Something different from the usual videos. A look at how the Viet Cong utilised simple materials to form crude yet effective punji traps in the Vietnam War. PLEASE DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!...
My cousin was a short man during his Nam duty At 5" 2' he was used as a ''Tunnel Rat".. Crawling in the Vietkong tunnels with a knife..pistol & a few grenades..How he made it back home is a God Send...
*Americans:* “We have helicopters, napalm, missiles, jet fighters, aircraft carriers, and soldiers armed to the teeth. What have you possibly got that could defeat us?” *Vietnamese:* “Sharp poop sticks.”
This video made me understand PTSD more than any other video or document ever has. I could only imagine thinking throughout the entire war I was not only gonna have to watch out for shooters in the thick jungle underbrush, but traps below. Every step could be a deathtrap. that's terrifying. I couldn't imagine coming home and feeling like I could walk with confidence in every step again.
My great uncle fought in burma during ww2. He used to tell us how the japanese would dig pits, cut bambo like that and burn the tips. The screams and the resulting wounds he saw his mates get haunted him
pacific war was like this on crack, japense soldiers when wounded would blow themselves up if us solider tried to help so they just bayonetted any japense they saw lying on the ground.
My friend's dad was a tank commander in Burma. Never said a single word about what happened there but use to complain about how his M4 Sherman used to get bogged down in the muck.
My Grandfather served in Vietnam from 1966-1968 and again from 1970-1971. He never told us any stories, but after he passed away, his close friends at the VFW shared some of them. He ran a surveillance platoon, going 3 weeks at a time without orders. During the waiting period, their scout / supplier was killed in a punji stake trap. Eventually, the men became paranoid of waiting. As the commanding officer, my grandfather told everyone to find an animal and train it to occupy their time. He had a pet monkey, but most had rodents. One day, when the men ran out of rations, half of the men wanted to kill and eat one soldier's pet pig. The other half became very attached to it. The men nearly killed eachother over deciding what to do. My Grandfather had to give the order to allow the men to kill and eat it. Grown men cried and suffered over it, and there was not even an enemy in sight. The sound of guns in the distance, but complete and utter isolation. War is hell. RIP. Victor R. Welfl 1928-1995
It wasn’t his grandfathers decision to go to Vietnam, it was the elite leaders. It’s not at all fair to demonize the average blue collar soldier who did what he was told to do. Those men believed they were doing something worth dying for and it’s horrible to talk bad about them. They gave much more than any shit talker on RU-vid.
@@glockdude5472 exactly. He grew up dirt poor in rural Texas. We went into the service to serve in Germany, since he had learned German from his parents. But when Vietnam came around, he had no choice. He did his duty and did what he did for the men under his command. He was spit by protestors on when he came back to the USA. That was wrong.
That’s the point of these traps. It puts Mental Stress on the American patrols during that war. So it causes them to panic and out of focus that lead to less combat effectiveness plus the exhaustion of the soldier by walking a mile inside the big jungle
@@Sebastian.12 also an injured american grunt was better than a dead one, because it also took a few other's out of fighting to help carry the wounded.
My grandpa had 2 brothers including himself fight in Vietnam. His twin brother fell into a trap and the bamboo went up his foot all they way up his leg. And his younger brother was killed from a mine and blew up into pieces.My grandpa was trying to get his brother out of the front but it was too late. My grandpas twin always walked with a Cain after that and would never talk about the war. My grandma would say he would have nightmares a lot from the war. But in 1996 my grandpa passed two years before I was born. Rest In Peace Grandpa your a legend in my eyes.🇺🇸🇲🇽
The conflict for those involved in the Vietnam War....must have been excruciatingly realising their war was not popular at home!! It was a bastard of a war....perpetuated by the Republican party's Nixon and Kissinger....that was literally an EVIL pursuit!! It was at this time....American exceptionalism was enshrined in Government policy positioning. The denial of reality was the creator of this war....something the Republicans have completed full circle by storming Capitol Hill on Jan 6th 2021!!!
