The Tunnels of Cu Chi (37 page)

She stayed close to the Cu Chi base in the belt, and with her girls organized the first of the spy rings that riddled the 25th Infantry's base. Next she led sniper attacks on the GIs foolish enough to snatch midday dips in the water-filled bomb craters, just outside the perimeter wire. Using the tunnels dug under the rice fields that flanked the Ben Muong bridge, Vo Thi Mo's girls were able to use spider holes only 500 meters away from the base. The GIs had to learn through bitter experience that swimming-hole trips, even just outside the wire, were potentially fatal.

Late in 1967, Vo Thi Mo was in charge of a twenty-four-woman platoon of guerrillas ordered to combine with a male VC company to attack a large ARVN military post at Thai My,
to the west of Cu Chi town. Her platoon was part of the second strike force, which included a male platoon. She was also second in command of that force.

ARVN military posts in the Cu Chi district usually had short and exciting lives. In an area that remained unpacified throughout the war and was the center for Viet Cong activity near Saigon, it was difficult to maintain even a nominal government presence. The ARVN soldiers had long since reached an accommodation with their Communist countrymen to stay out of all tunnel activity—that dangerous chore was left mainly to the Amercians. The South Vietnamese soldiers were poorly paid, they were for the most part draftees who had not been able to bribe their way out of service, and they were often commanded by corrupt officers. With a handful of heroic exceptions, the ARVN was an unreliable fighting force, the more so in Cu Chi, where it was perpetually surrounded by a hostile population. Not surprisingly, the Thai My military post was ringed by no less than eleven fences, four of which were barbed wire. The post had one perimeter guard post standing just inside the extensive wire protection, while several hundred yards from that stood the main ARVN HQ block, where the majority of the defenders had their fighting and sleeping positions. To attack the post successfully required either very heavy munitions, which the guerrillas did not then possess, or the deft use of what explosives they had, together with the commando-style ability to scale those eleven fences.

The plan was for the attackers to make full use of the moonlight, poke DH-10 claymore mines through the wire barriers, and blast a path through the formidable protection and into the guard post as quickly as possible. When the assault began, the main group managed to explode their way through only five fences. Vo Thi Mo's girls had torn through a full nine when the assault ground to a halt. Several of the mines had been kept in the tunnels and had been ruined by damp and failed to detonate. The attack flopped. The entire plan was reset for the following month, to coincide with the best moonlight. And this time, because of her previous success, Vo Thi Mo was promoted to second in command of the primary assault group. It comprised two of her girls and one man. Each carried two DH-10 claymores, properly checked for damp this time. At first everything went successfully. All the mines exploded as planned,
the group vaulted over tangled barbed wire, crawled over and under each new obstacle, blasted with explosives where the body couldn't go. Within five minutes they had reached the perimeter guard tower. So far, so good—except that Vo Thi Mo had left her trousers on the barbed wire. She stood somewhat awkwardly, carrying her new AK-47, wearing the black pajama top and briefs. But the fighting had to continue.

The perimeter guard tower put up little resistance, and Vo Thi Mo sent her messenger boy (the same ten-year-old she had used during the tank battle) to return through the wire to ask permission from the VC command outside to take the main post. Because Viet Cong guerrillas were subject to strong and disciplined central control, even in the very heat of battle, the messenger had to run through fire again and again to take action reports
to
the command, and new orders
from
the command back to the front. Vo Thi Mo was cleared to attack the main post and ordered to bring back prisoners if possible. As she fought her way as far as the ARVN HQ, she found two soldiers hiding in an underground shelter. She ordered them to surrender, which they did, and as she reached for the electric wire in her pocket to tie their hands together, she realized she had no trousers and no wire. The ARVN prisoners simply gaped at the unusual battle dress of this extremely attractive seventeen-year-old.

It was at this moment that a rather illogical thought seized her. She became obsessed with tying her prisoners up. Normally, she would have used the black-and-white scarf that she wore, but she had discarded it for this raid because the white squares would show up in the moonlight. The luckless messenger boy was again instructed to pick his way through the narrow path blown through the eleven fences and ask command for a couple of scarves.

But by now, the main ARVN guard post had begun a counterattack. Vo Thi Mo was momentarily frozen with two prisoners. One tried to escape and she shot him on the spot, the other took the force of a hand grenade thrown by one of his own comrades from the tower. Vo Thi Mo looked round and saw that the second strike unit was still having problems reaching the ARVN HQ, too. For several dangerous minutes the Viet Cong attackers were pinned down. Then the boy messenger returned, without the scarf, but with the order to retreat.
She took her badly wounded prisoner back through the wire and returned safely to her own base. The operation, in which several ARVN soldiers were killed—the remainder were subsequently evacuated to Phuco Hiep—was regarded (with little real justification) as an unqualified success.

Shortly after this attack, the Communists began their Tet offensive of 1968. Vo Thi Mo was wounded during Tet and while in the hospital received a personal telegram from Mme Nguyen Thi Binh (who was then a member of the Central Committee of the NLF), announcing the award of the Victory Medal Class Three (the highest class) to the entire female platoon, specifically for its conduct during the two assaults on Thai My.

In the two years that she fought with all-female C3 company, Vo Thi Mo's hatred for the Americans grew. She was once in a tunnel when a direct bomb strike killed a pregnant woman who was within days of delivery, and another who was breastfeeding her child at the time of the strike. “The first time I killed an American, I felt enthusiasm and more hatred. I thought I would like to kill all the Americans to see my country peaceful again. Many people in my village were killed by bombs and shells. In one shelter, over ten of my friends were killed by napalm bombs. You know how napalm burns. When we pulled the bodies out, they had only burned and crooked limbs. These battles kindled my hatred. I did not think of myself, I did not think of the hardship. The Americans considered the Vietnamese animals; they wanted to exterminate us all and destroy everything we had.”

