Cu Chi – countryside about 70 kilometers northwest of Saigon, which became a pain in the ass first of the French and then of the Americans. The same case when “the earth burned under the boots of the invaders.” It was never possible to defeat the local partisans, even though an entire American division (25th Infantry) and a large part of the 18th Army Division were stationed close to their base South Vietnam. The fact is that the partisans dug a whole network of multi-level tunnels with a total length of over 200 kilometers, with many camouflaged exits to the surface, rifle cells, bunkers, underground workshops, warehouses and barracks, densely covered with mines and traps on top.

They are quite simple to describe: these are underground fortifications that are perfectly camouflaged in the local tropical forest. the main objective their creation was to deliver unexpected blows to the enemy during the years of American aggression. The tunnel system itself was thought out in the most careful way, thereby making it possible to destroy the American enemy almost everywhere. An intricate zigzag network of underground passages radiates away from the main tunnel with many branches, some of them are independent shelters, and some end unexpectedly due to the geographical features of the area.

The cunning Vietnamese, in order to save time and effort, did not dig the tunnels very deeply, but the calculations were so accurate that if tanks and heavy armored personnel carriers passed over them, or were hit by artillery shells and bomb attacks, the recesses did not collapse and continued to faithfully serve their creators.

To this day, multi-level underground rooms, equipped with secret hatches covering the passages between floors, have been preserved in their original form. In some places in the tunnel system, special types of plugs are installed, designed to block the enemy's path or stop the penetration of poisonous gases. Throughout the dungeons there are cleverly hidden ventilation hatches that open to the surface in a variety of unnoticeable openings. Plus, some passages at that time could perfectly serve as fortified shooting points, which, naturally, was always a big surprise for the enemy.

And even this was not enough for the Vietnamese. The tunnels and approaches to them were equipped with a large number of ingenious death traps and masterfully camouflaged “wolf” pits. For greater security, anti-personnel and anti-tank mines were installed at the entrances and exits, which have now, of course, been destroyed.

Often, in war time Entire villages lived in the tunnels, and this allowed the Vietnamese to save many lives. There were weapons and food warehouses, smokeless kitchens, hospitals for the wounded, as well as living quarters, camp headquarters, shelters for women, the elderly and children. It’s not like a village, a whole city underground! Even during hostilities, the Vietnamese did not forget about culture and education: school classes were set up in large underground rooms, and films and theatrical performances were also shown there. But, with all this, all this underworld was carefully hidden and disguised

Since numerous shelling and bombing did not bring the desired result, the Americans eventually had to go underground themselves. The Tunnel rats, “tunnel rats,” recruited short, thin, desperate guys, ready with one pistol to climb into the unknown, in which cramped conditions, darkness, mines, traps, which did not allow them to breathe, awaited them. Poisonous snakes, Scorpios and, after all this, if you're lucky - evil partisans.

Not many American soldiers could fit into such a narrow hole

The pictures show everything clearly

A three-level system of tunnels secretly carved out of the hard clay soil with primitive tools numerous groups three or four people each. One digs, one drags the earth out of the tunnel to a vertical shaft, one lifts it up, and another drags it somewhere and hides it under leaves or throws it into the river.

When the team makes its way to the neighboring one, a thick pipe made of a hollow bamboo trunk is inserted into the vertical shaft for ventilation, the shaft is filled up, and the bamboo on top is disguised as a termite mound, stump, or something else.

Only a Vietnamese could squeeze through such a gap.

The Americans used dogs to search for entrances to tunnels and ventilation shafts. Then they began to hide captured uniforms there, usually M65 jackets, which the Americans often abandoned when providing first aid and evacuating the wounded. The dogs smelled a familiar smell, mistook it for their own and ran past.

If they did find the entrance, they tried to fill it with water or throw it in tear gas. But a multi-level system of locks and water castles protected the tunnels quite reliably: only a small segment was lost, the partisans simply brought down its walls on both sides and forgot about its existence, eventually digging out a workaround.

Now there are no disguises at the entrances, they have been expanded for tourists.

The bunkers have been brought to the surface, and the flat roofs have been replaced by high slopes, so that it becomes spacious enough to comfortably look at the Viet Cong-shaped mannequins depicting partisans in natural environment a habitat.

