Cu Chi Tunnel Complex

This hub is dedicated to the memory of my uncle, Sgt. Randolph Davis, killed in action at Cu Chi, South Vietnam, November 3, 1966.

Tropic Lightning News, September 23, 1966

Wolfhound Sgt. Hits Big League Streak

In Vietnam sometimes things go bad and everything seems in vain. Other times, you score like a big leaguer on a winning streak.

Sgt. Randolph Davis, a member of Co. C, 1st Bn., 27th Inf., recently had such a streak.

The 21-year-old fire team leader from Greenville, Miss., was on a multi-company sweep several miles west of the division’s base camp when it happened.

Two “Wolfhound” companies were working in an area where intelligence sources reported several enemy soldiers terrorizing villagers.

“We didn’t know how many we were after,” said Sgt. Davis recalling the day’s events. “All we knew was there were terrorists in the area, and they weren’t going to be there when we left.”

“l took a couple of my men and searched a small cluster of buildings. Most places we ‘visit’ only have women in them, but this particular group of buildings had a lot of men. I checked them out and took along the ones I wasn’t satisfied with.”

Sgt. Davis repeated the procedure again and again and personally apprehended 10 of the 18 Viet Cong captured that day.

“I guess I was just lucky,” said Sgt. Davis, “but there hasn’t been any reports of terrorist actions from that area since.”

[Thanks to the 25th Infantry Division Association]

I missed the Vietnam War by just a few years. I was only a couple of months shy of my 10th birthday when my mother woke me with the news that Uncle Randolph had been killed in action.

Life has a way of serving up strange changes. When I finally married, late in life, it was into a family of Vietnamese refugees. It's a longer story than bears repeating here but, through a highly unusual set of circumstances, my Vietnamese friends put me in correspondence with a cousin still living in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). One thing led to another and, in August of 2000, we were married in Ho Chi Minh City.

Fast forward to March, 2007. My wife and I now have twin daughters, age 4. Her parents haven't seen their first grandchildren yet, so I take a month's vacation and we return to Vietnam. It's my wife's first trip back since immigrating to the States and I know she has a lot of catching-up to do, so this really is her trip. I do have a couple of objectives, one of which is a visit to Cu Chi. We set a date for the trip and my mother-in-law hired a limousine. On the appointed day, my father-in-law, two of my wife's uncles and I climbed into the van for the trip to Cu Chi.

Cu Chi is actually a district of Ho Chi Minh City, located approximately 70 kilometres (43 miles) northwest of the city. The leisurely drive winds thorugh city and a rural countryside that, with Vietnam's rapid pace of economic development, increasingly resembles suburbs. We stopped for a mid-morning meal of noodles at an excellent roadside stand which was simply a large, covered patio on a concrete slab.

Cochinchina is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we [the United States] ought to clear out of Southeast Asia. - US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Lt. Colonel Peter Dewey, 1945

To understand the tunnels, you should know that, by the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, the Vietnamese had nearly 2,000 years experience resisting powerful foreign occupiers: China, France, Japan, France/Great Britain, France/USA, USA.

The early Vietnamese, like the Americans of 1776, were colonists who forged a separate identity and fought for independence from the mother country. The aboriginal Viets were a people of Mongolian origin who migrated south. In 208 B.C., they were conquered by a turncoat Chinese general, Trieu Da, who rebelled against the decadent Ch'in dynasty and proclaimed himself emperor of Nam Viet (Land of the Southern Viet) which stretched from Canton as far south as modern-day Danang. This began an era of annexation and colonization by the Chinese.

The first serious insurrection against the Chinese began in 40 A.D., led by the martyred Trung sisters. There would be sporadic outbreaks of rebellion in the land the Chinese called Annam ("the pacified south") for another 900 years.

In the 10th century, with China's T'ang Dynasty crumbling, the Vietnamese struck again, this time successfully. The Chinese were deploying fresh troops to Vietnam, many arriving by boat. In 938, a large flotilla of armed Chinese junks approached the Bach Dang river, a tidal waterway in the north. Do Quyen, a provincial mandarin, ordered his troops to bury iron-tipped spikes in the riverbed, their tips concealed under the surface. He then sent his fleet out a high tide to engage the Chinese. As the tide ebbed, the Vietnamese retreated. The Chinese pursued and impaled their ships on the spikes. The Vietnamese then turned back and destroyed the Chinese fleet. Vietnam at last was independent, and Do Quyen was a national hero.

