RATTLESNAKE DREAMS + PANAJACHEL INTRO

The rattlesnake dream    

     Sometime in 1991, I was walking down a back street in a Guatemalan town – either Guatemala Antigua, the old Spanish capital; or Panajachel, on the shore of Lago de Atitlán. I was with my friend Roger Bunch, who’d spent years in Guatemala, and a friend of his who was interested in dream interpretation. That friend asked me to tell some of my dreans. So while walking down that back street in Guatemala, I told him about “Dance of the Arrows” and “Rattlesnake and Pistol.”

     Roger’s friend was agog, and asked me to write them down so he could interpret them for me. In good Marine Corps fashion, I told him to go piss up a rope: “Forget it, buddy. Those are my dreams, and I already know what they mean.”

     I decided then and there to write this memoir. I would title it RATTLESNAKE DREAMS; it would have chapters from much of my life, including Viet Nam service and journalism travels. It would also contain many post-Nam dreams and nightmares, including the book's title piece.

Dream: Rattlesnake and Pistol

People come running up to me: people I know, friends, family, the human community. They're all afraid. They scurry and bump into one another in their urgency to summon my help: "Dean! Dean! There's a snake... you have to shoot it. Hurry!" I follow them. They form a wary circle around the snake, a rattler with powerfully writhing body as thick as my forearms, and triangular head the size of a fist. I'm in the circle, between the people and the snake. Someone hands me a pistol. It's a Hi Standard .22 semiautomatic with a 5" barrel. I recognize it in the dream, and later when I waken, as the first real pistol I ever held, the one my stepdad Bill Gano taught me how to shoot when I was a kid, setting up bottlecaps on a log to represent snakes' heads. The pistol is totally familiar: the purposeful weightiness, the dully glinting, no-nonsense machined surfaces, the knurled metal grips, the thumb safety and the blade front sight and the notch rear sight at the rear of the slide, even the screws, all as I remember them, in their proper places. The people become more frightened, their urgings more frantic: Hurry, they say, and shoot the snake. You're the only one who can do it. The snake throws its body into a coil of scaly, muscular loops. It cocks its head. It emanates power. The people surge back, their entreaties swelling to an ever higher pitch. I take the pistol and look down at the snake. It's in position to strike, but something is missing, which I notice more viscerally than visually. What is missing is that last critical increment of muscular readiness, the quiver of surgical tubing under tension. As I look closer, I notice that the head, instead of hovering just above the coils, tracking its target in readiness to strike, is still resting on the topmost coil, in a physical attitude which suggests both threat and a certain reluctance. And the mouth, which, if open to strike, would have been a terrifying maw in a snake that size, is still closed. I remember that a rattlesnake ready to strike flares its jaws open to almost 180 degrees in order to point all four fangs at its target. And this snake's eyes are not the cold, unblinking eyes with vertical black pupils I had stared into from six inches away, on the Rogue River, as a teenage boy. They are much larger, softer, moist, and brown, more like a dog's, or even a human's, eyes. The snake looks back at me. Its eyes convey ferocity layered with a deep wisdom; and with more layers of warmth, menace, accusation, resignation, regret, and a slight admixture of pleading. Though the snake does not have a voice, what it says with its eyes reaches my brain, not in words exactly, but still in a form akin to language. Ah, the snake says with its eyes. I guess you have to shoot me. I am, after all, a snake. And yes, I am dangerous. I wish I could promise never to bite any of these people, but I can't. I am what I am. But I'm not that different from you. And if you kill me, what does that make you? The urgings of the people in the circle around the snake and me have become a cacophony. They're aware of the eye-to-eye conversation between me and the snake, and want me to shoot before I have time to think about it. The snake is lying in its coils, its eyes now conveying only sadness and a deep reserve of dignity that says it will not demean itself by trying to avoid its fate. I reach down, pick up the snake, and put it in a burlap bag. I leave the circle. The people howl in surprise and protest, but express relief that the snake is no longer free among them. I walk down a road that leads away from the circle of the snake's accusers - the circle of my people - with the rattlesnake in the bag in my left hand, and the pistol, still loaded and still unfired, in my right.

