British Marine Reacts To Why Vietnam War TUNNEL RAT Job Was so DEADLY

[Music] hey troops welcome to the channel gen dead commando my name is ryan and i'm a former royal marines commando from the united kingdom and today we're going to be reacting to why vietnam walked on a rat job was so deadly it sounds deadly guys all right tunnel rat not a type of job i'd be like into doing don't really know where it entails but i can have a few guesses guys all right stick around for this one like share and subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already i really do appreciate each and every like and subscribe guys honestly it means the world to me so thank you thank you thank you for being here i really can't express enough how much i appreciate you all so without further ado let's just get straight into this one i'll see you guys in the comments june 11 1969 barrio city vung tau province vietnam a newbie tunnel rat arrived at the base to a scene of utter destruction just days earlier a platoon was hit by an m16 mine aka the jumping jack it got that name for the way it jumped in the air when stepped on it killed three men and injured 24 others not long after the hidden enemy injured 24. my goodness now there's a reason why in the military especially the marines we talk about spearsins a lot space out guys we laid an anti-personnel mine a personnel carrier hit that mine it was the first time that the unseasoned tunnel rat saw a dead body it was chaos each and every day he had to learn fast the number one tunnel rat nicknamed yogi was hit twice by mines bits were hanging off him as he told the newbie what he had to do next this was not a job for the faint of heart but someone had to do it that story is true it happened to a combat engineer in the australian army he took on one of the hardest and scariest roles in the war that of a tunnel rat we'll get back to his story but first let's talk about the job i'm excited to hear this going to war this is this is going to be good this one honestly kong the french fought the viet minh from 1946 to 1954. during that men learned a thing or two about fighting a superpower to beat someone far more powerful than yourself you had to resort to guerrilla tactics one of those tactics was keeping below ground and so the viet minh got to work building a massive complex of tunnels when the americans arrived in 1955 the tunnels were already vast but it was the viet cong that really made them a feat of engineering during the vietnam war or the american war to the vietnamese the vietcong used those tunnels for all kinds of things while the opening to the tunnels was small they might lead to a complex system of tunnels that would lead to large underground spaces it was within these spaces that the vietnamese usually guys this is a job raw that i would be like hang on a minute i didn't sign up for this i didn't even know this existed in vietnam this is crazy i knew the built tunnels and stuff but i didn't realize that people going in there from the american side man respect respect would hide eat sleep and machinate attacks on their enemy the tunnels served as headquarters hospitals barracks and storage facilities since they had ventilation systems it was possible to stay down there for a prolonged period of time so we're not so much talking about men burrowing like rabbits but men living in a subterranean world these worlds provided safety from the hostels the men would come out of them at night lay traps for the enemy and sneak back into the tunnel and that's how so many american and australian soldiers lost their lives to mind laying soldiers that were rarely seen above ground it was actually an australian combat engineering unit the three field force that were the first tunnel rats the americans later joined them but we don't imagine guys were queueing up for the job just imagine it they find the entrance but have no idea where the tunnel will lead or who they will encounter down there that wasn't the only threat of humans to worry about too vietnam is in the tropics and the tropics are home to all kinds of dangerous creatures have you ever seen a vietnamese giant centipede those oh no i haven't but i've heard about them have you seen them guys i've heard the monstrous absolutely monstrous fast-moving prehistoric looking creatures deliver one of the most painful insect bites known to man and guess what they too like to hide in tunnels then there were the snakes the highly venomous and deadly banded crate the millennium pit viper the king cobra and a whole host of other bad ass snakes this just can't spoil a person's day the soldiers had to deal with ants nests annoying bats rats carrying the bubonic plague as well as spiders that weren't generally a threat to life but could make life painful so you can imagine that going into one of those tunnels was about as frightening as getting into ted bundy's volkswagen i mean the thing is right you can forget about ted bundy what he was talking about there the fact that these men were fighting wars i've been in the jungle guys i've operated in the jungle in africa and it was horrendous but it was nothing like what these guys