@@tobsternater The war was actually started by JFK (Dem.) and pushed into high gear (over 500k US soldiers deployed to Vietnam) under Lyndon B Johnson (Dem), JFK's VP. Nixon actually ENDED the war. I have no idea where you got your info from that Nixon started the war.
My great grandfather served in Vietnam. His most infamous story he told was when he got trapped in a punji pit. Like many men during that war, he survived but wasn’t unscathed, and his mental scars were much deeper than his physical. This past summer we visited Washington DC and went to the Vietnam memorial, my dad pointed out a few of my great grandpa’s buddies from the war. Rest In Peace to anyone who died in this war, wether American or Vietnamese, and thank you for serving your countries through literal hell ❤️🇺🇸🇻🇳
Actually, we have been war with china since like, the beginning of century ;-; That 1979 war was just a mini war comparing to most Sino-Vietnamese war in the medevial age :v Vietnam and china are like natural enemys lol
@Sigmund225 That's not true the Vietnamese have been using Punji traps for centuries there is records of French Soldiers being WIA and KIA during there invasion of Dai Nam in the 1880s.
i like how you call our country is Dai Nam ( great Nam) most of people in east asia juat call us An Nam (peace full south ) :)))) but that country of Nguyen dynasty still fall
Well that's another advantage these types of things have...imagine being the guy to step on one of these things, the guilt you would feel knowing you probably caught the attention of every enemy in the area with your struggle and calls for help
Born and raised American, respect to both sides of the troops and have quite a few Vietnamese friends, Cambodia, Louise, etc. Glad this war is over now 1 thing for sure Vietnamese people stick together and make decent friends
Phil, wish I had been on base at Chu Lai, '66-'67, 2nd Bn. 1st Marines, South of DaNang, East of hill 55, West of Hwy. 1. You gonna make some more vids??
From what I understand is a certain first lady's family had borax mines in 'nam. I'm still trying to figure out why we followed the French and we even equipped them. Oh, what I said earlier.
sneaky little bastards! such a simple and effective trap. Not only injures the guy who hits it but demoralizes the rest too, good example of utilizing available resources.
@Jamie Nelson lol whatever country you're from, America would take a fat funky ass shit on your men if they were ever dumb enough to step to us. We could clear you out in one run and wipe you clean off the world map, you and yours would be nothing but a memory.
Respect other people, respect other people’s way of life, respect other people’s land. Period. Well done Vietnam, for doing what you were forced to do by the uninvited.
Actually we removed them all after the war. They were used in the vincinity of army camps so people would often keep tab of where they were. There haven't been a single incident of people falling into these things (that I know of), but I would recommend staying away from the jungle all together lol
Beside that, we still find American’s bombs in the jungle to this day. They are usually buried a few meter under the ground since 1960s. They are all mostly deactivated, but still there are fews that would explode on contact
wow these traps were utilize against men with grenades, rifles, bombs, ability to call airstrikes and other artilleries in what is considered to be the first modern war, you have to respect it.
If you were a grunt doing a tour in Vietnam, you pretty much were the trap. Since the Viet Cong would seldom fight in large scale battles, the US military would send squads on search and destroy missions. The squad was basically bait for the larger units watching them. Once engaged, the US squads would call in overwhelming artillery or air support. This rarely worked b/c the Viet Cong knew this was the goal and would wait until US troops were in carefully designed kill zone before every attacking.
A friend of my dad was in country very early on in the war. He volunteered. He came from a Military family so the idea of duty drove him. His unit was attached to an ARVN Cavalry unit. The ARVN would routinely put NVA/Viet Cong POWs into the helicopters, take them up into altitude, and push them out. Waist gunners on the other choppers would sometimes use the falling POWs for target practice. They would also do this to village honchos sometimes, pressing them about troop movements and such, then out they went. It was all under the command of the ARVN, so it was never investigated or followed up by the US forces. He said: "There was no difference between them."
Thank God i missed vietnam by a couple of years, but i had a few cousins that were there, and they all made it home alive. An interesting note, and you rarely see it on film, is a walking stick used by hikers,campers,etc..., not a cane, some of our fellows in nam would use these when walking point just because of below ground punji pits. No good for most gravity drop punji's or land mines, but there were far more ground pits than those 2 traps.
