A veteran tunnel rat describes entering narrow enemy tunnel complexes built during French colonial conflicts in the late 1940s-1950s. Small soldiers were sent underground to locate and search these networks for enemy combatants. He hints at traumatic actions he refuses to detail, suggesting the psychological weight of the work.
course of that. But we do have some listeners who might not know what a tunnel rat is. Tell us, how did you get that job? What was entailed?
Well, you had to basically be a small person. What it was, these tunnels had been there for a long time. They built— had these tunnels when they fought the French back in the late '40s and '50s. You know, the French basically ruled, and that was their hiding place. They could go underground and you couldn't— you couldn't get them. We would find a tunnel complex, we had to search it. I would go in, actually go in the tunnels looking for the enemy. And there's times I did some things, like I said, I will never go into detail about some of the things I had to do.
