Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 1977)
Vietnamese wartime tunnels visited (Cu chi, Vietnam) — As Li. Col. George Eyster lay dying from Viet Cong sniper bullet wounds on a jungle trail, he said to me, “before I go I’d like to talk to the guy who controls those incredible men in the tunnels.” Eleven years later I met that man and he showed me the inside of the fantastic tunnel octopus that took 30 years to dig and stretched 150 miles, with tentacles sometimes winding right under the chairs of U.S. com manders as they sat in their headquarters. Eyster, a tall West Pointer from Cocoa Beach, Fla., died in a field hospital while his battalion, the Second of the 28th Regiment, First Infantry Division, was trying to fight its way out of the vast underground complex 20 miles northwest of Saigon. The now peaceful tunnels were on the itinerary of a German tourist group I traveled with on a rare two-week trip to Vietnam. One of the briefing officers at district headquarters was Capt. Nguyen Thanh Unh. Dressed in an olive drab North Vietnamese uniform and Ho Chi Minh rubber tire sandals, he said in answer to a question that he had commanded the Cu Chi Liberation Battalion during 1966. That was the unit the American colonel's "Black Lion” battalion had opposed. The slightly-built, 45-year-old Capt. Unh looked quizzically as I pursued my questioning. Yes, he said, intelligence reports had informed him at the time that the opposing American battalion commander had been killed. As he recalled those days for our tourist group, the horror of a war I had witnessed from only one side became vividly real. Capt. Unh spoke in French with grudging respect and almost without hatred about his former enemies, the Americans. The death of Eyster and many other Ameri cans in those early war years shocked the American public, but as the captain talked it was evident the bat tles had not been one-sided. Of the 600 men in the Cu Chi battalion that fought Eyster's Black Lions in January 1966, only four survived the war, two officers and two non-commissioned offic ers, said Unh. The battalion itself “was wiped out several times,” he said. “Each time we reconstructed it. In the whole sector we lost 12,000 men in the course of the war.” The former battlefields looked lush and sleepy as our group drove from Saigon northwest along the river bearing the city’s name. Some deep B52 bomb craters were still visible, retained as fish ponds or wallowing holes for animals. Youth labor gangs were widening a road, and oc casionally a reminder of the war would appear. A rusting armored personnel carrier with First Infantry Division markings and “Little Rose’’ painted on its side loomed out of a bamboo thicket. The wreck of a U.S. helicopter was overgrown with elephant grass. The battleground we were being taken to lay be neath our feet, at one, two and three levels undergound. It was a twisting octopus of tunnels and caverns stretch ing from Cu Chi towards Saigon and the surrounding provincial capitals. The tunnels were marked in black lines on a 12 by 12-foot map hanging from a briefing room wall, and my first reaction was that it looked like a map of the New York or London subway system, with dots not for sta tions but for fighting positions and secret entrances and exits. The slippery, humid corridors, about two feet wide and two feet high, blocked with wooden trapdoors at undergound intersections, spanned the history of the whole Vietnam war, starting from the days when Com munist agents hid from the French police. But it was during the American phase of the war, Linh said, that the system was truly tested. "As more and mere American soldiers arrived to occupy the surface above, the more we extended our system below,’’ said a senior officer at the briefing, Col. Duong Long Sang. “At the end we had a three-tier tunnel system and everything was underground — the toilets, the hospi tals, all our soldiers, many civilians and even water buffalo.’’ The colonel continued: “We literally dug for 30 years, usually in the dark, squatting down. We carved out about a meter every eight hours, and women distri buted the earth on the surface, hiding it under fallen leaves. ” The tunnels crept under some U.S. positions "Several times we knew that American field comman ders would sit like this on their metal chairs directly above us,” said Linh with a grin. The Vietnamese took our group for a visit, and as noisy swarms erf mosquitoes buzzed around our heads we pushed ourselves tnrougn me narrow cornoors, oo viously built by and for slender Vietnamese. "We always moved in the dark, saving our candles and torches for emergencies," said Linh. "Our am putees lay in the dark, sometimes for months.” But eventually the Americans figured out the coun terattack. First they used hunting dogs "and we battled them underground with rifle butts, mines and knives," said Linh. Then somebody had the idea to use American toilet soap and the Vietnamese started smelling the same as the GIS. "That stopped the dogs," Linh said. Next came the "tunnel rats — small, tough Ameri cans, like us,” Linh said. "They crawled into the tunnels with explosives and gas to blast us out. We installed more escspe routes, more tiers, but sometimes we were cornered and we tried to kill them with bayonets so as not to give our positions away. “Many Americans died in the tunnels. They wasted much time pulling their dead back. That gave us time to regroup. The more we killed, the fewer problems we had," said Linh. The Americans tried flooding the tunnels "and we lost many men until we constructed upper tier escape levels," Col. Sang said. Finally, Linh said, came the "scorched earth" policy that from 1968 on saw regular B52 bombing of the tunnel complexes. Only direct hits killed, Linh claimed, but he described the awesome experience of a near miss: "Fire would be everywhere, the body would be thrown back and forth in the tunnel, shirt and pants would be ripped apart by the suction of the air blast." Sang stated: "The Americans used to say that as long as there were soldiers of the Liberation Front in the Cu Chi tunnels, Saigon would be in danger. They were right. We planned the 1968 Tet attack against the U S Embassy in Saigon from here And it was also from here that details for the final, successful liberation of Saigon on April 30. 