Vietnam Traps

An Important element in the Viet Cong's guerrilla warfare was the widespread use of booby traps. Made from readily available materials - sometimes from captured or recovered mines and ammunition - these unseen weapons were often made by old men and women and children. So effective were they that in some areas they were said to account for up to 50 per cent of allied casualties. Australian soldiers on patrol were trained to look for anything that might indicate the presence of a hidden mine or booby trap near by disturbed foliage, an unnatural arrangement of sticks or stones, and any wires, rope, string or vines that could spring a trap or trigger an explosion. They were also warned against relaxing their vigilance; unwariness when approaching their own base or taking advantage of some shade trees for a rest could result in sudden death or injury.
Apart from the casualties they inflicted, booby traps slowed down the movement of troops by making them wary of every step they took. Men on patrol would walk in the safe footsteps of the man in front, and the one in the lead was quick to develop a "sixth sense" in discovering trip wires.
The booby traps illustrated on this pages. while among those commonly met with by allied soldiers in Vietnam, represent only a small proportion of the ingenious devices used so effectively by the Viet Cong during the war.

The cartridge trap consisted of a cartridge set into a piece of bamboo in a camouflage hole in the ground. A nail was driven through the bottom of the bamboo, which rested on a solid board. When a man trod on the upper end of the cartridge, it was forced down on the nail, which acts as a firing pin and set off the bullet through the mans foot. In the angled arrow trap, a piece of bamboo about a metre long was fastened to a piece of board; inside the bamboo a steel arrow was held ready to fire by a strong rubber band and a catch mechanism connected to a trip-wire. The device was placed in a camouflage pit and sloped so that a man tripping the wire would be stuck in the chest by the arrow. Spike pits were constructed in various ways, but all had a of shell or sharpened bamboo spikes pointing upwards. The trap illustrated had wooden sides to prevent cave-ins and employed a tilting lid supported on an axle. When a man put on on the camouflage bamboo lid, it pivoted, dropping the man on the spikes below, and then swung back into place again.

The whip was a trap made from a strong piece of green bamboo with sharp spikes attached to it which was attached to a tree or post and bent in a arc around other posts and held by a catch in the firing position. The catch was released by a trip wire which caused the pole to spring round and propel the spikes into the victim at chest height.

A weapon in the form of a fountain pen that fired a .22 caliber cartridge was used by Viet Cong agents for assassinations. When the device was cocked, a round stud that was part of the firing pin was held in a notch at the end of a slot in the cap. When the stud was pushed out of the notch, a compressed spring drove the firing pin into the cartridge and fired it.