BATTLE OF INDO-CHINA: The Celebrated Buddha

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

Advancing in five columns, Viet Mink Communists were in sight of the ancient Laotian capital of Luang Prabang last week. Flying in with French reinforcements, TIME Correspondent John Dowling reported: THE plane, loaded with Legionnaires, JL jeeps, artillery, barbed wire, ammunition, slips smoothly into the grass airstrip. We step out and the hills and mountains enclose us in their green embrace. To the west, rising from the jungle, is a hill surmounted by a white, bell-shaped stupa (shrine) whose glistening, golden spire points needlelike at a soft blue sky. To...

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