DREAM: DANCE OF THE ARROWS

Dream: Dance of the Arrows

I'm standing alone in the center of a wide, barren plain that stretches to the horizon in every direction. The sky is clear, and sits like a hemispheric blue cap over the plain. I look at the horizon, follow it around. It is featureless... but wait: there is a solitary figure, a speck on the horizon. That figure and I are the only visual interruptions of the universe bounded by earth and sky. I'm invigorated by the feeling of spaciousness, but recognize that I must be watchful. Sure enough: the figure on the horizon is an archer. He draws a powerful bow. Alarm, my warrior's antennae say. The archer shoots an arrow into the sky. The arrow's trajectory says that it is perfectly aimed at me. The arrow disappears from sight, but I must track its flight. I do so by moving my head as though my initial observations had actually programmed the arrow's trajectory into my nervous system. I track the arrow forward, from the point where it disappears in the sky until it reappears, a deadly dot in the blue, now on its way down to kill me. I jump around. I try to dodge it. But it never wavers: no matter how I move, I feel the tingle of its anticipated penetration just below my navel. The arrow swoops toward me, visually accelerating in the way I've seen machine-gun tracers appear to speed up as they come nearer, after having seemed to be moving quite slowly toward me as I observed them from a distance; or the way the ground swoops up toward a parachutist during the last seconds of fall. Just before the arrow hits me, I make one final, quick sidestep. The arrow's feathers brush my belly; it thunks into the earth. Alarm. I look up. Comes another. Again I am able to dodge it only at the last instant. Again the feathers brush my abdomen. Again the arrow stabs the ground at my feet. There is an infinite succession of them. I have figured out that the arrows, while seeming to remain perfectly aimed at my center, never waver in flight, no matter how I jump and dodge. This, I learn, is because the arrow simply knows where I will be when it arrives three and a half feet off the ground, and is aimed there. So my jumping about as the arrow descends is irrelevant. I learn that, with each shot, I am given one, and only one, chance to save my life. This is what Japanese martial artists call suki, or "opening": that tiny window in time - often far less than a second - when an opponent's attention is interrupted or distracted, when only an instinctive, forceful, and unhesitatingly intentional motion will be quick enough and sure enough to enter the opening. So I must watch each arrow as it leaps out of the sky to kill me, and I must wait. I must let it come. As the arrows continue to come and I tire from exertion and fear, I must force myself to relax so that in dodging one arrow I don't overexert and fail to recover in time for the next. Each time, I must wait, closing out the fear that tries like a pack of howling dogs to crowd my mind, to panic me. I must wait until the steel of the broadhead is about to puncture my belly. Then I must perfectly - without protest, without excuses, without appeal to fairness or justice, without asking for help -execute the one quick movement I'm allowed for dodging that arrow. Then I must forget that arrow, allowing no thought of relief or victory or pride in accomplishment, and be ready for the next. The arrows come in a perfect rhythm. So my sidesteps adopt the same rhythm, thereby becoming, of necessity, a dance. I'm never released from the mortal urgency of the situation, but it begins to strike me as funny. At the end of the dream, I'm still dodging the arrows, which never relent in accuracy or intention. But I'm laughing, as at something in a Chaplin movie, funny but urgent, as I dance my dance of survival.

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

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HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

This photo shows (3) US pilots who had been shot down over North Viet Nam, imprisoned (I don’t know how long), then released, coincidentally, just in time for Julian Manyon and me to show up for their release in Vientiane, Laos. I do not know their names. I remember Ambassador Sullivan, who had spent a half hour inside their plane with them before they all walked down the exit ramp to the circle of waiting journalists, saying that “Major (if he gave a name, I don’t remember it), as senior man, would speak for all of them, and we should keep our questions brief.” (photo by Dean Metcalf)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

(Continued from previous post)

Wilcox was careful to ascribe the limited nature of his offer of help - he would give us names of people to see, and try to get us aboard an Air America plane to SAVANNAKHET (if there were any extra seats) - to limited resources. He skillfully parried our questions intimating that the reason journalists weren't welcome aboard AIR AMERICA, or even, it seemed, in front areas in general, might be because something was going on there which the public wasn't supposed to hear about. He would shrug off such queries, saying that we already knew that there was no American military effort in Laos - after all, that was strictly forbidden by the 1962 Geneva Accords - and we should know how much it hurt when the Americans had to stand by helplessly and see their Laotian friends get overrun by superior numbers.

     We didn't press further because we needed his help. He gave us press passes to the airport where the three American pilots were to be flown in from Hanoi the following night (Friday, August 2, 1968), and told us how to get in touch with BRIGADIER GENERAL OUDONE SANANIKONE, who was Chief of Staff and Information Officer for the Royal Laotian Army.

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(2014 NOTE: PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS THREAD OF LAOS STORIES MIGHT RECALL THAT PHIL WILCOX WAS THE US PRESS OFFICER IN VIENTIANE. WE LEARNED SHORTLY AFTER THAT HE WAS FAIRLY HIGH UP IN THE CIA HIERARCHY IN LAOS.)

     LATER, AFTER I'VE POSTED THE LAST LAOS PIECE, I WILL JUMP AHEAD 23 YEARS TO ENCOUNTER WILCOX WHEN HE AND I RECOGNIZED EACH OTHER IN EAST JERUSALEM. HE WAS US CONSUL IN EAST JERUSALEM, AND HELD AMBASSADOR'S RANK. I WAS (AGAIN) A FREE-LANCE JOURNALIST TRAVELING WITH A GROUP OF PEACE ACTIVISTS JUST AFTER THE GULF WAR THAT HAD JUST ENDED. (1991)

.....................................................

     A hard core of reporters had been making the round trip from Saigon to Vientiane and back for as many as four weekends in a row by the time Manyon and I arrived after a haphazard journey of six days, which covered some seven hundred miles by just about every means of transportation imaginable except flying. When the newly released pilots conveniently deplaned less than thirty-six hours after our arrival, some of the Saigon-

based journalists were envious of our luck.

     It was a disgusting experience, made more disgusting by the fact that what happened really surprised no one who was present.

     The INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION aircraft (a C47, I believe) taxied onto an apron near the terminal building at about 10:30p.m., local time. AMBASSADOR SULLLIVAN, dressed in a tropical suit and tie, climbed the portable stairway into the plane. We were expecting a wait (there were 30 or 40 reporters present), and we got it. The cordon of Laotian police allowed us to pour through the gate and form a large half circle with its center at the tail exit of the aircraft.

     After a time some men - possibly members of the COMMISSION - began to straggle to the exit and down the ladder, disappearing behind the ring of reporters and AMERICAN EMBASSY personnel. Once in a while we would see a stewardess appear silhouetted in the doorway, then disappear again inside. Two or three times the policemen fell back and let us reduce the size of the ring. The still photographers were talking about shutter speeds, and the television cameramen set up their floodlights to create a small area of intense whiteness in the surrounding dark.

