14. Peace

They made a wasteland and called it peace.

- Tacitus (c. A.D. 55-120)

The Paris Agreement on Vietnam was signed on January 27, 1973. Laos had not been a negotiating party at the peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam - excluded along with South Vietnam and Cambodia - at which the United States had quickly dropped its demand for a truce encompassing the whole of Indochina. The Royal Lao Government had wanted the United States to conclude a Laotian cease-fire as part of the Vietnam settlement but was rebuffed.

One of the issues during negotiations was the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from Laos. Hanoi continued to maintain the fiction that it had no soldiers in the country, but did confirm in writing that North Vietnamese would be considered ‘foreign’ troops in respect to the agreement’s call for the withdrawal of such forces.

Souvanna Phouma chose to interpret this as a defeat for the North Vietnamese, and believed that he would at last be able to work out a political settlement with the Pathet Lao that would be a nationalistic, Laotian solution free of foreign interests. In reality it was Hanoi that stood to gain from an early cease-fire in Laos, one of the terms of which included the cessation of all U.S. air support.

It was as if America had learned nothing from its previous negotiations over Laos. The mistakes of earlier agreements - 1954 and 1962 - were not only repeated but compounded. Laos and Cambodia were disposed of in the Paris Agreement by Article 20, a paragraph of 185 words of diplomatic waffle in which the United States and North Vietnam agreed to respect Laotian and Cambodian neutrality and to end military intervention. But there was no deadline laid down for any such intervention to cease, and no means to enforce it.

The North Vietnamese Communists had blatantly violated the two previous agreements, and it took optimism on the level of an act of faith to believe that they would now abandon the ambitions and struggles of thirty years because of a clumsily drafted afterthought in a document they had no intention of honoring anyway.

It is hard to accept that the U.S. negotiators were not cynical in regard to Laos, ignoring the fate of a small, irrelevant power in their anxiety for a quick exit from an unpopular war. But it is a charge that is denied by William Sullivan, who as a deputy assistant secretary and head of the State Department’s Vietnam Working Group acted as Kissinger’s deputy in the peace negotiations: ‘We were skeptical but not cynical. In retrospect we had hypnotized ourselves with our own mythology on this, because this is what we had been attempting to do from the very beginning - to contain the North Vietnamese back in the area that had been allocated them in the 1954 agreements. The underlying assumption was that we had pushed them into a position where they would have to truncate their ambitions. Maybe we were kidding ourselves.’ [226]

Ambassador Godley is more severe. He feels that Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma was treated shabbily. ‘He was a great man,’ he said. ‘I respected him tremendously - his honesty, consistency, and personal courage. He was never consulted. We led him down the garden path. Let’s face it, we were cutting and running. We pulled the rug from under him. But once we were out of Vietnam the only way we could have protected Laos was with an Army corps. It was totally out of the question and we knew it. We were licked. There was nothing to be done.’ [227]

Dr. Henry Kissinger arrived in Vientiane on his way to Hanoi thirteen days after the Paris agreement was signed. He dined with Souvanna Phouma at the prime minister’s villa, which struck Kissinger as so modest he recorded its simplicity in his memoirs: ‘It looked like the residence of a French junior minister, without the trappings usually associated with presidential palaces.’

After dinner Souvanna Phouma made a moving appeal to Kissinger: ‘The very survival of Laos rests on your shoulders. But your shoulders are broad. We are counting on you to make our neighbors understand that all we want is peace. We are a very small country; we do not represent a danger to anybody. We count on you to make them know that the Lao people are pacific by tradition and by religion. We want only to be sovereign and independent. We ask that they let us live in peace on this little piece of ground that is left to us of our ancient kingdom.

‘If pressure is kept on the North Vietnamese to understand the risk they run from violating the Agreement, then perhaps they will respect the Agreement... Therefore we must count on our great friends the Americans to help us survive. We hope, we dream, that this wish will be granted.’

‘What a touching hope,’ Kissinger wrote, and publicly responded in kind. ‘We have not come all this way in order to betray our friends.’ [228] But behind closed doors the Americans were exerting enormous pressure on Souvanna Phouma to sign, telling him bluntly that unless he accepted whatever settlement was being offered he stood to lose everything.

