Tunnels

[Martin Hash]

I'm American, I & my wife, Gwynne, had to visit the Viet Cong tunnels in Chi Cu, an hour outside Saigon. The guerrilla warfare around that region was famous because it showed how little support the South Vietnamese government had from its own ostensible citizenry, and introduced American soldiers to the concept of fighting women & children, not to mention suicide bombing.

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2 million Vietnamese soldiers were killed, a 40:1 ratio, not counting civilians, & they could have endured a much higher ratio. My goodness, their population was a third of America's at the time, and they were fighting for freedom from colonial rule by the French. America was there through an unfortunate alignment of the stars; first Korea, then the Soviet Missile Crisis, then Kennedy's assignation by a Communist sympathizer. America thought it was saving the world from the Red Scare. It's their country & they can interpret the facts as they wish but they can't make up their own: the propaganda espoused by our tour guide was cringeworthy. Dear Tour Guide, you're conflating America with France, and the Japanese were in there too. Plus, the majority of the people you fought were your own countrymen, not everyone was an "American soldier."

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We crawled through tiny tunnels & spider-holes, often frustrated by claustrophobes who couldn't take it. There were gleefully demonstrated booby-trap exhibits, and the centerpiece of the park was an AK-47 firing range where almost everybody (but me) squeezed off 10 rounds for $25. The whole experience was bizarre but one aspect of it was truly eerie: I bought a Zippo lighter engraved, "The Human Brain Functions 24 Hours a Day, Give it a Break and Get Mellow." That baby's going into the Hash Macabre Museum.

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[Okeefenokee]

Cool.

Go to the beer tunnels in Nuremberg. Completely different vibe.

[de officiis]