Viet Cong

Many Viet Cong spent the living in hideouts dug underground with their own hands. Most of the tunnels were near Saigon in Cu Chi and Vinh Moc (near the DMZ). One Vietnamese man who lived underground with his family for five years told journalist Tim O'Brien, "You had daylight, but I had the earth...Many times I might reach up and take this man's leg. Many times. Very easy. I might just pull him down to where the war was." The man worked, cooked, bathed and slept underground during the five year period.

Vinh Moc Tunnels (about 100 kilometers north of Hue and 550 kilometers south of Hanoi,) contain remnants of War tunnels, where a community of 600 people lived underground for more than four years. Almost two kilometers of the tunnels can be visited. Unlike the tunnels at Cu Chi, they have not been restored too much and they are pretty much in the same condition they were in when the war ended. The site also contains a gloomy one-room museum with blurry photos and items used by the people who lived in the tunnels.

The Vinh Moc Tunnels are located 13 kilometers east of the national Highway 1A and just six kilometers away from the sea in Vinh Linh Village, Vinh Thach Commune, Vinh Linh District, Quang Tri Province. The tunnels used to be thousands of meters long. But now there remain only 1,700 meters. This underground network is linked with 13 doors (seven opening to the sea and six to the hills). The structure is divided into three layers, the deepest being 23 meters underground. They are connected by a 768 meters main axis that is 1.6 to 1.8 meters high and 1.2 to 1.5 meters wide. It is linked to the sea by seven exits, which also function as ventilators and to a nearby hill by another six.

Along the two sides of the main axis are housing chambers. There is also a large meeting hall with a seating capacity of 50 to 80 people, which was used for meetings, movies, art performances, surgeries, and even the delivery of babies (17 were born here). There are also four air , two watch stations and three water wells. The village featured unique Hoang Cam stoves, named after the general who invented the store to allow for underground cooking without emitting smoke, thus evading the discovery by bombers.

According to the Vietnam government: “The spectacular network stands as a testament to the endurance, wisdom and bravery of the local people in their fight for independence. Before entering the tunnels, visitors are shown the displays of that brutal period in Vietnam's history by some photos. They provide a sharp contrast for the vitality of the local people in during war time, celebrating on the victory day. The war forced many people to either leave their villages or live beneath the ground. Vinh Moc residents opted for the second solution. A few would imagine that the rubber and pepper tree plantations today used to be a fierce battleground from 1966-1972 when Vinh Moc was a place to pass food and ammunitions to Con Co Island. “The area underwent tens of thousands of tons of bombs by U.S warplanes. The invaders wanted to return the area to the "stone age" and launched a destructive war there. It was estimated that local residents endured the equivalent of 500 heavy rockets per day. In 1976, the Ministry of Culture and Information recognised Vinh Moc Tunnels as national heritage site and included it in a list of especially important historical sites. To ensure security for visitors, the tunnels were restored with reinforced concrete and internal lightening.

Cu Chi Tunnels

Cu Chi Tunnels (75 kilometers northwest, or a two hour drive, from ) is the famous underground of tunnels used by the Vietcong to attack targets around Saigon during the . Built under fortified villages, where peasants had been forcibly moved, Cu Chi was a 200-kilometers-long mile network of passages with underground hospitals, meeting rooms, multi- level sleeping quarters, trap doors, smokeless kitchens, air raid shelters, weapons factories, strategy rooms and even entire underground villages with theaters and movie halls. In some places the tunnels had three stories.

One of the radio command centers was made from a South Vietnamese tank stolen by the Vietcong in 1966 and buried and linked to the tunnel system. There was even one tunnel with a trapdoor inside a U.S. military base at Dong Du. The conditions in the tunnels were harsh. Many Viet Cong who lived in them survived on one meal of manioc a day.