HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

-->

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.

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

(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."

……………………………………………………………………

(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.
.................................................................................................................................

 
 (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)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (3)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS 1968 (3)

Traveling with Julian Manyon/Pakse/Nicholas Lawrence Lieuw of Kotakinabalu, Borneo/Saravane/Air America/Pakse airstrip/Jeep caught us/Colonel and General/USAID and American girls/IR8,IR5 rice/hitching on a rice truck





Manyon and I got along pretty well, but were a ways from being soulmates. I was astonished at his physical weakness, and, in my typically intolerant fashion, more than a little put out by having to help him hoist his pack to the top of a bus, or even to push him up over the side rails and into the back of a truck. Ours was a pragmatic arrangement: I had a strong back and military experience; he spoke French.
Kracheh was the end of the line for the riverboat; from there we took a series of rural buses, and hitched the odd ride with truck drivers. That got us as far as Stung Treng, the last sizable town in northern Cambodia. From there, we hitched a ride with two merchants in their jeeps to the Laotian border.
Pakse was our first Laotian town. It lay on the east bank of the Mekong at the end of a hectic four hour ride in a tiny bus over a road periodically interdicted by bridges which had been hastily blown by the Pathet Lao (cousins to the west of the Viet Cong) and just as hastily repaired by government road gangs spending money furnished them by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

I remember Pakse for a couple of reasons, the first of which was a very good, if not overly clean, Chinese restaurant where Manyon and I stuffed ourselves on sweet and sour pork, shrimp, steamed rice, fried rice, salad, and beer for less than a dollar each. We talked about Chinese expatriots around the world, how there is a remarkable consistency about the way they move into a place with hardly a possession, and manage to set up some kind of business by means of which they transform wretchedness into dignity. Often when success comes to them, it is at the expense of the less ambitious Vietnamese or Cambodians or Laotians around them, so they form islands of Chinese society in indifferent or hostile seas; they draw into themselves, endure the envious stares of the locals, and await a friendlier day. As we spoke of this, I remembered Nicholas Lawrence Lieuw, a Chinese Catholic from Kotakinabalu, Borneo, and how he had been able to converse in Mandarin with the restaurateurs in Phnom Penh, and how that was the only time I saw a spark of emotion in the one old man's face - the one who ran the restaurant at the Hotel Mondial - during the time I was in that city. He and the other waiters in the place seemed to get along with the Cambodians, but it was more like respectful tolerance of customers than real warmth.
In Kotakinabalu, Lieuw worked as a travel agent. He was on an extended Asian vacation, a benefit of his job. His main interest seemed to be to sample the women in the brothels of each city he visited.

For Manyon and me, Pakse was the location of our first contacts with the American and Royal Laotian Government establishments. We began looking for evidence of secret air operations. If American pilots actually were conducting military operations, this would be a violation of the 1962 Geneva accords on Laos, which stipulated that Laotian soil be neutral, and that the presence of foreign military personnel was prohibited. The U.S. was a signatory. Of course, the thousands of North Vietnamese troops infiltrating through Laos into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail would be illegal as well.

From the beginning, our trip through Laos was a series of experiences which were so contradictory that we began to get a feeling of otherworldliness about the place and about the war that was supposedly going on there. We had as yet seen nothing to confirm the presence of an actual shooting war, except for the blown-and-repaired bridges we had crossed and the well guarded checkpoints we had passed through on the road up from Cambodia.

One afternoon Manyon had a long talk with an old Laotian doctor in Pakse. He asked the doctor if there was really any fighting going on in the country, and was informed that there was at that moment a fierce battle in progress at Saravane, about fifty air miles northeast of Pakse toward where the Ho Chi Minh Trail snaked through the eastern part of the country on its way into the northern provinces of South Vietnam. Apparently the RLG (Royal Laotian Government) garrison was completely surrounded and in imminent danger of being overrun. The doctor also said that there were many American aircraft, including fighters, flying in and out of the place. He said that some of the airplanes were marked "Air America," an ostensibly civilian aviation company contracted to USAID in Vietnam and Laos which some Americans in that part of the world admitted off the record to be a CIA front.

We had heard that there was an airstrip outside Pakse where such flights might be originating, so we took a shuttle taxi out the highway and got off at the first of two gates to the airfield. We knew that the hangars and office buildings were near the other gate, but wanted an excuse to wander along the airstrip and take a look at some of the hardware of the Royal Laotian Air Force and its American "civilian" benefactors.
The Laotian fighters were T28's, an earlier model of the A1 Skyraider with which the U.S. had outfitted the South Vietnamese Air Force. Some were marked with the threeheaded elephant (actually four, when seen in three dimensions) which was the seal of the government, and some were unmarked. There were only a few American aircraft around; most were C123 cargo planes used widely by the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps in Vietnam. It is originally a military aircraft; the ones we saw in Laos were all plain silver and identified only by the words "Air America" stenciled in very small black letters under the wings, and by equally small black numbers on their tails.

