Letter From Vietnam

LETTER FROM VIETNAM

Notes From the Underground

By Kevin Sullivan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, June 10, 1997; Page B01

The Washington Post

CU CHI -- "You ready to do 50 yards?"

There was a certain amused glint in the guide's eyes. He was clearly

hoping his large, square American guest would agree to grunt and grope

through a long, narrow stretch of pitch-black tunnel.

"Okay," I said. "Fifty yards."

In a second, he was gone. I got one final glimpse of the back of his

sandals as he disappeared around a bend in the cramped tunnel with his

flashlight. Then it was dark. Black dead dark. I was crouched 15 feet

underground in a Vietnamese jungle in a tunnel that now seemed about as

high and wide as a garden hose. My head, shoulders, knees and elbows

banged stupidly against the hard dirt walls as I crept forward down a

hole a Viet Cong commander once used to get from his bedroom to his

breakfast table.

The vast tunnel network centered at Cu Chi, a village about 40 miles

northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, made the area

one of the most treacherous places for American soldiers during the

Vietnam War.

The tunnels were an underground city: 150 miles of passages, three

levels deep into the ground, with hospitals, kitchens, barracks,

camouflaged trapdoors and secret underwater entrances bored into

riverbanks. From this complex hive, Viet Cong soldiers emerged, killed

and disappeared without a trace before the Americans knew what hit them.

The Viet Cong tunneled directly under American military bases, popped up

and shot at sleeping soldiers who had no clue where the close-range

sniper fire was coming from. They tunneled into villages controlled by

the Americans and South Vietnamese and wreaked havoc. The 1968 Tet

Offensive on Saigon was planned and launched, in part, from the

underground command centers in the tunnel network.

When the Americans caught on to the terrifying maze below their feet,

they launched an attack of almost apocalyptic proportions. Chemical

defoliant and napalm were dropped from planes. Bulldozers cleared rice

paddies, villages and huge areas of jungle to locate tunnel entrances

and eliminate the enemy's cover. Most notably, B-52s unloaded so many

massive bombs on the area that it looks, in places, like the surface of

the moon, pocked with hundreds of 15-foot-deep craters.

But the massive attacks did little to wipe out the tunnels. One bomb

crater is located no more than 10 feet from where a Viet Cong commander

slept on a cot with his head on a smooth log pillow. His quarters remain

intact.

Today, the Cu Chi tunnels have been transformed from GI trap to tourist

trap, an eerie reminder of Vietnamese determination in what they call

the "American War." Ninety minutes by car from the increasingly Western

commerce of Ho Chi Minh City, the government has turned Cu Chi into a

bizarre theme park celebrating American failure.

The twisted carcass of an American tank -- destroyed by a homemade bomb

fashioned in the Cu Chi tunnels -- sits near a captured American

helicopter. Various curio shops sell replicas of the Zippo lighters

favored by American soldiers. Visitors can fire the AK-47 rifles used by

the Viet Cong or a captured American M-16 for a dollar a bullet. And you

can buy Vietnamese cobra wine, with a snake inside the bottle, the same

stuff that was used to toast the local guerrillas.

For about $5, a cheerful Vietnamese guide will take you through sections

of the tunnels that have been widened and restored for tourists. The

tour starts with a short hike into the jungle, along a path where all

the trees are small and thin -- none of the vegetation here is older

than about 25 years, because the area was flattened by the Americans.

First stop is an airy thatched gazebo with rows of folding chairs where

visitors watch a 15-minute videotape of "history." The grainy

black-and-white tape shows "gentle Cu Chi villagers" smelling flowers,

farming and fishing. Then it darkens into chaotic footage of the "crazed

American devils" bombing and clearing the land. Some of those same

flower-smelling villagers are shown receiving the highest decoration of

the day, the "American-killer medal."

My guide relaxed in a hammock as I sat alone in the little theater, the

only tourist at this screening. When it was over, he walked over and

smiled. "Any questions?" he said. "Now we go see the tunnels."

The phrase "American-killer medal" was still ringing in my ears as we

walked farther down the path, past the life-size replicas of Viet Cong

guerrillas wearing captured American canteens, grenades and combat

belts. The words made me think of all the people I have seen crying at

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Some of them mourn for men

who died in this place.

The guide stopped in a small clearing and challenged me, and four South

Korean tourists who had joined us, to find a tunnel entrance there. We

kicked around in the leaves on the jungle floor. Nothing. Finally, the

guide brushed back some leaves right next to my feet, and there was a

wooden trapdoor.

It was no more than 15 inches square, barely large enough for a child to

slide through. Still, the guide told us it was now roughly twice the

size it had been in the war, before being opened up for tourists.

In another clearing, we dropped down through another trapdoor, this one

wider still. I slipped feet first into the narrow hole and ended up in a

small chamber, just big enough for all of us to gather in a crouch. The

guide pulled back a piece of board at the entrance to reveal a pit

filled with sharpened bamboo stakes.

For the next hour, we sweated through tiny tunnels filled with hot,

stale air. We saw the "hospital," an eight-foot-square chamber that was

connected to an operating room where a single table sat beneath a

captured American parachute. Here, doctors used instruments kept in a

small wooden cabinet to operate on their wounded by the light of an oil

lamp.

We saw the kitchen, where smoke from the wood fire in the brick oven

escaped down a series of vents and dispersed more than 50 yards away.

That prevented the Americans from spotting a large plume of smoke from

the air and using it to target bombs.

In the "political commissar's" quarters, we saw where high-ranking

officers slept on crude cots with logs for pillows. We visited a

conference room where up to 50 Viet Cong officers could meet to discuss

strategy.

Then it was time to go deeper, to the second level of tunnels, which are

a little smaller than the first. It was here that the guide challenged

us to go 50 yards, from a dining area to the commander's quarters.

It was creepy. There was almost no air and it was hot as an oven. As I

sweated along, with dirt falling in my eyes, I imagined what it must

have been like for Viet Cong soldiers crawling along even smaller

tunnels, lugging their AK-47s, living down here for months at a time.

And I imagined what it must have been like for the Americans who crawled

in here after them. There are places on the third level where the

tunnels were intentionally narrowed to just a foot or so high, big

enough to allow small Vietnamese soldiers to wriggle through, but small

enough to trap most Americans.

I crawled on. Too hot. Too dark. Silent. Too much like a grave.

@CAPTION: War warren: This tunnel was part of a vast network built by

the Viet Cong northwest of Saigon.

@CAPTION: This Viet Cong hospital in the Cu Chi tunnel system had an

operating table set up under an American parachute.