- Joined
- Mar 9, 2015
Stories of Tunnel Rats make me thank god I'm as young as I am as a short king. Shit is pure nightmare fuel. Probably one of the scariest jobs in war, EVER. Mining and that was always awful and scary but, you had to deal with the threat of a counter mine... oh well you hit a stick of dynmite and cease to be... VC fucking dropped a box of live pissed of scorpions on you. You didn't die...instantly.They had plenty of shotguns in Vietnam. The problem with Tunnel Rat duty is that you're often in too tight a space for an Ithaca 37 or other pump action, even one cut down as small as it possibly could be. You don't have the room to maneuver it or work the pump. You're squished down basically into a ball, duck walking, or you're crawling on your belly. You've got just enough room for a pistol and a handheld flashlight, and that's it. There are stories of Tunnel Rats who were in such tight quarters that even a 1911 was too big. That's why they went with a revolver that fired shot shells instead of a normal bullet, because then aiming wasn't as critical. Not to mention that it wasn't just VC Gooks they had to worry about, but also highly venomous snakes that the VCs would set out as traps.
FUCK.