According to the prime minister’s son, Prince Mangkhra Phouma, who filled the position of director of the cabinet in the Ministry of Defense at the time, his father was presented with a fait accompli. ‘We had to sign the agreement because of the menace from Mr. [sic] Kissinger. He threatened to cut off all aid to Laos if my father refused. He signed, so that the Americans would continue to help Laos. But as soon as we signed the help stopped.’ [229]

This view is supported by Maj. Gen. Oudone Sananikone, the Army chief of staff who said that John Gunther Dean, the U.S. chargé d’affaires involved in the Laotian peace negotiations, made thinly veiled threats to the Royal Lao Government in order to obtain concessions for the enemy. The pressure became so intense that the Communist Pathet Lao believed Souvanna Phouma ‘would agree to anything’ and considered the Americans so keen on a peace settlement that they were, ‘in effect, in their [the enemy’s] corner.’ The pressure exerted by the Americans was not subtle. ‘We would find that the weekly shipments of American-supplied rice for the army would not arrive,’ Sananikone said, ‘or that the American-supplied money to pay the army would be delayed, or that only part of the fuel needed to run the army’s vehicles would be delivered.’ [230]

On the day Kissinger was in Vientiane, the official news agency, Lao Presse, issued a dignified, heartfelt editorial that was pathetic in the circumstances. ‘America ... has ended its suffering, but it cannot forget that in international morality, peace has the same value for all people, small or large.’ [231]

This small, gentle voice went unheeded in the hard world of international realpolitik. To power brokers with the muscle of Henry Kissinger, Laos was very small beer indeed. Critics have suggested that a better cease-fire agreement might have been negotiated over Vietnam, giving the allies a greater chance of survival, had a permanent, senior negotiator been given the job, rather than relying almost exclusively on the overextended skills of Kissinger, who was committed to an exhausting round of worldwide shuttle diplomacy. (During the extended Vietnam talks, Kissinger was also involved in negotiations regarding Salt 1; the Four Power Agreement on Berlin; the India-Pakistan war; the treaty between the two Germanys; various treaties with Chile, Cuba, and countries of the Middle East; opening contact with China; secret talks with President Sadat over his plans to expel the Soviets from Egypt; and the beginnings of the Panama Canal Treaty.) [232]

Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma had written to his half brother Prince Souphanouvong in July, proposing yet another new effort at negotiating a peace agreement between the warring Laotian factions. Peace negotiation between the Royal Lao Government and the Pathet Lao had opened in Vientiane on October 17,1972.

Souvanna Phouma genuinely sought conciliation, hoping nationalist interests would bring the two sides together, but there was a desperate edge in his search for peace once he understood the U.S. position that any agreement was better than none. In principle, both sides agreed on neutralization, a coalition government, and an end to foreign intervention. In reality, the talks in Laos were tied to the coattails of events in Vietnam.

The subsequent Vientiane Agreement between the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government bowed to almost every demand made by the Communists. In his desperation to reach an understanding that would avoid further bloodshed,

Souvanna Phouma made even more concessions than those favored by Washington.

The Pathet Lao retained complete control of their own zone, while gaining a half-share in the national government. Worst of all, the North Vietnamese were allowed to remain for sixty days after the formation of a new coalition government, while U.S. air support was to be closed down within twenty-four hours of signing the truce. The Royal Lao Government received the news of the agreement with profound dismay. ‘This is the worst defeat we have suffered,’ Sisouk Na Champassak, Lao defense minister, said.

The Pathet Lao were naturally delighted with the terms of the agreement. But these are now only of interest to students of Laotian history, for events were soon to prove that even the most generous agreement was seen by the Communists as nothing more than a stopgap to the total takeover of the country. Laotian sovereignty was violated everywhere by the North Vietnamese. On the other hand, the removal of U.S. and Thai military elements and the disbanding of the CIA irregulars was to go ahead according to the letter of the agreement. The ineffective International Commission for Supervision and Control, a body that had proved a complete failure in its oversight of the previous agreements, was brought back into being.

The same miscalculation made by Averell Harriman in 1962, when he underestimated Hanoi’s independence of Moscow and Peking as well as its territorial ambitions, was repeated by Kissinger. It was a major strategic mistake. ‘I cannot, even today, recall Souvanna Phouma’s wistful plea without a pang of shame that America was unable to fulfill his hopes for our steadfast support against a voracious enemy,’ Kissinger wrote in his memoirs. [233] It is a shame that is not out of place.

