Laughter in the Shadows (19 page)

Guns for the Meo

A month after the king’s funeral, I flew to La Plaine for a meeting with Colonel Kham Kong, commander of the Second Military Region. While waiting for the colonel to arrive, I was talking to Bernard, the proprietor of the Snow Leopard Inn, when Major Pang Vao rushed up. I hadn’t seen him since my visit to Nong Het, and I congratulated him on his promotion.

Pang Vao was more agitated than usual. He told me Nong Het had fallen and his garrison and the villagers had fled into the mountains. They were now heading for a Meo area farther south.

Pang Vao pointed to the helio and asked if he could use it to try to locate the column from Nong Het. I agreed but said he would have to wait until the 105-mm howitzer was unloaded from the C-46 that had just landed. The howitzer had been flown in to help defend La Plaine against advancing neutralist forces. A U.S. Special Forces team was standing by to help the Cham artillerymen set up the 105.

A cable slipped as the howitzer was being lowered from the side door of the C-46, and the wheel of the 105 crashed into the side of the plane, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. A Special Forces team standing by rushed up to help right the howitzer and lower it to the ground.

Just as the Special Forces team managed to set up the 105, mortar rounds began dropping at the other end of the airfield. The Cham artillery unit immediately ran off, and the Special Forces disabled the 105 by placing an explosive charge in the breech to disable the howitzer before it fell into the hands of the Pathet Cham.

The C-46, a hole in its side, lifted off before the Plaine des Jarres changed hands again. Pang Vao and I ran to the waiting helio to look for his column.

We had just taken off when the helio pilot pointed to another C-46 off to the right. The plane was bringing in a second 105 howitzer and had lowered its gears on its final approach to the Plaine des Jarres.

Our helio pilot tried radioing the pilot of the C-46 to warn him off, but the plane continued its descent. The helio pilot continued trying to contact the rapidly descending C-46, with no success. He finally dove into the path of the C-46, forcing the bigger plane to bank sharply to avoid hitting the smaller plane. The C-46 pilot came on the air, cursing “the idiot” who had crossed into his flight path but apologized when he learned of the enemy “reception committee” waiting on the ground.

We then began searching for Pang Vao’s column and eventually spotted it moving along a dirt road. Pang Vao asked if we could land on a clearing near the road, and we landed just as the column appeared around the bend. Pang Vao called out to the lieutenant leading the column who came over to greet his commander. I watched the column pass, a rag-tag mix of soldiers and villagers and two young boys in the rear prodding the sheep, goats, and two cows the Meo had managed to take with them from Nong Het.

Pang Vao ordered the lieutenant to halt the column and bivouac for the night, then asked me to come back the next day so we could talk.

We took off and flew down to Viensiang so I could brief Jorgy, Henry’s replacement. Jorgy called for another officer, whom he introduced as Bill, to sit in on the briefing. I related the debacle of the 105s, the fall of the Plaine des Jarres, the search for Pang Vao’s column, and the latter’s request that I come back to meet him
the following day. Following the briefing, Jorgy told me to return to Luang Prabat and wait for further instructions.

On the way back to Luang Prabat, we passed an Ilyushin cargo plane flying toward the Plaine des Jarres. The Cold War had come to Cham.

The next day Bill arrived with instructions from Viensiang that I was to take him to meet Pang Vao to discuss a paramilitary program. I knew Pang Vao was finally going to get his guns. On the way back down, we flew by an Ilyushin dropping supplies to the neutralists. This time the Russian crew waved to us as we passed.

We landed on the same clearing where Pang Vao was waiting. I introduced Bill, telling Pang Vao that he had come to discuss a “special program” with him. I then translated as Bill outlined a paramilitary program for arming and training the Meo. I noticed Pang Vao kept smiling and glancing over at me as he listened.

When Bill finished, Pang Vao turned to me and said he had only one question. “How can I be certain that your government will honor its commitment and not abandon the Meo like the French did?”

I told Pang Vao the U.S. government stood its commitment and would never abandon the Meo.

My answer seemed to satisfy him and he shook hands with Bill. Pang Vao then took me aside to ask me for a favor. Remembering the anvil, I braced myself. This time Pang Vao asked if we could transport his family to the area of his future base of operations. He wanted to be sure his family was safe, and he would follow on foot with the rest of the column.

I agreed, and once again, his request was not as simple as it sounded. It took the helio five round trips to transport Pang Vao’s family of three wives and thirteen children to the new area.

Several weeks later I visited Pang Vao and Bill at the new base area. A Dornier plane was air-dropping rice, and several of the sacks hit Meo soldiers rushing out on the DZ before the drop was over. Following a buffalo sacrifice in their honor, I returned to Luang Prabat.

I didn’t see Pang Vao again until ten years later, when I escorted him to the White House to present President Lyndon B. Johnson with a Meo flintlock.

CHAPTER 8:
Vietnam, 1962–66

The wrath of God lies sleeping. . . . Hell ain’t half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman’s making into a foreign land, ye’ll wake more than the dogs.

—CORMAC MCARTHY,
The Crossing

T
here was still hope for Vietnam in the early ’60s, before the My Lai massacre and Kent State made it America’s tar baby. Vietnam was like its neighbor, Cham, having been ravaged by Mongolian hordes, invaded by Chinese warlords, and worked over by French colonials.

In 1962 Vietnam was recovering from the Indochina War, trying to grapple with a North-South split of the country dictated by another Geneva accord. The country was battle scarred, thousands of Catholic refugees were pouring into the South in another diaspora, while Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem solidified their control over war-weary rice-growing populations. Although Vietnam retained oriental charm, civil wars and the ravages of foreign occupiers had left pockmarks scarring its pristine beauty.

