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While admitting his leadership qualities, Western observers are often depressed by Kong Le's Laotian indifference to discipline and logistics. Although supplies are airlifted to the neutralists by five U.S.-loaned C-46s from Vientiane, trucks and Jeeps break down for lack of parts. Ammunition dumps are left unguarded and open to weather. Neutralist officers talk to each other "in the clear" on field radios, leave marked maps lying around, and drive at night with headlights blazing. The supply system is so haphazard that often one unit overflows with rice rations but lacks bullets, while another is loaded with munitions but starves. None of the neutralist troops have been paid in almost a year. Says Kong Le: "My men are tired, but their morale is high, and they still have the will to fight."
Long Silence. They demonstrated that will, in a Laotian way, just two ridges beyond Kong Le's headquarters. Over the velvety landscape and through soft summer rain rolled two tanks and an armored car crowded with neutralist soldiers. Their objective was a Pathet Lao artillery emplacement on top of a steep, conical hill. As the tanks chugged up the first rise, a herd of wild ponies stampeded away from them. One tank and the armored car soon halted, but the second tank labored upward, followed by a skirmish line of scrambling soldiers. Moments later, the Pathet Lao gun flashed, and the tank fired back. Both missed. It soon became evident that the Communist gun could not be depressed sufficiently to get the tank in its sights. Even so, both sides fired futilely for two hours. Then the tank rumbled around a side of the hill, and the neutralist soldiers vanished among the trees.
A long silence followed. The pale sun shone through showers, and a rainbow briefly appeared over the purple mountains. Two of the wild ponies returned and began grazing. The battle simply blurred into the general drift of events in Laos.