[Today's post comes to you via a family connection; my father-in-law, Brien Hodge served as an Army adviser during the Vietnam War. In the process of digitizing his photos, he came across what I thought were some fascinating pictures of Vietnam-war era IEDs and MRAP-like vehicles, so I asked if he would write a brief description. Text and photos courtesy Brien Hodge]
The first two are of two armored vehicles approaching and then stopped at a Ba Cang village where I was stationed at the time. This was on the main North-South road through Vinh Long Province. I believe these were Regional Force troops. They were conducting a road clearing operation some time in the first quarter of 1968 after the road had been cut by Viet Cong insurgents as we call them today, or guerrillas at the time, during the Tet offensive.
I recall one incident when a large mine (IED in today's terms) was placed under that road, apparently by digging into the side of the berm that supported the roadway so that the penetration 
could not be seen from the road, and exploded by remote control when a bus loaded with civilian refugees from the fighting to the north passed over it. There were numerous casualties. The armored vehicles were sent out to help reopen the road which went south from the village to one of the main crossing over the Mekong River near the city of Can Tho.
The other two pictures are of mines, aka IEDs, that were found dug into trails near Ba Cang. I believe they were triggered by trip wires. We also found similar devices far out in the countryside.
I recall an incident when we were out on a trail in a tree line in Binh Minh District, south of Ba Cang, when one of our Popular Forces soldiers was wounded by a grenade trap with a trip wire, something like these. So it seems like they were partly aimed at local forces and civilians and troops that were patrollling away from the villages.
