The Cuchi Tunnels

25-10-2013  On our way to tour the Cuchi Tunnels stopping at the Handicapped Handcraft which the government created after the war in 1976 for the war victims of Agent Orange.

 These people are truly inventive, this handicap is using egg shells crushed into tiny pieces to create many amazing art design.

This particular art piece blue my mind, as I gassed at this piece of art my thought was, how many hours did one handicap person take sitting in the same spot gluing egg shells onto a board, such talent and patients.

The Cuchi Tunnels

The tunnels are a true indication of the determination for survival these people had, going as far as making thongs backwoods so the Americans thought they were walking in different directions and always striking from behind due to the lack of fire arms.  Communist forces began digging a network of tunnels under the jungle of South Vietnam in the late 1940s, often dug by hand.  At its peak the tunnels in the Cu Chi district linked VC support bases over a distance of 250 kilometres, from the outskirts of Saigon all the way to Cambodian border.
 

Des sits on one of the tanks left behind after the Viet Cong War. 

These traps were disguised to look like grass until an unsuspected person fell through and onto numerous punji stakes. There were many Traps only in different shapes and sizes set up around the tunnels just waiting for its next victim. 

 The Door Trap

How would you like that door coming at you, not nice.

The Viet Cong under ground making Ammunition from  chrapnil they collected, this was their only means of defense against the enemy. 

 The tunnels were built over a period of 25 years that began sometime in 1940 during the war against the French.  As we sat and listened to the history of the tunnels it was hard to imagine what these people endured and the conditions in which they were forced to live.  The tunnels were used to avoid aerial attacks, house troops, transport communication and supplies.  More than 43,000 Vietnamese died defending the tunnels.

Bombs and Shells of the US Army abandoned on Cu Chi Land.