BBC BBC.

BBC.

Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.

And today we hear from a Vietnamese veteran who built, lived and fought in a

network of underground tunnels during the Vietnam War. protected people's lives. That way we survived and could fight hard.

Le Van Lang was born in 1933 in the rural district of Kuchi, just 20 kilometers north of Hochiman city, then called Saigon.

During the Vietnam War he was part of the communist-led insurgency against the

South Vietnamese government and their American allies.

It was war.

I could die any time.

I tried to find life beyond death.

When they searched for us, if we were to survive, they would

have to die. It was us or them. With this in mind, we had to fight hard.

Kuchi in the countryside close to the South Vietnamese capital Saigon was at the center of the

insurgency and their local communists developed a vast tunnel network to act as a hidden base and shelter for local

Vietnami army units sent to the south. Le Van Lang helped dig the tunnels.

In a clearing where the soil was soft

we'd begin measuring, we'd dig two holes eight meters apart, just like digging a well.

We would go down about five meters and then make a horizontal cut.

We would dig the whole night, six to seven people for each section of tunnel.

Teams from each hole would dig towards each other.

When we linked up, we would then cover up the entrances to the holes immediately. The tunnel was not meant to be large. They were

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