the tunnels, a marine tunnel rat recounted that he was challenged by his friends to get his first kill without firing his weapon.

Experiencing a dreadful sense of unease, he entered into his first tunnel.

After some time, crawling through the narrow and pitch-black passage, he suddenly paused.

He could smell another man's breath.

The concealed man then lunged in the darkness.

As they fiercely grappled in the narrow space, the fighting ended when the young Marine managed to seize his unseen enemy's throat.

and crush his windpipe.

As thrilling as this and other such encounters are for us to hear, it goes without saying, such stories have only been recounted by those who made it out of the tunnels alive.

Tunnel rats suffered a casualty rate of one out of every three who entered the tunnels, with many who didn't die being permanently maimed and injured, if not physically, psychologically.

Both Vietnamese and American fighters expressed shared sentiments towards the violence and brushes with death that became a routine experience.

If I die, I die.

If I make it,

I make it.

The more of your friends died, the more you wanted to fight, the less you feared death.

By 1973, with more than 3 million people having been killed during the war, more than half being Vietnamese civilians, American forces were withdrawn from the region following the signing of the Paris Agreement.

The fighting yet continued, and Communist forces seized control of South Vietnam in 1975.

As international trade was sanctioned against the country, violence and economic ruin drove more than one and a half million Vietnamese to flee the country on foot, by air, with military assistance, and on small boats, with hundreds of thousands more dying, stranded at sea.

An awful end to a catastrophic war.

The harrowing experiences of the men and women fighting in the sweltering jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam and those suffocating tunnels and cavernous spaces under them is incredible, if not disturbingly tragic.

It is unquestionably a simultaneous example of the extent of human courage and sacrifice.

Many of the children born in the tunnels, as well as the men and women fighting a war in and above them, still walk among us,

perhaps wearing scars not visible on their bodies.

Like them, we may find ourselves left with a sense of mingled pride and remorse, along with many unanswered questions,

we must remember: the only ones who can tell us these stories are the ones who survived.

For those who fought and died, we respect and honor their memory and the sacrifice paid by both them and their families.

For those still living, we offer nothing less than our utmost respect.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Whitla Cascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddum.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Clogson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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