Booby traps #2
The Viet Cong also made use of explosive booby traps and pressure detonated mines. Stories reveal that one American soldier raised his head through a tunnel entrance only to have a piece of metal automatically speared through his neck. Tiger traps were also particularly violent. When triggering a tripwire, a plank weighted with barbed metal spikes and bricks would fall rapidly from the earth squashing the soldier below. The idea, of course, was to scare the men so much that they did not continue to search the rest of the tunnel.
Grenade traps were another form of booby trap placed along the base of tunnels. Communist soldiers would attach one side of the string to a stake in the floor, and the other to the safety pin in the grenade. When an American soldier tripped the wire, the grenade would detonate inside the tunnel. If possible they also used gas to disorient, scare, and suffocate tunnel rat soldiers.
Another particularly horrific tactic became known as the spike ball or the mace. The enemy would litter a concrete ball with barbed spikes. When the soldier tripped the wire, the ball would swing down the tunnel and strike into the face of anyone in the way. Similarly, the bamboo whip was a very traumatic trap. When the soldier triggered the tripwire, foot-long spikes placed all over a long bamboo pole catapulted into the soldier’s face and chest at a rapid speed.