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By 1936, By 1965, the Viet Cong had expanded a pre-existing labyrinth of tunnels and underground chambers, beneath their villages and the surrounding jungle. For nearly eight years, they practically lived in this network of subterranean cities as they

waged a war of endurance against South Vietnamese forces and their allies.

Thousands of miles from their own homes and families, the Allied soldiers and Marines who

daringly entered into these claustrophobic passages were met with complete darkness the smell of damp earth and rotting corpses, vicious booby traps, and enemy soldiers lying in weight.

This is the story of the Viet Cong tunnels.

I'm Luke Lamanah, and this is wartime stories.

Known by the Vietnamese as the American War, this conflict is still mired in heated political debate.

Therefore, understanding why this war was fought, why the Vietnamese spent over 20 years digging tens of thousands of kilometers of underground tunnels, requires a degree

of understanding the root causes of the war itself. Or, more precisely, the question of why millions

of Vietnamese citizens found themselves in the crossfire, as the armies of the French, Japanese,

and then allied forces, destroyed each other in the dense jungles and rice patties of Vietnam.

Invaded in the mid-19th century by Napoleon's forces, like so many other nations, Vietnam entered a long-standing fight to regain its independence from foreign exploitation and oppression.

Despite their initial defeat against expanding French colonization,

remnants of the Vietnamese armies began a campaign of guerrilla fighting through the 1860s, a time when armed conflict raged worldwide,

from the New Zealand wars to the Americans fighting a civil war half a world away.

Through the end of the Second World War, a lack of sufficient organization

appears to have caused the repeated failure

of Vietnamese anti-colonial uprisings against the now established French government.

...