Laughter in the Shadows (13 page)

The Montagnards

Mountain dwellers are wild and proud, valley people soft and effeminate.

—GIOVANNI BOTERO, 1588

Dark-skinned, barefoot, and fierce, the mountain tribes, or montagnards, were not hard to distinguish from the lowland Cham. The men wore loincloths and strode proudly with a long-handled machete balanced on one shoulder and a crossbow or flintlock rifle on the other. The women wore colored blouses, heavy pleated skirts, and hammered-out silver necklaces.

Oudone referred to them as Peaux-rouges—redskins—when he pointed out the shadowy figures wandering through the marketplace during the day and melting back into the mountains after the sun went down.

When I mentioned organizing the montagnards as part of the nation-building program, Oudone, changed the subject. When I persisted, he told me I should contact Captain Pang Vao, a Meo and officer in the Cham army. Oudone said he would send a message to the district chief of Ban Ban, who could arrange for me to meet Pang Vao.

Oudone did not offer to go with me.

The Opium Trail

A Filipino Operation Brotherhood (OB) medical team was located in Ban Ban, and I asked Vitoy, a friend in OB, to go with me. Vitoy and I were the only passengers on the Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong, the provincial capital and nearest airport to Ban Ban. Xieng Khuong was also at the crossroads of the poppy trade. The Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong was known as “Opium One.”

The Veha Akhat plane resembled one of those biplanes in an “Eddie Rickety-back” cartoon. Its floppy wings and two “half-engines” were wired to an oil-spattered canvas fuselage. The pilot was a wire-haired Algerian wearing sun-blotched khaki shorts and a wine-stained shirt with torn epaulets. He motioned for Vitoy to sit in the back of the plane on some rice sacks and for me to take the copilot’s seat.

The pilot, Anton, turned the key, sending clouds of blue smoke belching from the engines. When the engines finally caught, the plane went lurching down the tarmac and lifted off about ten yards before the end of the runway. Once we leveled off, the pilot turned and told me to take the controls, shrugging off protests that I didn’t know anything about flying an airplane. He reached over and took my hand, placed it on the control stick, and pointed to the compass: “Fly twenty degrees north.” The pilot then dropped off to sleep.

For me it was an hour of bare-knuckles flying, trying to keep my eyes glued to the compass while maneuvering the stick back and forth to keep the plane on course. When a mountain loomed up ahead, I shook Anton, who woke just in time to nose the plane up into the clouds. When we broke out, the mountains were behind us, and a sprawling mustard-colored steppe stretched out below us. Huge prehistoric urn-shaped boulders, dolmens haphazardly strewn over the plateau, protruded through elephant grass like echoes of a pagan past.

La Plaine des Jarres (The Plain of Jars)

The typical snow leopard has pale frosty eyes and a coat of pale misty gray, enormous paws and a short-faced heraldic head like a leopard of myth.

—PETER MATHIESSEN,
The Snow Leopard

Nosing down toward the airstrip, our plane hit an air pocket and almost pancaked when it landed on the dirt airstrip. Anton had to swerve around a water buffalo grazing on the airstrip but finally skidded to a stop at the end of the airstrip, across from the Snow Leopard Inn.

The inn, its mangy namesake tied to a banyan tree out back, sat aside the main junction of the “opium route.” Over the years the inn has been a witness to
a number of skirmishes and battles between the French and the Vietminh and has served as victualers to both.

Monsieur Bernard, the proprietor, reminded me of Casablanca’s Sydney Greenstreet, except for Bernard’s white safari jacket, which was caked with red dirt and wine splotches. Bernard walked out to the plane holding out a shot glass of pastis, the licorice-flavored French liqueur, for his old friend Anton. Then, noticing Anton’s passengers, he went back for two more.

