works cited

 

"General Statistics Vietnam War." General Statistics Vietnam War. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 May 2014.

 

 

"Booby Traps Created by the VC during the Vietnam War." Booby Traps Created by the VC during the Vietnam War. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2014.

 

 

"Booby Traps." Booby Traps. N.p., 20 May 2004. Web. 1 May 2014.

 

 

"Mike Smith Interveiw." Personal interview. 2 May 2014.

Most of the non-explosive traps were not fatal to first but infection was the greatest threat after getting into a booby trap. Most traps were targeted at the feet and legs of the soldiers, so they wouldn't die from the traps immediately. The Viet Cong knew this and to aid in infecting the wound they would soak the punji sticks used in allot of traps in human excrement for days. The excrement would get into the wound and could cause lethal infections.
The explosive traps were better at killing soldiers much faster. The grenades didn't need help in killing power. An M67 grenade has a casualty radius of 15 meters. That means anyone in 15 meters of the grenade when it goes off can die. This id why the Viet Cong didn't have to help their explosive traps in preforming.

The traps set by the Viet Cong were effective but were not a huge cause of death in the Vietnam war. Booby traps and mines were the cause for only eleven percent of the death. Only fifteen percent were wounded by the booby traps. The pungi sticks accounted for a whole two percent of the wounds in Vietnam. One in ten Americans sent to Vietnam didn't return back home alive. It is estimated that 5.8 million soldiers fought in the war. 2.2 million died and 58 thousand were American Soldiers. So overall the nasty booby traps and pungi sticks did not take many soldiers out of the war but it did strike fear in the soldiers.

Improvised explosive devices in the Vietnam war

Explosive traps were not as diverse as the non-explosive traps were. The explosive traps were not used very often because the Viet Cong had limited resources and couldn't get explosives easily. Since the explosive traps weren't used often there isn't much information on the subject. The only explosive trap I could find information on was a trip wire attached to a grenade. The Viet Cong would take a soup can and attach it to a tree or stick of bamboo. This was used to hold the grenade waiting for a soldier to pull the wire that would pull the pin on the grenade and set it off. There were traps set on bridges for vehicles to drive across and blow them up. The explosive traps were not very popular simply because the Viet Cong had limited resources and couldn't get explosives.

The Use Of Punji Traps In The Vietnam War

There were two different types of booby traps used in Vietnam; explosive and non explosive. The different booby traps were used for different targets. The explosive traps were used to take out larger targets like cars and trucks or even larger groups of soldiers. The explosive could use grenades or C4. The non-explosive traps were mostly for a single to small groups of soldiers. The non-explosive traps used pungi sticks or sometimes they used poisonous snakes in the traps. Both traps were effective in slowing down troops. The non-explosive traps were more widely used by the Viet Cong.

Non-explosive booby traps come in many different forms. There were pungi sticks used in most of the traps to puncture soldiers. The pungi sticks were bamboo sticks cut to a point on one end and soak in human excrement for several days to induce infection. The pungi sticks could be put in the bottom of holes to be stepped or put into what the soldiers called the "checker board". As my great uncle explained, the "checker board" was a board made of bamboo weaved into a square and pungi sticks shoved in it. It was suspended in the jungle trees and triggered by a trip wire so that when triggered it would fall down and become impaled into the person who tripped the wire. The size of the traps vary on the target, if it was meant for only a foot or a bigger trap would be for a whole body.

I chose to study the booby traps in Vietnam because i found it interesting how the Viet Cong were taking soldiers out of battle before the battle and also because my great Uncle Mike is a Vietnam veteran. He has told me little stories about Vietnam and he has a scrapbook with photos and money from Vietnam. I'm know that scrapbook very well because he has let me bring it to school several times and show it to my classmates and teachers. Even though that him being in the war was very interesting, it makes it so he has couple of physical problems like hip trouble and eye problems as well as ptsd and he doesn't watch the fireworks with us on fourth of July.

My great uncle was a Sergeant of the fourth infantry. He went into the military at the age of 18 years old. He was stationed in Pleiku recon base from February 68 to September 70. By the time he was done he received two silver hearts and one bronze heart.

I interviewed my great Uncle Mike about the booby traps used by the Viet Cong because he is a Vietnam war veteran. He was a sergeant in the 4th infantry stationed in Pleiku recon base from February of 1968 to September of 1970. He was rewarded with two silver stars and one bronze star.
 
I asked him to describe some of the booby traps he saw used while he was based in Vietnam.
 He described the pungi sticks used in most anti personal traps. He told me that pungi sticks were blades of bamboo with a sharp point on one end. To cause infection after being stuck with one of the sticks, they would soak the sticks for three days in human excrement. To set the traps, the Viet Cong would dig a hole one foot by foot by one foot deep,  approximately, and then the trap he described they would lay two boards across the top the hole. The boards would be covering the pungi sticks and a solider would step on the board and the pungi sticks would go through the combat boots and take that solider out of fighting for a while. Another reason for two boards was that when you wopuld try to pull the foot back out of the hole you couldnt because the boards would stop it.

In the Vietnam war, the Viet Cong were a Communist trained warriors which invaded North Vietnam. They didn't have large supplies of weapons and/or ammunition, so they made up for the lack in fire power by using anti personal and anti-vehicle traps. There are two main types of booby traps;explosive and non-explosive trap for both anti personal and anti-vehicle traps. These traps were meant to slow the enemy troops, move resources to clearance operations and to inflict injuries on the enemy. The traps were effective in causing both physical harm and psychological stress on the ground troops because the traps were hard to see and easy to set off. The spikes that would be set in the traps were often covered in human excrement or poison so cause infections. So even if the even the hit wasn't fatal the infection from the excrement spread on the spikes could kill. This traps alone caused 11 percent of the deaths and 17 percent of the wounds among the Australian troops between 1965 to 1970.