Like many other things, metal was in terrible short supply, so the partisans collected numerous unexploded bombs and shells (and an absolutely incredible amount of them were dumped on a tiny patch; the jungle was simply demolished by carpet bombing from B-52s, turning the area into a lunar landscape), sawed , explosives were used to make homemade mines...

and the metal was forged into spikes and spears for traps in the jungle.
In addition to the workshops, there was a dining room, a kitchen (with a specially constructed external smokeless hearth that did not give away the place of cooking with a column of smoke), a uniform sewing shop….

...and, of course, a room for political information. Only then was all this located at a sufficient depth underground

Let's look at the traps used by Vietnamese guerrillas during the war and how they ruined the lives of the occupiers.

Vietnamese traps, being very insidious and effective products, at one time spoiled a lot of blood for Americans. Perhaps it will be useful to you too.
The jungle in Cu Chi was fraught with many unpleasant surprises, from the already mentioned mines, which even blew up tanks like this M41, to the famous movie homemade traps, some of which can be seen up close.

"Tiger Trap" Ji Ai walks along calmly, suddenly the ground under his feet opens up and he falls to the bottom of a hole studded with stakes. If he is unlucky and does not die immediately, but screams in pain, his comrades will gather nearby, trying to pull the unfortunate man out. Need I say that around the trap in several places there are exits from the tunnels to the surface, to camouflaged sniper positions?
The trap was covered to match the terrain: with leaves

Or covered with turf and grass

Or more humane traps, " Vietnamese souvenir" This is a pretty high-tech trap. There are pins at the bottom; in addition, ropes connected to nails are stretched under the round platform. When a soldier steps on an inconspicuous hole, covered on top with a piece of paper with leaves...

The leg falls through and the first thing he does is pierce the leg with pins at the bottom, at the same time the ropes are stretched and pull nails out of the holes, which pierce the leg from the sides, while fixing it and making it impossible to pull it out.

As a rule, the soldier did not die, but as a result he lost his leg, and then received pins removed from his leg in a Saigon hospital as a souvenir. Hence the name.

The next few photos show a similar design.

Or is there a wider trap?

As you may have already noticed, Special attention They paid attention not only to the task of piercing the adversary, but also to pin him in place and not let him get off the hook. This “basket” was placed in flooded rice fields or near river banks, hidden under water. A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter or boat, OPA! - we arrived...

The soldiers try to follow the trail

However, it happened that the task was not to injure, but to kill. Then they put on grinds like this, in which G.I. quickly stuffed himself under his own weight.

For those who liked to enter the house without knocking, simply by knocking down the door with a valiant blow, such a device was hung above it. The slow one went straight to the other world, the quick one managed to put the machine gun forward - for such, the lower half of the trap was suspended on a separate loop and made a sofa out of his eggs. So the efficient one, as the Vietnamese guide put it, then went to Thailand, a paradise for transvestites.

Well, the simplest, most reliable and popular design in the film industry. Since it flies much faster than the “home” one, there is no need to worry about having two halves. And so it will sweep away. The guide likes her the most.

The traps were very diverse.

Regular wolf pit

Leading Vietnamese production workers returned to their workplaces. Long nails, thin steel rods - everything will go into use. It is enough to drive more sharp objects into a wooden block, and the base for the trap is ready.

The magazine clearly shows that even women and children participated in the making of traps.

Clamshell trap. The simplest and most common trap. They say that at one time it was mass-produced by Vietnamese schoolchildren during labor lessons. The principle is simple. Placed in a small hole and covered with leaves. When the enemy steps on it, under the weight of the foot, the boards are dented and the nails, previously smeared with manure, are pierced into the foot. Blood poisoning is guaranteed.

Board with spades. It is made on the principle of a rake, at the end of which there is a board with nails. When the enemy steps on the “pedal”, the board joyfully jumps up and hits the soldier in the chest, either in the face, or in the neck, or wherever it hits.

Sliding trap. It consists of two wooden boards moving along guides and studded with pins. The boards are moved apart, a support is placed between them, and they are wrapped with an elastic rubber band (or Pilates tape). When the support holding the slats moves, the latter, under the action of the cord, slide along the guides towards each other. But they are not destined to meet, because someone’s soft body is already between them.

A welcoming trap. Making such a trap is not difficult, and it will please you for a long time. You and your guests. You will need: two bamboo stalks, steel rods and wire. We connect the bamboo into the letter “T” and drive the rods into the headboard. We hang the finished trap above the door, connect it with a wire and invite a neighbor to come over, for example, to watch football. When a neighbor inadvertently crosses the wire, the trap flies whistling towards the guest.

