At first it was convenient to presume the VC were peasants by day, lost among the black-pyjama-clad millions, switching to guerrillas at night. But why so many casualties by day, and no one to fire back at? In January 1966 the Big Red One decided to raze the Iron Triangle once and for all. It was Operation Crimp.
They started at one end, fanned out and moved forward. They had enough ammunition to wipe out Indochina. They reached the other end and had found no one. From behind the moving line sniper fire started and the GIs took five fatalities. Whoever was firing had only old, bolt-action Soviet carbines, but a bullet through the heart is still a bullet through the heart.
The GIs turned back, went over the same ground. Nothing, no enemy. They took more fatalities, always in the back. They discovered a few foxholes, a brace of air-raid shelters. Empty, offering no cover. More sniper fire but no running figures in black to fire back at.
On Day Four, Sergeant Stewart Green, massively fed up, as were his mates around him, sat for a rest. In two seconds he was up, clutching his butt. Fire ants, scorpions, snakes, Vietnam had them all. He was convinced he had been stung or bitten. But it was a nail-head. The nail was part of a frame, and the frame was the hidden door to a shaft that went straight down into blackness. The US Army had discovered where the snipers went. They had been marching over their heads for two years.
There was no way of fighting the Vietcong living and hiding down there in the darkness by remote control. The society that in three years would send two men to walk on the moon had no technology for the Tunnels of Cu Chi. There was only one way to take the fight to the invisible enemy.
Someone had to strip down to thin cotton pants and, with pistol, knife and torch, go down into that pitch-black, stinking, airless, unknown, unmapped, booby-trapped, deadly, hideously claustrophobic labyrinth of narrow passages with no known exit and kill the waiting Vietcong in their own lair.
A few men were found, a special type of man. Big, burly men were of no use. The 95 per cent who feel claustrophobic were no use. Loud mouths, exhibitionists, look-at-mes were no use. The ones who did it were quiet, soft-spoken, self-effacing, self-contained personalities, often loners in their own units. They had to be very cool, even cold, possessed of icy nerves and almost immune to panic, the real enemy below ground.
Army bureaucracy, never afraid to use ten words where two will do, called them ‘Tunnel Exploration Personnel’. They called themselves the Tunnel Rats.
By the time Cal Dexter reached Vietnam they had been in existence for three years, the only unit whose Purple Heart (wounded in action) ratio was 100 per cent.
The commanding officer of the moment was known as Rat Six. Everyone else had a different number. Once joined, they kept themselves to themselves and everyone regarded them with a kind of awe, as men will be awkward in the company of one sentenced to die.
Rat Six had been right in his gut guess. The tough little kid from the construction sites of New Jersey, with his deadly fists and feet, Paul Newman eyes and no nerves, was a natural.
He took him down into the Tunnels of Cu Chi and within an hour realized that the recruit was the better fighter. They became partners underground where there were no ranks and no ‘sirs’ and for nearly two tours they fought and killed down in the darkness until Henry Kissinger met Le Duc Tho and agreed America would quit Vietnam. After that there was no point.
To the rest of Big Red One the pair became a legend, spoken of in whispers. The officer was ‘The Badger’ and the newly promoted sergeant was ‘The Mole’.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Tunnel Rat
In the army, a mere six years in age difference between two young men can seem like a generation. The older man appears almost a father figure. Thus it was with the Badger and the Mole. At twenty-five, the officer was six years older. More, he came from a different social background with a far better education.
His parents were professional people. After high school he had spent a year touring Europe, seeing ancient Greece and Rome, historical Italy, Germany, France and Britain.
He had spent four years at college for his degree in civil and mechanical engineering, before facing the draft. He, too, had opted for the three-year commission and gone straight to officer school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Fort Belvoir was then churning out junior officers at a hundred a month. Nine months after entering, the Badger had emerged as a Second Lieutenant, rising to First when he shipped to Vietnam to join the 1st Engineer Battalion of Big Red One. He, too, had been headhunted for the Tunnel Rats, and in view of his rank quickly became Rat Six when his predecessor left for home. He had nine months of his required one-year Vietnam posting to complete, two months less than Dexter did.
