{"id":188,"date":"2018-02-05T09:46:10","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T14:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/?p=188"},"modified":"2018-02-05T14:26:02","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:26:02","slug":"tunnels-and-spider-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/2018\/02\/05\/tunnels-and-spider-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunnels and Spider Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A C-130 captured by the North Vietnamese sits at the site of the old base of Khe Sanh. (Diana Nelson Jones\/Post-Gazette)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Khe Sanh was a battle site made iconic when U.S. Marines were surrounded for 77 days in 1968.<\/p>\n

But for one veteran visiting the isolated and windy plateau in Quang Tri province today, a museum, artificial bunkers, captured tanks and a C-130 obscured the panic and the power the place held in 1971.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clarence Medeiros of South Kona, Hawaii, was an engineer with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne.<\/p>\n

One of his duties was to clear the enemy from tunnels and what were described as spider holes — literal holes in the ground that enemy soldiers hid in.<\/p>\n

He sent his dog in first.<\/p>\n

“He would let me know,” he said. “If he started pulling, I knew something was there to follow.”<\/p>\n

Two civilians, quaking in fear, were brought out safely in one foray. In another, a tunnel led to a graveyard.<\/p>\n

“I went a quarter of a mile and there was a fork in the tunnel,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I took a right and saw three coffins lined up,” he said. “My hair was standing up, but I had to get out. I opened one and there were RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) in it.”<\/p>\n

Medeiros and his wife Nellie now operate a coffee farm, an agrarian tradition that goes back generations in his family.<\/p>\n

While he walked the former base to get a sense of place, she checked out the coffee plants that grow around it.<\/p>\n

The clouds parted, allowing the weeks first rays of sun. The only sound on that once heavily mortared plateau was of the wind.<\/p>\n

“This place took heavy fire” from the North Vietnamese in the nearby mountains of Laos, he said. “I wanted to picture in my mind where people were.<\/p>\n

“This visit has helped me put to rest some things. Nothing’s left (but memories). The whole country is changing. And we made it out.”<\/p>\n

–Diana Nelson Jones<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Khe Sanh was a battle site made iconic when U.S. Marines were surrounded for 77 days in 1968. But for one veteran visiting the isolated and windy plateau in Quang Tri province today, a museum, artificial bunkers, captured tanks and a C-130 obscured the panic and the power the place held in 1971.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2018\/02\/vietnam_20-1024x768.jpg","fifu_image_alt":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9BZRz-32","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}