Aside from all the death, what I find truly sad is that they sent "Boys" in to do something none of them were prepared to do or deal with, after the fact. I have a dear friend who is 63 and he still wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming out while in the midst of nightmares he has on a nearly constant basis. Where does one go to get peace from oneself? These many years later and still they carry the weight of that war around with them. The wounds that go unseen are often the worse.
I inadvertently met Vietnamese govt public affairs officer and a "senior Colonel" from the Vietnamese Air Force, a Mig-21 pilot with over 2K cockpit hours that he was traveling with. They had been at high level military meetings on Randolph AFB. Nice gentlemen. The Colonel was a true warriors deserving of the utmost respect. They were discussing joint-basing and joint-training, and joint-security with the USAF. They told me that BAR FAR MOST Vietnamese want stronger relations with America, they wished America had stayed and won the war, and even in Hanoi, American joint-basing was favored by 77% in recent polls. OMFG. (disclaimer, I just bicycled Vietnam N to S for 30 days, and it seems like those statements were correct)
SeculaRxHumanisT Wasnt that useless. At least they saved some of the south Vietnamese from being killed by communists. They went to the Philippines on boat.
@@Nimori They saved a few South vietnamese, great. But what about the vietnamese civilians that were sprayed with napalm/agent orange or bombed by the U.S. and its allies ?
SeculaRxHumanisT Agent Orange was specifically made to destroy plants. Tests shown that you could inhale some and still live, without internal damage. However, if you inhale a lot, it could cause cancer later on. Pamphlets often dropped from B57’s warned civilians when and where American’s were going to use it. And that civilians in that area should follow strict guidelines as to surrender themselves so they would still have food and shelter after. However the vietcong decided to exploit that and hide behind civilians, endangering them so that the vietcong could infiltrate. You seem pro vietcong. I have a list of war crimes carried out by their leaders and government; not by specific peoples. FURTHERMORE Americans killed more north Vietnamese soldiers, and even Chinese soldiers. A prime example being that one navy seal operation, with only 12 members; killing over 900 Vietnamese soldiers without casualties.
Not really I don't think the vietcong could have done a good invasion of america. it's just a the enemy being defending guerrilla style and the home filed advantage is a bitch to overcome.
I actually did this as a kid, for context i live in hawaii and i was around 10 years old, I remember seeing this trap on some sort of social media, it was a video explaing how to build it and used it, a hole, anything sharp at the bottem, sticks, leafs, and sand, thats how i did it because mud wasnt close to a beach and the weather is always sunny. I remember drawing “->” in the sand and a x on the spot, me and my brother thought it was a “prank” and funny. Only one person fell for the trap and it was just some poor old lady, and we was hiding behind a tree giggling, after no one else fell for it we just got our mom and she said it could break someones feet and got mad at us, we didn’t understand lol
The Vietnamese managed to defeat the most powerful technologically advanced military in the world in part with bamboo and shit. You gotta respect that.
No sensible person respects any of that stuff. Both sides committed atrocious war crimes, with the Vietnamese torturing POWs and the Americans using chemical warfare. You think any of the US soldiers wanted to be there? They were pretty much all drafted, young men barely out of high school. At least the Viet Cong was fighting voluntarily. The US soldiers had no choice.
And the fact the U.S. couldn't just open fire on everyone in villages made the war that much more complicated. You sit here and try and help a wounded vc then get blown the fuck up. The U.S. should of been allowed to just blast anyone. I know that sounds unrealistic but we got our ass whooped due to having to pick and choose who we can kill.
@@hurricaneirma561 Then we should of just stayed out of it. America's rich self always starting wars then send OUR innocent civilians to die for their bullying.
@@hurricaneirma561 Let me rephrase. We always either bully and conquer, or try and help other countries. And our innocent civilians either join to die/kill or get forced to die/kill.
Technically, US didn't lose. The campaign was lost when domestic confidence fell. Vietnam won the war of attrition, a very effective way when you are the underdog. PS. You can never napalm the whole forest, and guerilla warfare is a strength of many SEA countries. Poor Americans.
