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High over the jungle green hills of Laos, unmarked U.S. transport planes loosed red and white parachutes that floated down the supplies of war: ammunition, clothing and food. Only a few miles away, across a canyon or a hill. Russian Ilyushins bounced onto rough turf runways bearing howitzers, mortars, assault guns and Communist technicians to man them. Among all the crises around the world, only in the remote and rugged northern Laos were Communist and anti-Communist armies lined up for war.
But strangely, once the arms glided down into the hands of the Laotians, very little seemed to happen. Rarely had the world's two great antagonists been more frustrated in their respective friends.
Images & Amulets. In the Royal Laotian Army, the soldiers were small, laughing men. floppy as rag dolls in their outsized American fatigues, wearing socks of rice about their chests. In five weeks, they had advanced exactly eight miles along Astrid Highway, a dirt scar grandly named to commemorate the visit years ago by a Belgian queen. They swam in mountain streams, stole pigs, got drunk on rice whisky, and occasionally fired their U.S.-supplied 105-mm. howitzers in the general direction of the enemy. (They disliked the idea of shooting at anybody with a rifle, since it is not permissible for any good Buddhist to knowingly kill another human being.)
The Communists were only slightly better served. On the commanding Plaine des Jarres, cut off from the Royal Army by deep ravines, the Pathet Lao fought without pay and kept their new Russian weapons clean. But the Pathet Lao have not yet dared risk a major battle. During three months of slow retreat, they have managed to kill just 50 of the enemy, almost all by means of land mines or long-distance artillery barrage. What could serious cold-warriors on either side do with soldiers who set up tiny clay images of Buddha to shoot at, deliberately missed, and then wore the statues as amulets on the theory that the enemy would now miss too?
Three Princes & a Soldier. To the minority of Laotians who know about the war at all, it was simply a fight between the princes. For Laos is a country of princes and peasants, where the democratic process has made no more impact than has the Communist cry of revolution. There is Prince Souvanna Phouma, who claims to be Premier and is recognized as such by the Russians, though he is off in voluntary exile in Cambodia, cultivating gladioli at a royal villa borrowed from Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk. Souvanna is a man so enigmatic that he persistently refuses to define what he means by his doctrine of "neutrality in neutralism," on the ground that Laotians dislike precision. There is Prince Boun Oum, recognized as Premier by the U.S., but frankly described by one Western diplomat as "a sort of Buddhist Falstaff." One of Boun Oum's supporters called him "the most representative personality of the kingdom"—by which was meant that he is excessively fond of drinking and wenching. In fact, Boun Oum owes his position to the strong man on the Western side—General Phoumi Nosavan. an anti-Communist soldier who captured Vientiane three months ago and forced Souvanna into exile.