Fernandes gets a feel of the Vietcong spirit

HO CHI MINH CITY, MARCH 29. The Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, today got a firsthand feel of one of the greatest guerilla warfare techniques ever employed when he visited the Cu- Chi tunnels, a maze of underground defences through which a handful of Vietcong humbled five mighty campaigns of the American Army.

After signing a wide-ranging defence cooperation agreement in Hanoi, Mr. Fernandes flew here to visit the 200-km network of tunnels spread like a cobweb under the ground, where merely by dropping into just a small section, one could visualise how a small country such as Vietnam had humbled the mightiest power on earth.

The three-layered tunnel, some going as deep as 40 to 50 feet, was built by the Vietcong to wage a campaign against the French in 1945. The maze was later spread to withstand five major armed campaigns of the U.S. Army, who used heavy B-52 bombers, tanks, heavy artillery, special troops and even 3,000 German Shepard dogs.

The tunnel zig-zags underground for over 200 km just on the outskirts of the Ho Chi Minh city, from where a dedicated band of Vietcong took on five campaigns of the Americans taking a toll of 20,000 U.S. troops, destroying more than 5,000 tanks and armoured cars and shooting down 256 aircraft of all kinds over a period of 10 years.

- PTI

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Section  : International
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