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.