But within a month it was clear that once the two men went into the tunnels, the roles were reversed. The Badger deferred to the Mole, accepting that the young man, with years on the streets and building sites of New Jersey, had a kind of sense for danger, the silent menace round the next corner, the smell of a booby trap, that no college degree could match, and which might keep them alive.
Before either man had reached Vietnam the US High Command had realized that trying to blow the tunnel system to smithereens was a waste of time. The dried laterite was too hard, the complex too extensive. The continuous switching of tunnel direction meant explosive forces could only reach so far, and not far enough.
Attempts had been made to flood the tunnels but the water just soaked away through the tunnel floors. Due to the water seals, gas failed as well. The decision was made that the only way to bring the enemy to battle was to go down there and try to find the headquarters network of the entire Vietcong War Zone C.
This, it was believed, was down there somewhere, between the southern tip of the Iron Triangle at the junction of the Saigon and Thi Tinh rivers and the Boi Loi woods at the Cambodian end. To find that HQ, to wipe out the senior cadres, to grab the huge harvest of intelligence that must be down there – that was the aim and, if it could be achieved, was a price beyond rubies.
In fact the HQ was under the Ho Bo woods, upcountry by the bank of the Saigon river, and was never found. But every time the tankdozers or the Rome Plows uncovered another tunnel entrance, the Rats went down into hell to keep looking.
The entrances were always vertical and that created the first danger. To go down feet first was to expose the lower half of the body to any VC waiting in the side tunnel. He would be happy to drive a needle-pointed bamboo spear deep into the groin or entrails of the dangling GI before scooting backwards into the darkness. By the time the dying American had been hauled back up, with the haft of the spear scraping the walls and the venom-poisoned tip ripping at the bowels, chances of survival were minimal.
To go down head first meant risking the spear, bayonet or point-blank bullet through the base of the throat.
The safest way seemed to be to descend slowly until the last five feet, then drop fast and fire at the slightest movement inside the tunnel. But the base of the shaft might be twigs and leaves, hiding a pit with punji sticks. These were embedded bamboo spears, also venom-tipped, that would drive straight through the sole of a combat boot, through the foot and out of the instep. Being fish-hook carved and barbed, they could hardly be withdrawn. Few survived them either.
Once inside the tunnel and crawling forward, the danger might be the VC waiting around the next corner, but more likely the booby traps. These were various, of great cunning and had to be disarmed before progress could be made.
Some horrors needed no Vietcong at all. The nectar bat and black-bearded tomb bat were both cave dwellers and roosted through the daylight in the tunnels until disturbed. So did the giant crab-spider, so dense on the walls that the wall itself appeared to be shimmering with movement. Even more numerous were the fire ants.
None of these was lethal; that honour went to the bamboo viper whose bite meant death in thirty minutes. The trap was usually a yard of bamboo embedded in the roof, jutting downwards at an angle and em
erging by no more than an inch.
The snake was inside the tube, head downwards, trapped and enraged, its escape blocked by a plug of kapok at the lower end. Threaded through this was a length of fishing line, heading through a hole in a peg in the wall on one side, thence to a peg across the tunnel. If the crawling GI touched the line, it would jerk the plug out of the bamboo above him and the viper would tumble onto the back of his neck.
And there were the rats, real rats. In the tunnels they had discovered their private heaven and bred furiously. Just as the GIs would never leave a wounded man or even a corpse in the tunnels, the Vietcong hated to leave one of their casualties up above for the Americans to find and add to the cherished ‘body count’. Dead VC were brought below and entombed in the walls in the foetus position, before being plastered over with wet clay.
