Explore the Outstanding The Cu Chi Tunnels
They may not be your regular tunnels, but a very complex network of tunnels which served as hospitals, living quarters, communication and supply routes, in addition to storage areas to the weapons and food from the Viet Cong guerrillas. We were holding constructed without resorting to any sophisticated machines or tools however only crude tools and human resilience. The Viet Cong guerrillas began building them throughout their proof against french from 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 lengthening the tunnels. The tunnel system was very strategic contributing to the victory with the North Vietnamese Army against the Americans.
These types of secret tunnels were built underneath American bases. Its importance had not been only tied to military purposes and also had become the hub with the Vietnamese community life because the Americans burned and destroyed villages. Everything proceeded normally for the Vietnamese of these tunnels where lovers met, couples got married, children visited school, and performances were held.
All was not normal, naturally. The Vietnamese was required to face the difficulties of living in cramped quarters where ants, scorpions, vermin, and poisonous centipedes thrive. In addition to that, they must ration everything because food, water, and in many cases air were scarce. More often than not, they just got from the tunnels during the night to scavenge something that can be a good choice for the city whether they were supplies or food. When the Americans bombed and infiltrate villages, they had to remain during these claustrophobic quarters for what looked like endless days. Those living conditions made sickness, especially malaria, rampant. The truth is, it is now the other major cause of death on the list of Vietnamese during that time. Aside from that, a lot of the tunnel inhabitants had serious instances of intestinal parasites.
As the Cu Chi tunnels had been a haven for your Vietnamese, it was a source of frustration to the Americans. That they tried various strategies to detection and infiltration which are all an inability. The American troops conducted major operations burning villages, bulldozing jungles, and destroying rice paddies. They deployed planes which sprayed chemicals to defoliate other places burning it afterwards. Through each one of these offensive attacks, the Vietnamese guerrillas, with the remaining portion of the villages, remained safe and secured inside their tunnels. Despite this, only 6,000 Vietnamese in the original 16,000 tunnel inhabitants had the ability to survive as soon as the war.
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