(2014 NOTE: IT WAS THE TV CAMERAMEN’S FLOODLIGHTS WHICH ENABLED ME TO HOLD MY USED JAPANESE CAMERA OVER MY HEAD AND SHOOT THE PHOTO OF THE THREE PILOTS. I HAD NO FLASH ATTACHMENT. THE THIRD PILOT’S FACE IS IN SHADOW. THE FACE AT THE FAR RIGHT IN THE PHOTO IS A JOURNALIST HOLDING HIS MICROPHONE UP IN FRONT OF THE SMILING MAJOR WHO SPOKE FOR THE THREE PILOTS. (PHOTO BY DEAN METCALF, FIRST PUBLISHED IN COLORADO COLLEGE MAGAZINE, WINTER 1969)

     Finally AMBASSADOR SULLIVAN came down the ladder and strode to the center of the ring of waiting newsmen. He made a terse statement that Major so-and-so, as senior man, would speak for the three pilots, and that we should keep our questions brief. Then he left.

     Then, after about a forty minute wait, the pilots came out. All were wearing white shirts, open at the neck, and not-too-convincing smiles.

     "How's it feel to be back, Major?" was the profound first question.

     "Oh, great, just great, really good to be back...." Toothy smile followed. Somebody had given the Major a big cigar, and he lit up and puffed happily. When he was asked how they had been treated in prison; he answered, "Very well. The North Vietnamese treated us very well."   

     (2014 NOTE: I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM THEN, OR NOW. AT THE TIME, I HAD ALREADY LONG SINCE LEARNED THAT US MILITARY PERSONNEL, SELECTED TO SPEAK BEFORE THE PUBLIC, HAD ORDERS ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY, AND THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID. IT’S ALL PART OF THE TAPESTRY, ALREADY WOVEN FOR THEM. WE JOURNALISTS AND OBSERVERS FROM OUTSIDE THE ORB OF FLOODLIGHTS, OF COURSE CAN HARDLY BLAME THEM.

BUT ONE CAN ALSO LEARN FROM THESE SITUATIONS, AFTER SOME TIME AND DISTANCE HAVE PASSED. (SOME OF US BEGAN TO LEARN AS THE EVENTS WERE HAPPENING.) LYING IN SUCH SITUATIONS – ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF POW’S - IS SO SOLIDLY AT THE CORE OF WHAT HAPPENS, THAT IT IS EXPECTED, FORGIVEN, AND OF COURSE NOT BELIEVED. THE PILOTS THEMSELVES CAN HARDLY BE BLAMED. EXCEPT IN THE SENSE THAT WE CAN ALL BE BLAMED, FOR CREATING THE WORLD WHERE SUCH THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE EVENTS CANNOT GO ANY OTHER WAY. WHATEVER THE DOWN-AND-DIRTY DETAILS OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO THEM IN THE NORTH VIETNAMESE PRISON, THEY HAD LEFT COMRADES BEHIND THERE. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSEQUENCES TO ANYTHING THEY SAID, OR DIDN’T SAY. WAR SUCKS, AND NOBODY WINS… IF YOU WANT TO SUM IT UP THAT WAY.

     He (THE MAJOR) was already beginning to sound like a tape recorder.

     There were more questions: about how long each of them had been imprisoned, whether they'd heard from their families, when they'd found out they were to be released... and there was the question of how the three would return to the United States, to which the major answered that they had been given the choice of going by commercial aircraft or a special Air Force jet, and "hadn't decided yet." The questions were mostly of the unphilosophical, hometown news release type, and several of us were getting the impression that the major preferred them that way. As the queries got closer to sensitive territory  what kinds of missions they'd been on, what they felt about the damage they'd caused  the major began to hedge, and indicated that it was time to cut the thing short; they were very tired and wanted to get home to their wives.

     

     Manyon's question was the capper: "Major, have your personal views changed any as a result of your missions over North Vietnam and your subsequent imprisonment?"

     "Well, since you don't know what my views were before, I guess you can't tell, can you? Ha, ha."

     Again, there was the toothy smile and a flourish of the cigar as the three pilots began to ease their way through the crowd of reporters. Someone muttered that Ambassador Sullivan had done a pretty good coaching job.

 

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

This photo shows (3) US pilots who had been shot down over North Viet Nam, imprisoned (I don’t know how long), then released, coincidentally, just in time for Julian Manyon and me to show up for their release in Vientiane, Laos. I do not know their names. I remember Ambassador Sullivan, who had spent a half hour inside their plane with them before they all walked down the exit ramp to the circle of waiting journalists, saying that “Major (if he gave a name, I don’t remember it), as senior man, would speak for all of them, and we should keep our questions brief.” (photo by Dean Metcalf)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

(Continued from previous post)

Wilcox was careful to ascribe the limited nature of his offer of help (he would give us names of people to see, and try to get us aboard an Air America plane to SAVANNAKHET (if there were any extra seats) to limited resources. He skillfully parried our questions intimating that the reason journalists weren't welcome aboard AIR AMERICA, or even, it seemed, in front areas in general, might be because something was going on there which the public wasn't supposed to hear about. He would shrug off such queries, saying that we already knew that there was no American military effort in Laos - after all, that was strictly forbidden by the 1962 Geneva Accords - and we should know how much it hurt when the Americans had to stand by helplessly and see their Laotian friends get overrun by superior numbers.

     We didn't press further because we needed his help. He gave us press passes to the airport where the three American pilots were to be flown in from Hanoi the following night (Friday, August 2, 1968), and told us how to get in touch with BRIGADIER GENERAL OUDONE SANANIKONE, who was Chief of Staff and Information Officer for the Royal Laotian Army.

     A hard core of reporters had been making the round trip from Saigon to Vientiane and back for as many as four weekends in a row by the time Manyon and I arrived after a haphazard journey of six days, which covered some seven hundred miles by just about every means of transportation imaginable except flying. When the newly released pilots conveniently deplaned less than thirty-six hours after our arrival, some of the Saigon-

based journalists were envious of our luck.

