Punji stick
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
A punji stick or punji stake (the spelling pungi, pungy, or pungee is also used) is a form of booby trap. It is a stick mounted vertically in the ground with a sharpened, sometimes fire hardened, point at the top, typically placed in a pit in the ground to impale the unwary. The tip of the punji stick was frequently smeared with feces to promote infection in the wound created by the stick. Pungi sticks were not necessarily meant to kill the man who stepped on it. It was used as a guerrilla tactic to wound an enemy and slow his entire unit down rather than killing him.
Punji traps were used extensively by the Vietcong in the Vietnam War.
