Please go ahead with your story.

While I was in the north I heard that the inhabitants of the south were killed in droves, among them were members of my family. Therefore, I was very worried and my heart ached terribly. Hence, I went to my superiors and volunteered to go back to the south to fight in any circumstances and with any means. My superiors said that if you volunteered, then it was possible for you to go. So I and about 10 other brothers went back to this area. The highland people took us south. When we got here, the first person we met was Comrade Tran Hai Phung, who is now the major general commanding the armed forces in the city.

We also met with Comrade Nguyen Duc Hung, alias Tu Du, who was the commander of the Special Forces inside the city at that time. When these two comrades found out that I was a Saigonese and knew the city very well, they let me join the Special Forces to fight inside the city. We used Cu Chi as our training base and launch area. We recruited people from Saigon and trained them in Cu Chi. Then we sent these people back to Saigon to operate there.

They would lead normal lives as young people, as workers and as servicemen and women. We organized people from the city, took them out to Cu Chi for training and then sent them back to Saigon. As far as I was concerned, when I arrived here I used faked papers which I made myself. These papers looked exactly like the papers, issued by the enemy.

This was to enable me to travel around in full public view and before the eyes of the enemy. When we operated in the city, each section of our organization had people who specialized in producing false papers. Whenever the enemy produced any kind of paper, we could always obtain the sample and produce exact replicas. Sometimes we produced these papers inside Saigon itself. Sometimes we produced them in our base area.

This was because in Saigon while the enemy appeared to control the population, in reality the people were secretly supportive of the revolution. Hence, there were many people who were eager to support the revolution, each to his or her ability. Whenever we came to the city, the people put us up in their houses, fed us and protected us so as to enable us to carry out our activities.

On the road, the enemy's checkpoints and patrol cars always stopped us and asked for our papers. But these policemen were people who were mindful of their own personal security and, in addition, we had the protection of the population along the road. And so we traveled from Saigon to Cu Chi or to other places without many difficulties at all. This was how we operated.

We relied mainly on the patriotism of the Saigon inhabitants in order to build up our forces, to survive and to travel around. And the male and female soldiers from Saigon were brought to Cu Chi and trained in the tunnels. We had to train them in the tunnels so as to instill in them a certain degree of political consciousness and certain technical and tactical skills to enable them to fight.

This was especially when they had big jobs such as attacking large enemy hotels when they had to use automobiles, Honda motorcycles and small arms which required you to hit the enemy with only a single bullet. Therefore, we had to bring these people out here to Cu Chi to train them. It was impossible to give them this kind of training in Saigon. Our training in Saigon was very simple: producing explosives and operating simple weapons.

But when the fighting became more complex, we had to bring people out here for training. And when we brought people out here to Cu Chi, it was very difficult to keep them undetected above ground. Hence, we had to take people down to the tunnels and kept people separate from each other so that they could not know each other's identity. Then we trained them.

These people also did not know our faces. And we also tried to change our voices so that they would not be able to identify us. Therefore, the trainees had no way to know who their commanders were. And the trainers themselves also did not know the faces of their trainees. They only knew these people through their unit leaders.

The biggest American search and destroy mission into the Cu Chi area occurred on January 8th, 1966. At that time the Americans poured over 10,000 troops into the area. About a week before the actual search and destroy operation the Americans had already carpet bombed the liberated area of Cu Chi by B-52s. After that, the Americans used their helicopters to pour their troops into the area.

And on their heels were the tanks which swept in quickly. Then the Americans also brought in their troops by boats down the Saigon River. The physical impacts of this search and destroy operation are still quite visible. Our strength at that time was composed mainly of the local guerrillas and inhabitants in the liberated villages and the defense forces of the various organizations which were then called the "organization guerrilla fighters."

All these people were already in a state of preparedness when the Americans arrived. Supplies had all been brought down into the tunnels. In this district of Cu Chi we had 200 kilometers of tunnels. In order the fight the enemy, we had to place land mines in the areas that we expected the enemy tanks and infantrymen would be coming through. We placed people who were familiar with the geography of the area on the ground to shoot at the Americans. If the Americans chased after them, these people would quickly descend into the tunnels.

Then how did you enter Saigon?

Let me finish describing this first search and destroy operation first. During this operation, we already had people shooting at the enemy from the tunnels. We had people fighting on the ground too. This is a tunnel system that runs 200 kilometers long, connecting one village to another. In the tunnel there are partitions that would prevent toxic chemicals and gases from getting into the tunnel.

