The Maze Runner

Authors note: I am writing a book review and summary of The Maze Runner. I would like to be reviewed on my vocabulary and sentence fluency.

The Maze Runner, this book starts off in an elevator, pitch black with metals screeching and grinding. Thomas-the main character-wakes up with no memories of his past life, scared,with nothing. He can't see but he can crawl around the box that was lifting him. Suddenly it stops and he hears voices above him. The roof is pryed apart and he is greeted by adolescents who call themselves the gladers. The box is the center of a large courtyard called the glade, where the mysterious maze is around it. Machines called grievers roam outside and attack any humans that come near one. Thomas makes a friend immediately, who he finds quite annoying  although they are best friends. The walls around the glade close each night, seeming magic. As the are large yet they seem to stretch to close the four entrances. The night Thomas arrives his new friend, Chuck, helps him with his sleeping arrangements. The next morning a new kid arrives. The two years the veteran gladers have stayed, a kid has only come up once every thirty days.Thomas doesn't notice yet, but every Glader is a boy, until the new arrival. As she is lifted up she is in a coma. They quickly take her to the homestead, which is their hospital and base, to watch over her. If you are stung by a griever and survive to make it back to the glade. The grief serum must be taken or else the victim will meet his/her end. After this serum is taken you go through the changing which helps you to get your memories back. Ben, a teen who has just recently been through the changing tries to kill Thomas but is caught and banished. Banishing  insures the attackers death, during this process he is lead to the door seconds before closing and is left outside with the grievers. The kids in the glade all have special jobs, but Thomas may have the most special, a runner, they run outside during the day to map out the maze, and as each day goes on, they realize the maze changes. Somehow. Thomas and his fellow runner get trapped outside the walls one night and manage to become the first Gladers to ever survive a night in the maze. The only way was to lead the grievers off a edge called The Cliff. Mysteriously, the grievers disappeared as they were thrown all in the same spot.When the Gladers return home the walls stop closing and grievers take kids every night. They now know they must find a escape rout. After hard thinking it must be the griever hole. The spot where they disappeared. The Gladers lose half their numbers fighting their way their where they find a slide and escape. The creators of the maze are waiting for them in a chamber where the Gladers fall. They lead a insane person is who tries to kill Thomas but Chuck throws himself in the way of the knife and dies, though, saving Thomas' life. People with guns then shoot all the creators and "rescue" the remaining Gladers. I would give this book a 8 out of 10 for good intense action, while there was boring parts, and a crappy cliff hanger ending. But that can all be solved in the sequel. The scorch trials.

Vietcong

The United States Army had a large power to go to war against. These were the Vietcong, who would use the guerrilla warfare as a combat method to fight. One American soldier could take out ten Vietcong before dying himself. But there were always multiple guerrillas to take the late communists' spot. The well trained Americans were not trained enough to battle the fighting style of the VC.

                                                                      Definition of Vietcong:

"A Vietnamese supporter of the communist National Liberation Front in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War)." The official term for VC is the People's Liberation Armed Forces`

                                                                                      WHO THEY WERE

The Vietcong included both guerrillas unites as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants who fought. They were from Vietnam, both south and north. They were guerrillas who wanted to fight against the Americans, but were very unsure about fighting well trained soldiers when they were just farmers. They fought against the armed forces of the U.S.A. and the government of South Vietnam. Beginning as a unorganized group of guerrilla fighters. Over the course of four years (1960-1964) the VC had grown from around zero to thirty-thousand. There has never been an adequate defense system against guerrillas. They blend in with their environments and wear no uniforms so the soldiers wouldn't know the difference between a peasant and a guerrilla. What really defined the VC is that they were communists and wanted to make Vietnam a country that ran off of communism. Most people were forced or fooled into becoming part of the VC!

