Just as all of you are now growing up with daily news of the Iraq War, I grew up with the daily news of the Vietnam War and the real possibility of going there against my will (called the draft). Every day I saw and read about this conflict which is so much like what the US is fighting as the opposition was often indistiguishable from the normal civilian population.

However, unlike the Iraq mess, the main forces in Vietnam were organized into a proper army with all that goes with it. The Viet Cong and the NVA rarely had the sort of material abilities of the Free World forces against it (and by that I mean airpower, artillery and a well stocked supply line).

This meant that the way they did battle was very different. The Viet Cong and the NVA were masters of using available cover and rarely if ever fought to hold a position, preferring to melt away into the brush to fight another day. Their opposition was pretty much the opposite, fighting from built up fortifications that were used to house all the equipment and troops brought in to go out and find/fight the enemy.

One of the things always appreciated about the VC/NVA was that they were able to move with a great deal of stealth and it wasn't until the opposition found itself being fired upon from all sides that it was realized they were in the area.

The main reason for this was the sophisticated network of tunnels and other hidey-holes used. These could range from complexes that housed thousands to single person shelters. These were all cleverly arranged to take care of local vegetation and placed in such a manner that they were away from regularly used trails and waterways.

The defenses of these complexes were equally ingenious, using a variety of traps and snares to trap the unwary and give warning that the enemy was nearby.

G. Rottman spent time in Vietnam during the war and his job was to go out and find these places. This makes him well versed on the subject. His depth of expertise shows and greatly enhances this book. It covers the whole range of subjects from the nature of the land and war, through the building of these defenses, the arrangements of the camps and how the tunnel systems were built. It includes how the Free World forces tackled these defenses and systems when they found them and what it was like to live in these places.

The illustrations are key to helping to understand just what these places were like. Since they were designed to be temporary and mostly built from earth, nearly all of them disappeared or collapsed after the end of the war in 1975, so we have to rely on period images and drawings/paintings.

Overall, it is an especially intriguing  book covering a period of time that we all hoped would not be repeated. It is one that I found difficult to put down and I'm sure you will as well.

November 2006

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