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Nguyen Toan · A history learner. Easy to forget but eager to learn.Updated 1y

How did the Vietnamese survive in the tunnels they built to evade American troops during the Vietnam War?

There is a chapter about Cu Chi Tunnel in this book : Bare Feet, Iron Will Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefield. by James G. Zumwalt.

He came to Vietnam after the war, against Vietnamese but latterly changed his view a little bit. It is worth reading, easy to read from US perspective if you want to research about life in tunnels.

Below are introduction about background and the author via publisher in Amazon.

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Interested in the Sino-Vietnamese War of 19794y

Andrew Dang · 

In short answer, during the Sino-Vietnamese War, after suffering a large number of casualties and before the coming of the Vietnamese crack troops, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A) had to withdraw their forces. The “road to Hanoi lay open and the city could have fallen to China” was also a war myth. In fact, all the roads from the border regions to Hanoi were heavily fortified and garrisoned by several main force divisions of the People’s Army of Vietnam (P.A.V.N).

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The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces commonly wore rubber sandals (often called “Ho Chi Minh sandals” or dép lốp) for practical, tactical, economic, and cultural reasons. Key factors:

• Cost and availability
  • Made from recycled car or truck tire soles, these sandals were extremely cheap to produce and easy to repair or replace in the field.
  • Local cobblers could cut and strap soles quickly using scrap materials, enabling mass distribution without industrial supply lines.
• Durability and suitability for terrain
  • Thick tire rubber resisted sharp stones, thorns, and rough trails better than many civilian shoes.
  • Rubber tolerates recurrent wet conditions—jungle streams, mud, monsoon rains—without rapid deterioration that leather suffers from.
• Maintenance and logistics
  • Minimal maintenance required (no polishing, waterproofing); replacements were simple.
  • Lightweight and compact for guerrilla mobility; easier to carry spares than heavy boots.
• Noise discipline and stealth
  • Thin, flexible soles allowed quieter movement over hard jungle paths and dry leaves compared with rigid-soled boots.
  • Soldiers could move more silently during ambushes, reconnaissance, and tunnel work.
• Cultural and practical familiarity
  • Many Vietnamese civilians already used similar footwear for daily life; soldiers were accustomed to them from childhood.
  • Sandals dried quickly and were comfortable during long patrols in hot, humid climate.
• Tactical trade-offs
  • Sandals offered speed, silence, and simplicity but less protection against punctures, snakebite, and extreme rough ground than combat boots.
  • Viet Cong tactics emphasized mobility, concealment, and use of local terrain (trails, rice paddies, tunnels), reducing need for heavy foot protection.

Examples and outcomes