It is in the light of this emotion that her last Cu Chi action remains a paradox, unless one can hold to the comforting view that a woman's innate compassion and tenderness may overcome even her blind hatred. In a curious incident that might not have taken place had the protagonist been a man, Vo Thi Mo, the American-killer, ended her military service in Cu Chi.

The action took place at Cay Diep later that year. There had been a series of battles with the Americans at two different locations. The women's platoon was temporarily integrated with a larger mixed Viet Cong company. During the first encounter with the U.S. infantry patrols, the Communists had suffered sufficient casualties to be forced to withdraw to a rear tunnel base. As usual, Vo Thi Mo allowed her platoon to go
below for water and rest while she maintained guard at the spider hole. With her was her faithful messenger boy. She had been there only about twenty minutes when two GIs walked straight out of the undergrowth and sat down just ten meters away from her rifle muzzle. A few minutes later they were joined by a third. Vo Thi Mo could hardly believe her good fortune. The men were unprotected, seemed to have sprung from nowhere, had taken not the slightest defensive measure, and were now sitting targets in front of her heavily camouflaged spider hole. It would take just three bullets and the Americans wouldn't even be able to reach for their M-16s, carelessly flung by their knees. She tightened her grip on the AK-47; she was already lying down, spread-eagled. All she had to do now was hold her breath and squeeze the trigger.

The three Americans sat in a small triangle. They took out some letters and photographs and showed the photographs to each other. Vo Thi Mo, consumed with curiosity at this first human action she had ever observed of the enemy, held her fire. The men read the letters to themselves and then to each other. She watched, transfixed. What they were doing was what soldiers everywhere do. Having sentenced them to death, she was inclined to give the victims a few more seconds alone with their thoughts of their loved ones. Her small guerrilla companion looked sideways at her and raised an eyebrow.

The Americans took out some cookies and sweets. They talked to each other, and ate. Then after a while they began to cry. One took his handkerchief and wiped the other's eyes, then his own. Vo Thi Mo remained baffled. Were these three really sadistic killers, pillagers of the land? Or were they unwilling conscripts forced to come to Vietnam, now broken men, missing their loved ones, yearning only to return home? For the first time since she had watched her home destroyed by American bombs, Vo Thi Mo allowed a grain of doubt to enter her mind. What she was a silent witness to was so remarkable and so eloquent that language was not necessary.

At that time, the Front had decreed that anyone who killed three Americans would automatically receive the Military Victory Medal Class One (for six, you earned a Class Two, and for nine Americans killed, you would receive a treasured Class Three—body counts were not uniquely American). She was a finger squeeze away from the award.

After the three had wept for some time, the GIs tore up the letters and photographs and put the remaining food with them in a small heap in the center of the triangle. The messenger boy, who was also armed with a Red Butt rifle, quietly lifted his weapon in an obvious move. Vo Thi Mo placed her hand on his arm and shook her head. The moment had long since passed. The line between duty and murder had been crossed. She understood that. Whatever she felt, it was something that neither the Front nor her own training could suppress. No amount of hatred could lead her to destroy these three young men, only a little older than she, who cried in secret just like the Vietnamese. When the three got up, she let them walk away.

There was a short party inquest. The messenger boy was ordered to give evidence, but he loved Vo Thi Mo and spoke only for her. The district headquarters political commissar was angry but listened carefully to her explanation. Whatever he may have felt as he heard this seventeen-year-old girl explaining why she had pardoned the three GIs, he suspended judgment, pending an on-the-spot investigation. In all solemnity, a small political team, together with the girl and the little messenger boy, returned to the place outside the spider hole. In the dirt, just as Vo Thi Mo had explained, they found the letters and the torn photographs and the sweets and cookies. They were as baffled as she had been. There was no formal verdict. Suddenly, the Communists started laughing and teasing. In a good-natured way, they jeered: “You have become kind and human to the Americans. The American killer has become the American lover.” It was the end of the matter.

There is no logical explanation for this strange behavior by the three Americans. The letters and photographs may have belonged to comrades killed during earlier fights that day, or they may have been from their own families. There is one possible answer. As American infantry losses rose during the war, more and more American troops, when sent out on patrols, sweeps, on search-and-destroy missions, began to develop their own special kind of search-and-avoid tactics. They would leave base, strike off on their own into the jungle, find a secure area, and simply goof off for the time allotted to their mission. Sometimes they established their own perimeter security, and then they would sleep, write letters, smoke, eat their rations,
and let the hours pass. They would then pack up and return to base, reporting negative contact with the enemy. Vo Thi Mo's description of their behavior could also suggest that the three soldiers had been smoking marijuana, which was widely used by GIs, even in the field. The symptoms of smoking are excessive emotional reactions, including laughing or crying, and sudden food cravings. Some of the more sophisticated search-and-avoid missions involved taking unregistered previously captured Viet Cong weapons and turning them in as evidence of an engagement with the enemy. If it was indeed such a mission that Vo Thi Mo refused to fire at, then it was, if nothing else, a small victory for natural justice.

Vo Thi Mo stayed with the C3 Women's Company until the end of the war. Just one year earlier she had married an irrigation engineer in a simple party ceremony in a forest near the Cambodian border. After the war she returned to Cu Chi. Miraculously, both her parents had survived. All three went to the site of their ancestral home. There were so many bomb craters, and still are, that it was impossible to reconstruct a house there, and will remain so. Reluctantly, a new family home was taken in Tay Ninh, where Vo Thi Mo's husband now works. They have three sons and one daughter.

   Tunnel Rat Squad