Marking Time: Village provides preview of Vietnamese hazards                 Chris Rasmussen    Leader Staff

Just as today’s Soldiers train for the Middle Eastern environment they will operate in when they deploy, warriors at Fort Jackson during the Vietnam era prepared for battle at Bau Bang village. Constructed in September 1966, the Vietnamese village was intended to give Advanced Individual Training Soldiers, and permanent party personnel who were programmed specifically for Vietnam, a glimpse of what they might expect. The fortified hamlet, which had a 400-meter perimeter, featured a moat in front with punji stakes. In the rear was a barricade wall of pointed logs placed closely together in an upright position. There were guard towers at each corner, a tunnel connecting the entrance with a “spider hole” and an underground bunker from which a Soldier could fire but could not be seen. In each hamlet, at least one haystack and one well were evident, and in many cases the Viet Cong would conceal a tunnel entrance in either or both. In Bau Bang, the haystack covered an entrance to a tunnel complex, which was 1-meter square and approximately 75 meters in length. The tunnel divided and became two; one tunnel led to an exit approximately 50 meters outside the stockade wall and the other led to an exit hidden beneath a bunk inside the grass hut immediately to the left of the haystack. A false tunnel entrance could be found in the hamlet shrine and beyond the rear gate. A trail led to a wash area located beside a small stream. Live chickens within the village complete the scene.  A section of the hamlet was utilized to familiarize trainees and visiting personnel with the various types of booby traps employed by the Viet Cong.  In this area you would find a false bottom fox hole with punji stakes, boards with sharpened spikes designed to penetrate the sides of a boot or leg, a 200-pound mace designed to eliminate a squad of men, a Daisy Chain of grenades, a deadly crossbow or homemade, sawed-off shotgun, man traps and traps that fire a round through a man’s foot when stepped on.  Reports received from those in Vietnam who completed their training here said that the lessons learned at this hamlet helped them immeasurably.