     It was a disgusting experience, made more disgusting by the fact that what happened really surprised no one who was present.

     The INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION aircraft (a C47, I believe) taxied onto an apron near the terminal building at about 10:30p.m., local time. AMBASSADOR SULLLIVAN, dressed in a tropical suit and tie, climbed the portable stairway into the plane. We were expecting a wait (there were 30 or 40 reporters present), and we got it. The cordon of Laotian police allowed us to pour through the gate and form a large half circle with its center at the tail exit of the aircraft.

     After a time some men - possibly members of the COMMISSION - began to straggle to the exit and down the ladder, disappearing behind the ring of reporters and AMERICAN EMBASSY personnel. Once in a while we would see a stewardess appear silhouetted in the doorway, then disappear again inside. Two or three times the policemen fell back and let us reduce the size of the ring. The still photographers were talking about shutter speeds, and the television cameramen set up their floodlights to create a small area of intense whiteness in the surrounding dark.

(2014 NOTE: IT WAS THE TV CAMERAMEN’S FLOODLIGHTS WHICH ENABLED ME TO HOLD MY USED JAPANESE CAMERA OVER MY HEAD AND SHOOT THE PHOTO OF THE THREE PILOTS. I HAD NO FLASH ATTACHMENT. THE THIRD PILOT’S FACE IS IN SHADOW. THE FACE AT THE FAR RIGHT IN THE PHOTO IS A JOURNALIST HOLDING HIS MICROPHONE UP IN FRONT OF THE SMILING MAJOR WHO SPOKE FOR THE THREE PILOTS. (PHOTO BY DEAN METCALF, FIRST PUBLISHED IN COLORADO COLLEGE MAGAZINE, WINTER 1969)

     Finally AMBASSADOR SULLIVAN came down the ladder and strode to the center of the ring of waiting newsmen. He made a terse statement that Major so-and-so, as senior man, would speak for the three pilots, and that we should keep our questions brief. Then he left.

     Then, after about a forty minute wait, the pilots came out. All were wearing white shirts, open at the neck, and not-too-convincing smiles.

     "How's it feel to be back, Major?" was the profound first question.

     "Oh, great, just great, really good to be back...." Toothy smile followed. Somebody had given the Major a big cigar, and he lit up and puffed happily. When he was asked how they had been treated in prison; he answered, "Very well. The North Vietnamese treated us very well."   

     (2014 NOTE: I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM THEN, OR NOW. AT THE TIME, I HAD ALREADY LONG SINCE LEARNED THAT US MILITARY PERSONNEL, SELECTED TO SPEAK BEFORE THE PUBLIC, HAD ORDERS ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY, AND THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID. IT’S ALL PART OF THE TAPESTRY, ALREADY WOVEN FOR THEM. WE JOURNALISTS AND OBSERVERS FROM OUTSIDE THE ORB OF FLOODLIGHTS, OF COURSE CAN HARDLY BLAME THEM.

BUT ONE CAN ALSO LEARN FROM THESE SITUATIONS, AFTER SOME TIME AND DISTANCE HAVE PASSED. (SOME OF US BEGAN TO LEARN AS THE EVENTS WERE HAPPENING.) LYING IN SUCH SITUATIONS – ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF POW’S - IS SO SOLIDLY AT THE CORE OF WHAT HAPPENS, THAT IT IS EXPECTED, FORGIVEN, AND OF COURSE NOT BELIEVED. THE PILOTS THEMSELVES CAN HARDLY BE BLAMED. EXCEPT IN THE SENSE THAT WE CAN ALL BE BLAMED, FOR CREATING THE WORLD WHERE SUCH THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE EVENTS CANNOT GO ANY OTHER WAY. WHATEVER THE DOWN-AND-DIRTY DETAILS OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO THEM IN THE NORTH VIETNAMESE PRISON, THEY HAD LEFT COMRADES BEHIND THERE. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSEQUENCES TO ANYTHING THEY SAID, OR DIDN’T SAY. WAR SUCKS, AND NOBODY WINS… IF YOU WANT TO SUM IT UP THAT WAY.

     He (THE MAJOR) was already beginning to sound like a tape recorder.

     There were more questions: about how long each of them had been imprisoned, whether they'd heard from their families, when they'd found out they were to be released... and there was the question of how the three would return to the United States, to which the major answered that they had been given the choice of going by commercial aircraft or a special Air Force jet, and "hadn't decided yet." The questions were mostly of the unphilosophical, hometown news release type, and several of us were getting the impression that the major preferred them that way. As the queries got closer to sensitive territory  what kinds of missions they'd been on, what they felt about the damage they'd caused  the major began to hedge, and indicated that it was time to cut the thing short; they were very tired and wanted to get home to their wives.

    

     Manyon's question was the capper: "Major, have your personal views changed any as a result of your missions over North Vietnam and your subsequent imprisonment?"

     "Well, since you don't know what my views were before, I guess you can't tell, can you? Ha, ha."

     Again, there was the toothy smile and a flourish of the cigar as the three pilots began to ease their way through the crowd of reporters. Someone muttered that Ambassador Sullivan had done a pretty good coaching job.

 

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (5)

 

                                HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (5) 

     The eldest son of the family came up and said in English that he had a motorcycle, which was allowed past the barricades, and he would be glad to take Manyon and me, one at a time, into town. He said it was 4 or 5 kilometers, and he knew where the hotel was. We thanked him and decided Manyon should go first. As they started off I walked over to one of the little metal-topped tables and sat down. The mother and her teenage daughter and younger son all sat around me, and were very friendly.

