It had been a difficult time for the country. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was constantly struck during the war and as many Laotians as possible moved away, some even retreating to live in caves. Those Laotians who remained in the area ran the risk of being forced to work as porters for the North Vietnamese or being the victims of U.S. bombing. For the people of Laos, this was an unwanted conflict fought by foreigners their on home soil.
Today, modern Tchepone has sprung up on the west side of the Sepon River, just a few miles away from the old town. We crossed the river using a bridge built a decade after the war by the Soviets; to the south lay the remains of the original structure, destroyed by U.S. bombs during the war. There wasn’t much to see in the new town: a Buddhist temple, a covered market selling shabby merchandise from Thailand, and a few roadside stalls open despite the heat of the day.
One morning, after several hours of tramping around in the heat, we stopped at a garage-like building with plastic tables and chairs scattered out front under an awning. By now, the temperature had climbed to around ninety degrees. Our group sat at a table while a couple of the adjacent tables were filled with young men working their cell phones. Ubiquitous is too mild a word for it—I’m still looking for a person in Southeast Asia who doesn’t have a cell phone.
One of the stalls was a sort of beauty salon. I watched as a middle-aged woman got her hair cut and then received a manicure and a pedicure. Finally, in the ultimate quest for beauty, she had her ears cleaned. A long pair of bayonet shaped forceps was used to insert various swabs and solutions into the ear canal. It was a serious and delicate procedure—the feminine quest for beauty exists in all cultures and knows no limits.
The stall adjacent to the beauty salon was used for cooking. Large pots boiled over the flames of a propane gas cooker. Some of the men were eating a dish of noodles and pig organs. We all had a beer which was served semi-cold, ice added to the glass as needed. As time passed, our drink was freshened up and replenished.
The men all work at a nearby plant owned by some foreigners that manufactures some kind of electric device. They had nothing to say about the war; they were more interested in their smartphones. Everyone was drinking Beerlao, a rice-based lager made in Laos. Beerlao is an ordinary tasting lager that has obtained a cult-like status in much of the world, probably in part because it’s hard to find anywhere other than in Laos. Beerlao did wonders. After a couple of rounds, the war seemed ages in the past. Drinking beer with ice on a hot morning and watching a lady have her ears cleaned, all while the scent of pig organs floated in the air, seemed like a much better way to pass the time.
There was really no safe place to live in Laos during the war. It wasn’t just the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the panhandle that was involved in the so called “Secret War.” Early in the 1960s, the CIA led a campaign to help the Royal Laotian forces in their fight against the communist troops of the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese. They enlisted the support of the hill tribe Hmong people and their charismatic leader Vang Pao. Then, in 1962, the Geneva Accords were signed, guaranteeing a free and neutral Laos. A coalition government was formed, and U.S. and North Vietnamese troops were scheduled to leave Laos. Things were finally looking up for the divided country.
The North Vietnamese violated the Geneva Accords from the beginning, continuing to move troops and supplies down the Trail to South Vietnam, maintaining their support to their communist brethren, the Pathet Lao in Laos and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The CIA also stayed, funneling support to the Hmong fighters, while the Seventh Air Force kept bombing the Trail. The Secret War, waged in a neutral nation, continued until 1973.
Early in my Air Force career, I had an opportunity to participate in the Secret War in Laos. My first assignment after flight surgeon’s school was with the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida, a unit that focused on unconventional warfare, including the clandestine support of the war in Laos. My squadron commander was a young major named Richard Secord.
When I arrived at Hurlburt in the fall of 1970, Secord was commander of the 603rd Special Operations Squadron, an A-37 unit employed in counter-insurgency. Knowledgeable regarding both the Middle East and Southeast Asia, he went on to hold a variety of posts before retiring as a Major General. Secord’s greatest claim to fame, or notoriety, came with the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s, a scheme to provide funds to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from profits gained by selling arms to Iran. Secord helped manage the covert arms sales through secret Swiss bank accounts, reportedly making a couple of million dollars in the process.
