Inside a day in the life of a Vietnam 'tunnel rat'

Armed with a three-and-a-half-foot-long bamboo stick with a slit cut on one end, a 14-inch World War II Japanese bayonet, and a silenced .38 Special revolver pistol, Nicholas “Nick” Sanza was deep underground in the Viet Cong tunnel system. He was wearing the same black pajamas of his enemy, strictly ate their food, and used their skills to hear in the dark what his eyes could not see. 

“I was a tunnel rat. Some of the tunnels I went down were close to 60 feet down,” Sanza told Task & Purpose. 

Sanza joined the Army after high school, carrying on a family military tradition. His grandfather William Kramer, Sanza says, served in President Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, and his father was Gen. George S. Patton’s last driver during World War II. Sanza’s son also eventually joined the Army, serving as a sniper in Iraq and Afghanistan.