After another round of aperitifs, Bernard served us large bowls of bouillabaisse stew along with a bottle of Algerian red wine. When we had finished eating, Bernard joined us for a cognac pousse-café. I asked him about getting transportation to Ban Ban, and he pointed to two Cham soldiers who were stationed in Ban Ban sitting at another table. Bernard suggested that if I offered them a round of beer, they would probably be glad to drive me in their jeep to Ban Ban. I stood them to two rounds of “33” beer and, as Bernard had predicted, they agreed to drive us. Before leaving, I went over to Anton’s table to say good-bye. I had taken a liking to the wizened Algerian pilot and told him I hoped to fly with him again.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I would keep crossing paths with Anton many times as we plied our respective trades along the trail. The last time I saw him, we were standing again outside the Snow Leopard Inn. Behind us stood the aging biplane, which by then I had christened the Spirit of Xieng Khuong. The thud of mortar rounds could be heard off in the distance announcing the beginning of another battle for La Plaine. Anton clapped me on the shoulder. “Plus
ca change, mon ami
. Nothing changes. Another battle beginning that will change nothing. I hope
les emmerdeurs
don’t hit the inn and spoil the best bouillabaisse in Southeast Asia!
Salut!”

Ban Ban

The ride to Ban Ban was scary and gut wrenching. Spring rains made the road slippery, causing the jeep to slide along the edges of steep embankments and crash into thickets of vines and bamboo. The crankcase kept scraping over deep ruts, clogging the exhaust pipe and causing the engine to sputter and cough. At times the road disappeared entirely, the driver crashing blindly through the jungle until finally the road would reappear.

Sharp embankments offering ideal ambush sites loomed on either side as we drove deeper into the mountains. Bernard had told us after lunch about a convoy that had recently been ambushed by the Pathet Cham along this same road, which was probably the reason the two Cham had suddenly became silent, nervously scanning the ridges for a possible ambuscade.

Their fears were contagious. I felt butterflies in my stomach and began to sweat, even though it was getting colder the higher we went. And my unease was made worse knowing it was of my own making. I had been too nonchalant and blasé about the trip to Ban Ban, announcing cavalierly that I was “off to see the montagnards.” I hadn’t left an itinerary with the Station or bothered to have Oudone advise the local military commander we would be in the area. However, I was no longer feeling cavalier, bouncing along in a jeep and sitting behind two skittish Cham soldiers who had one carbine between them.

Even with the best of preparations, the case officer in the field often feels alone and vulnerable. His only companions are often only local counterparts or indigenous village chiefs and villagers on whom he has to rely for company and security. Unlike his military colleagues, the case officer has no backup, no cavalry or gunships standing by to come to his rescue.

Nevertheless, case officers thrive on their independence and freedom of action, on being able to use their initiative and operate on their own. He can take action and make decisions, knowing the Station will back him up. With that independence, however, comes loneliness and vulnerability, and riding deeper into the mountains, I began to feel both.

The butterflies and cold sweat disappeared when the jeep finally broke out onto a winding gravel road. A bullet-pocked concrete marker read ten kilometers to Ban Ban, and a half hour later the jeep pulled up in front of the Operation Brotherhood clinic.

The OB team greeted us with a warm welcome and invited us to stay with them. They prepared a barbecue that evening in our honor and invited the district chief. When he arrived, the wild boar was still turning on the spit. I introduced myself to Wang Si, who told me Colonel Oudone had sent a message about my visit. He invited me to call on him at his office in the morning.

The barbecue was followed by a Filipino songfest and dancing the
tinikling
, at which Wang Si was surprisingly adept, stepping effortlessly in and out of the clacking bamboo poles. I was not as agile as Wang Si, which my black and blue ankles attested to the next morning.

The district chief was waiting in his office when I arrived. Wang Si was a Black Thai, descendant of the tribal group that emigrated centuries earlier from the Black Thai river basin area in China. He was short, wide shouldered, and dark skinned, with a wrinkled forehead and squinting eyes. Wang Si’s face brightened when I presented him with a “petit pistolet.” He ran his hands over the barrel and then began pointing the pistol at various targets in his office. I was glad I had held back the box of cartridges.

Before talking to him about meeting Pang Vao, I asked Wang Si if he would be interested in an airport for Ban Ban. The idea had come to me as we drove into
the town before arriving at the OB clinic. I didn’t relish the idea of more jeep rides like the last one if it turned out I needed to make more trips to Ban Ban to meet with Pang Vao. I had seen a soccer field outside of town, a field that could serve as an airstrip for the Station’s newly acquired helio.