But a skim of clay will not stop a rat. They had their endless food source and grew to the size of cats. Yet the Vietcong lived down there for weeks or even months on end, challenging the Americans to come into their domain, find them and fight them.
Those who did it and survived became as accustomed to the stench as to the hideous life forms. It was always hot, sticky, cramped and pitch dark. And it stank. The VC had to perform their body functions in earthenware jars; when full, these were buried in the floors and capped with a tampon of clay. But the rats scratched them open.
Coming from the most heavily armed country on earth, the GIs who became Tunnel Rats had to cast all technology aside and return to primal man. One commando knife, one handgun, one flashlight, a spare magazine and two spare batteries were all that would fit down there. Occasionally a hand grenade would be used, but these were dangerous, sometimes lethal, for the thrower. In tiny spaces, the boom could shatter eardrums but, worse, the explosion would suck out all the oxygen for hundreds of feet. A man could die before more could filter in from outside.
For a Tunnel Rat to use his pistol or flashlight was to give his position away, to announce his coming, never knowing who crouched in the darkness up ahead, silent and waiting. In this sense, the VC always had the edge. They only had to stay silent and await the man crawling towards them.
Most nerve tearing of all, and the source of most deaths, was the task of penetrating the trapdoors that led from level to level, usually downwards.
Often a tunnel would come to a dead end. Or was it a dead end? If so, why dig it in the first place? In the dark, with fingertips feeling nothing ahead but laterite wall, no side tunnel to left or right, the Tunnel Rat had to use the flashlight. This would usually reveal, skilfully camouflaged and easily missable, a trapdoor in the wall, floor or ceiling. Either the mission aborted, or the door had to be opened.
But who waited on the other side? If the GI’s head went through first and there was a Vietcong waiting, the American’s life would end with a throat cut from side to side or the lethal bite of a garrotting noose of thin wire. If he dropped downward feet first, it could be the spear through the belly. Then he would die in agony, his screaming torso in one level, ruined lower body in the next down.
Dexter had the armourers prepare him small, tangerine-sized grenades with reduced explosive charge from the standard issue but more ball-bearings. Twice in his first six months he lifted a trapdoor, tossed in a grenade with a three-second fuse, and pulled the door back down. When he opened a second time and went up with his flashlight on, the next chamber was a charnel house of torn bodies.
The complexes were protected from gas attack by water traps. The crawling Tunnel Rat would find a pool of rank water in front of him.
That meant the tunnel continued the other side of the water.
The only way through was to roll onto the back, slide in upside down and pull the body along with fingertips scrabbling at the roof. The hope was that the water ended before the breath in the lungs. Otherwise he could die drowned, upside down, in blackness, fifty feet down. The way to survive was to rely on the partner.
Before entering the water, the point man would tie a lanyard to his feet and pass it back to the partner. If he did not give a reassuring tug on it within ninety seconds of entering the water, confirming that he had found air on the other side of the trap, his mate had to pull him back without delay because he would be dying down there.
Through all this misery, discomfort and fear there occurred a moment now and again when the Tunnel Rats hit the mother lode. This would be a cavern, sometimes recently vacated in a hurry, which had clearly been an important sub-Headquarters. Then boxes of papers, evidence, clues, maps and other mementoes would be ferried back to the waiting intelligence experts from G2.
Twice the Badger and the Mole came across such Aladdin’s caves. Senior brass, unsure how to cope with such strange young men, handed out medals and warm words. But the Public Affairs people, normally avid to tell the world how well the war was going, were warned off. No one mentioned a word. One facility trip was arranged but the ‘guest’ from PA got fifteen yards down a ‘safe’ tunnel and had hysterics. After that, silence reigned.
But there were long periods of no combat, for the Rats as for all the other GIs in Vietnam. Some slept the hours away, or wrote letters, longing for the end of tour and the journey home. Some drank the time away, or played cards or craps. Many smoked, and not always Marlboro. Some became addicts. Others read.