                                                                                      GUERRILLA WARFARE

The term "guerrilla" was developed by small bands of Spanish soldiers fighting the large Napoleon army. In Spanish the word guerrilla means little war. The tactics employed by guerrillas date back to the ideas of Sun Tzu, a military strategist who lived more than 2,000 years ago. Sun Tzu argued that all warfare should exploiting your strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. He gives several suggestions on how to defeat an army larger and better equipped than yours. These strategies and tactics were adapted by communist forces like the VC. The VC were organized into small groups called cells. These cells were usually 3-10 people. They worked together but the knowledge of members of their cells were kept to a bare minimum. Therefore, when a guerrilla was captured and tortured, his confessions did not do very much to harm the VC. The VC believed they needed to recruit peasants in order to win the war. The peasants thought that their poverty was only a punishment for the crimes of their ancestors. The VC educated these peasants and taught them that they were poor because of wealthy landowners who took all of their money. The VC would sometimes execute the landlords because of their cruel ruling over the poor. The peasants were motivated to join through fear and gratitude. The VC said that if the US or ARVN took the land that they would get it back. This view was reinforced if the Vietcong would leave a village to flee or hide from US forces the villagers would be taken and if the VC had already beaten the peasants would be beaten and tortured, sometimes hauled off to jail. At the end of the day when they would return home their house would be destroyed, their chickens killed, and their rice gone. "If a villager wasn't pro-Vietcong when we got there, they sure as hell were when we left" explained US Marine William Ehrhart.

                                                                                      WHAT THEY DID

  The Americans had been in Vietnam for three years before the Tet Offensive. Most of the  battles they had fought were small skirmishes where the VC had involved guerrilla tactics. The well trained and better supplied American soldiers were quickly realizing that their traditional combat styles weren't working on fighting the VC . In the beginning of 1968 the North Vietnam Army's leader, General Vo Nguyen Giap, decided it time for a major surprise attack on the cities in South Vietnam. The communists made a diversionary attack on the city and American military base in Khe Sahn.  The VC  had just broken the ceasefire for the holidays. The Americans were surprised by the high numbers and ferociousness  of the assault. But they quickly rounded up and fought back. The VC had hoped for  populous uprising in support of their actions, met heavy resistance instead. In some towns and cities the intruders were repelled within  hours but in some places there was weeks worth of fighting. In Saigon, the communists succeeded in occupying  control of the U.S. embassy for eight hours until the U.S. regained control. In military terms the Americans won the Tet offensive.

                                                                                      LIVING

 Life was very hard, they had to live in three man cells. With two other mates to watch over you, it was very hard to desert. Most of the time their living quarters were the Cu Chi tunnels, near Saigon. The tunnels could withstand any B-52 bombings. They ate, slept, and woman even had babies inside of the tunnels. These tunnels were located under the city of Ho Chi Minh. They were the base of operations for the Vietcong during the Tet offensive. The tunnels also served as a supply route and hospital as well as living quarters. Life was very hard in the tunnels, there was only a scarce supply of food, air and water inside the system. Also infested with ants, poisonous centipedes, scorpions, spider and vermin. Malaria spread through the tunnels and was the second most cause of death other than battle wounds. A captured Vietcong member reported that almost everybody in the tunnels had some significance of having intestinal parasites. The U.S. had campaigns to flush the Vietcong out of their tunnel, two being Operation Crimp and Operation Cedar Falls. Operation Crimp began on January 7, 1966, with B-52 bombers dropping 30 tons of high explosive onto Cu Chi, turning the once lush jungle into a moonscape. The U.S could not throw grenades into the tunnels for the clever design of the tunnels so that the grenades would have minimal or no effect. And the Americans could not enter because of many booby traps placed in the entrances such as punji stake pits or trip wires rigged with explosives.

                                                                HOW THEY FOUGHT

They would often run raiding missions to camps and villages to take supplies, food, and weapons. Sometimes their method was to force a little boy into an American camp holding a can of coke. It wasn't a real can of coke, it was just a decoy rigged with explosives. The can would then blow up with the boy holding it inside the camp.

The Vietcong fighting style relied heavily on the placement of booby traps.

They put large amounts of pressure on US/ARVN troops. Not only did they have to worry about shooting innocent civilians because the VC wore no uniforms, but they had to wonder if their next step would have them fall into a pit filled with Punji stakes. A lot of soldiers would suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder. Most The VC would use many different types of landmines during the war, these were activated if a US soldier would step on it. Most wouldn't go off until the soldier would step off. If someone were to step on it the other men would dig a trench and slide a knife or something heavy under the soldiers foot. Then another soldier would charge and tackle the poor soldier into the trench hopefully protecting them from the explosion. Bouncing betties would jump into the air after triggered up to waist or even chest height and explode large fragments of metal with quite a wide radius. Toe poppers exploded when stepped on but inflicted a less severe injury. They would normally cause damage to the victims foot.

