They’re not your family tunnels, but a very complex network of tunnels which served as hospitals, living quarters, communication and offer routes, as well as storage areas for the weapons and food of the Viet Cong guerrillas. These were constructed without using any sophisticated machines or tools however only crude tools and human resilience. The Viet Cong guerrillas began building them in their resistance against in france they in the late 1940s. Its original purpose was for communication between villages without getting detected through the French army. In 1960, however, Vietnam’s National Liberation Front began excavating and extending the tunnels. The tunnel system was very strategic causing the victory from the North Vietnamese Army contrary to the Americans.
A large number of secret tunnels were built underneath American bases. Its importance wasn’t only limited to military purposes but in addition took over as hub with the Vietnamese community life because Americans burned and destroyed villages. Everything proceeded normally for that Vietnamese during these tunnels where lovers met, couples marry, children attended school, and performances were held.
All was not normal, naturally. The Vietnamese was required to face troubles of living in cramped quarters where ants, scorpions, vermin, and poisonous centipedes thrive. In addition ,, they need to ration everything because food, water, and even air were scarce. Most of the time, they simply got out from the tunnels in the evening to scavenge whatever can be a good choice for the neighborhood whether they were supplies or food. If the Americans bombed and infiltrate villages, that they to keep of these claustrophobic quarters for seemed like endless days. Those living conditions made sickness, especially malaria, rampant. Actually, it has become the other major cause of death one of the Vietnamese during that time. Aside from that, a lot of the tunnel inhabitants had serious installments of intestinal parasites.
Even though the Cu Chi tunnels was actually a haven to the Vietnamese, it has been a supply of frustration to the Americans. They’d tried various types of detection and infiltration which are all a dysfunction. The American troops conducted large scale operations burning villages, bulldozing jungles, and destroying rice paddies. They deployed planes which sprayed chemicals to defoliate areas burning it afterwards. Through each one of these offensive attacks, the Vietnamese guerrillas, combined with rest of the villages, remained safe and secured of their tunnels. Regardless of this, only 6,000 Vietnamese through the original 16,000 tunnel inhabitants could actually survive following the war.
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