Cu Chi Tunnels5 .5.59 -.
The town of Cu Chi is a district of greater HCMC and has a population of about 200,000 (it had about 80,000 residents during the American War). At first glance there is little evidence here to indicate the intense fighting, bombing and destruction that occurred in Cu Chi during the war. To see what when on, you have to dig deeper – underground.
The tunnel network of Cu Chi became legendry during the 1960s for its role in facilitating Viet Cong (VC) control of a large rural area only 30km to 40km from HCMC. At its height the tunnel system stretched from the South Vietnamese capital to the Cambodian border; in the district of Cu Chi alone there were more than 250km of tunnels. The network, parts of which was several storeys deep, included innumerable trap doors, constructed living areas, storage facilities, weapons factories, field hospitals, command centers and kitchen.
The tunnels made possible communication and coordination between the VC controlled enclaves, isolated from each other by South Vietnamese and American land and air operations. They also allowed the VC to mount surprise attacks wherever the tunnels went – even within the perimeters of the US military base at Dong Du – and to disappear suddenly into hidden trapdoors without a trace.
After ground operations against the tunnels claimed large numbers of US casualties and proved ineffective, the American resorted to massive fire power, eventually turning Cu Chi’s 420 sq km into what the authors of The Tunnels of Cu Chi (Tom Mangold and John Penycate) have called ‘the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warface’.
Cu Chi has become a place of pilgrimage for Vietnamese school children and communist-party cadres. Part of this remarkable tunnel network (which are enlarged and upgraded versions of the real thing) are open to the public. The unadulterated tunnels, though not actually closed to tourists, and hard to get to and are rarely visited.
There are numerous war cemeteries all around Cu Chi.
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