In February, I along with Argiris Malapanis visited a section of these tunnels in Ben Duoc, in the Cu Chi region, that has been refurbished and opened to visitors. We were in Vietnam as a part of the U.S. delegation to the Second International Preparatory meeting held in Hanoi, the capital city, to plan the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Venezuela this August.

The region of Cu Chi is just 45 miles outside of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, the capital of the puppet government that Washington propped up in southern Vietnam. The landscape is still dotted with the rubber plantations previously owned by the French imperialists.

Despite the fact that it was just a short distance from their capital, the U.S. forces and those of the puppet regime in Saigon were never able to exert full military control over the region and it remained a “liberated zone” of the National Liberation Front (NLF) throughout the war.

This area was one of the most intensively fought battlegrounds of the war. Today a monument outside of the tunnels stands as a tribute to the thousands of Vietnamese fighters and civilians who were killed by the U.S. and South Vietnamese troops in Cu Chi. Thousands more NLF fighters fought in Cu Chi and lived in the underground tunnels. Near one of the entrances to the tunnel we visited is a massive crater left by a bomb from a B-52 bomber dropped over 30 years ago, evidence of the systematic carpet bombing by the U.S. military in Cu Chi. In 1965, Gen. Curtis LeMay pledged to “bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age” and Washington deployed all its military might to do so, saturating the province of Cu Chi with 750- and 500-pound high explosive bombs.

The area of Cu Chi was the most bombed, shelled, gassed, and defoliated area during the war. The U.S. armed forces considered it to be a “free strike zone” where U.S. aircraft returning from bombing runs in the north would discharge all remaining bombs, napalm, and other chemical weapons, such as Agent Orange, before returning to base. Some 21 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across southern Vietnam, destroying much of the forests and wetlands and poisoning the population.  
 
Building the tunnels
Our tour guide’s parents had fought in the NLF. He comfortably maneuvered through the narrow passages taking us from one hall to the next. It is hard to imagine that this massive tunnel network, which at its height stretched over 150 miles from Saigon to the border of current day Cambodia, was built over decades by hand with small shovels and baskets .

A picture of the effort involved is given in an interview with a Vietnamese tunnel soldier, Nguyen Thanh Linh, today a captain in the People’s Army of Vietnam, in the book The Tunnels of Cu Chi by Tom Mangold and John Penycate. Linh spent five years fighting in the tunnels and he described how they were dug by entire communities of peasants in the region.

“To dig the tunnels we divided the work scientifically,” said Linh. “Old men made baskets for carrying the earth, old women did the cooking, young men and women used their strength to dig the earth. Even children did their share by gathering leaves to cover the trapdoors. Our favorite digging tools were old worn-out spades and old hoes. A new hoe is about 15 by 25 centimeters, but after it has been used by the peasants to dig earth in the fields for a long time, it’s nicely reduced to the size of a bowl.”

The fighters were already well practiced in using the warren of tunnels in the region by the time the first U.S. “advisors” arrived in 1955. They had served as a base for the resistance fighters in their struggle against French imperialism in the 1940s and ’50s.

On display at the Ben Duoc tunnel museum, near the portion of the tunnel complex we visited, are photos, replicas, and actual examples of the makeshift weapons that the Vietnamese people employed against Washington’s high-tech military machine. These “weapons of the poor” were often made in underground workshops. Coca-Cola cans became hand grenades, firearms captured by the enemy were repaired and used against them, ingenious mobile land mines were employed with deadly effectiveness, and dozens of simple but deadly booby traps made from bamboo and other materials made the efforts by U.S. soldiers to enter the tunnels and the surrounding countryside an extremely dangerous task.

We also saw the pictures and exhibits of daily life in the tunnels. Sewing machines and printing and drill presses were dismantled, transported underground, and set up in these bunkers to continue production. Kitchens and cafeterias were built, along with meeting halls, storage depots, and sleeping quarters. Theater performances and film showings were also held in the tunnels. Traveling tunnel performers, many of them revolutionaries that lived underground during the war, presented plays to entertain and boost the moral of the NLF forces.

A worker at the Ben Duoc tunnels showed us how the National Liberation Front fighters made sandals from blown out U.S. tank tires. Most of the electrical power to operate the machines was produced by hand or foot pedaled generators.

We walked through an underground bunker that served as a hospital ward throughout the war. The NLF also provided medical services to the villages and districts the liberation forces controlled.

“The Cuban people are highly conscious of the extraordinary role the people of Vietnam have played within the world revolutionary movement and the people’s fight for liberation,” said Cuban leader Fidel Castro during a 1973 visit to Vietnam. “Vietnam offers all of the exploited and oppressed an unforgettable lesson. No liberation movement, no people who have had to fight for its independence, has carried out so massive and heroic a fight as did the people of Vietnam.”

The tunnels of Cu Chi stand as a powerful reminder to the truth of that statement.  
 
 
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