1975, were drawn up. "The greatest pleasure in those days was to stick one's head out to the surface and just breathe air," said Linh as we dim bed into our vehicles for the ride back to Saigon. I watched him take a gulp of the heavy, humid and undisturbed air that hangs over peaceful Cu Chi today. Weaver calls gas deregulation robbery By JOHN RIMEL Of the Emerald U.S. Representative Jim Weaver, D-Ore., said Monday in a news conference the deregulation of natural gas prices would drasti cally increase both unemploy ment and inflation. “Deregulation would be a mas sive robbery of consumers, as much as $10 billion to $20 billion a year,” he said. The Fourth District Congress man said if gas prices are allowed to rise, all other energy prices will go up and unemployment also would increase because the American public’s purchasing power would be diminished. Dave Fidanque, spokesman for Weaver's Eugene office, said that since 70 per cent of Eugene’s natural gas comes from Canada, the impact on the Eugene area would be only indirect. Industry would pass the increase in gas costs to consumers, and prices of CROSS COUNTRY SKI PRE-SEASON SALE Regular Special Price Price Kneissl Loipe S Skis $90.00 $60.00 Trucker BCP Skis $180.00 $130.00 Trucker Mountain Edge Skis $110.00 $99.50 Other assorted racing and touring skis 30% and more OFF Cross Country Ski Boots 50% OFF (Small assortment) SPECIAL PACKAGE — When you buy skis, boots, poles and bindings, you get AN EXTRA 15% OFF (Even items already on sale!) Chuck Cross, Kneissel Cross Country Factory ^ Representative, will talk with you in our Downtown Mall shop from 2 to 5 PM Thursday. ~ This sale and demonstration in our Downtown Mall Shop Only - 57 West Broadway <S» Sale ends Sunday, October 16th 4W Page 4 Section A gasoline and other petroleum products would rise because of their increased competitiveness with natural gas. Natural gas pricing is one of President Carter’s major energy proposals. Carter proposed end ing the dual market under which gas in interstate pipelines is regu lated at $1.46 per thousand cubic feet, while gas used in the states where it is produced is free from controls. Carter has instead re commended a new uniform ceiling on all newly discovered gas start ing at $1.75 pef thousand cubic feet and rising to about $3.36 by 1965. The House approved this prop osal in August, along with much of the rest of the President s energy program. However, the Senate adopted the opposite approach and approved the Pearson Bentsen substitute, an amend ment that would lift all federal price controls on new natural gas. According to Weaver, The only argument the industry gives for deregulation is the incentive to produce more gas, and this is pa tently false He added that "at $1.40 per thousand cubic feet, there is a proven strong profit in centive. The price set in the House bill is $1.75 per thousand cubic feet, easify more than the industry needs." A House-Senate conference commrttee will try to reconcile the differences and put together a compromise bill. Carter has said he wiU veto the legislation if it con tains deregulation like that voted by the Senate i Ballot Measure #2 gets nods Two new statements of support for Ballot Measure No. 2, the re ferendum for development of non-nuclear energy sources to be voted on Nov. 8, have been issued by major Oregon environmental groups. The Oregon Environmental Council (OEC), a citizen organiza tion, and the Many Rivers Group of the Sierra Club both declared support this week for the meas ure. The proposal will make avail able low-interest money, backed by state bonds, for new energy sources within the state. f The OEC gave its support, it said, because the measure "pro vides a needed mechanism for stimulating development of en vironmentally sound, decen tralized non-nuclear energy re sources in our state.’’ The decision came after long discussion between board mem bers over what they perceived as ambiguities in the language of the measure. “Many board members expres sed concern that major utilities, oil and gas companies could easily gain control of most of the funds, UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN Do you feel ill-at-ease in most social situations? Do you have difficulty meeting people and making friends with those you do meet:' A free four-week program is being offered to undergraduate women who want to increase their social skill. Let > us help you to help yourself. Call for details: Dept of Psychology Social Skills Program 686-5050 effectively frustrating the kinds of small scale, decentralized energy development projects the meas ure purports to encourage," OEC President Vem Rifer said. However, he said, the OEC board decided to support the measure "because it represents a step forward in energy policy, and a move toward development of more environmentally sound energy sources." The Sierra Club’s Many Rivers Group, with members in Coos, Crook, Deschutes, Douglas and Lane Counties, issued unqual ified support for the measure. The group is encouraging a “yes vote, saying, "We must now shift our energy base from nuclear and fossil fuels to renewable energy resources such as solar heating and cooling, wind generation and recycling waste heat." The measure would enable Oregon to allow "smaller utilities to generate electricity near con sumers, which reduces waste and provides economic stimulation in the ratepayers’ communities,’’ said the Sierra Club group. Thursday, October 13, 1977