Cal Dexter was one of those. Talking with his officer-partner he realized how blighted was his formal education, and started again from square one. He found he was fascinated by history. The base librarian was delighted and impressed, and prepared a long list of must-read books which he then obtained from Saigon.
Dexter worked his way through Attic Greece and Ancient Rome, learned of Alexander who had wept that, at thirty-one, he had defeated the known world and there were no more worlds to conquer.
He learned of Rome’s decline and fall, of the Dark Ages and medieval Europe, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Age of Elegance and the Age of Reason. He was particularly fascinated by the early years of the birth of the American Colonies, the Revolution and why his own country had had a vicious civil war just ninety years before he was born.
He did one other thing in those long periods when monsoon or orders kept him confined to base. With the help of the elderly Vietnamese who swept and cleaned the hootch for them all, he learned workaday Vietnamese until he could speak enough to make himself understood and understand more than that.
Nine months into his first tour two things happened. He took his first combat wound and the Badger ended his twelve-month stint.
The bullet came from a VC who had been hiding in one of the tunnels as Dexter came down the entrance shaft. To confuse such a waiting enemy, Dexter had developed a technique. He threw a grenade down the shaft, then went in fast, hand over fist. If the grenade did not blow away the false floor of the shaft, then there was no punji-stick trap down there. If it did, he had time to stop before he hit the spikes.
The same grenade ought to shred any VC waiting out of sight. On this occasion the VC was there, but standing well down the passage with a Kalashnikov AK47. He survived the blast, but injured, and fired one shot at the fast-falling Tunnel Rat. Dexter hit the deck with pistol out and fired back three times. The VC went down, crawled away, but was found later, dead. Dexter was nicked in the upper left arm, a flesh wound that healed well but kept him upstairs for a month. The Badger problem was more serious.
Soldiers will admit it, policemen will confirm it; there is no substitute for a partner you can utterly rely on. Since they formed their partnership in the early days, the Badger and the Mole did not really want to go into the tunnels with anyone else. In nine months, Dexter had seen four Rats killed down there. In one case, the surviving Tunnel Rat had come back to the surface screaming and crying. He would never go down a tunnel again, even after weeks with the psychiatrists.
But the body of the one who never made it was still down there. The Badger and the Mole went in with ropes to find the man and drag him out for repa
triation and a Christian burial. His throat had been cut. No open casket for him.
Of the original thirteen, four more had quit at the end of their time. Eight down. Six recruits had joined. They were back to eleven in the whole unit.
‘I don’t want to go down there with anyone else,’ Dexter told his partner when the Badger came to visit him in the base clinic.
‘Nor me if it were the other way round,’ said the Badger. They settled it by agreeing that if the Badger extended for a second one-year tour, the Mole would do the same in three months. So it was done. Both accepted a second tour and went back to the tunnels. The Division’s Commanding General, embarrassed by his own gratitude, handed out two more medals.
There were certain rules down in those tunnels that were never broken. One was: never go down alone. Because of his remarkable hazard antennae the Mole was usually up at point with the Badger several yards behind. Another rule was: never fire off all six shots at once. It tells the VC you are now out of ammo, and a sitting duck. Two months into his second tour, in May 1970, Cal Dexter nearly broke them both, and was lucky to survive.
The pair had entered a newly discovered shaft up in the Ho Bo woods. The Mole was up front and had crawled three hundred yards along a tunnel that changed direction four times. He had fingertip-felt two booby traps and disconnected them. He failed to notice that the Badger had confronted his own personal pet hatred, two tomb bats that had fallen into his hair, and had stopped, unable to speak or go on.
The Mole was crawling alone, when he saw or thought he saw the dimmest of glows coming from round the next corner. It was so dim he thought his retina might be playing tricks. He slithered silently to the corner and stopped, pistol in right hand. The glow also stayed motionless, just round the corner. He waited like that for ten minutes, unaware his frozen partner was out of sight behind him. Then he decided to break the stand-off. He lunged his torso round the corner.