Legend of the, Ho Chi Minh trail | Laos GPS Map Hope this brings back good memories instead of bad ones.
I was fascinated by the village low tech blacksmithing tools, impliments and equipment...come TEOTWAWKI, that's the kind of setup we'll probably be reduced to using for quite a while.
When a kid on a dirt poor farm my mother made a "bellows" in the field to get a lever red hot and rebent it. Have never forgotten that pic. She was quite an ingenious lady-miss her wisdom/ knowledge. We can do a lot if we want to and put our heads to the task.
While drilling post holes with a tractor driven post hole digger,in rocky ground, the "replaceable" tip was bent out of its correct angle. Town was a doubtful source of replacment so being close to 0'dark thirty I built a make shift forge with remains from the last nights fire pit and while cooking I slowly reshaped the tip. I still use that drill bit. Memories, worth more than you paid for them.
An amazing trick the VC used was to build bridges just under the water. They were not visible from the air yet they could be used easily. Low tech is often superior.
The bridge may have been under water; but the trail leading to and from it wasn't. Plus, sub surface bridges require slow flowing water or the current shows them as a straight line which aren't common in nature. See it, the trail and the craters?
Yet another method was found by US Army Special Forces. A slow flowing stream was used as a road way by building the roadway just below the surface using piers and pierced metal decking. When I find the only example I know of this type operation I will post its location. As I remember a 6 man team "dropped in" just to find this road way below the surface. But as the example in the picture, once it was found it was toast and not easily repaired. The enemy had been using it for truck traffic and only at night, this to bypass a heavily bombed and damaged road near by.
A bud was force recon. He said they would blow them up and the VC would build them back that night. The cong had been fighting the French since the fifties--then we thought we could beat them. We did but then the gub got in the way-- same as they did in Korea---and now in the middle east. There is an old quote--" you cannot win a war without the will to win". Think that was McArthur or maybe Patton. Our PC gub gets men killed needlessly. I like Teddy Roosevelt's philosophy -- "speak softly and carry a big stick".
The NVA did a lot of rebuilding by recruiting the locals as slave labor; so they weren't loved. Depending on which Force Recon platoon and what year, In 1965, a platoon was attached to A-106 at Ba To. Later, another platoon(?) was assigned to A-107 at Tra Bong. They worked with SF and the CID-G; I'm not sure but I believe the relationship ended in 1966? Both Ba To and Tra Bong are in the south central coast region of Vietnam. True and tying the Military's hands always means more people die. Another site: http://vietnamresearch.com/history/stats.html The average American would never believe the VC or the "greatest jungle fighter of the 20th Century" vanished as a viable military force after the 68 Tet, but they did. After the Tet, we never saw VC just NVA and they kept getting younger.