     At first I was suspicious; I had been conditioned to be that way in Vietnam, where Americans got used to overtures being made with monetary return, or something more sinister, in mind.

    

     But these Laotians were genuinely warm people, and soon began to disarm me. The boy, who was about ten years old, had had some English in school, and we tried for a while to carry on a conversation. I asked him how many Americans there were in the area, and he said that there were quite a few, more than at Pakse. After a while he asked if I would like anything to drink, and I said no. The mother spoke to her daughter, who got up and brought me a glass of tea anyway. I reached for some money, but they wouldn't accept it, even though the place was a restaurant. Then the mother motioned for the girl to come and sit closer to me. I finally forced myself to relax and admit that they didn't want anything. It was one of the most subtly painful experiences I was to have all summer, for it became a tactic of survival for an American in Southeast Asia to distrust, as a potential enemy or opportunist, anyone he didn't know. The strength of the habit became cruelly apparent when I found myself acting coldly towards people who truly wanted to befriend me.      

    

     The older son returned, and I thanked his family and got on the motorcycle behind him. He took me to the hotel in town where Manyon was waiting. There was a strong odor of marijuana smoke as I entered the lobby; the stuff was legal in Laos.

     We were up early and caught the bus to Thakkek, where we arrived at about noon, changed buses, and continued on. A few miles northwest of town there was a large steel bridge on which the Pathet Lao [Laotian equivalent of Viet Cong] had done a beautiful job, dropping a full span of it into the river. The river was too deep to ford, so a ferry had been set up to carry vehicular traffic, including our bus, across. It was midafternoon when we got to Paksane, where we looked up and saw a giant silver Boeing 707 tanker refueling one of a flight of four sleek fighters. I remember them because they looked so out of place over that town, a lovely little hick place that reminded me of Powell Butte, Oregon.

    

     We had some bad luck at Paksane. The driver knew people there, and he sat in one of the cafes drinking lemonade and talking so long that he was conveniently able to decide that we'd never make Vientiane before the curfew, and would have to spend the night where we were. He drove the bus to a hotel where people who could afford it took rooms; Manyon and I slept in the bus with the other peasants.

……………………………………………………………………………..

     The next day we were in Vientiane by noon. We went to the American Embassy and looked up the press officer, whose name was Phil Wilcox . The first thing he said was "Oh, yes, I've been expecting you two."

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(2014 NOTES, STARTING BELOW:)

     “Oh, yes, I’ve been expecting you two.”

     The speaker was PHIL WILCOX, who at the time of the conversation reported here held the job of Press Officer for the United States Embassy in Vientiane, capital of Laos. I WAS SOON TO LEARN THAT HE WAS A SENIOR OFFICER IN CIA IN LAOS. WE'D MEET AGAIN, AFTER LAOS, 23 YEARS LATER, WHEN HE WAS US CONSUL IN EAST JERUSALEM, AND I WAS (AGAIN) A FREE-LANCE JOURNALIST.

     FOR THIS SECOND MEETING, I WAS THE ONLY JOURNALIST TRAVELING IN ISRAEL, GAZA, AND THE WEST BANK WITH A GROUP OF PEACE ACTIVISTS. IT WAS 1991, A FEW DAYS AFTER THE END OF THE FIRST GULF WAR, THE ONE THAT REMOVED SADDAM HUSSEIN FROM POWER IN IRAQ.

NOTE THE EASY SIDE-SLIP BETWEEN WILCOX'S POSITION OF "PRESS OFFICER" (I.E. CIA OFFICIAL) IN THE US EMBASSY IN VIENTIANE IN 1968, TO THE TROPICAL-SUIT-AND-TIE "US CONSUL" 23 YEARS LATER WHEN THE MEMBERS OF THE PEACE GROUP I WAS ACCOMPANYING WERE INSTRUCTED TO CALL WILCOX "MISTER AMBASSADOR."

THAT "SIDE-SLIP" WASN'T UNUSUAL. IT WAS TYPICAL FOR UP-AND-COMING US DIPLOMATS. IF A CIA OPERATOR WAS NEEDED, HE WAS IT. IF A US CONSUL OF AMBASSADORIAL RANK WAS CALLED FOR, HE WAS IT. GET USED TO IT. IF YOU DO, YOU'LL KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW TO READ NEWSPAPERS... ESPECIALLY "BETWEEN THE LINES."
     
     BACK TO 1968, AND MY FIRST MEETING WITH PHIL WILCOX:

     WILCOX had been “expecting you two” - meaning my traveling partner, Julian Manyon, and me – for the several days we’d been hitch-hiking the length of the highway that followed the Mekong river north from PAKSE, in southern Laos, all the way to Vientiane, the country’s capital.

WILCOX WAS FROM A COLORADO FAMILY. PURE SERENDIPITY THAT IN 1962 AS I RODE MY RALEIGH 10 SPEED BIKE ACROSS OREGON, HIT THE RAILROAD TRACKS SOUTH OF LAPINE AT THE WRONG ANGLE AND HAD TO HITCH-HIKE INTO BEND OREG. TO GET IT FIXED, I SPENT THE WAITING TIME IN THE LIBRARY. PULLED OUT THE BLUE BOOK OF COLLEGES, LOOKED AT PLACES WITH VIGOROUS LIBERAL ARTS (PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, LANGUAGES...) BECAUSE I WANTED TO SWITCH FROM ENGINEERING, WHICH I'D STUDIED MY WHOLE FRESHMAN YEAR AT OREG. STATE, TO THE HUMANITIES. ALSO WANTED TO LIVE IN MOUNTAINS, AND ESCAPE THE RAIN, RAIN, RAIN OF CORVALLIS, OREGON. IN MY CASE THAT MEANT PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, WITH HEAVY INTEREST IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES. I WANTED TO BE ABLE TO TALK WITH THE PEOPLE I NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND. THAT INCLUDED COURSES IN SPANISH, RUSSIAN, (IT WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF NOT ONLY THE VIETNAM WAR, BUT ALSO THE COLD WAR.) AND FRENCH.

