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Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by agentblue
Yes, there is a common thread to it.
It's the portrayal of these guys as cowards ("they ran and hid in a stinking hole!) and as a sort of comparison to vermin (as rats and such tend to live in these holes, too.)
Note the term used for Saddam's hideout was "spiderhole." What the hell is a "spiderhole?" Has this term EVER been used outside of reference to Saddam Hussein?
Unbeknownst to you, I lay secluded in a five-foot deep spiderhole, with a trapdoor on top, watching you come closer. You could be right on top of me and still not see my hiding place.
I wait for you to walk past, humming a happy song by Erasure (or whatever you may listen to. I just like Erasure). Then, fast as lightning, I flip back the trapdoor and leap out onto the trail.
Two hundred meters away, facing the Marine trenches, there was an NVA sniper with a .50-caliber machine gun who shot at the marines from a tiny spider hole.
*spider hole = single-man foxhole with a hinged roof for concealment,
used by VC for sniping and observation, usually linked to other holes
by an extensive tunnel complex, providing means of escape after sniping
attacks. Excellently camouflaged, resistive to air and artillery attacks.
A 'rat trap' was the term used by US soldiers to describe a two or
three-man spider hole.
Out of a spider hole comes Private Robert R. James of Fort Ord. This replacement for a trench is an adaptions of a Chinese Army device plus an imitation of the trap door of a big California spider.
No. it's a propaganda term - it's a hole. He was hiding. The term "spider" is meant to convey both a variety of unpleasant vermin, and as an allusion to the accusation that he was a secret mastermind of the insurrection, "like a spider in its web."