In the tunnel we also had chambers that prevented the enemy from pumping water into the tunnel to cause flooding and to force us out of the tunnel. There were wide trenches about fifty meters long which ran off on the sides of the tunnel and which led to fighting foxholes which were close to the surface, rising only five to ten centimeters above the ground. Therefore there was no way the enemy would be able to detect us from a distance.

Our fighters, however, were already lying in wait in their foxholes. About 70 to 100 meters from these foxholes we had land mines rigged up. So when the enemy came in by tanks and by foot, they got blown up equally by these mines. But the enemy could not find out from where we were fighting them. We were so well hidden that even when we used rifles to shoot and kill the American soldiers only a couple of yards in distance from us, they would still be unable to find out where we were.

Therefore, the American soldiers were very angry because of this. And in case the Americans detected the foxholes or in case we ran out of ammunition, then our fighters retreated into the main tunnels and passed through a series of partitions which the local people called "floating lids" and "under covers" in order to avoid gases and water which could be pumped down into the tunnel. And even in the tunnels we had booby traps complete with bamboo sticks and iron spikes and even with rigged up grenades.

So in case the enemy dared to venture down the tunnels, they would get wiped out there. And if the enemy dared to put their heads through the "floating lids" then the civilian self defense forces on the ground could stab them to death with bayonets, shoot at them with small arms, or blow them up with grenades. So throughout the period of struggle against the United States, no American ever dared to climb through the "floating lid" of the tunnel.

How did you manage to get into the enemy bases?

We had many ways of getting into the enemy bases, depending on where a certain base was located. For example, sometimes our fighters climbed up from under the tunnels to engage the enemy. Now, the enemy usually stationed their troops in the areas which they had just finished with their search and destroy operations. Should they station their troops next to the entrances to the tunnels then our fighters would come up to fight them and, after finishing with them, would climb down the tunnels again right in the middle of the area where the enemy troops were stationing.

This was the normal method used by the guerrilla fighters. Other fighters fought in a different way. They infiltrated from the outside at night. The first thing these fighters had to do was to avoid the blazing lights used by the enemy. Therefore, people who infiltrated the enemy base, even if they were infantrymen, had to learn the techniques of the commandos. Those who infiltrated into the enemy bases were not all commandos.

They also included infantry people, the regular forces and the self defense forces. Therefore they had to learn how to get through the enemy's lights without getting detected, how to cut the barbed wire fences, how to defuse the enemy's mines, and so on. Hence, they were all trained to do all these things.

Our fighters were all trained to defuse all types of enemy's mines. They were also able to cut through all kinds of enemy's fences. When our fighters infiltrated into the enemy bases, depending on the objectives of their attacks, they would open fire at the appropriate targets. And then they would open their ways out. All these required tremendous training.

How did you manage to get into the city of Saigon? And once there, what were your activities?

There were hundreds of ways of getting into Saigon. Ordinarily, we would just take the bus along with other people. We supplied ourselves with all the necessary papers and would just go into the city like any other ordinary citizen. In other areas, our fighters inside the city had to wear uniforms exactly like those worn by enemy troops.

For example, the enemy paratroopers were stationed in the general area we were using to go to the city, then our fighters (who did not necessarily come from Cu Chi but from areas which were only three to five kilometers from Saigon) would put on paratrooper uniforms. Sometimes our people even flew into Saigon on passenger airplanes.

Therefore, there were many ways to get to Saigon. And, because of the patriotism of the inhabitants from the outskirt of the city to the heart of Saigon, many times our fighters did not have to use the main roads to get into Saigon. Rather, they just went from house to house, under the protection of the inhabitants, to get into the middle of the city.

What about your activities inside the city of Saigon?

Our activities were also quite varied. This was because Saigon was a big metropolitan area, a nerve center of the enemy and the enemy capitol city. The control of the enemy, secretly or publicly through all types of armed forces, all kinds of police forces, all kinds of secret police and secret agents and various types of informers, was very tight. Therefore, if you attempted to get to Saigon without the support and protection of the inhabitants, you would get captured right away.

The very fact that you could enter the city and carry out your activities at all depended on the support and protection of the city inhabitants. And the fighters themselves were also city inhabitants. So, for cadres and commanders like us, we had to go back and forth to organize and supervise things and we just did not stay put either in the city or in the base only. Some cadres had the job of staying only in the city.

But others had to go back and forth. Hence, our activities in Saigon were under hundreds and thousands of forms. I was responsible for military struggles. But others were engaging in political struggles. I belonged to the military section and so my job was to engage in armed struggles in the city, fulfilling the demands of the battlefields.

You were fighting in the belly of the enemy, then you did you camouflage yourselves?