@Juan Espinoza I don't usually reply to someone typing in all caps but North Korea is sitting confidently beside China and Venezuela is a no-gain country. I'm not making excuses, I came from SEA region. So yes, you better believe your all caps smh.
@Juan Espinoza Aye, you left the very important part of Korean War. Don't be like that. Of course, UN and US went to it AFTER NK almost annihilated SK in a surprise invasion. The coalition troops pushed NK so hard that China have to intervened. You have to treat NK as a buffer zone of China to the east, so any invasion of it would mean China intervening. Venezuela? Never heard of that shit country until its economic downfall. I'm not pro-US so give up, you are just anti-US.
@Juan Espinoza Dude, if you are gonna argue, make it so with proper sentences. I cannot understand any of it, like a fragments or phrases with no coherence. Are you an elementary? Crimea is a different case. The old USSR lies on the lands beyond what is Russia now. The US cannot just meddle directly into it, the consequences are great. South Korea is South Korea since after the end of world war, protecting it is clear as sky. Two different scenarios. Your arguments are drifting far away from the original topics. I think you need to at least take a basic education on writing sentences and constructing arguments.
Also the VC is also very smart too, they attach fans into the AT mines, so when a US helicopter hover above the mine (at the right height), the wind generated by the helicopter will make the fan rotate fast enough so the mine would fly up and hit the helicopter, bring the helicopter down, damage it but it would not destroy the helicopter, but it will injure or even kill the soldiers inside.
I wasn't in Nam, spent my war years serving stateside, but bamboo was used as slow torture. It is a grass and grows from the bottom up. Sharpen a stick and tie the prisoner above it and the bamboo will just grow upwards killing the guy slowly.
If you cannot ... Các bạn không đọc được tiếng Anh chịu khó chờ bản tiếng Việt nhé. # I must say the Vietnamese were extremely humane. # During the last hours before the end of the war at 11:30 30-4-1975 (in fact, always, well before that time), the Vietnamese commandos and militia (Viet Cong) were everywhere in Saigon, for sure even on the US Embassy ground. # What would have happened if a grenade or two were thrown at the crowds at the US Embassy or the American Marines still there? Yet, nothing had happened. # For sure, all around and very close to Saigon, and inside Saigon itself, there were enough of Vietnamese (Viet Cong) guns and missiles that could down a helicopter or two that were evacuating the escapees. # Yet, not a single shot was fired at the low-flying helicopters. # Furthermore, during the many years of the bloody war, WHILE THE AMERICAN MILITARY (and their followers, the South Korean troops, the Australian troops, ...) committed heinous barbarities on the Vietnamese people every hour of the day, every day of the many years that they waged their invading, unjust, immoral, barbaric war on Vietnam (barbarities like the kill-all-burn-all-rape-all massacre in Son My - My Lai in 1968, or the napalm bombing of the "Napalm Girl" Phan Thi Kim Phuc in Trang Bang in 1972, or the indiscriminate B52 carpet bombings killing all, including infants and old women, or the spraying of toxin Dioxin - Agent Orange that is still, right now in March 2019, causing catastrophic destruction of the bodies of many Vietnamese young, and numerous monstrous birth defects to Vietnamese women), THE VIETNAMESE on the other hand had NOT, not once, kidnapped or committed any atrocity on American children or women, or American civilians, many of whom were living in Vietnam at the time (and quite vulnerable). NOT ONCE. # If that does not show Vietnamese's humanity, I don't know what else does. ====================== # In Video on a similar topic, "The Fall Of Saigon (Part 7)" (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mYJyllwH-p8.html ), at 10:41 the journalist Mr Peter Arnett says "What was this war all about?" # Mr Peter Arnett asked the question, but I think he had also implied the answer; and the answer was similar to that by Australian Prime Minister Mr Gough Whitlam. # Prime Minister of Australia Mr Gough Whitlam was among the few westerners who voiced the OBVIOUS TRUTH (in contrast