The Ravens would be required to fight to the last minute of American involvement in Laos. They too had learned of the terms of the peace agreement with shame, and could not share in the euphoria that was sweeping America at the news of the end of the war. The general public in the United States, who knew little about the war in Laos and cared even less, could have no knowledge of the terrible sacrifice the Meo had made on America’s behalf and the tragic fate to which they had been abandoned. But for the few Americans intimately involved, the end of the war was no cause for celebration.

Gen. Vang Pao’s 1972 monsoon offensive northeast of the Plain of Jars had kicked off in August with the understanding that USAF helicopter support was crucial. The plan was to insert a 2,400-man force in the northern plain to the enemy’s rear, but it faltered because of bad weather, and restrictive Air Force rules limited the use of CH-53 helicopters without escort. Only half the intended assault group was deployed, and the force was no match for enemy artillery and tanks. Survivors were split up and forced to make their way overland through enemy lines, a ragged retreat that went on for several weeks.

Despite dwindling support, Vang Pao continued to launch attack operations. The last major combat assault using USAF helicopters took place on January 20,1973, when seven CH-53s and two Air America Chinooks flew in a thousand men to reopen the Vientiane-Luang Prabang highway. Four choppers were hit, but the road was successfully reopened prior to the cease-fire. [234]

The enemy, meanwhile, kept up the pressure in the panhandle, while the United States piled on the last of its air power. From the end of January until the cease-fire, sorties flown in Laos averaged 350 a day and totaled 8.900. [235] With the war over in South Vietnam - for the Americans, at least -massive air support now became available for use over Laos during the last days of the war there. Hillsboro, the orbiting command post in the panhandle, called Jack Shaw and asked if he had a target. Shaw said he had seen a truck in a river, but was not sure if it was stalled there or had been previously destroyed.

‘Okay, you got air.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Shaw argued. ‘I don’t know if this truck is any good.’

‘You’ve got air,’ Hillsboro insisted. ‘You’ve got the only target in the war.’

The entire afternoon launch from a carrier arrived in relay, and Shaw directed the mixed bag of twenty-five fighters onto the truck, stacking them up and putting them onto the target as fast as possible. It was a hectic period of furious activity which was nothing more than battlefield make-work. 1 can’t remember if we got the truck,’ Shaw said. ‘It was probably dead anyway.’

On the last official day of the war in Laos, February 22, 1973, Gen. Vang Pao received an unsigned, typed communication at his HQ in Long Hang, part of which read:

‘1. In accord with the terms of the ceasefire agreement between the Royal Lao Government and the Neo Lao Hak Sat (Pathet Lao) that established 1200 22 February as the time armed action between those forces would cease, the United States is honoring this agreement.

‘2. As we discussed previously, USAF air support would cease as of 1200 22 February ... USAF were under instructions to clear Lao air space by 1200 this date.’ [236]

One of the outposts defending Long Tieng duly fell at 2:30 that afternoon, while others were being heavily shelled in preparation for direct attack. Vang Pao shook his head and told reporter Arnold Isaacs of the Baltimore Sun, who was standing beside him, that he did not see how his positions could be held without American support. ‘We are not like South Vietnam. South Vietnam, the Americans have given all means, thousands of tanks, trucks, airplanes...’ [237] He left the sentence unfinished; Laos was to be abandoned with scarcely anything to defend it

The Ravens were ordered to be back on the ground by midday, and were threatened with the most dire consequences if they were not. The objectives of the war in the previous couple of months had changed, from tying up NVA troops and interdicting traffic on the Trail to a frantic last-minute scramble for territory before the cease-fire went into effect. On the day before the cease-fire, friendly troops were told to hoist Royal Laotian flags, specially made up and dropped by the CIA, to mark their positions.

The final morning of the war was fought in dismal weather. In the north, H. Ownby, Darrel Whitcomb, and Craig Dunn flew three missions apiece in support of a surrounded enclave of Meo battling for their lives. ‘I had taken off before dawn,’ Ownby said, ‘and worked some U.S. air and Laotian T-28s. Then, starting about ten o’clock, it was like the world quit. The planes started disappearing and it got real quiet on the radio. It was eerie.’