According to an old Vietnamese belief, hanging a rake over the entrance and smeared with manure is a sign of peace in the house.

Someone was “lucky” to run into this trap. It's better to dismantle it.

Then the Americans paid dearly for their invasion.

But since then there have been quite a few aggressions by the United States against other countries. It seems that they have drawn conclusions, but they are unlikely to come to the brave Vietnamese.

USA: irretrievable losses - 58 thousand (combat losses - 47 thousand, non-combat losses - 11 thousand; from total number as of 2008, more than 1,700 people are considered missing); wounded - 303 thousand (hospitalized - 153 thousand, minor injuries - 150 thousand)
The number of veterans who committed suicide after the war is often estimated at 100-150 thousand people (that is, more than died in the war).

South Vietnam: data varies; military casualties - approximately 250 thousand dead and 1 million wounded; civilian casualties are unknown, but they are monstrously colossal.

What Vietnamese traps existed during the war with the United States?

The Vietnam War took place between 1964 and 1975. Various countries participated in it, namely the USA, Vietnam, the USSR, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, China and North Korea. This was another round of development of the Cold War between the superpowers. The essence of the war was to obtain all of Vietnam as a satellite. The southern part of the country supported American government, while the north was on the side Soviet Union. Thus, the war, which claimed many lives, had one goal: control of the country and the possibility of placing military bases on it to control the entire Asia-Pacific region.

The US Army was ill-prepared for a ground war, as it had no previous experience in jungle operations. Their shape in the first years of the conflict was the same as always, so they stood out well in the foliage. At the same time, the Vietnamese had a camouflage uniform, and it was difficult to notice them in the thick grass.

As for armored vehicles, they also could not move through the jungle, so the Americans could only rely on their own manpower and air support. Their aircraft immediately took a leading position in the war, but this situation was changed when the USSR entered the Vietnam conflict on the side of North Vietnam. But not into direct confrontation, but began to supply the necessary equipment.

The Soviet aircraft turned out to be more technologically advanced, and the experience of the pilots acquired during the Second World War made it possible to shoot down American aircraft with minimal losses. However, NATO forces had complete superiority at sea, which made it possible to shell coastal areas from ships.

It is worth noting that the NATO army quickly realized its mistakes at the beginning of the conflict and made adjustments to its uniform and improved its equipment. This made it possible to use it in jungle conditions.

Traps for American soldiers

Vietnamese soldiers turned out to be original in creating traps. It was the only one effective method struggle, since weapons in Vietnam in the initial stages of the conflict were significantly inferior in quality to US weapons. A wide variety of methods were used to combat the occupiers, the following were used:

• Improvised explosive devices;
• Punja's trap is regular and rotating;
• Whip Trap;
• Bucket trap;
• Trap with closing sides;
• Trap cartridge;
• Cube-shaped spike traps;
• Standard stretch marks;
• Poisonous snakes;
• Mining;
• Exploding flags;
• Self-firing guns protecting the graves of ancestors.

These are the main Vietnamese traps that became a real nightmare for the American army and its allies. None modern weapons could not cope with them, so NATO forces lost soldiers every day without a fight. You can read to learn more about the traps of partisans.

Poisonous "gifts"

In Vietnam, the liberation army often used traps, the main element of which were poisonous snakes. Usually they used bamboo keffiyeh. It is also called the “three-step snake” because its venom acts instantly. It's a snake small sizes, which was hung by the tail at face level. When it bites, the body's blood clotting process is disrupted and red blood cells are destroyed.

Vietnamese soldiers are like snakes liberation army hidden wherever possible: in bags, boxes, tunnels, in empty bamboo stalks. They were also planted on the trails where American troops were supposed to pass.

Minefields

Soviet-made anti-personnel mines were used to mine the villages that had to be abandoned. In addition to villages, large fields were mined where the enemy should or could have been located. Absolutely everything in the villages was mined: weapons, windows, doors, objects that could be of interest to the invaders, and so on.

During war, the symbolic meaning is to remove the enemy flag from the flagpole. But often NATO soldiers blew themselves up. Considering that the battles were fierce, the first desire after the victory was to remove the flag, which was flying in a prominent place. But when someone started to pull the rope, he pulled the pin out of the grenade and exploded. When his colleagues saw this, they ran up to the exploded soldier. At this moment there was more powerful explosion, which significantly increased the losses of NATO forces.

