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The silvery Cessna Wren scudded high above the Plain of Jars, and the tiny man in rumpled fatigues peered down through eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. Below him the wind moved casually over apple-green downs, setting the jade-colored rice fields to shivering. A few pagodas, their tiled roofs torn by howitzer shells, yawned at the sun. On the barren hilltops, orange-colored lines of slit trenches spread like ringworm across the Plain of Jars, which had been fought over for three years by Communist Pathet Lao troops and neutralist forces. The tired little passenger in the Wren was neutralist General Kong Le, whom the Communists had just pushed off the Plain. But he vowed to get back on it—with American help.
Kong Le was on his way to inspect one of his outposts at the edge of the Plain. As his aircraft slewed to a halt near the village of Vang Vieng, he jumped down and stared around at the straggly cluster of palm-thatched huts and muddy walkways that would be his headquarters for the next fight, for it was here that he expected the Communists to resume the attack. Kong Le and his headquarters looked worn, scruffy, far from impressive. But he stood almost alone in Laos last week as the West's only effective battler against Communism. With only 3,000 ill-paid, ill-trained troops supplied only infrequently by airdrops, Kong Le's prospects seemed poor. His spirit did not. "Whether we win or lose," he said, "I'm afraid there is not much choice except to fight until we can fight no longer."
Behind Kong Le loomed an elaborate, half-hidden U.S. operation designed to maintain the fiction of Laotian neutrality and keep both Kong Le and Premier Souvanna Phouma's government from falling completely to the Communists. For the first time outside South Viet Nam, the U.S. had used direct if limited military intervention in its attempt to hold Southeast Asia from the Red Chinese and North Vietnamese. From Washington to Vientiane, the operation was punctuated by denials that obviously could not be kept up much longer. After all, it was an election year, and even as Lyndon Johnson preached "the pursuit of peace," other Government officials were taking pains to tell Washington journalists that Southeast Asia was as crucial to Western interests as Berlin. But the U.S. had made a move, and, for the moment at least, it seemed to have produced an effect.
Hawks & Doves. The neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, shaken severely by a right-wing coup last April, had been jolted further by a series of sharp Pathet Lao attacks that forced Kong Le off the Plain. If the precariously balanced Laotian coalition was to hold, outside help was needed. A month ago, unarmed U.S. jets began flying reconnaissance missions over Red territory in hopes of intimidating the Pathet Lao. When one of the slow-flying Navy recon planes was downed by Russian-made antiaircraft guns, the U.S. decided to send armed jet fighters to escort the reconnaissance craft. When one of the escorts was shot down, too, the U.S. obviously had to do something—or give up the whole game.