Major Secord knew a lot about the Secret War, while I knew next to nothing. I could barely find the country of Laos on a map. I had been at Hurlburt for less than a week when I was called into an office with a couple of colonels and asked if I wanted to volunteer to go to Laos to provide medical care for CIA personnel helping the Hmong fight the Pathet Laos and North Vietnamese. The colonels told me I would be “sheep-dipped,” which I later learned meant that I would be a civilian assigned to the CIA, possibly using a different name.
This was an easy choice. I had just arrived in Florida and my son was two months old. Showing my true colors, I chose not to volunteer. No one seemed annoyed or upset, Major Secord appeared happy to have me on staff as a flight surgeon. My next opportunity to go to Laos came all too soon, via an F-4 just ten months later.
It would be nearly another forty-six years before I actually set foot in the country.
Fifty years later, the scars of the war in Laos are too deep to have completely healed. The landscape was devastated during the conflict. Some two million tons of ordnance was dropped on the country, making Laos the most heavily bombed nation per capita in the history of the world. Today, you see old bomb casings used as supports for houses and sheds; fuel tanks jettisoned by bombers now serve as boats; piles of different types of ordnance are used as backdrops for photo-ops for tourists. Poor farmers harvest the relics of the war to sell to scrap dealers, one of the few cash crops in the countryside.
The worst legacy of the war in Laos is the problem of the unexploded ordnance (UXO). Up to a third of the bombs dropped never exploded and continue to wreak havoc a half-century later. Particularly dangerous are the Cluster Bomb Units (CBUs), large canisters that opened in mid-air above the target scattering hundreds of small explosive bomblets over a large area. These tennis ball sized bomblets (known as “bombies” in Laos) continue to cause injury and death—particularly among children. Some twenty thousand people are estimated to have been killed or injured in Laos since the war ended. The UXO threat continues to hamper the daily life and long-term development of this nation. The danger still lurks in the forest and fields, hindering the economy in many ways.
There are ongoing national and international efforts, supported in a small way by the U.S., to clear Laos of UXO. Most commonly, metal detectors are used to discover the ordnance, which is then marked and later detonated. This “mag and flag” technique is slow, tedious, and dangerous work. It will take many more decades to make Laos safe.
For the people of Laos, the Vietnam War still lingers. Everyone I talked to was well aware of the UXO problem and felt the U.S. should do more to help. I completely agree—I can’t think of a better place to spend foreign aid dollars.
TWENTY-FOUR
HANOI
My time in Laos was done. I had set foot on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, walking the same jungle paths tread by thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers headed to the south. The damage from the war is still evident fifty years later, but the people of Laos, resilient and optimistic, are moving forward.
I headed back to Da Nang to fly to Hanoi for a couple of days on my own before joining a tour group. Phuoc, Thanh, and I took a different route back to the city, stopping at a beach resort south of Hue for lunch. (Everyone has heard of China Beach, but I never realized that there were many lovely beaches on the northern side of the Hai Van Pass.) The restaurant was packed with South Korean tourists; we had driven
through a heavy rainstorm and the weather seems to have forced everyone inside. Rain never seems to fall lightly in Vietnam, the tropical downpours have an intensity like nowhere else.
After lunch, a trip through the Hai Van Tunnel put us in the outskirts of Da Nang ahead of schedule. When Phuoc dropped me at the airport, I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. I had spent a lot of time with my guide and had asked him hundreds of questions; he was probably happy to rid himself of this inquisitive American senior citizen who tried to talk to everyone he saw and finally enjoy some peace and quiet with his family.
I was excited to be heading to Hanoi, the cultural and political center of the country. During my year in Vietnam, Hanoi was the most dangerous place in the world, the area where the men of Rolling Thunder ran the triple gauntlet of AAA, SAMs, and MiG aircraft, the city where most of the American POWs were held.
