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Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Something to keep in mind is that minefields are essentially useless unless covered by fire - ie somebody with a weapon is watching over them.
An unguarded minefield is little more than a rather dangerous mine storage area for the enemy as was shown in Vietnam when a (very) large minefield laid by western armies (not sure if it was US or Aus). A few short months later after it had been handed over to the ARVN, there was no minefield - the ARVN had failed to guard it and the VC lifted the whole thing for their own use!
The vast majority of mines encountered for the remainder of the war were from this field.
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That was us, in Phuoc Tuy Province. It took a couple of years but the VC ended up with tens of thousands of our mines because we and our allies failed to keep a manned watch over a long, narrow mine field laid south of Nui Dat. And the thing that frustrates me the most about that is that the last Australian soldier to die in the Vietnam War was killed by one of our own mines which had been stolen, quite possibly from the same minefield.