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By LAURENCE STERN flown by Air America pilots.The Washington Post They carried their life’s posses-MAK HIEO, Laos — The war sions in their hands and on theirin Laos ceases to be a geopolitic- backs to Vientiane. Now theyal abstraction in this muddy rur- are starting anew in this camp,al camp where 900 refugees 16 miles east of Vientiane,from the Plain of Jars are try- The mementoes of Mounging to make a separate peace. Koun’s agony are everywhere toTheir place of origin is Moung see. A kerosene stove has been Koun on the southwest corner of fashioned from the fins of one ofthe Plain. It has been traded the cluster bombs that used toback and forth between the neu- rain down on the six villages oftralists, the government and the Moung Koun.Pathet Lao time and time again Flare parachutes which used in the past decade. to signal an impending nightFinally, on Feb. 5 they were bombing are now privacy cur-evacuated in C130 transports tains for several of the crampedstraw hutches, six-by-four feet wide, in which entire families sleep.Some of the refugee villagers have caches of Pathet Lao money, their life savings, which are now worthless in government controlled territory. At best, Pathet Lao currency will bring 20 per cent of its original value.The spokesman for the group was Khan Sing, an engaging man of 36 who looks 10 years younger. He greeted three American visitors' in his undershirt and olive drab drawers, a suitable costume for the heat.As he spoke, Khan consulted a red diary book in which he inscribed the tortured history of Muong Koun. He was the Tas-seng, or elected district chief, of the 900 homeless men, women and children in Mak Hieo Camp.Khan and his constituents are the only palpable evidence of a war in Northeast Laos that is largely invisible to the American public, to the press billeted in Vientiane hotels and restricted from the war zone, even to the fortunate Lao who live ingovernment sanctuaries beside the Mekong River that have not suffered from the Pathet Lao or American bombs.The people of Khan Sing’s Tasseng don’t understand these things. They barely realize that they are pawns in a great power battle involving the North Vietnamese, the American pilots from Vietnam and Thailand, the Pathet Lao and the government army. As Khan tells it, the intense dose of indoctrination administered when they were under Communist control hardly rubbed off on his people.“We are glad to be here because we no longer hear the sound of guns. But we have no way to make money and we are not familiar with this country,” said Khan.The women, children and elderly men who make up the ma-«r f flr/\ Anmn’o nnniil of i An— like him.” Khan pointed to a boy of 13 who looked eight.For the last two years that Muong Koun was controlled by the Pathet Lao the villagers were ruled on the ground by the Communists and attacked from the air by heavy American andLao government bombing sorties.“There were many kinds of bombs,” he recalled. Khan described the “little bombs” which he said showered pellets of steel over wide areas. He spoke also of the big bombs which dug huge craters in the earth and sometimes — especially in the rainy times when the ground was soggy — didn’t explode immediate-ly.A young man walked into the straw longhouse where Khan was talking to a reporter. He was hobbling on crutches.“I was walking to the store where the Vietnamese sell salt when a jet came over the village so fast that I could not take cover,” he said. “I was hit by the shrapnel before I could get into a hiding place.”The villagers learned the identity of the different attack aircraft with remarkable precision. They could name the F4H, the F104 and the prop-driven T2s by letter and number.The Pathet Lao taught them the identity of the aircraft andthe North Vietnamese showed them how to dig foxholes and shelter caves in the side of the mountains.The North Vietnamese soldiers kept themselves apart from the villagers and let the local Pathet Lao govern. But. it was the North Vietnamese also who conducted the brunt of the fighting while the Pathet Lao were “behind them.”Which side did he prefer to live under? Khan paused and asked for the question to be re-Deated. Then he reDlied ouicklv!
Newspaper Details
Pacific Stars and Stripes
Tokyo, Tôkyô, JP
Thu, Apr 02, 1970
Page 29
Full Page
Clipped by
Tim G.
USA 13 May 2019
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