Free Vietnam by Nigel Cawthorne

rotting flesh filled the tunnels with a sickening stench. The wounded operated on without anaesthetic in the underground hospitals often begged to be taken above ground to die. Nevertheless an underground lifestyle flourished. There were morale-boosting lectures and other entertainments. Weddings were held and babies born.
    Initially, the Americans knew nothing about the tunnels. Indeed, the US Army's biggest base in South Vietnam was built right on top of a Vietcong tunnel system at Chu Chi. When the 25th Infantry Division arrived in 1966, an enterprising VC called Huynh Van Co and two comrades hid underground for a week while the GIs settled in. Then they began to emerge at night to steal food, sabotage equipment, and set off explosives: the newly arrived 25th thought they were being mortared from outside the perimeter. After seriously undermining the 25th's morale, Huynh Van Co and his comrades withdrew undetected and their tunnels were never discovered.
    After Operation Crimp, the American forces tried destroying the tunnel systems with explosives or pumping burning acetylene gas down them. This was ineffective due to the hardness of the tunnel walls and the doors and seals the VC had installed. Dogs were sent down, but they were easily killed by the Vietcong or their booby traps. There was no alternative but to send men down. Special teams of volunteers called 'tunnel rats' were formed under a southerner named Captain Herbert Thornton, the Chemical Officer of the 1st Infantry Division. He narrowly escaped death when crawling behind a rookie tunnel rat who detonated a booby trap. The explosion in such a confined space deafened Thornton in one ear, though the rookie's body protected him from much of the blast.
    While a high-tech war raged above ground, the tunnel rats took on the enemy on their own territory underground with nothing more than a flashlight, a handgun, and a knife. Facing all manner of booby traps along with armed men hidden in the dark recesses of their own tunnel systems, the tunnel rats earned enormous respect from their above-ground colleagues. Smaller men, often Hispanics, were used, often accompanied by 'Kit Carson Scouts': Vietcong who had defected to the Americans. They were used to negotiate with cornered VC and persuade them to surrender. Valuable intelligence was gained this way. Careful searches were made as the Vietcong's battle plans, along with other vital documents, were stored underground. The tunnel rats developed their own procedures. They never fired more than three shots without reloading, otherwise the enemy would know you were out of ammunition. They also whistled 'Dixie' when they emerged, as a mud-covered figure clambering out of a tunnel shaft might be mistaken for a VC. The tunnel rats had their own code of honour too. No dead tunnel rat was ever left underground and rats would often disobey direct orders to return underground and kill whoever had killed one of theirs. And they were not without a sense of irony: their unofficial motto was cod Latin for 'not worth a rat's ass'.
    The year 1966 saw the big build up in Vietnam, with 385,500 men in country by the end of the year. However, only 14 per cent of US servicemen deployed were front-line troops. The rest were concerned with administration, construction, and logistics, much of it dedicated to providing the men with everything from colour TVs to Napoleon brandy. By 1968, there were forty ice-cream plants in Vietnam and over 760,000 tons of supplies were being delivered every month. With American goods on sale in the PXs, American movies and stage shows, American music on the radio station Armed Forces Vietnam, American TV and chilled American beer, it was possible for rear-echelon troops who never left the base to imagine they were still back home. This, General Westmoreland remarked, was 'one of the more remarkable accomplishments of American troops in Vietnam'.
    President Johnson wanted to go further in the Americanisation of