I CHOSE COLORADO COLLEGE. AFTER 4 YEARS IN THE MARINE CORPS (SEE SEVERAL CHAPTERS OF RATTLESNAKE DREAMS), I ENROLLED THERE. GO FIGURE!

I KNEW NONE OF THAT WHEN WILCOX AND I MET IN 1968. HE WAS PRESS OFFICER AT US EMBASSY IN VIENTIANE. (THAT WAS A CIA BILLET, WHICH MY NEW EX-CIA FRIEND JOHN STOCKWELL WOULD MAKE EMPHATICALLY CLEAR TO ME A FEW YEARS LATER.) STOCKWELL, AFTER LEAVING THE CIA, WROTE AN EXCELLENT BOOK ABOUT HIS TIME AT CIA: "IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES."

( BACK TO 1968:)

I HAD JUST HITCH-HIKED SEVERAL DAYS NORTHWARD ALONG THE MEKONG FROM PHNOM PENH. WHEN OUR CONVERSATION GOT AROUND TO THOSE CONNECTIONS, WILCOX APPARENTLY DECIDED TO DO HIS JOB BY BEING COURTEOUS TO US, INSTEAD OF OTHER OPTIONS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AVAILABLE TO HIM.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT HERE, IN TERMS OF OUR STORY, IS THAT WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, ALL THE PLAYERS ARE STILL HUMAN BEINGS (EVEN IF THEY'RE CIA OFFICERS MOVING RAPIDLY UP THE CAREER LADDER): WE ALL CAME FROM SOMEWHERE, WE ALL HAD MOMMIES AND DADDIES, WE ALL WERE POLITICALLY CONNECTED IN SOME WAY, WE ALL HAD OPINIONS, HOWEVER WELL- OR ILL-FORMED. AND ALL THOSE THREADS OF CONNECTIVE TISSUE CAUSED, IN EACH PERSON'S CASE, SMALL AND LARGE DEBTS THAT BECAME PAYABLE, EVEN AS WE TRAVELED ALONG THE MEKONG.

MANYON, MY RECENTLY-MET TRAVELING PARTNER, WAS A WELL EDUCATED 16-YEAR-OLD BRITISH KID GETTING AN EARLY START IN JOURNALISM. I WAS AN AMERICAN EX MARINE 25 YEARS OLD WITH A BIG CHIP ON MY SHOULDER ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR, CONVINCED THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING DREADFULLY WRONG IN THE WAY MY COUNTRY WAS DOING THINGS IN THE WORLD, AND SINCE ALMOST NO ONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION TO THAT GREAT WRONG, IT WAS MY JOB TO FIX IT.
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 (2014 NOTES:)    

     We had stumbled into disparate groups of American pilots, USAID workers and the odd expatriate along our way in Laos. (But none that I remember, earlier aboard the riverboat along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers in Cambodia.) I was accosted once by a Cambodian Army officer who asked what I was doing in his country, to which I replied with a shrug, “Just  traveling… just seeing Cambodia.” He spoke almost no English, and I had very few phrases of French. He gave me a stern look that said he didn’t believe me, but let me go. We were approaching the border with Laos; once we crossed that, I would no longer be his problem. I got off lucky, I guess: the only official document I had was my American passport. It might have helped that I was traveling with a young British citizen.

     Once along the way in Laos, we saw what looked like an aircraft hangar. Manyon needed to use a bathroom. He tried the door; it was locked. We asked the young crew-cut man who was doing something outside the structure, if there was a bathroom inside, and if so, could Julian use it. We had to hassle him repeatedly, then finally he unlimbered a keychain from his belt and unlocked the door he had used to let Manyon into the building, closing the door behind him.

     I waited for what seemed like too long a time, then approached the “doorman” and asked, “Say, did you see a tall skinny British kid around here?”

     “I don’t know, but if he’s in there… ”(nodding toward the building) “…he’s locked in, ‘cause I locked it when I came out.”  He unlocked the door. Julian was waiting somewhat impatiently just on the other side. He came out and we went on our way.

……………………………………………………………………

     We were both lucky and unlucky, meeting PHIL WILCOX in Vientiane. (Readers who have followed this story so far will recall our being detained along the airstrip in PAKSE by a jeep carrying a US Army Lieutenant Colonel and a Royal Lao Army Brigadier General. It was that LtCol who said, “This is highly irregular. You’d better go see the head of USAID.”)
 

(2014 NOTE: TOMORROW, I WILL DO A SHORT DIGRESSION TO MENTION SOME ENCOUNTERS OVER THE YEARS WITH USAID, AND HOW IT'S INTERTWINED WITH OTHER AGENCIES, INCLUDING INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES.)

(USAID):

Acronym FOR UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
The ubiquitous US Govt agency which supervises and pays for US Govt. "assistance" projects around the world. I've seen projects for water purification and plumbing projects in Nicaragua (before the Sandinistas took over from Somoza), military bases in Latin America, airstrips and hangars and bridges, highways... anything, anywhere the USG decided its "interests" might be enhanced by such projects. USAID is huge. Its higher-ups wield a lot of clout, because they do discretionary spending at, sometimes, a very high level.