Rolling Thunder had ended over two years prior to my arrival in Southeast Asia. The Linebacker campaign, which sent U.S. fighters back over North Vietnam, began a week after I came home. Some have called this interval the “halftime” of the war up north, but that wasn’t quite true—our wing had flown missions over North Vietnam between Christmas and New Year’s in 1971. But in general, the country was mostly off-limits from the end of 1968 until May 1972.
I had always thought of Hanoi as a dark, dismal place. When you’ve never actually seen a city in person, your mind uses the few photos you’ve seen, adds in what you’ve read, and conjures up an image. I saw Hanoi as a city of bunkers, laced with AAA sites and SAM installations. The people wore either black pajamas or dull green uniforms with ugly pith helmets. In my mind, Hanoi was the place where the Devil went on holiday.
New York Times journalist Harrison Salisbury visited Hanoi around Christmas 1966, one of the first Americans allowed in the country. I read his book, Behind the Lines: Hanoi while I was in medical school. Salisbury painted a picture of devastation and destruction; his writings made the city seem like Dresden or Tokyo.
The reality was different. For much of the war, up until December 1972, Hanoi was one of the safest places in all of Vietnam. The U.S. had a thirty mile restricted zone around the city, and Hanoi was basically off-limits to American fighters. Some bombs surely went astray—things happen when you’re trying to dodge AAA and SAMs—but in general, the damage was much less than described and certainly unintentional.
Many people view the whole Vietnam War as a massive unloading of bombs over the entire country of North Vietnam. They picture giant B-52s dumping ordnance on Hanoi around the clock. There were plenty of bombs dropped on the North, but it was the nation of South Vietnam that endured the brunt of the air and ground war; around four times as many bombs were dropped in the south compared to the north. Even the small, supposedly neutral country of Laos received nearly double the ordnance that the North Vietnamese received.
At the Hanoi airport, the concrete revetments still shelter the Vietnamese fighter jets as they did fifty years ago. During much of the war, attacking the MiG fighters on the ground wasn’t permitted; they had to be in the air. It was a bit like bird hunting is today; it’s fine to hit the birds on the fly, but it is bad form to shoot one on the ground, sitting in a tree, or on a power line. Those were just some of the rules of engagement promulgated by Lyndon Johnson. Looking back, the rules seem bizarre and foolish, designed to kill American airmen rather than win the war.
My guide, George, sped me through the airport and downtown to my hotel. The custom of adopting an English first name for dealing with English-speaking visitors is very common in China, but I rarely saw it in Vietnam. The Vietnamese seem proud of their names and are often anxious to explain their meanings.
My hotel was near Hoan Kiem Lake, a stunningly beautiful twenty-five acre body of water surrounded by a lovely promenade. This spot was more alive than any place I saw in Vietnam. The area was full of people strolling, exercising, dancing, hawking
merchandise, playing badminton, eating, or enjoying a game of chess. The city seemed to never sleep; revelers were out late at night, and merchants were on the go before dawn. If you don’t like crowds, Hanoi probably isn’t for you.
Immediately to the north of Hoan Kiem Lake is the Old Quarter, a warren of narrow streets and shops which has changed little in over five hundred years. Originally, each street sold a specific type of goods (herbs, silk, cotton, etc.) and the street names of today still carry those labels.
The Old Quarter is a delightful place for a morning stroll. The people of Hanoi seem oblivious to foreign tourists; the city is a popular destination for Asian as well as Western visitors. I rarely garnered a glance from any of the natives. The Vietnamese squatted in the doorways or sat on small plastic chairs, talking and eating breakfast, seemingly unaware of curious foreigners.
At the opposite end of Hoan Kiem Lake are the grand boulevards and wide pavements of the French Quarter. After the hectic, narrow streets of the Old Quarter, the elegant Parisian-style buildings of the French Quarter seemed to belong to another world. By the late nineteenth century, the French had established firm control of their colony of Indochina and began constructing elegant buildings like the Opera House and the Hotel Metropole, as well as stylish villas to house colonial officials. Today, the French heritage is preserved in the French Quarter; the spaces are greater, the architecture is lovely, and the crowds are thinner. The French never fail to impress, but their imprint on Vietnam is fading with time.
