Tunnel rats in vietnam?

Question

Hi,

I want to read about experience of tunnel rats in vietnam - personal memoirs where they mention the hazards they faced, combat in tunnel, getting the better of the enemy or getting injured on the job. Please suggest.

Answer 1

I dont wish to sound flipant,but have you tried google.

Answer 2

I am living in Hanoi right now and a girlfriend of mine's father, Huet, was a "Tunnel Rat" as you call him.  I wrote about him on my blog at www.nick-in-nam.com.  If you send me your email, I will send you a picture of Huet and I during dinner at his house with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter (who would not exist, had we killed Huet.)  If you have specific questions, I can ask him for you.

Here is an excerpt from my blog on Huet:

Dinner With the Nguyen Family

Uncategorized — Nick @ 2:17 am

I had a lovely dinner with Trang (say: Tchang, or, Jenny) tonight with her family, and later, drinking and smoking and tea with neighbors.  Pictures and commentary coming.  I have an appointment for a dog dinner with one of the neighbors (Nim) Sunday.

That’s a “dog dinner”, not a “dog’s dinner”.  I’m game.  Life is too short not to try everything.

Trang’s Dad, Huet (sic.), fought in the American War and showed me the M-16 graze on his head during dinner and told me about the day the American Bombers came and the A-frame supports of the tunnel he was in collapsed on his head.  At this point he was wounded enough to be sent home to his mom.

The M-16 graze was, as John Wayne would say, just a “flesh wound”.

Mon Buddha!  What a ******* nice guy.

Glad we didn’t kill HIM.

We wouldn’t have Trang without him.  I wouldn’t have had a lovely dinner.

Vietnam would have been short one more nice guy.

The Planet would have been short one more nice guy.

To this day Huet gets payments from the government for his service and his wounds.  A full pension, for taking a Yank bullet for the cause.  He works at the Electric Company and just got a promotion.

Huet was adamant that “the past was a long time ago” and “Vietnam and America are good friends now”.  I made it a point of explaining my Dad was in the Service before the American War, and I was only a child at the time, and my Service was much later and and I was against it anyway.  We had no ******* business trying to destroy these peoples homes and lives.

He dismissed all my angst with camaraderie, laughs, and pouring me another beer and trying to make me eat more of the beautiful food on the table.

What a ******* nice guy.  I’m choked up just writing about it.  

I went to University with a bunch of nice Iraqi guys.  I wonder how many of them we are short now.

Can anyone tell me, how are Our Vets are doing?  We “Support the Troops”, but from what I’ve been reading, once we’re done with them, they’re on their own, to eak out a living a leg or an arm or a brain cell short of what one needs to make a living and buy one of those American Dream things we all get promised.

Somebody else can have mine.  I’m happy enough with some dogs or some ducks or some pig brains for dinner and some cheap beer and some cigarettes IN THE ******* BAR THANK YOU!  (Wiretaps, torture, yeah, yeah yeah, but when they told you that you couldn’t smoke cigarettes in a bar, didn’t you somehow get a rough idea the freedom was gone?).

WTF?

Hope there’s enough heroin going around to quell the suffering of the poor b******s that we’re not paying for.  Sorry guys.  I voted for the other guy.  You’d still have your legs and your sanity if he’d won.  Iraq would have 3 million more people now.

I really hate that I pass my life apologizing (constantly) to practically everyone I meet for EVERYTHING on behalf of my "dumbshit, no-passport-having, not understanding that everyone else is human, and has dreams and families, and feelings too country."