were facing these guys are facing a ferocious enemy as well all right and then the elements the elements is bad enough the environment which you're in is horrific i'm not joking it's like being in a sauna all the time there's no rest there's even when you're lying down you're sweating it's hot everything wants to eat you it's just such a hard environment guys to survive in never mind having a ferocious enemy who wants to kill you as well honestly it's just horrific man beetle but they had to do it lest more men get blown to bits by these damned jumping jack mines if the men can infiltrate the tunnels they might not only kill a few of the enemy but they would usually come across a stash of mines grenades and guns there was another problem concerning arms the tunnels were small and so that meant that the tunnel rats couldn't take larger guns down them they were usually only equipped with an m1911 pistol or an m1917 revolver they'd also have a flashlight a knife and usually some explosives so they could blow up whatever they found down there you can just picture it a man crawling through the darkness his flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the eye crawls and crawls and then he sees the enemy he shoots and then all he can hear is ringing in his ears he's blinded by the flash and deafened by the noise then the earth above his head starts to fall he needs to get out fast what he doesn't know is that the vietcong have something special for him poisonous gas and this tunnel rat didn't choose the gas mask option because the last time he wore one he could barely see if the gas doesn't get him the flood will the vietcong designed this particular tunnel with a flooding feature if it should ever be infiltrated other times the tunnel might just collapse which wasn't a designed feature but a case of poor construction you can't believe that crazy i just can't believe that this actually happened this existed those people who went down there let me know your thoughts on this guys i want to hear in the comments do you know any stories about these tunnel rat guys it seems like the worst job the hardest job in the military do this job you also had to be short imagine a hulk of a man with quite the belly trying to navigate around a tunnel soldiers that were picked for the job were usually not taller than 165 centimeters it was the same years later when the u.s marine corps and british royal marines fought in the afghanistan war yet tunnel rats weren't only a thing in vietnam but let's stay wow okay so i was a royal marines commando well i am a royal marines commando i was formerly in um never knew that we actually had equivalent of tunnel rats alongside our american us marine counterpart brothers in afghanistan i don't know what's worse being a tunnel right in afghan or being a tunnel right in the jungle what do you think guys with vietnam for now and go back to the australian soldier he was trained at the australian army school of military engineering he actually thought that this line of study would mean he'd be facing less combat in doing more engineering he was wrong he was being trained to become a tunnel rat that meant learning about things such as mind detection disarming booby traps safely blowing stuff up and learning how to get through tunnels when he arrived in vietnam he walked into chaos as we said one of the first things he saw was the aftermath of a soldier stepping on a jumping jack mine three bodies were outfitted with body bags and after that two dozen men were wounded he said those m16 mines were everywhere and it was part of his job to find them what the viet cong did was store them in the tunnels and then lay them at night so each day was a new day and there was always a possibility of new minds lying around that's why the tunnel rat had such an important job find where the mines were stored and blow up the tunnel and then no more mines when he started the job he worked as a tunnel rat number two he worked in a pair with tunnel rat number one and when six months was up he became number one and he was joined by a newbie he hadn't been at number two for long when he heard that a number one tunnel rat named yogi had stood on a mine yogi was alive but as you can imagine he wasn't looking too well in fact only three australians that stood on mines made it back home with their legs and lives intact yogi was one of them he was lucky the fatality rate in his unit was 33 that's one reason why going 33 percent one in three people is getting caught up and injured quite badly would you do that job if those were the if that was the percentages i don't know these these brave brave men need more respect man going into tunnels was not a prospect most soldiers liked the americans wanted to destroy the tunnels not from the inside but from the outside if you dropped enough bombs on suspected tunnels then they would cave in and anyone inside would suffocate if you sprayed poisonous gases into them the vietcong would die you could also try and flood the area where the tunnels were and by doing that to drown the enemy the problem was that these efforts didn't always result in success the reason for