Village studies are one of the major points of interest to scholars of Vietnam's history and wars. Because the major political organization in Vietnam has always been the hamlets which, when combined, became villages, the village has been most important. The means of unifying Vietnam before contacts with the west was consolidation village by village. During both French colonialism and the later American domination of Vietnam, control of the hearts and minds of villagers was the key to controlling provinces, urban areas, and Vietnam itself.

We can observe the impact of the war up-close-and-personally by knowing something about the war as it was fought in hamlets and villages. Some of the required readings for People's War, aspects of the strategy and theories of such warfare, and personal records of key individuals sampled in this module inform us about war in villages of southern Vietnam especially. Another way to learn about this perspective is to note briefly the underground village life such as that in the Cu Chi area near Saigon.

The Cu Chi Tunnels

New brochure for a visit to the Ben Dinh Tunnel Complex. (1998)

Orientation Board outside the Ben Duoc Tunnel Complex (Photographed 1991)

I have visited the Cu Chi Tunnels three times, seeing two parts of a vast area of tunnels first built during the war against the French and then expanded later.

Resources for our class include the most important book, The Tunnels of Cu Chi (1985) by Tom Mangold and John Penycate. Cu Chi is easily accessible from Ho Chi Minh City today by travelling 25 miles northwest on Highway 1 toward Cambodia. It is located in the area which became known during the war as the Iron Triangle.

Source: Doug Huffman, a Vietnam Veteran. To see the rest of his web site, please go to the "Related Sites" section under the heading "War in the Villages and Tunnels" on the People's War and Tran Van Tra Page and click on Vietnam Journey.

The Cu Chi area and nearby became the most heavily bombed, gassed, and defoliated area in the history of combat. The Americans, however, never knocked out the tunnel complex entirely despite such operations as Cedar Falls in January 1967. The Junction City Operation followed from February to May. Use of bulldozers and 32,000 troops did not prevent southern Vietnamese revolutionaries from rebuilding tunnels in time to be used in the 1968 Tet Offensive against nearby Saigon.

This area at the time contained some 50 square miles of tunnels which included space for barracks, hospitals and weapons. As BBC investigative reporters, Mangold and Penycate tell the story of Cu Chi in such detail that one is immediately struck by the resolve of Vietnamese villagers to survive. Historian Joe P. Dunn has written that "As well as any other source," these writers explain "why the United States was unable to subdue such determination, courage and self-sacrifice through high technology." Reviewing their book for the New York Times, journalist Harrison Salisbury notes that our government never anticipated that tunnel warfare would be so prominent or important in Vietnam. We had too little interest in the French war with Ho Chi Minh and knew little about the Viet Minh tunnels at Dien Bien Phu. Our faith in superior technology and firepower also caused us to underestimate the use of tunnels overall.

By 1966 and 1967, Cu Chi was one of the most important base areas for the Viet Cong. It was in a critical location between supply areas in Cambodia and Saigon. Illustrations and diagrams in Mangold and Penycate, plus the maps now being used in "visitor center" briefing rooms for orientation of today's visitors to Cu Chi, show that the tunnels were at times on four levels.

When I moved on hands-and-knees through the tunnels in 1991 and 1997, I chose to remain on the first two levels only. As one might expect, the tunnels used today have been enlarged to accomodate larger western human frames. Those Vietnamese who lived and fought in these tunnels easily navigated them, often staying underground for weeks at a time. Today one may still view underground rooms used as living space, kitchens, and hospital facilities.

Among the most courageous American soldiers in Vietnam were those who were known as "tunnel rats." They were usually smaller in stature and equipped only with knives, pistols, and flashlights. Students may have seen documentaries of veterans who served at Cu Chi as tunnel rats. Upon their return to Vietnam, some have been able to obtain closure by once more going into the tunnels; others understandably have been unable to do so.

Interviews of U.S. and British tunnel rats, Viet Cong, and others who fought at Cu Chi offer detailed accounts of personal experiences, and reading The Tunnels of Cu Chi will put one in touch with the harsh realities of war there. Another excellent and recent source is the entry for Tunnel Rats in Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, edited by Spencer Tucker. The author of this entry is Dr. James T. Gillam, an historian who teaches at Spelman College in Atlanta. I had the privilege of being in Vietnam in 1991 with Jim, who is not only a Vietnam veteran but also a former tunnel rat. For students who have access to a library copy of the encyclopedia, read Jim's detailed information about the tunnels and men who fought within them -- both at Cu Chi and in the Central Highlands. He also writes that when he was in Cambodia, he "found an armory and a hospital with an electrocardiogram" in a tunnel complex. Remarkably most tunnel rats, according to Jim Gillam, survived.

Those whom Mangold and Penycate interviewed (Vietnamese and Ameicans) included nurses, women, surgeons, commanders, Viet Cong soldiers, U.S. tunnel rats, rice farmers living in the area, and others. For an artist's view of a typical 25th infantry division tunnelrat, click HERE. Return to this page by using your browser's BACK button.

Sampling Village and Province Studies

One of the best among the many village studies is that of Jeffery Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (1972). Long An Province is comprised of several villages located in the Mekong Delta south of Saigon. Race also collected, during his research, numerous documents available for study by other scholars. His best treatment of Long An is for the late 1950s and the early 1960s -- before involvement of massive numbers of American combat troops.

