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Sunday, March 02, 2003
Lim: Cu Chi tunnels
By Melanie T. Lim
A month ago, I flew down to Vietnam to satisfy decades of curiosity and to try to understand how the Vietnamese could hold out for 21 years and eventually wear down American resistance.
The most significant remnant of the Vietnam War is arguably the Cu Chi tunnels. Located 40 miles northwest of Ho Chi Minh (a.k.a. Saigon), this elaborate network of tunnels covering an area of approximately 250 kilometers hid a sprawling city underground that served as sanctuary for the Viet Congs (Armed Forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam) during the Vietnam War.
Ironically, this labyrinth of tunnels existed right under the noses of the Americans. A massive American supply base actually existed on top of the Cu Chi underground network. It took months for the Americans to discover the tunnels and only after captives and defectors sang, but it proved impossible for the Americans to penetrate and destroy it even in 21 years.
The Cu Chi tunnels were originally built in the 1940s to resist the French occupation but they evolved into an elaborate three-level underground city into which the Viet Congs vanished to the bafflement of the Americans during the Vietnam War.
The tunnels are between .5 to 1 meters wide – just enough for a person to walk or crawl through. The upper soil layer is between 3 to 4 meters thick and can support the weight of a 50-ton tank and the damage of light cannons and bombs. Upon their discovery, the Americans used all means to penetrate and destroy the underground network.
A special detachment of Southern Vietnamese, small enough to fit into the tunnels, was formed. But these “Tunnel Rats” were met with booby traps and often lost themselves into many unlit and unventilated parts of the tunnel. The Americans then tried to use trained dogs but the dogs proved too bulky to navigate through the tunnels.
Toxic gas and water were pumped into known tunnels. Large areas aboveground were bulldozed and razed to the ground but the tunnel entrances and exits were so well concealed and the underground network of such size and scale that it proved impossible to destroy.
Mess halls, meeting rooms, sleeping quarters, schools and hospitals existed underground. Wells were dug to provide drinking water. Air vents were constructed so ingeniously that aboveground, they simply resembled termite-infested tree trunks.
Down in these tunnels, weddings were performed, babies were born, lives were sustained although in terribly dire conditions, throughout the Vietnam War.
Eighteen thousand Vietnamese reportedly lived in this underground city for 21 years but only 1/3 survived. The rest fell casualty to snakes, rats and American assaults.
To visit these tunnels and to see how a people could live through such sacrifice for 21 years will make you understand how the Vietnamese, against all odds, were able in the end, to make the American forces withdraw from Vietnam.
The Cu Chi tunnels are a testament to the strength, will and cunning of the Vietnamese. But the tunnels are also a testament to the triumph of the human spirit.
(The writer can be reached at sunstarcebucolumnist @yahoo.com)
(March 2, 2003 issue)
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