George had left me pretty well alone in Hanoi, and I had been coming and going on my own schedule. He did, however, manage to hook me into going to a water puppet show.
The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was to watch little wooden figures go through their act. It was the type of event you force your grandchildren to attend, and even then it’s a poor second to video games in their eyes. A water puppet spectacle was certainly no place for a man in his seventies. If you have a finite number of days left on the planet, you don’t want to waste any watching puppets.
George was persistent, so I signed on for the show. I think his persuasiveness was sincere; he was genuinely proud of this Hanoi tradition.
In the end, George did me right—the water puppets were an interesting sight to see, much better than wasting time in a bar. The show was held in a theater with comfortable seating. The stage was a waist-deep pool of water around thirteen feet long on each side. The brightly colored puppets, made out of lacquered wood, were controlled by puppeteers standing in the waist-deep water hidden behind a screen. The puppeteers maneuvered the wooden figures using long, submerged bamboo rods.
The show consisted of a series of skits based on famous Vietnamese legends and folklore. Many dealt with everyday rural life, such as the rice harvest or fishing. An orchestra of drums, bells, flutes, and strings provided the soundtrack. Everything was in Vietnamese, but the themes were universal and easy to grasp; I could quickly identify the poor maiden, the village clown, and the evil rich man.
The show once again reminded me that most must-see sights are usually must-see for a reason. It’s best to leave your sophisticated ways at home and join in. I’ve found that some of my best experiences have come from being herded around with other tourists at local cultural shows.
Since my tour group was due in from the United States and I would soon be on a scheduled itinerary, I tried to squeeze in a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. I’ve always been fascinated at the way communist countries entomb and deify their dictators and despots. If you install an atheistic system in a country, you have to have someone for the young to worship once the old people of faith die off.
Vladimir Lenin was the first of the comrades to be embalmed and given his own mausoleum. Lenin supposedly asked to be interred, but his place in the communist pantheon was too important to let him be buried in the ground. His body is still around, having survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of communism in Russia.
In North Korea, it’s a family affair. Both K
im Il Sung and his son Kim Jung Il are on public display, even years after their passing. Yet it is Chairman Mao Zedong of China who takes top honors. He rests in a mausoleum that dominates the vast Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Mao’s portrait is everywhere in China, including each piece of Chinese currency. When I visited his mausoleum a few years back, every single visitor seemed distraught and despondent, as if the most important person in their life had just passed away.
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is located in the center of Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, the spot where Ho proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945. Uncle Ho, as he is commonly known, died in 1969, right in the middle of the Vietnam War. His will reportedly included instructions for the cremation of his remains, but his wishes were not to be. Ho’s comrades had other ideas; it was important to keep the father of the country above ground, a symbol of the nation. In 1973, inspired by Lenin’s tomb in Moscow and using marble quarried from Marble Mountain in Da Nang, the communists began work on Ho’s tomb. Two years later, the mausoleum opened and the Vietnamese have been coming in droves to pay tribute ever since.
I waited in line for nearly an hour before passing through security and filing silently past the dimly lit glass case that held the great man’s remains. A military honor guard stood at attention as the mostly Vietnamese crowd shuffled by in quick order; no dilly-dallying was tolerated. The Vietnamese were very respectful of their national hero, but there was little of the weeping and wailing I’d seen at Chairman Mao’s mausoleum.
Uncle Ho, the father of the country, is held in highest esteem by the Vietnamese. His picture shows up around the nation on posters and banners, in shop windows, and hanging from utility poles, especially around election time. His face also graces every single piece of currency. Whenever I open my wallet, I’m greeted by Ho’s goateed, half-smiling image. For most rulers, you only live once, and when you’re dead you’re done, but that’s not the case for leaders in the communist world.
Racing Back to Vietnam Page 18