Protection of graves

Often in Vietnam, traps were set on graves, as the occupiers did not hesitate to avenge their fellow dead. Often a gun was placed in the grave. This trap could have taken one life. They also used a “torpedo”. There were many different types, for example, they installed a shotgun in a coffin. It fired when the lid was opened. Another type of such trap resembled an anti-tank mine in its principle of operation.

Cube with spikes

Such traps were often set during. It was a small metal cube with spikes. He did not kill, but could neutralize an enemy soldier for a long time. Thus, the leg of the enemy soldier was damaged, and he became helpless. Moreover, two other soldiers were neutralized and were forced to carry the wounded man and his weapon.

About the Bamboo trap

It was great way get rid of the looters. This trap was installed at the entrance to an abandoned house. When the enemy entered, a stick with spikes was pointed at him. In most cases, such a blow was fatal. The main blow fell on the head or stomach to crush the skull or rip open the insides. The same devices were sometimes used on small jungle paths.

About the whip trap

It also served as a kind of weapon to fight the Americans.

Outwardly it was a stretch, but in which it was not used explosives. So, a bamboo trunk with long stakes was bent and connected to a guy wire. If someone touched the tripwire, they received a powerful blow to the area from the knees to the stomach. Such weapons were rarely lethal, but they reduced the enemy's combat effectiveness and negatively affected the morale of the enemy army.

Bucket trap nightmare

It is somewhat similar to Punji, but it used fishing hooks, installed at an angle. The bucket itself was buried and camouflaged. If an enemy soldier fell into such a trap, he could not get out of it on his own. They had to dig out the bucket and take the victim to the medical unit. If someone tried to get out on their own, the hooks dug into the leg more strongly.

Despite the fact that it is not a lethal weapon, with its help the number of enemy combat-ready soldiers decreased daily. To make it, you needed any bucket and several fishing hooks. Simplicity and low cost made it possible to use such a device especially often.

I bring to your attention a selection of the most terrible traps that the Vietnamese partisans set. The sight of some of them sent shivers down my spine. Not for the impressionable.

Homemade partisan traps from the Vietnam War: “Vietnamese souvenir.” Pins were fastened at the bottom; in addition, ropes connected to nails were stretched under the round platform. When a soldier stepped on an inconspicuous hole, covered on top with a piece of paper with leaves.

The leg would fall through and the first thing he would do was pierce his leg with pins at the bottom, at the same time the ropes were stretched and pulled nails out of the holes, which pierced the leg from the sides, while fixing it and preventing it from being pulled out. As a rule, the soldier did not die, but in As a result, he lost his leg, and then received pins removed from his leg in a Saigon hospital as a souvenir. Hence the name.

This “basket” was placed in flooded rice fields or near river banks, hidden under water. A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter or boat, OPA! - we arrived...

They also set up these grinders, in which the soldier stuffed himself under his own weight.

And such terrible spinning things...

For those who liked to enter the house without knocking, simply by knocking down the door with a valiant blow, the following device was hung above it:

Let's look at the traps used by Vietnamese guerrillas during the war and how they ruined the lives of the occupiers.
Vietnamese traps, being very insidious and effective products, at one time spoiled a lot of blood for Americans.

The jungle in Cu Chi was fraught with many unpleasant surprises, from the already mentioned mines, which even blew up tanks like this M41, to the famous movie homemade traps, some of which can be seen up close.

"Tiger Trap" Ji Ai walks along calmly, suddenly the ground under his feet opens up and he falls to the bottom of a hole studded with stakes. If he is unlucky and does not die immediately, but screams in pain, his comrades will gather nearby, trying to pull the unfortunate man out. Need I say that around the trap in several places there are exits from the tunnels to the surface, to camouflaged sniper positions?
The trap was covered to match the terrain: with leaves

Or covered with turf and grass

Or more humane traps, “Vietnamese souvenirs”. This is a pretty high-tech trap. There are pins at the bottom; in addition, ropes connected to nails are stretched under the round platform. When a soldier steps on an inconspicuous hole, covered on top with a piece of paper with leaves...

The leg falls through and the first thing he does is pierce the leg with pins at the bottom, at the same time the ropes are stretched and pull nails out of the holes, which pierce the leg from the sides, while fixing it and making it impossible to pull it out.

