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| Going down into a tunnel system was a risky business fraught with danger. However, the tunnels yielded vital intelligence on the VC in the form of plans and documents. Usually armed only with a pistol or a knife and a flashlight. The "Tunnel Rat" would descend into a pitch black, claustrophobic, dank hell, to play a deadly game of hide and seek with the enemy. Carefully probing the floor, sides and ceilings of the tunnels became second nature to the tunnel rat as he gently inched and probed his way along. Feeling for wires or tree roots that didn't quite feel right, knowing that anyone of them could detonate a booby trap and blow him to smithereens. Or they may encounter a waiting VC around a corner or on the otherside of a trapdoor. Besides the booby traps, a tunnel rat crawling through tunnels might encounter swarming bats or deliberately tethered poisonous snakes as a sort of natural booby trap. Boxes of scorpions would be rigged with a trip wire, when tripped the scorpions would fall on him stinging him in the process. Crawling along on their stomachs also exposed the soldiers to painful bites from fire ants living in the tunnels and to real rats. The pistols that were carried by the tunnel rats were varied, ranging from the favored .38 Smith and Wesson to the Colt .45. One of the tunnel rats golden rules was you never fired more than 3 shots underground without reloading, as the VC would know you were out of ammo. Every rat carried a standard Army issue flashlight. These were carried in a way so as not to make themselves a nicely illuminated target. If the bulb in the flashlight died, Rats could quickly change the bulb in pitch darkness, lying prone, squatting, or kneeling down. The tunnel rat normally stripped himself from most of the infantryman's basic load in order to operate and survive in the narrow passages. This rat is wearing a Vietnamese produced bush hat with a locally purchased "Tunnel Rat" tab sewn on the front. The tunnel rats were among the bravest in Vietnam, doing a job that not many others could, or would care to do. Their motto was,"Non gratum anus rodentum - Not worth a rats ass." |
| Tunnel Rat, 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, Vietnam, 1969 |
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