How Viet Cong Fighters Ate, Slept & Survived 3 Years Living 30 Feet Under a US Army Base

In January 1966 the US 25th Infantry Division built one of the largest American bases in Vietnam at Cu Chi. It was built on top of a live section of the Viet Cong tunnel network, and for the next five years there was an American city on the roof and people living in the basement. This is how they ate, slept and survived down there: the stove a Viet Minh cook invented in 1951 so that cooking smoke never gave anyone away, the captured report that put a number on how sick a tunnel unit really was, the three levels, the U-bends that stopped gas and water, the chili and garlic that beat the tracker dogs, and the paper count that tells you who was besieging whom. Chapters 0:00 A man ten metres under a running generator 1:25 Three things to hold 2:16 The roof: the 25th Division arrives at Cu Chi 2:48 The strange losses, and an envelopment from below 3:58 The base stayed, 1966 to 1970 4:43 The basement: day below, night above 5:52 Eating: the Hoang Cam stove 7:10 Sleeping: a passage a grown man could not stand in 8:00 The captured report: malaria and parasites 8:44 The dark was total 9:34 Three levels 10:24 Plumbing: U-bends against gas and water 10:58 The dogs, the chili and the garlic 11:43 The traps, and the three-step snake 12:11 Not built for the Americans: the French war 12:59 Operation Crimp and the first tunnel team 13:47 Operation Cedar Falls: 30,000 men and 491,553 pages 15:24 Who was besieging whom 15:57 The three things, answered 16:28 The photographer who could not find the way back in Sources and credits The cold open (0:00 to 0:26) and the final callback are dramatized reconstructions generated for this video. They are not archival footage. Film (US National Archives, public domain, via archive.org and Wikimedia Commons): The Big Picture, Your Army Reports No. 10 (NARA 111-TV-713); Mines and Booby Trap Course, Cu Chi, 1967 (NARA 111-LC); Lai Khe, 1st Division (1040VI1524); Operation Baker (NARA 111-LC); The Staff Film Report 66-18A; Activities of the 1st Infantry Division, South Vietnam 1968. Photographs, public domain via Wikimedia Commons: US Army Signal Corps, DASPO and NARA photographs of the 25th Infantry Division at Cu Chi (1966 to 1970), Operation Crimp (January 1966), Operation Cedar Falls (January 1967), the 49th Scout Dog Platoon and the ARVN Military Dog School, the Iron Triangle, the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the 25th Division's landing at Vung Tau, by SSG Edward Kane, SSG Howard C. Breedlove, SSG Robert R. Ellis, SSgt Francisco J. Salas, SFC Peter P. Ruplenas, SGT Virgilio Rodriguez, SP5 James B. Egan, SP5 Allan K. Holm, SP5 Lawrence J. Sullivan, SP5 D.R. Goff, SP4 Dwight Carter, SP4 Wilkinson, PFC Robert C. Lafoon and SPF William F. Abbott; Office of History, US Army Corps of Engineers; US Information Agency; Department of the Army (Operation Cedar Falls map); TTXVN (Viet Minh photographs, 1953 to 1954); S.L.A. Marshall (Australians on Operation Crimp); Kevyn Jacobs (the Cu Chi tunnels and trapdoors, 1997). Photographs under Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons: Jorge Láscar from Australia, Cu Chi tunnels series (CC BY 2.0); RG72, Cu Chi tunnels, dioramas, air pipe and B-52 crater (CC BY-SA 4.0); Rushen, Bungarus candidus, Blue krait (CC BY-SA 2.0); Matthew Blissett, Cu Chi original tunnel (CC BY-SA 3.0); Liftold at Vietnamese Wikipedia, Hoang Cam cooker (CC BY-SA 3.0); Gabichan2020, Bike used in the Ho Chi Minh Trail (CC BY-SA 4.0); Kiraface, Bún chả with chili peppers and fresh garlic (CC BY-SA 4.0); shankar s. from Dubai, Another ventilation termite mound (CC BY 2.0); Archives Branch, USMC History Division, War Dog Handler, December 1962 (CC BY 2.0); SSG Francisco Salas, Engineers climb from CH-47 to clear landing zone, Operation Cedar Falls, 8 January 1967 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Gary Todd, Cu Chi Viet Cong Tunnels series (CC0); Michael Barry Shannon, Tu Do Street in 1966 (CC0); Balon Greyjoy, Cu Chi tunnel ant hill (CC0). Animations: original explainer animations made for this video. Quotations from Colonel Chau Lam are from his 2003 interview with NBC News. Nguyen Thi Nghia's account is from Agence France-Presse. Descriptions of Nam Thuan follow Tom Mangold and John Penycate, The Tunnels of Cu Chi. Captain Herbert Thornton's selection criteria are given by the National Museum of the United States Army. TAGS: how viet cong fighters ate, slept & survived 3 years living 30 feet under a us army base, war debrief, cu chi tunnels, viet cong tunnels, tunnels of cu chi, 25th infantry division, tunnel rats, hoang cam stove, hoang cam, chau lam viet cong, duong thanh phong, herbert thornton tunnel rats, 1st infantry division vietnam, 1st engineer battalion, operation crimp, operation cedar falls, ben suc, vietnam war documentary, military history documentary, how soldiers survived, full length documentary, vietnam war 1966