Booby Traps

Some booby traps were of simple construction, meant only to disable not kill in some cases. The goal of the Viet Cong was to get the U.S. soldiers out of the war one way or another. Sharpened bamboo sticks with some sort of waste on them would cause an injury and take some unfortunate troop out of the war for a while because of the ensuing infection. The Cong would put these pungy sticks, as they were called, just under the edge of the water of a rice paddy on an angle where they couldn’t be detected until too late. On the dry path, the enemy would put a small tin can tied back to be tripped by the soldier’s foot. When it was tripped the poor soldier, and sometimes some of his buddies, would jump off of the path into the water to avoid the expected explosion and right into the waiting pungy sticks. Too late the soldier would realize that there was no explosion. A cheap and effective way for the Viet Cong to disable the their enemy.

Sometimes the Cong would dig a hole big enough for a foot to fit into, and put a board over the hole. The board would be almost cut in half, so that it wouldn’t take much pressure to break the board when stepped on by a soldier. On each end of the board the enemy would drive rusty nails, again doctored up with waste. The whole thing would be covered up to look just like the rest of the surroundings. When the soldier would step on the hole with the board on it, his weight would pull his leg down in the hole. Then as the board broke and the ends with the nails came up into the leg, the soldier would jerk his leg upward in reflex and the nails would dig into the leg and another U. S soldier would be out of the war. Again a cheap but effective way to disable.

More advanced anti-personnel devices included a mine that when stepped on would click to activate it , but would not explode until the foot was removed. If one would hear the first click, it might be possible for someone else to dig down around the mine and disarm it… Good luck. Another mine was called the “Bouncing Betty” because when stepped on it would bounce up out of the ground and explode at waist high level, in order to do the most damage. Live and learn; learn and live.