to many other who knew this truth but chose not to say it, or worse even colluded with the rich and powerful US Government to wage an extremely barbaric invading conquering immoral unjust war on the Vietnamese people in an attempt to impose a new colonialism [after the failure of the French's old colonialism] on Vietnam) # Mr Gough Whitlam said (I saw it on the internet some years ago, but sorry I did not write down any info; it was in one of the interviews he gave; I just remember him saying so) "THE VIETNAMESE SIMPLY WANTED THEIR INDEPENDENCE." # That's why they kept on fighting the almighty US war machine against all odds, with tremendous sacrifice and suffering, and unbelievable hardship and difficulties; that's why they resolutely fought off the expansionist Deng XiaoPing - Mao ZeDong's Chinese invasion combined with the genocidal Khmer Rouge's Pol Pot attacks (supported by the vengeful US Administration) ====================== In video "RR7522A VIETNAM SAIGON THE COMMUNISTS TAKEOVER" on the same topic (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mknTDi70KFE.html ), at 04:17 the Saigon Regime's soldier says "Everybody is happy!" with another face smiling broadly next to him. # How true, at least for (I'd estimate) 99.99% of the Vietnamese people! ====================== If you don't read Vietnamese, maybe the English interpretation below helps. # Vietnamese saying: Giặc đến nhà, đàn bà cũng đánh! English: Enemy arriving to your home; women too fight! # To better understand Vietnamese women, look up for "Trưng sisters", "Lady Triệu (Triệu Thị Trinh)", “Võ Thị Sáu”, “Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai”, “Lê Thị Hồng Gấm”, “Đặng Thùy Trâm”, “Nguyễn Thị Út (Út Tịch)”, "Tạ Thị Kiều", "Nguyễn Thị Định", "Bùi Thị Xuân", ... # Poem by Tố Hữu: O du kích nhỏ giương cao súng Thằng Mỹ lênh khênh bước cúi đầu Ra thế! To gan hơn béo bụng Anh hùng đâu cứ phải mày râu! # My attempt at English translation: Petite militia girl raising high her gun Towering American guy stoopingly walking, his head bent So! Big liver (courage) better than fatty stomach (big body) Heroes not having to be reserved just for men. # There was a happy ending to the "Petite militia girl and the towering American guy" photo: They (Nguyễn Thị Kim Lai, 17 years old at the time the photo was taken on 20-09-1965, and American ex-pilot William Andrew Robinson, aged 22 then) met up again 30 years later, but this time as FRIENDS when Robinson came to visit Kim Lai at her home in Hà Tĩnh province in Central Vietnam (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MDFcpVq_HZA.html ) ======================= garge7676 says "... the North Vietnamese did, indeed, commit crimes ... I think the Hue City massacre and their attacks on the hamlets ... are the clearest examples of their crimes." - I reply: # During the American war in VietNam, I'd estimate that for every bullet the Vietnamese side (Viet Cong) fired, the American Military shot back the equivalent of 100 thousand bullets (equivalent: 1 rocket launcher's round = probably 1 thousand bullets, etc.) # And of course the Vietnamese (Viet Cong) had no helicopter gunships, no long range artillery, no armed-to-the-keel warships hugging Vietnam's coast, no bombers, no B52s for carpet bombings, not as many soldiers as the American side, no (negligible number of) war correspondents (those for propaganda) .... # And of course the American side totally dominates 100% the propaganda machinery. # In Hue City in 1968 (and in fact everywhere in Southern VietNam during the whole American war), if there was even a suspect (no need for fact yet) of Viet Cong's presence anywhere, then the American Military would bomb, shoot, burn that place indiscriminately, trying to kill all, burn all, destroy all, in the manner of "We bomb them back to the stone age" # So, is there any surprise that all the killing and massacre committed in Hue City in 1968 were in fact committed by American shooting all, killing all, burning all, "bombing them back to the stone age", then with the total dominance of the propaganda machinery, they (the Americans and their puppet Saigon regime) concocted the false story of the Vietnamese side (Viet Cong) killing civilians ?
A friend stepped into one walking point on a patrol. The spikes missed completely and he wasn't injured. Punji pits weren't common like explosive booby traps were.