that was the fact that the viet cong made more impressive tunnels they made them blast proof flood proof and provided extra ventilation so the gases weren't effective they also made them in a zigzag shape to mitigate the effect of an explosion this is why the tunnel rat was indispensable those guys were the only thing that really worked believe it or not most american soldiers were not chosen to do this job but actually volunteered most soldiers wow that shows you the level of bravery that our american warrior brothers had you've got these guys volunteering to do this job that's what i like to hear man true warrior brothers america at its finest first thought you'd have to be out of your mind to do the work the centipedes and the snakes were one thing but suffocation in a collapsed tunnel was something from a nightmare so why did they volunteer one soldier back then said it was sometimes a macho thing soldiers did it to show others just how tough they were he said that many tunnel rats had had problematic lives back home in the us so they wanted to show that they could be useful and useful they were as well as brave one tunnel rat named c.w bowman said that his fellow soldiers thought he was a maniac doing the job he said they took bets each time he went into a tunnel and some men bettered that he would die some men almost did and this would become a weakness imagine having your buddies betting on is this guy coming back or not but betting on yeah he's not coming back today how would you feel about that guys if there was money going on you i don't even know what the emotions must be like man that must just be horrendous us military we'll get around to that soon let's first take you through a mission you shoot first and ask questions later that was the mantra of the tunnel rat anything they came across they shot at they would usually fire only three bullets and then reload the reason for this was the enemy wouldn't know how many bullets they had in the chamber let's say the mission was successful and that the tunnel rat took out the enemy and discovered what was hidden down there what would they find on one mission the tunnel was around 120 feet at the end of the tunnel the rat found places where men cooked and slept as for items he discovered eight rifle grenades forty pounds of salt and six thousand pounds of rice all of which was destroyed on another mission the tunnel rats found cameras films and printing presses as well as weapons and ammunition there was still a problem though and that was the fact that even if the tunnel rats were successful the americans still had a problem winning the war you can take out the tunnel but there will always be more this is a quote from ho chi minh the president of north vietnam you can kill 10 of our men for every one we kill of yours but even at those odds you will lose and we will win take for instance the use of booby traps horrific things that killed around 11 of american soldiers during the war sometimes the vietcong would put a pungy steak trap in a larger part of the tunnel these were holes filled with sharpened bamboo that would be covered with branches and leaves when a soldier stood on the trap the spikes would impale him and worse the spikes might have been dobbed with poison or feces the soldier yeah i've heard of this before guys um if you're unlucky enough to just to step on one of these or fall down on one of these you're gonna die pretty much a horrible death like you know of infection or you've if your wounds haven't already made you bleed out you probably die of of sheer shock i mean that's just a gruesome way to go it would um it wouldn't last one second in under geneva conventions um rules of war yeah don't apply in some places of the world what's your thought patterns on that guys should we follow their rules i don't know i think sometimes we need to throw the rules out the window would then scream out but he wouldn't die this was the point because the vietcong wanted more men to go down into the tunnel not only were there often more traps down there but even if there weren't pulling an injured man off sharp sticks and dragging him out through the tunnel was very time consuming the vietcong would later say that the americans spent so much time and energy rescuing their injured comrades that they had lots of time to regroup and plan what they were going to do next the sheer horror of these traps were also very bad for morale this is what ho chi minh was referring to when he said the americans would not be victorious he was right too there were other kinds of traps a tunnel wrap might have hit a tripwire while crawling and then the tunnel would have collapsed on him there's a story of a tunnel rat that popped his head out of one entrance and that triggered a spear that went through his neck at other times the vietcong made traps like something you might have seen in an indiana jones movie a man could hit a tripwire in a tunnel and then a concrete ball studded with spikes would come flying at him a lieutenant named this is genuinely it's generally like a horror movie guys vietnam i reckon vietnam's probably one of the most horrific wars