  Punji stake pit: It is just what the name suggests- it is a pit. The VC  would dig a hole and line the insides with spikes. These were simply sharpened pieces of bamboo that had also been   fire hardened. They were sharp enough to easily penetrate a soldier's thick boot.  Many times the stakes were covered in poisons or feces that usually cause infection.  After the hole was lined with stakes the covering was placed on. This brush and grass "blanket" was just thick enough so that it looked real, but are flexible enough that they penetrate easily when stepped on. The punji bear trap was constructed in a similar way to the punji pit. But instead of one pit it was two on top of each other. A larger pit was on top while a smaller hole was dug out inside of the large one. The VC would put a bear trap over the smaller pit so that when a victim's foot would fall through the brush covering the trap would snap shut, there was hardly any escaping from this trap. The side closing trap was a more sophisticated version of the punji stake pit. They were made with a large plank of wood over a pit which,   in the middle, was connected to a piece of wood the stretched  over the width of the hole, which acted as the pivot for the larger piece of wood. When a soldier stepped on one end of the plank his weight caused the wood to lower  and the victim fell into the pit.

The next item was trip wires. These would  a rope or string of some sort placed in between trees. There were non-explosive trip wires and also the opposite.  A trip wire could make a giant ball of mud with poison tipped stakes fall from a tree and hit the victim usually in the chest or upper waist. Or might trip a poison tipped arrow to shoot at the victim. Some would be covered in feces. The bacteria in human waste would then infect the victim. No matter what the wire would trigger it was intricately designed so it would hit the victim just right. The explosive trip wires would most likely pull the pin on a grenade concealed by a tin can or box. Sometimes in fields were traps called "daisy chains" these would be grenades  in a large field where the first one set off would create a chain reaction, making just about the entire field go up into the sky.

The VC also used ingenious hiding tactics. Sometimes a US soldier would have crawl into a VC dug foxhole just to find his enemy. If nobody was in it he could get out easily without any harm, but if a hostile was in one he could literally look up and see the barrel of a gun pointing right at him. It was as if somewhere, a VC was always watching the soldiers. The Vietcong also made efficient work of the environment. Haystacks, trees, bushes, and large piles of brush made effective hiding spots. Here they would wait until a US soldier came close enough for a surprise attack. But the VC were also well known for building intricate under ground tunnels. They would build some elaborate tunnels that almost made and underground town. Normally there was something large covering the entrance hole like a cooking kettle or something large, these also disguised it. The VC would enter through these holes and hide in large chambers. If the Americans searched the tunnels they would be perfectly safe if no one was in it. But if there was a VC member he would be alone with them because only one soldier would search the system.

                                                                                          GEOGRAPHY

Vietnam is a country of tropical lowlands, hills and densely forested highlands, with level lands covering no more than 20% of the area. The red river delta, rising in China, is about 746 miles long. The entire delta region, is no more than nine feet above sea level. Most of this the US soldiers were not used to. You could be walking in grass taller than your self then go to rice paddies, rivers, mountains, and plains. It was hot and humid, with all the gear and armor the soldiers wore, it made them loose energy faster and  move slower. Also causing noisier travel through the rough forest terrain. The VC would easily be able to ambush the Americans while hiding in the thick forest terrain or in the rocky mountain environment . The Americans took advantage of their air cavalry by doing high-level (high-level to avoid the risk of being shot down) bombing missions to destroy the jungle which was the Vietcong cover, napalm and agent orange were also dropped. The US also used helicopters to fly troops in and out of spots where they believed the VC to be. The downside to this was that they could not put their full military power into action. To avoid pitched battles the VC would often shoot patrols quickly and run away. The US did not want civilians to be harmed so they encouraged villagers to evacuate their own village and move into what the US called "fortified villages", this backfired because the peasants did not want leave their villages because the VC had also promised more land to them when communism took control.  It also provided  more targets for guerrilla attack and the US had to use men and resources defending them.

Conclusion

The Americans started out winning the Vietnam war but as morale grew low and supplies decreased, the weary soldiers had to draw back. Some would go insane under the immense pressure of traps placed over the field of battle. The VC emerged victorious with almost nineteen times more deaths than the  US who ended up with about  58,000 deaths while the VC had more than 1.1 million deaths. The VC hiding tactics caused high superstition among US troops, and the US public were becoming more and more disapproving of the war, these factors lead to the US defeat.