I refer the reader to my passage just above, where the US ARMY LIEUTENANT COLONEL,  who had just collared Manyon and me while we were taking photos on the airstrip at PAKSE, LAOS. The other passenger in his Jeep was a Laotian BRIGADIER GENERAL. That General may or may not have been the same one I met a and interviewed a short time later in Vientiane, in his office. His name was OUDONE SANANIKONE

    OK, this may be confusing to some. (Imagine being me, in 1968...!)

     Let’s take this apart:

A few days earlier, Manyon and I were walking the length of the airstrip at PAKSE, LAOS, unescorted, taking pictures of unmarked military aircraft, both Lao and American. A jeep screeches to a halt beside us. A US Army Lieutenant Colonel in full dress green uniform yells at us from the back seat: “HEY! Who the hell are you?” (This is 1968, at the height of the war, just 3 or 4 months after the Tet Offensive, which changed US public opinion about the war, convincing many that we were losing.)

     The USAID man had called WILCOX from Pakse, and he already had the story about our photography excursion along the airstrip there. And by the time we got to Vientiane, we had been hitchhiking for several days while living out of our rucksacks, and looked it. Wilcox's quizzical expression as he looked us over seemed to ask the same two questions which by now we were used to: were we for real, and if so, were we a threat to his enterprise?

    

     WILCOX began questioning us, and when he asked what publications we were writing for, I pulled out the article I'd had published in the Denver Post About political attitudes of Vietnamese students at the University of Dalat in Viet Nam. That broke the ice; it turned out that his father-in-law was one of the editors of the Post. In fact, his brother-in-law, Chuck Buxton, was editor of the Colorado College Tiger, and I also had a credential from him.  We talked about Colorado, and then, as he had decided to help us, about the vast differences in journalistic activity between Vietnam and Laos. Manyon and I complained about how difficult it was even to talk to Americans in Laos, much less to get transportation assistance or information concerning the policies and projects of the American mission in Laos.

     In spite of his offer of help, Wilcox again became defensive. He explained that since there was a full-fledged war going on in Vietnam, the American military establishment there had huge appropriations for such things as accommodating reporters, but there weren't any of our military personnel in Laos at all, and the civilian budget, he said, was pitiful. (It was another stanza of the same song we were to hear from American and Laotian functionaries alike: nobody cares what happens in Laos, the same people who are contributing so much to the war effort in Vietnam don't even care that there are 40,000 regular North Vietnamese troops right there in Laos, Congress wouldn't give them weapons or airplanes or money...) It was la guerre oubliée": the forgotten war."

ANOTHER 2014 NOTE:

USAID projects, in Laos and otherwise, were often (not always) interwoven with doings by other US agencies, including CIA. My impression from watching a number of these projects, and from listening to overheard remarks by US officials involved, is that the US Ambassador to any country where the US is involved (which includes, I would say, every country in the world, except the very few where we've been kicked out.)

I will later post, here or elsewhere, observations about USAID presence in Costa Rica, in the 1960s.

Please ask me any questions you like, either about content or clarity, of anything I've written.
     (OOPS! I HAD JUST LATELY MET WILCOX AFTER BEING SENT TO MEET HIM, UNDER DURESS, BY "THE HEAD OF USAID" IN PAKSE. THAT WAS WHEN MANYON AND I WERE APPREHENDED TAKING PICTURES OF UNMARKED AND MARKED AIRCRAFT ALONG THE AIRSTRIP THERE BY THE US ARMY LIEUTENANT COLONEL.)

So: please note that a US Army Lieutenant Colonel (2 ranks below General), had just passed Manyon and me UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND from himself to "the head of USAID."

A few years later, in a conversation in my kitchen, ex-CIA officer JOHN STOCKWELL, in a conversation about CIA in Laos (where he himself had served during the war), had this to say about CIA presence in Laos in 1968: "At that time during the war in Laos, ALL American civilians in Laos were CIA." He then made an emphatic horizontal cutting movement of his hand in the space above the table, left to right: "ALL OF THEM."

     Wilcox was careful to ascribe the limited nature of his offer of help (he would give us names of people to see, and try to get us aboard an Air America plane to Savannakhet if there were any extra seats) to limited resources. He skilfully parried our questions intimating that the reason journalists weren't welcome aboard Air America planes, or even, it seemed, in front areas in general, might be because something was going on there which the public wasn't supposed to hear about. He would shrug off such queries, saying that we already knew that there was no American military effort in Laos - after all, that was strictly forbidden by the 1962 Geneva Accords - and we should know how much it hurt when the Americans had to stand by helplessly and see their Laotian friends get overrun by superior numbers.

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (4)

 

                                    HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (4)

It was a jolly ride, sitting atop the load of rice bags as we passed primitive frontier outposts where a soldier and his family, living in a pole shack at the end of a bridge, would be its only security. Several of the bridges were recently blown, and we'd have to leave the road and drive through the woods until we came to a ford. It was all the same to the driver; he'd bounce along through the trees until he got back on the main road, then drive like hell for the next crossing.

     The mood of the countryside began to change. There were more outposts, with more barbed wire and revetments, and more soldiers with weapons more in evidence.

     Toward evening one of the truck's tires blew out, and we all piled out while I helped the driver change tires. The driver and the other two Laotians in the cab reminded me of the truckers I'd worked with in Colorado Springs the summer before, the way they sweated and cursed and laughed as we were changing the tire.

