Essay On Vietcong

James Anderson

Booby Traps and Rat Tunnels of Vietnam

1959-1975

Period 6

The Viet Cong was a political organization and had a military in South Vietnam that fought the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War. It had both guerrilla and regular army units. They used warfare tactics that were somewhat unfamiliar to that generation of American soldiers. Those tactics were called booby traps and guerrilla warfare.

Vietnam was fought in a jungle that is, very dense in vegetation, which makes the jungle an ideal place to create some nasty booby traps. The Vietcong would often find a well-known American patrol routes and the Vietcong would set dozens of booby traps waiting for the American prey. As more and more American soldiers became aware of the serious threat of booby-traps, they were under huge physiological pressure. Just thinking the possibility of every step you take could very well be your last one, would make some people literally go crazy.

For the American soldiers in Vietnam, they had never seen anything like this before; they were fighting an enemy that they couldn’t even see. These Vietcong would launch surprise attacks at night, then they would all of the sudden disappear into the jungle. If the U.S. marines would try to go after the Vietcong, they would find themselves in a jungle ridden with booby traps waiting to go off on an unexpected victim. This strategy gave the Vietcong a huge advantage over the U.S. troops. It would put fear in the Vietcong’s enemies.

The word booby-trap originated between 1840-50, the word booby means, stupid or dumb person. (www.dictionary.com/boobytrap) Booby trap means to trap a stupid person apparently. The Vietcong did in fact perfect the...

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...ach it to the pin on the grenade; they hooked it to some sort of anchor. After the trap was armed and ready they would camouflage and disguise is so that it was almost unnoticeable to the American soldiers.

There are many different types of booby traps, offensive and defensive traps. The offensive was used to stop enemy U.S. troops from moving forward, and the defensive traps were you used to guard the Cu Chi tunnels or anything of importance to the Vietcong. As the American forces learned the hard way, guerilla warfare is a difficult way to fight a war. The use of Cu Chi tunnels and the various booby traps made life as an American soldier hard. Vietnam was a nasty war and be will always remembered for the ones who died and served our country. These American soldiers who fought in Vietnam learned the hard way that booby traps had a huge physiological impact on them.