As a rule, the soldier did not die, but as a result he lost his leg, and then received pins removed from his leg in a Saigon hospital as a souvenir. Hence the name.

The next few photos show a similar design.

Or is there a wider trap?

As you probably already noticed, special attention was paid not only to the task of piercing the adversary, but also to pin him in place and not let him get off the hook. This “basket” was placed in flooded rice fields or near river banks, hidden under water. A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter or boat, OPA! - we've arrived...

The soldiers try to follow the trail

However, it happened that the task was not to injure, but to kill. Then they put on grinds like this, in which G.I. quickly stuffed himself under his own weight.

For those who liked to enter the house without knocking, simply by knocking down the door with a valiant blow, such a device was hung above it. The slow one went straight to the other world, the quick one managed to put a machine gun forward - for such, the lower half of the trap was suspended on a separate loop and made a sofa out of his eggs. So the efficient one, as the Vietnamese guide put it, then went to Thailand, a paradise for transvestites.

Well, the simplest, most reliable and popular design in the film industry. Since it flies much faster than the “home” one, there is no need to worry about having two halves. And so it will sweep away. The guide likes her the most.

The traps were very diverse.

Regular wolf pit

Leading Vietnamese production workers returned to their workplaces. Long nails, thin steel rods - everything will go into use. It is enough to drive more sharp objects into a wooden block, and the base for the trap is ready.

The magazine clearly shows that even women and children participated in the making of traps.

Clamshell trap. The simplest and most common trap. They say that at one time it was mass-produced by Vietnamese schoolchildren during labor lessons. The principle is simple. Placed in a small hole and covered with leaves. When the enemy steps on it, under the weight of the foot, the boards are dented and the nails, previously smeared with manure, are pierced into the foot. Blood poisoning is guaranteed.

Board with spades. It is made on the principle of a rake, at the end of which there is a board with nails. When the enemy steps on the “pedal”, the board joyfully jumps up and hits the soldier in the chest, either in the face, or in the neck, or wherever it hits.

Sliding trap. It consists of two wooden boards moving along guides and studded with pins. The boards are moved apart, a support is placed between them, and they are wrapped with an elastic rubber band (or Pilates tape). When the support holding the slats moves, the latter, under the action of the cord, slide along the guides towards each other. But they are not destined to meet, because someone’s soft body is already between them.

A welcoming trap. Making such a trap is not difficult, and it will please you for a long time. You and your guests. You will need: two bamboo stalks, steel rods and wire. We connect the bamboo into the letter “T” and drive the rods into the headboard. We hang the finished trap above the door, connect it with a wire and invite a neighbor to come over, for example, to watch football. When a neighbor inadvertently crosses the wire, the trap flies whistling towards the guest.

According to an old Vietnamese belief, hanging a rake over the entrance and smeared with manure is a sign of peace in the house.
Someone was “lucky” to run into this trap. It's better to dismantle it.

Tunnels and traps of Vietnamese partisans.

Cu Chi is a rural area about 70 kilometers northwest of Saigon that has become a thorn in the side of first the French and then the Americans. The same case when “the earth burned under the boots of the invaders.” It was never possible to defeat the local partisans, even though an entire American division (25th Infantry) and a large part of the 18th Division of the South Vietnamese Army were stationed close to their base. The fact is that the partisans dug a whole network of multi-level tunnels with a total length of over 200 kilometers, with many camouflaged exits to the surface, rifle cells, bunkers, underground workshops, warehouses and barracks, densely covered with mines and traps on top.
They are quite simple to describe: these are underground fortifications that are perfectly camouflaged in the local tropical forest. The main purpose of their creation was to deliver unexpected blows to the enemy during the years of American aggression. The tunnel system itself was thought out in the most careful way, thereby making it possible to destroy the American enemy almost everywhere. An intricate zigzag network of underground passages radiates away from the main tunnel with many branches, some of them are independent shelters, and some end unexpectedly due to the geographical features of the area.

The cunning Vietnamese, in order to save time and effort, did not dig the tunnels very deeply, but the calculations were so accurate that if tanks and heavy armored personnel carriers passed over them, or were hit by artillery shells and bomb attacks, the recesses did not collapse and continued to faithfully serve their creators.