No one accosted us before we got to the hangar area, so we looked around for some Americans to talk to, and encountered another strange phenomenon of the "forgotten war": the Americans received us with a coolness which bordered on hostility, which seemed to deepen as they noticed our ages, as they found out that we were college students, and particularly when we told them we were journalists. It is customary for countrymen who cross paths in out of the way places to greet one another at least civilly, but this almost never happened to us in Laos. It was a strange feeling, after spending several days without seeing a Caucasian, to pass on the street some cleancut type in civilian clothes, of stern demeanor, who is obviously an American, who just as obviously recognizes you as being an American, and who then averts his glance and passes without a nod.
 
In the office building there were a switchboard operator and a couple of pilots in civilian clothes who were about to leave for the day. They were carrying flight helmets and flak jackets, and were not particularly anxious to sit and chat with us. We asked them if they had any aircraft going out to the area of Saravane where the fighting was going on, and if so, could we catch a ride?
The answers were short and polite: Air America didn't carry unauthorized passengers; besides, there were no aircraft going out to the area of Saravane because nothing was happening there. There hadn't been any fighting anywhere around for months because of the rainy season. (We knew better: that was when VC and NVA mounted many attacks because it limited the effectiveness and range of their enemies' air support.)
We walked back along the flight line toward the gate where we had entered. Since we were unsatisfied with the information we had been given, Manyon and I decided to see if the Americans at Pakse were as much on the up-and-up as they would have us believe. If they weren't doing anything to be touchy about, they shouldn't mind if we took a few pictures of their little ol' unmarked airplanes....

The jeep caught us at the far end of the flight line. There was a Laotian Brigadier General in the passenger seat and a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, in full dress green uniform, in the back seat. The driver pulled up alongside us and skidded the jeep to a stop. The Colonel was excited.
"Hey, who the hell are you?" he yelled from the back seat.
"Oh, hello, Colonel. We're student journalists. He's British, and I'm American. We were just...."
"I saw what you were doing. You were taking pictures, weren't you?"
"Yeah. What's wrong with that?"
 
The guy couldn't believe his eyes and ears. I had on a pair of faded, dirty Levi's, an old cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a few days' growth of beard; Manyon looked like a London street urchin. And we called ourselves journalists.
"Well, there's nothing secret about them or anything, but you're just not supposed to take pictures on the flight line, any flight line. It's just military security. You guys got any identification?"

We showed him our press credentials from Saigon, which he did not recognize, but which were obviously legitimate. He cooled off a little. We acted dumb, and that fools most American army officers, including this one. He showed our press cards to the General and spoke to him in Lao. Then he asked us just what sort of story we were after, and we replied that we had thought it would be interesting to do a feature story on the Royal Laotian Air Force for the students back home who seldom get to hear about this sort of thing, and did he have any suggestions?
"I think you'd better go see the head of USAID," he said. "This is highly irregular."
He spoke again to the General and the General got out of the jeep and the Colonel climbed out and let us into the back seat and then got into the General's seat, and we drove off leaving the General standing at the end of the flight line.
The two secretaries at the USAID office were American girls about my age, fine-looking to two of us just in from the wilderness, but about as friendly as the Colonel and the pilots had been. They gave us coffee and we waited for the official who was the local head of USAID.

When he came in we could tell that the Colonel had spoken to him at some length about us, because he looked us up and down carefully, and because he already knew all about the business at the airstrip. But we did the harmless act again and started asking about rural development and about how the new IR8 and IR5(
) rice strains were doing in Laos, and he loosened up somewhat and began to answer questions. We got around to asking him if there were any way he could help us with transportation as we went about our research, and he got careful again and said that we'd have to go to Vientiane, the capital, and talk to the press officer at the embassy there. He emphasized that this was a requirement, not a request; and that the press officer would be expecting us.
It was about noon when we got our packs from the hotel room. (This is how we lived in Laos: a cheap hotel room would be 600 or 700 kips at 500 to the dollar so since Manyon had more money than I, he'd pay 500 and sleep on the bed, and I'd pay 200 and sleep on the floor. He hated discomfort; I was more worried about food.) We took a taxi out of town a ways and caught a ride on a rice truck.

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.