The years 1962 to 1966 spanned the prelude to the war, the landing of U.S. Marines, and the initial skirmishes in the “war of a madman’s making.”

Although my nation-building and counterinsurgency credentials had been singed in Cham, I was sent on to South Vietnam, where similar troubles were brewing. The assumption was I could apply the same poultices used in Cham to staunch the insurgency in South Vietnam.

Guidance to the Station from Headquarters contained familiar phrases about “strengthening the government’s resolve” and “developing rice-roots democracy.” There was a new one that had a good ring to it, however: “winning hearts and minds.” Nation-building was struck and replaced by “pacification,” civic action gave way to “counterterror” and “census-grievance,” the Viet Cong (VC) superseded Pathet Cham as public enemy #1.

Saigon

Our house was on the outskirts of Saigon, across the river in Gia Dinh Province. It was a large stucco French colonial, larger than my grade and status warranted, but because of its insecure location outside Saigon’s city limits, there were no other takers.

The house had a big yard surrounded with a wall covered with vines and frangipani. It came with a fifteen-foot boa constrictor that resided in a large cage with a palm tree in the center, a rock garden, and a small pond for the boa to bathe in. There were also two peacocks that were continually escaping over the wall but that were always brought back by local Vietnamese for the obligatory ransom of fifty rupiahs, or twenty cents.

We also acquired a young deer and christened it “Florence,” then changed its name to “Lawrence” when certain appendages appeared. My trips up-country increased our menagerie. I brought back a small crocodile, a flying squirrel, and a two-foot-long boa constrictor, which I thought would be a good companion for the larger boa that came with the house.

I later gave the crocodile to the zoo after it almost snapped Megan’s finger off. We kept the flying squirrel, which made its home in my study, flying across the room every time a visitor entered. The boys put the small boa in their mother’s bed, setting off a small domestic crisis that was solved when it slithered over the wall to make its way to our German neighbor’s house next door.

The boa constrictor that came with the house used the palm tree for his constricting. We named the boa Charles Willoughby, after the gluttonous G-2 on Douglas MacArthur’s staff. Charles ate a live duck once a week, and his “feeding” attracted a number of foreign journalists, including Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Keyes Beech, and Jerry Schecter.

Every three months the boa shed his skin, and during this molting period, he would ignore the live duck offered him for his weekly dinner, allowing the duck to sit complacently on his head or strut up and down the scaly epidermis. After a week we let the duck out in the yard, where he would join the other “lucky ducks” spared earlier by Charles Willoughby.

I was initially sent to work with the montagards in the thirteen highland provinces. As in Cham, the mountain tribes controlled the highlands except for the provincial and district capitals and military outposts.

The Army of South Vietnam (ARVN) rarely ventured into montagnard areas except on “search and destroy” operations, brutal sweeping forays that didn’t endear them to local tribes. So, to implement our Mountain Scout program, we
worked directly with province and district chiefs, touching base with military commanders only when necessary.

My counterpart for the montagnard program was Colonel Hoai, a Vietnamese army officer who accompanied me on my trips to the highlands. Colonel Hoai’s role was to act as my intermediary with province and district chiefs and report my activities to his headquarters in Saigon.

Hoai was an ideal counterpart. He rarely interfered with my activities, and because he was always hungry, he arranged most of my meetings with province and district chiefs before noon to ensure he would be offered lunch. After lunch, Hoai would doze off, which allowed me to work out the details of our program with the province or district chief. These officials were happy to support the Mountain Scout program. It provided them with paramilitary forces they could command directly, making them less dependent on ARVN military commanders to provide security for their province or district.

The backbone of the program, which I spent the better part of my first year in Vietnam implementing, consisted of twelve-man montagnard teams whose mission was to gather intelligence, harass the Viet Cong, and act as a government presence in the highlands. In provinces bordering North Vietnam, the teams were tasked to monitor infiltration of personnel and supplies destined for their comrades in the South.

I offered them a “package,” which included financial aid and logistical support, including weapons, rations, and training. After the teams had been recruited and trained, I would make the rounds again with payrolls and supplies and try to monitor the effectiveness of the teams. Sometimes I would accompany them when they were operating in nearby villages, but my presence was a negative distraction, and I had to rely on reports from province and district chiefs.

A Mountain Scout training center was established in Pleiku in the central highlands. Bert, my former mentor at The Farm, became the director of the center, which received a number of commendations, including one from the president of South Vietnam for his course on animal husbandry and the prize pigs Bert raised for breeding throughout the highland.

A U.S. Special Forces team was assigned to the Station to work exclusively on the Mountain Scout program. The team set up a base in Kontum, the highland province where the Viet Cong were most active and from where they ran extensive infiltration operations into the South. The Special Forces unit trained our Mountain Scouts in hunter-killer operations and gathering intelligence on cross-border infiltrations.

Being in the center of a Viet Cong area, the Base was vulnerable. I was staying with the team one night when the Base was probed with small-arms fire. The team leader immediately lit a “flaming arrow” line of smudge pots on a pivoting
platform. He then radioed for “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the C-47 with a Gatling gun mounted in the door, which arrived overhead minutes later, spewing out thousands of tracer rounds per minute in the direction indicated by the flaming arrow. The tracers lit up the area in a Spielberg show of firepower and drove off the attackers, stopping any further probes for almost a month.