Viet Cong Battle Strategies

The Viet Cong were rebel forces from the communist northern side of Vietnam.  They had the advantage of being super familiar with the battlegrounds because that is where they lived all of their lives.  It was much harder for the Americans to navigate and march through the thick shrubbery and vegetation.  The Viet Cong utilized the vegetation and topography to their advantage, and they had very brutal strategies.  The first category is their different types of booby traps.  The first kind that I will introduce are called punji sticks.  There would be a large hole dug, but not so large that it could be noticed and identified by a soldier.  Inside they would set up sharp wooden steaks that the soldier would fall into.  Not only would they get gruesome wounds, but some punji sticks were covered in feces so that their wounds would be instantly infected, causing them to die quicker.  The next kind of trap they used was a snake pit.  Vietnam has an abundance of bamboo pit vipers, so the Viet Cong utilized them and put a bunch in a pit that they dug.  When a soldier fell into that pit, they would be bitten and poisoned to death.  Another kind of trap were flag bombs.  After the Americans had won a battle, they would be tempted to tear down the Viet Cong flags that were set up, however, those flags contained bombs that would be set off if one tried to tear down the flag.  The Viet Cong also believed instead of killing, causing more medical evacuations for the Americans would slow them down.