of of the modern era without question you tell me a war that was more horrific than this in terms of the horrors the traps the deadly um the deadly thor pattern of the viet cong all right what they were prepared to do you're prepared to do anything absolutely anything guys you tell me a worse wall than this put them in the comments named jack flower said he experienced a totally different kind of trap his comrade went into a tunnel and that man triggered a tripwire after that a box full of scorpions rained down on him snakes were also used sometimes the vietcong would place them in bamboo and tie them to the roof of the tunnel when a soldier hit the bamboo the snake would pop out and bite the man in his face they scared the hell out of the soldiers some of whom called them three-step snakes because after you were bitten you only had three steps before you died that might be a bit of an exaggeration but you can imagine being stuck in a dark tunnel with scorpions and snakes flowers went into over 100 tunnels he later said this about the expeditions in these tunnels your adrenaline was pumping like a river i swear i could hear my heart beating you'd feel your way along for booby traps they got so you could sense them same for the vc you could smell another human being in the tunnel you knew he was waiting for you in the dark all these horrors that the vietcong created instilled so much fear in the men that volunteering to be a tunnel rat wasn't exactly on every soldier's mind but some i've got to be honest guys i don't think i would be you know i'm a royal marines commando of um i've passed the test i've i've made the grid but sometimes you have to accept would you be good enough to do that job i wouldn't want to put my i wouldn't want to put my honor on the line i wouldn't want to be present and say yeah i could do that job because watching this i don't think i could i don't think i could do that job these men are better men than me better men than me i couldn't do what they do i couldn't have done what these guys have done i don't i don't care uh it's not in me someone had to do it they had to do it for the team so to speak this is what one american said about hiding in tunnels we often wondered how things happened in the night and we never saw what was going on guys getting their throats cut nobody ever knew where these guys were coming from they had to go down every tunnel they could find otherwise strange things happened during the night it created tremendous psychological stress not knowing where the enemy was so sending down tunnel rats was some peace of mind there were successful tunnel campaigns such as operation cramp in operation cedar falls but in the end the viet cong proved to be more resilient while the american soldiers were literally having nervous breakdowns going into the tunnels the vietnamese soldiers were at home in them if the tunnels were destroyed they just built more of them the americans had the task of sisyphus pushing the giant rock up a slope for eternity as for the fate of the tunnel rats there isn't any data on how many of them died but it's thought that most of them succumbed during those horrific explorations of the vietnamese sub-terrain out of 100 or so tunnel rats in the american army only 12 of them lived to tell the tale of those tunnels back on american soil one of those men was jack flowers he later said why did we do it i wasn't a tough guy nobody who knows me would ever suspect i could do what the tunnel rats did i never want a son of mine to have to do it i wasn't a tough guy how many people wrecking this guy is a tough guy i won't be the first to put my hand up this guy is a tough guy a real tough guy thank god he said that these days men don't have to do what he did now you should watch this video the insane wow guys that last bit got me actually how humble could he be one of 12 people to have come back and survived and he doesn't class himself as a tough guy i know that's what a tough guy is someone who doesn't really class himself as a tough guy the ones that go around gobbing off and stuff they're not normally the people that are tough they just have to act tough mad respect for these people mad respect guys like share and subscribe to the channel i do this every single day if you like what you see then drop a comment below if you want to support the channel a little bit further press that join button i really would appreciate your membership but other than that have a wonderful day wherever you are thank you for stopping by i can't thank you guys enough have a nice day

Channel: Ryan Forrest

Views: 23,779

Keywords: tunnel rat, tunnel rats, vietnam, vietnam war, viet cong, viet cong tunnels, military, land mines, tunnel rats of vietnam, the infographics show, war, soldiers, army, vietnam war story, war stories, vietnam war stories, history, historical, animated, animation, animated history, Gen Dit Commando, Royal Marine Reacts, British Marine Reacts, British Marine Reacts To Why Vietnam War TUNNEL RAT Job Was so DEADLY, Why Vietnam War TUNNEL RAT Job Was so DEADLY, TUNNEL RAT

Id: yg0ttcAVjUQ

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021