Another excellent village study is by James W. Trullinger: Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam (1980, 1994). He studied My Thuy Phuong, located in central Vietnam about seven miles south of Hue. He interviewed villagers from 1969 to 1972 and then returned for five more months of study in 1975, after the war ended.

This village had four hamlets and a total population of about 7,600. Its location is on Highway 1, known by the French as the "Street without Joy." By 1954, eighty percent of the villagers supported the Viet Minh. Trullinger discovered, however, that only three-to-five percent were ever truly loyal to the French, Diem's government, or the Americans. The U.S. Airborne base, Camp Eagle, was in part of the village and marines were at another base about four miles away.

The village of My Thuy Phuong was a typical battle site for the hearts and minds of villagers. Since this study is longitudinal in nature, Trullinger is able to show changing patterns of loyalty. Few Viet Cong actually lived in the community, but there were loyal supporters within the village. People would often switch loyalties as time and circumstances required.

There were tunnels in and around the area, and during Tet 1968 the village was generally loyal to the VC. From 1968 to 1972, however, such support dropped from about eighty percent to 50 percent. The Americans left the area in 1972 as part of our Vietnamization process.

War Along Trails

A final way to understand People's War in Vietnam is to note the importance of two systems of transport along key trails -- the well-known Ho Chi Minh Trail and the less well-known Sihanouk Trail.

Parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail date back for centuries when it was a trade route. With improvements in 1959 and especially after 1964, it became a major transportation network. Group 559, or the 559th Transportation Group of the North Vietnamese Army, moved an increasing volume of supplies along the trail by 1964 (one source estimated the tonnage of supplies as forty times that in all previous years, and half of that was by truck).

The trail was a network of waterways, footpaths, and dirt roads in its earliest stages. Along the route later were better roads, bridges, underground hospitals, refueling positions, and living quarters. As maps show, the trail is chiefly outside of Vietnam, inside Laos and Cambodia, with many branches of the trail extending into southern Vietnam. Such trunk lines of the trail extend into the Central Highlands, through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which divided North and South Vietnam, 1954 to 1975, and into the Cu Chi area. In addition to supplies moved by truck, thousands of porters, chiefly women, carried about 55 pounds each on their backs or about 150 pounds on their bicycles. Oxcarts were also used.

The period of significant infiltration of troops along the trail was from 1967. About 20,000 or more North Vietnamese troops came south each month. Most moved on foot, resting at regular intervals at some of the 50 logistical support bases along the route. The most distant points required about a three-month period of travel. Viet Cong began to get Soviet and Chinese weapons whereas earlier they were more dependent upon older Japanese and French weapons and captured U.S. weapons.

Gradually the trail became better fortified -- defended by antiaircraft. Major South Vietnamese and U.S. efforts to destroy the trail and its trunk lines included: Operation ROLLING THUNDER (1965-68) and LAM SON 719 (1971), but each failed. By 1974-5, the trail was really close to being a modern highway, and General Tran Van Tra was using a car for part of his travels on the trail, whereas he had walked the trail many times before.

How critical was this trail in the outcome of the war? Most argue that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was very important overall. Both supplies and troops reached rear units in southern Vietnam. Until near the end of the war, there were never enough motorized transports to provide fully the food needs of NVA or Viet Cong in the south. Thus our enemy forces had to depend significantly upon local food supplies from villagers in the Republic of Vietnam. They also arranged for locally made uniforms. Richard Linn Stevens, in The Trail: A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Role of Nature in Viet Nam (1993), maintains that, failing to destroy the trail, "we could not win the war."  

        

The most recent scholarly book on the Ho Chi Minh Trail is The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (1998) by John Prados.

Sihanouk Trail (1966-69)

Early in the 1960s, supplies also reached American enemies in South Vietnam by sea, on small ships and junks moving along rivers and swamps into provincial areas under enemy jurisdiction. After naval forces of the U.S. and Republic of Vietnam discovered such routes, the enemy created an alternative supply route through parts of Cambodia.

This route began in Sihanoukville on Cambodia's coast and ran northeastward through
Cambodia. Branches of the trail crossed into the Mekong Delta region and the area between the Cambodian border with the Republic of Vietnam and Saigon. There were bases on the Cambodian side of the border, bases to which supplies were trucked on the Sihanouk Trail. When rivals of Prince Sihanouk opposed this supply role of his government, the use of the Sihanouk Trail ended in 1969. This helped make the Ho Chi Minh Trail the more developed and preferred supply route.

Visual images of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and tunnel warfare appear in a number of documentaries which may be available on your campus. The following are among selections at the University of Richmond.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail (1989) BBC production [60 min]

In the Year of the Pig (1968, 1987) Emile de Antonio's controversial documentary [UR 103 min]

With America's Enemy, 1954-1967 [60 min], an episode in Vietnam: A Television History (1983), controversial series of 13 episodes, WGBH, Boston; originally shown on PBS

A World Beneath the War: The Secret Tunnels of Vietnam [60 min]

More of Dr. Bolt's Cu Chi Tunnel Photographs

Orientation guide for 1991 visit. Note that he is holding an intrenching tool (small shovel) and a hand-woven basket. These were the two basic tools used in building the tunnels.

Weapons displayed at site visited in 1991.

U.S. tank pictured above the tunnel complex in 1997.

Part of a new mural at Ben Dinh (1998) showing fighting above the tunnels.

Guide at Ben Dinh demonstrating typical booby-trap, part of the "Self-Made Weapons Gallery."