     Soon after that we stopped for a meal in a roadside village. The open-front, weathered board building where we ate must have been the rural Laotian equivalent of a truck stop. The women who worked there seemed to be three generations of the same family. They looked at Manyon and me with some curiosity, but when we smiled and said "merci" and made the traditional gesture of hands together under the chin, bowing slightly, they became open and very friendly. We had some strips of boiled meat – maybe pork - and some ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..        [NOTE IN 2014: Re-reading this passage about relating to rural Laotians in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war going on right next door (and, really, all around us: branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail crossed our path more than once.), I am struck more strongly now than I was while I was there in Laos. As I wrote this chapter, we were on our way to a place where we’d have a closer look at NVA-occupied territory. At the time, I was preoccupied with walking under, and through, a triple canopy jungle at night in the rain./Another thing strikes me powerfully now, that maybe only occurred as a faint glimmer then: the people we spent those days with – the truckers, and the family who ran the truck stop – had to have known what the other Americans were doing in their country. They lived with it every day, in the form of bombardments, covert and not-so-covert troop movements, Air America gunships strafing NVA positions and troop columns in their neighborhoods… of course they knew. But once we treated them with courtesy and respect –- not to mention helping with the work of changing the truck tire -– they were no longer enemies. In fact, they were friends. The proprietress told her teen-aged daughter to sit beside me and talk, with the few words of English at her disposal, and offer me a glass of tea. Many US veterans of that war, especially those most involved in close combat, never had the chance to see the “other side” of the people among whom we lived and moved. Or didn’t know where, or how, to look. PLEASE SEE WAYNE KARLIN’S EXCELLENT BOOK, “WANDERING SOULS.”   )……………………………………………………………..] ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE) foul-smelling soup with animal parts floating in it, and the glutinous rice they always had that you grabbed a handful of and rolled into a sticky ball and ate like a candy bar. In fact, you ate everything with your hands except the soup.      

     Julian Manyon would have none of it. He was quite sure that his digestive system couldn't handle such strange food. In fact, there were many times during the trip when I had to laugh at how utterly out of place he was in a primitive situation. There were even a couple of times - like when we were with the army outside THAKKEK  - when I would roundly curse him for it.     

     I offered, not too insistently, to help pay for the meal, but the driver wouldn't accept. I think he'd been pleased by my helping with the tire change, and then when we'd finished and were all thirsty, I'd broken out two canteens of water and passed them around. Also, he could see that we weren't rich tourists, and he didn't feel compelled to make a profit from hauling us. In fact, this was something we were to notice several times - the business of paying what you could afford.

     On the little bus that had brought us into PAKSE  from the south, there was a wrinkled old man who had walked out of the jungle and stood at the edge of the road to wait for the bus, and when the boy who was collecting fares came in front of him, the old man pulled from his pocket a 100 kip note that was even more wrinkled than his face, and the boy refused it. The old man made the appropriate gesture to save his dignity, then finally the boy took the bill from his hand and shoved it emphatically back into the old man's shirt pocket. We got the feeling that this scene was re-enacted every time the old man got on the bus, with the same 100 kip note. (I also got a break on the fare that time. It was obvious to the Laotians who lived in areas we passed through, that I had very little money, and was used to working my way as I traveled.) And weeks later in Cambodia, as I was taking the river boat back downstream to PHNOM PENH one of the passengers bought me a meal of fried rice from the little kitchen on the boat's fantail. Without it, I'd not have eaten.

     The tire change had taken more than an hour, and as we got on the road again, the sun was going down. With the coming of darkness, the mood of the Laotians changed. They no longer laughed or talked or pointed off to the sides of the road; they just sat there, and the driver pushed the truck as fast as it would go. There would be some conversation now between the driver and the guards at each checkpoint, and when we started up again he'd get the truck back up to top speed right away. Apparently it wasn't a good idea to be on the road at night in that part of the country. Manyon and I joked nervously about the possibility of his convincing the Pathet Lao that we were Frenchmen.

     But points of light began to wink more often from the side of the road, and the truck slowed as the driver and his friends relaxed and began to talk again. We were pulling into the outskirts of SAVANNAKHET.

     There was a military barricade at the town limits, a curfew after which no autos were permitted to enter town, and we were late. Manyon and I got down from the truck and went over to a roadside cafe where one of the truckers was still standing around. As we approached he was saying something about us to the mother of the family who ran the cafe, and it must have been favorable, because the driver hadn't asked us for any money. It was customary for truckers to earn extra money hauling passengers because there were so few buses.

     The eldest son of the family came up and said in English that he had a motorcycle, which was allowed past the barricades, and that he would be glad to take Manyon and me, one at a time, into town. He said that it was 4 or 5 kilometers, and that he knew where the hotel was. We thanked him and decided that Manyon should go first. As they started off I walked over to one of the little metal-topped tables and sat down. The mother and her teenage daughter and younger son all sat down around me, and they were very friendly. At first I was suspicious; I had been conditioned to be that way in Vietnam, where Americans got used to overtures being made with monetary return, or something more sinister, in mind.

     But these Laotians were genuinely warm people, and soon began to disarm me. The boy, who was about ten years old, had had some English in school, and we tried for a while to carry on a conversation. I asked him how many Americans there were in the area, and he said that there were quite a few, more than at PAKSE. After a while he asked if I would like anything to drink, and I said no. The mother spoke to her daughter, who got up and brought me a glass of tea anyway. I reached for some money, but they wouldn't accept it, even though the place was a restaurant. Then the mother motioned for the girl to come and sit closer to me. I finally forced myself to relax and admit that they didn't want anything. It was one of the most subtly painful experiences I was to have all summer, for it became a tactic of survival for an American in Southeast Asia to distrust, as a potential enemy or opportunist, anyone he didn't know. The strength of the habit became cruelly apparent when I found myself acting coldly towards people who truly wanted to befriend me.      

     The older son returned, and I thanked his family and got on the motorcycle behind him. He took me to the hotel in town where Manyon was waiting. There was a strong odor of marijuana smoke as I entered the lobby; the stuff was legal in Laos.

NEXT: HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (5)