To this day, multi-level underground rooms, equipped with secret hatches covering the passages between floors, have been preserved in their original form. In some places in the tunnel system, special types of plugs are installed, designed to block the enemy's path or stop the penetration of poisonous gases. Throughout the dungeons there are cleverly hidden ventilation hatches that open to the surface in a variety of unnoticeable openings. Plus, some passages at that time could perfectly serve as fortified shooting points, which, naturally, was always a big surprise for the enemy.

And even this was not enough for the Vietnamese. The tunnels and approaches to them were equipped with a large number of ingenious death traps and masterfully camouflaged “wolf” pits. For greater security, anti-personnel and anti-tank mines were installed at the entrances and exits, which have now, of course, been destroyed.

Often, during wartime, entire villages lived in the tunnels, and this allowed the Vietnamese to save many lives. There were weapons and food warehouses, smokeless kitchens, hospitals for the wounded, as well as living quarters, camp headquarters, shelters for women, the elderly and children. It’s not like a village, a whole city underground! Even during hostilities, the Vietnamese did not forget about culture and education: school classes were set up in large underground rooms, and films and theatrical performances were also shown there. But, for all that, this entire underground world was carefully hidden and disguised

A three-level system of tunnels, secretly carved out of the hard clay soil with primitive tools by numerous groups of three or four people. One digs, one drags the earth out of the tunnel to a vertical shaft, one lifts it up, and another drags it somewhere and hides it under leaves or throws it into the river.

When the team makes its way to the neighboring one, a thick pipe made of a hollow bamboo trunk is inserted into the vertical shaft for ventilation, the shaft is filled up, and the bamboo on top is disguised as a termite mound, stump, or something else.

Only a Vietnamese could squeeze through such a gap.

The Americans used dogs to search for entrances to tunnels and ventilation shafts. Then they began to hide captured uniforms there, usually M65 jackets, which the Americans often abandoned when providing first aid and evacuating the wounded. The dogs smelled a familiar smell, mistook it for their own and ran past.

If they did find the entrance, they tried to fill it with water or fire tear gas into it. But a multi-level system of locks and water castles protected the tunnels quite reliably: only a small segment was lost, the partisans simply brought down its walls on both sides and forgot about its existence, eventually digging out a workaround.

Now there are no disguises at the entrances, they have been expanded for tourists.

The bunkers have been brought to the surface, and the flat roofs have been replaced with high slopes, so that it is spacious enough to comfortably look at the Viet Cong-shaped mannequins depicting guerrillas in their natural habitat.

Like many other things, metal was in terrible short supply, so the partisans collected numerous unexploded bombs and shells (and an absolutely incredible amount of them were dumped on a tiny patch; the jungle was simply demolished by carpet bombing from B-52s, turning the area into a lunar landscape), sawed , explosives were used to make homemade mines...

...and the metal was forged into spikes and spears for traps in the jungle.
In addition to the workshops, there was a dining room, a kitchen (with a specially constructed external smokeless hearth that did not give away the place of cooking with a column of smoke), a uniform sewing shop….

...and, of course, a room for political information. Only then was all this located at a sufficient depth underground

Let's look at the traps used by Vietnamese guerrillas during the war and how they ruined the lives of the occupiers.

Vietnamese traps, being very insidious and effective products, at one time spoiled a lot of blood for Americans. Perhaps it will be useful to you too.
The jungle in Cu Chi was fraught with many unpleasant surprises, from the already mentioned mines, which even blew up tanks like this M41, to the famous movie homemade traps, some of which can be seen up close.

"Tiger Trap" Ji Ai walks along calmly, suddenly the ground under his feet opens up and he falls to the bottom of a hole studded with stakes. If he is unlucky and does not die immediately, but screams in pain, his comrades will gather nearby, trying to pull the unfortunate man out. Need I say that around the trap in several places there are exits from the tunnels to the surface, to camouflaged sniper positions?
The trap was covered to match the terrain: with leaves

Or covered with turf and grass

Or more humane traps, “Vietnamese souvenirs”. This is a pretty high-tech trap. There are pins at the bottom; in addition, ropes connected to nails are stretched under the round platform. When a soldier steps on an inconspicuous hole, covered on top with a piece of paper with leaves...

The leg falls through and the first thing he does is pierce the leg with pins at the bottom, at the same time the ropes are stretched and pull nails out of the holes, which pierce the leg from the sides, while fixing it and making it impossible to pull it out.

As a rule, the soldier did not die, but as a result he lost his leg, and then received pins removed from his leg in a Saigon hospital as a souvenir. Hence the name.

