This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Military History, Special Ops Troops, U.S. Army, USMC, Vietnam Rings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I don’t know how many of you younger military ring customers are aware of the punji stake but I am sure that every one of you Vietnam ring customers are acquainted with them. The reason I say this is because that is where they were used.
The punji stake was a sharpened piece of wood or some other material placed in a shallow pit with the spiked end pointed up. The stick was sometimes covered with some type of poison or even human excrement so that when you stepped on it it would penetrate and cause a nasty infection or painful poisoning.
The stick was put in the pit which was then covered with debris so that you wouldn’t see it. The whole purpose was to wound rather than kill because when a combatant is wounded it takes several others to care for him which effectively takes them out of the action. As far as I know the Vietnam War was the only place where this particular improvised weapon was used. If I am wrong will one of you custom military ring customers let me know?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.