The helio, or heliocourier, had been designed and developed in St. Louis, Missouri, by two airplane mechanics. Designed for short takeoff and landings (STOL), one of the first helios produced in St. Louis had been sent to Viensiang for use in our up-country operations. Ban Ban would be an ideal destination for its inaugural flight.

Wang Si jumped at the idea of an airport in Ban Ban.
“Magnifique!”
he declared.

When I suggested the soccer field as a possible site, Wang Si immediately agreed and said he would speak to the commander of the military outpost near the field. He would ask him to have his soldiers remove rocks and stumps along the sides and at either end of the proposed runway.

Having settled the question of the airport, I asked Wang Si if he could arrange for me to meet Captain Pang Vao. Wang Si replied that Pang Vao was “like his brother,” and he would have no trouble arranging a meeting. He said he would immediately send a message asking Pang Vao to come to Ban Ban to meet me.

Wang Si hadn’t asked why I wanted to see Pang Vao and didn’t mention having to obtain the approval of the province chief or regional military commander, which would be normal in arranging a meeting between a Cham officer and a foreigner. It seemed that Wang Si ran his district with little outside interference, and I attributed this to the isolation of his district. In the case of Pang Vao, he pointed out that he was a “fellow montagnard.”

I met Pang Vao three days later in Wang Si’s office. The Meo captain was short, like Wang Si, but much thinner and wirier. Pang Vao had high cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes, and a ruddy complexion. Although he had been walking for two days to get to Ban Ban, he didn’t seem tired. Pang Vao had a reservoir of restless energy and was constantly shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet as he talked.

After introducing me to Pang Vao, Wang Si left us alone in his office. I told the captain I had heard a lot about him. I had looked forward to meeting him so I could discuss a project with him concerning the montagnards. I was about to continue, but Pang Vao cut me off. Pang Vao’s habit of interrupting was one I would have to get used to.

He said he had been waiting for a long time to meet someone from the American embassy. He wanted to discuss the current situation concerning his Meo, a situation that was grave,
tres tres
grave. We could discuss my project later.

Pang Vao spoke in rapid French for almost an hour. He began by berating the French. He said that after they lost the Indochina War, they disarmed the
thousands of Meo they had recruited as maquis to fight the Vietminh and help the French control the highlands. Disarming the Meo, according to Pang Vao, was a big mistake, because taking a Meo’s rifle is like taking his soul. A number of Meo had hidden their weapons from the French, but they were all still bitter about having been betrayed.

Pang Vao would keep coming back to the betrayal, which had deeply embittered him against the French.

Getting back to the “grave” situation, Pang Vao said the Meo desperately needed help. The Cham government didn’t care about the tribal people and couldn’t or wouldn’t help them. The Cham had appointed a “token Meo” as minister of Montagnard affairs, but he became corrupted by Cham politicians and had done nothing to help his fellow montagnards.

Pang Vao said the Meo depended heavily on their opium crop, which they bartered for rice, blankets, and cooking oil. This year’s opium crop had been almost wiped out by heavy rains along with having to suffer through a harsh winter. Also, Vietnamese marauders had been increasing their raids across the border to steal their livestock.

With another winter approaching, the Meo were becoming desperate. Pang Vao said his people needed my help.

The Meo leader had caught me off guard. My proposal for integrating his montagnards into a nation-building program would ring hollow. Pang Vao wanted tangible help for his people, who were in desperate straits. Offering civic action kits and community radio sets wasn’t going to cut it. At the same time, I didn’t want to raise false hopes with a man who had a strong memory of false promises. I had to come up with something.

I told Pang Vao how much I admired the Meo and could sympathize with their plight. Unfortunately, my agency’s resources were limited. We didn’t have magic fertilizers to revive the opium crop or hybrid seeds to start a new one. We couldn’t feed the entire Meo population, and as for their depleting livestock, we couldn’t provide arms for cross-border raids against North Vietnamese rustlers.