There were also millions of ways to camouflage our activities. There was no unique method. We adapted ourselves to the general situation. This is to say that on a certain route certain kinds of papers and certain ways to doing things would get us through easily.

How did you camouflage yourselves when you infiltrated into the enemy's bases?

We had to do this through training. We also used searchlights and trained our fighters how to get by them. We trained them until the men who were operating the search lights on the guard towers or pill boxes could not see them anymore as they slipped by. Sometimes, it just took only one sweep of the searchlight like that when our fighters were already able to advance quite a number of steps. Or our fighters had to walk in such a way that they would just slip by unnoticed. These were ways of infiltrating into enemy bases.

When you camouflaged yourselves, did you put soap on your bodies? Or what did you do? Did you pretend to be a merchant or a beggar in order to infiltrate into the enemy's bases?

There were many ways to get into an enemy's base. We had people who went into the bases to spy on the enemy publicly. They worked in the bases as employees or service people there. And sometimes we even came into the bases as contractors who were doing the repairs to their buildings. For example, in my own unit there was a man who was specializing in interior decorations for large offices such as the Presidential Palace and other important buildings.

This man whom they hired for this important work was one of our informers. And this man is now a captain in the army. At that time he was an interior decorator and a contractor. Therefore, we had public informers like that. We also had people who were wearing enemy's uniforms and receiving enemy's salaries but who were actually our revolutionary infrastructures, and were passing out information and drawings of all these places to us.

In some places, we had to organize it in such a way that the commander had to be able to enter these places himself in order to research them. This was quite different from the infiltration of a commando into an enemy base. In order to infiltrate into the enemy offices and headquarters in the city, you had to be able to get in there openly. You had to be able to just walk in there openly, not trying to avoid searchlights but trying to outwit the enemy with the support of the people.

That was certainly so. You had to use all kinds of means. But in order to get by the enemy's searchlights did you have to put soap on your bodies in some cases? And did you, on certain occasions, have to act as merchants and beggars?

The situation was like this: If you tried to infiltrate the enemy's base at night, then what need was there for you to pretend to be a merchant or a beggar? You were trying to infiltrate in a totally surreptitious manner. Why would you need to act as merchants or beggars? In this case, you had to use commandos and spies to get into the enemy's base. Of course, in this case you have to make up your skin to look like the ground surface in that area.

Sometimes you had to wear patterned clothes which would merge you into the surroundings. Sometimes you had to be completely naked, covered with a layer of mud or any other color which would help you camouflage effectively in that surrounding. And it there were dogs in that area, then you had to employ means which made it impossible for the dogs to sniff you out.

If the dogs were able to sniff you out then you would be detected by the enemy. So there were many ways to infiltrate into the enemy bases at night in order to fight them. And, as I said a while ago, this was a task which was not reserved exclusively for the commandos. Infantry people, too, had to be trained in these methods employed by the commandos.

Now, besides the guerrilla fighters, what did the old people and the children do during the fighting. Could you tell us something about this?

The people's war in this area of Cu Chi is the same as elsewhere in the country. In Vietnam, since olden times the young and the old, the big and the small, have all participated in the struggle against the foreign invaders. This has been our tradition. This was not something special to Cu Chi. This was a national tradition. And what I want to tell you about the old people and the children in Cu Chi in the struggle against the United States was this: Here, the weapons used in fighting the Americans were all home made.

Unexploded American bombs and shells were dug up by the old people and the kids, sawed up in order to get the gunpowder and the explosives in these bombs and shells and then produced as various kinds of explosive devices in the villages themselves. In each hamlet and village we had a workshop for producing these devices. The old folks were the natives of those villages, having their garden patches and their paddy fields there.

Their lives were tied to the villages and their children and loved ones had been killed by the enemy. And so everyone was full of hatred for the enemy. They, therefore, brought the gunpowder to the village workshops to have explosive devices made. And then they placed these devices along the routes which they knew the enemy tanks were coming and went back to their houses or went down to their bomb shelters, or went to some other places.

When enemy tanks and soldiers came and ran into these explosive devices, they got blown up. Therefore, in Cu Chi we had many old folks who participated in the fighting. Have you heard of Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ranh who was 80 years old and became a military heroine? We have many women and men here who were older than fifty years of age when they became heroes and heroines in the struggle against the United States. The children were even more active and creative than the old people.

They used mostly home made weapons which were manufactured precisely to fight the enemy in a certain area most effectively. I just cannot describe to you here all the ways employed by the people in their fight against the enemy. They were quite varied and quite creative. All these were based on the Party's policy of getting the entire people to fight. It was a people's war. People would employ any weapon at all to fight the enemy.