Dirty Tricks

[dragoon500ly]

More dirty tricks....this one is a NVA trap.

Dig the standard hole for pungi stakes, place 2-3 toe popper mines in the bottom of the hole, and then fix the pungi stakes so that they point downwards from all sides. Then camouflage the trap and wait for the helpless GIs to walk down the jungle trail.

This was often laid out in checkerboard patterns, mixed with standard pungi traps.

[Abbott Shaull]

More dirty tricks....this one is a NVA trap.

Dig the standard hole for pungi stakes, place 2-3 toe popper mines in the bottom of the hole, and then fix the pungi stakes so that they point downwards from all sides. Then camouflage the trap and wait for the helpless GIs to walk down the jungle trail.

This was often laid out in checkerboard patterns, mixed with standard pungi traps.

One game of chess I wouldn't want to play.

[dragoon500ly]

NVA also pulled this trick...not so much demo as damned fine camouflage!

An infantry battalion was landed in the middle of a headquarters area, while the troops were searching for the enemy, they started to take heavy small arms fire; except the troops could not id the direction the fire was coming from. One GI dropped into a dry drainage ditch for cover and was promptly shot, a medic, hearing the cries of the injured trooper, jumped into the ditch and was killed by a gunshot. Two more troopers jumped into the ditch, one was killed and the other wounded.

By this time, the entire platoon had gone to ground trying to figure out where the fire was coming from. A squad leader was hunkered down behind an ant mound, looking the situation over. The drainage ditch was one leg of an upside down Y. The dead and injured GIs were on the vertical leg of the Y, smelling a rat the sergeant started looking over the area around the angle and soon spotted a narrow firing slit that overlooked the GIs. He signaled a trooper who was carrying a satchel charge and the two soon had the charge hanging right above the slit. After the charge blew, the platoon discovered that the NVA had dug a tunnel next to the ditch, and drilled a firing position every few meters. It later turned out that the area was covered with these tunnels.

So the GIs pulled back and Arclighted the site....after the B-52s had finished, they went back in swept the remainments of the garrison up.