During the 13th century, the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan invaded Vietnam three times, pushing south to control the spice routes of the Indonesian archipelago. The Vietnamese, under the illustrious general Tran Hung Dao, repulsed each invasion. Tran Hung Dao relied on mobile warfare, abandoning the cities, avoiding frontal assaults, and harassing the enemy until, exhausted and confused, they were ripe for attack. In the last great battle, which took place in the Red River Valley in 1287, the Vietnamese routed 300,000 Mongol troops.

In light of this history, it is less surprising that Ho Chi Minh chose as his military commander a man with no military experience: Vo Nguyen Giap was a lawyer, writer, organizational genius -- and a history teacher.

The Cu Chi Tunnel Complex is now appointed as a clean, modern tourist center. A sign in the parking lot advertises the National Defence Sports Firing Range: here, you can fire a variety of weapons, including the M-16 and AK-47. My itchy trigger finger was missing its weekly practice by then but, when we reached the range at the end of our tour, I saw that ammo cost approximately $1.25 per round. I wasn't about to pay that but you should, if you've never had trigger time on any of these (or any other firearm, for that matter).

Our driver purchased our tickets at the gate. I don't recall how much I paid, but it is higher for foreigners than for Vietnamese citizens. Still, it wasn't terribly expensive.

We proceeded to the visitor center, where we began our tour by watching grainy, black-and-white newsreel footage of the fighting in 1966. The fighting was a brutal combination of carpet bombing, air and artillery strikes, and close-quarters battle. Casualties ran high on both sides. Cu Chi was of immense strategic importance to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, as both the Saigon River and Highway 1, which runs the length of the narrow, coastal country, pass through there. In addition, Cu Chi was the southern terminus of the system of jungle pathways we call the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The tunnels developed organically, rather than in response to direct orders. The earliest tunnels were dug in the 1880s, to resist the French. Beginning around 1946 or 1948, tunelling again began in earnest. At first each hamlet dug its own communication tunnels. Later these tunnels were connected until, by 1965, they had a combined length of over 200 kilometres. The tunnels grew in complexity as they expanded, adding underground hospitals, sleeping quarters, kitchens, workshops, and planning/briefing areas.

A modern, subterranean passage takes you from the visitor center to the tunnels. Here, attendants check your tickets and issue you a visitor sticker. Emerging from this passage, you see staff members and mannequins dressed in Vietcong uniforms. Guides demonstrate an array of booby traps, such as punji stick pits, folding chair traps and swinging door traps.

The tour winds past a series of bunkers: medical, clothing, weapons, briefing. These are set into the ground and covered with low, palm thatched roofs that stop just a few inches short of the lip of the bunker. In the clothing bunker, a woman sews Viet Cong uniforms on a vintage sewing machine. The weapons bunker features animated mannequins working to convert unexploded American bombs and shells into booby traps -- what we call improvised explosive devices (IEDs) today, as if we'd never seen them before. In other locations, re-enactors cut tire carcasses to make the rubber-soled "Ho CHi Minh sandals," while others show how rice was ground by hand and rolled flat for food wraps.

Perhaps because I work at a modern, American hospital, I found the medical bunker the most eerie. No light, a crude operating table, an old-style IV bottle suspended from a pole cut from a sapling. But the VC doctors displayed as much ingenuity as anyone: they rigged motorcycle engines as generators; fashioned surgical implements from scrap metal; and transfused wounded soldiers with their own blood that the doctors collected and filtered. All of the bunkers have tunnel entrances.

The ground is still criss-crossed with communication and fighting trenches: as with the bunkers, these are directly accessible from the tunnels. Other topographical features include a shattered American M-41 tank and an enormous bomb crater made by B-52 carpet bombing.

Visitors may take a guided crawl through a short section of tunnel. This is definitely not for the claustrophobic. Although these sections have been enlarged to accommodate Western tourists, they still are darn small. At 5'9" and 170 pounds, I still found myself banging my head and shoulders against the top of the passage when I attempted to "duck-walk" through it. I ended up crawling through on all fours, instead. It's hot and stuffy underground, as you might expect. Low-power lights have been set into the passageways: you close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like to negotiate the tunnels by flashlight, oil lantern or candle. You emerge near a bamboo flue that funnels cool spring water. I soaked a bandana in the water and tied it around my neck -- much better! Refreshments are served at a picnic area nearby, at no additional charge.

Cu Chi is an easy day trip from Saigon. It is an essential stop for anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the Vietnamese way of war.