The next few photos show a similar design. Ains

Und zwei...

Dry

Or is there a wider trap?

As you probably already noticed, special attention was paid not only to the task of piercing the adversary, but also to pin him in place and not let him get off the hook. This “basket” was placed in flooded rice fields or near river banks, hidden under water. A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter or boat, OPA! - we arrived...

The soldiers try to follow the trail

And for those who are unlucky, it’s time to go back.

However, it happened that the task was not to injure, but to kill. Then they put on grinds like this, in which G.I. quickly stuffed himself under his own weight. Once…

Or two...

Or three...

For those who liked to enter the house without knocking, simply by knocking down the door with a valiant blow, such a device was hung above it. The slow one went straight to the other world, the quick one managed to put the machine gun forward - for such, the lower half of the trap was suspended on a separate loop and made a sofa out of his eggs. So the efficient one, as the Vietnamese guide put it, then went to Thailand, a paradise for transvestites.

Well, the simplest, most reliable and popular design in the film industry. Since it flies much faster than the “home” one, there is no need to worry about having two halves. And so it will sweep away. The guide likes her the most.

The traps were very diverse.

An ordinary wolf pit,

Painting in the Vietnamese museum. This is roughly how it happened.

Multiple injuries are guaranteed, and to get out…….

Leading Vietnamese production workers returned to their workplaces. Long nails, thin steel rods - everything will go into use. It is enough to drive more sharp objects into a wooden block, and the base for the trap is ready.

The magazine clearly shows that even women and children participated in the making of traps.

Clamshell trap. The simplest and most common trap. They say that at one time it was mass-produced by Vietnamese schoolchildren during labor lessons. The principle is simple. Placed in a small hole and covered with leaves. When the enemy steps on it, under the weight of the foot, the boards are dented and the nails, previously smeared with manure, are pierced into the foot. Blood poisoning is guaranteed.

You can go deeper:

Board with spades. It is made on the principle of a rake, at the end of which there is a board with nails. When the enemy steps on the “pedal”, the board joyfully jumps up and hits the soldier in the chest, either in the face, or in the neck, or wherever it hits.

Sliding trap. It consists of two wooden boards moving along guides and studded with pins. The boards are moved apart, a support is placed between them, and they are wrapped with an elastic rubber band (or Pilates tape). When the support holding the slats moves, the latter, under the action of the cord, slide along the guides towards each other. But they are not destined to meet, because someone’s soft body is already between them.

A welcoming trap. Making such a trap is not difficult, and it will please you for a long time. You and your guests. You will need: two bamboo stalks, steel rods and wire. We connect the bamboo into the letter “T” and drive the rods into the headboard. We hang the finished trap above the door, connect it with a wire and invite a neighbor to come over, for example, to watch football. When a neighbor inadvertently crosses the wire, the trap flies whistling towards the guest.

According to an old Vietnamese belief, hanging a rake over the entrance and smeared with manure is a sign of peace in the house.

Someone was “lucky” to run into this trap. It's better to dismantle it.

crossbow

Log with spikes

A spike trap falls from above.

Stretch trap - “Bamboo whip”

Bamboo whip - a bamboo whip in action.

Caught a fish

Stretch underwater

Stretch on the trail

Luvushka - Buried cartridge

Or Cartridge trap - cartridge trap

Spike trap box - a trap made from a spiked box

Pointed bamboo stakes - pointed bamboo stakes

Spike trap pit - a trap made from a spiked pit

Trap bridge - bridge with a trap

Steel arrow trap - steel arrow trap

Barber - spike plate – “barber” - spiked plate

Helicopter explosive traps - helicopter trap made of explosives

Then the Americans paid dearly for their invasion.

But since then there have been quite a few aggressions by the United States against other countries. It seems that they have drawn conclusions, but they are unlikely to come to the brave Vietnamese.

USA: irretrievable losses - 58 thousand (combat losses - 47 thousand, non-combat losses - 11 thousand; of the total as of 2008, more than 1,700 people are considered missing); wounded - 303 thousand (hospitalized - 153 thousand, minor injuries - 150 thousand)
The number of veterans who committed suicide after the war is often estimated at 100-150 thousand people (that is, more than died in the war).

South Vietnam: data varies; military casualties - approximately 250 thousand dead and 1 million wounded; civilian casualties are unknown, but they are monstrously colossal.

For more complete information material collected from many sites.