He put in his last set of fighters and turned the plane around to head for home by the noon deadline. The battle still raged on the ground, and as he flew away he felt he was ignoring every instinct in his being. ‘I felt like a coward. If I’d had more guts I would have said screw the diplomats, screw my boss, and screw the president - I’ll do what I know needs to be done. But I was young and believed that somebody knew more about it than I did.’

The war on the Bolovens Plateau was furious, and Jack Shaw kept begging Hillsboro, ‘Send us air, send us air.’ He had flown out of Pakse with CIA case officer Sword sitting illegally in his backseat. They fired M-16s and M-79 grenade launchers from the windows of the plane. The enemy had opened up on Paksong with mortars and had the town under siege, and seemed to be on the move everywhere. ‘No more air after the next ten minutes,’ Hillsboro radioed. ‘Everybody has to be out of Laos and west of the Mekong by noon. That’s it, buddy.’

The last fighters dropped their bombs at 11:50, and Shaw turned the plane around and flew home during what he knew to be the height of the battle. Paksong fell at 12:30.

‘We knew damn well the North Vietnamese would not recognize the cease-fire,’ Lew Hatch said. ‘As we left, the tanks started rolling. In four days they overran four positions on the Bolovens. The thousand-man Thai artillery post was cut off and they had to walk out through the enemy lines. And we had to sit there and watch the Lao fly.’

Back on the ground the Ravens went through the ritual that all combat pilots who had completed a tour in Southeast Asia experienced: a bottle of champagne was opened, and the pilot was hosed down with cold water while a photograph was taken of him beside his plane. But on the last day of the war in Laos it was an empty ritual acted out with an absolute lack of spirit. Shamefully, they handed their planes over to Lao FACs, who turned them around and flew into battle to direct the hopelessly inadequate squadrons of T-28s.

Their frustration mounted as they watched their old allies return to the war without them. ‘We’ve got to help those guys,’ Shaw said to an officer from the air attaché’s office. ‘Those fuckers on the ground are getting their shit blown away.’

‘The war’s over, lieutenant - and that’s official.’

The Ravens stationed in Vientiane went out for dinner that night at Chez Hélène and tried to celebrate. ‘Everybody felt shitty,’ Ownby said. ‘We had a real good dinner and we all still felt shitty. The life had gone out of everybody.’

In the panhandle the Ravens went out drinking with Air America and CIA personnel and suffered a similar dispirited evening. Doug Mitchell, the last Raven to be sent to Laos, stayed at home in the hootch in Savannakhet. After three years of flying combat in Southeast Asia, the sudden release from tension was overwhelming. ‘I got a case of the total shakes. Total, uncontrollable shaking, and I felt cold as ice. And I was shaking like that for an hour.’

Enemy activity after the cease-fire was so blatant that the prime minister, Souvanna Phouma, was forced to accept the cynicism of the Communists. The next morning he told reporters that instead of honoring the cease-fire, the Communists had planned all along to wait until the skies were clear of American bombers to mount a general offensive to grab more land. Dejected and emotionally distraught, Souvanna Phouma stated, ‘We had faith in this agreement and we have been tricked. Our faith has been violated.’ [238]

He declared that unless the Communist attacks stopped he would request further air strikes from the Americans. Almost indifferent to the threat, the Pathet Lao spokesman said accurately that they had successfully withstood American bombing until then, and would continue to do so. That night the Americans reacted to the request and nine B-52s struck near Paksong.

But the post-ceasefire conflict continued. ‘The goddam International Control Commission in Pakse was living in a downtown hotel which they never left, logging every T-28 that took off as a cease-fire violation,’ Lew Hatch said. He appealed to the Canadian delegate, offering to fly him and his colleagues around the panhandle to see exactly what the situation was. ‘The Canadian wanted to do it but he was perpetually outvoted by the Polish and Indian delegates. A large part of the country which we controlled was overrun after the cease-fire.’

The war went on, but there was less of it. Government weekly casualties dropped to a quarter their previous number. [239] Serious violations that could not be overlooked brought the B-52 back in April 1973, when the final strike of nine years of USAF bombing was put in south of the Plain of Jars. [240] It is symbolic that the last raid of the war, made by one of the most awesome weapon systems on earth, was nothing more than an empty and impotent gesture.

A contingent of Ravens remained stationed in Vientiane, supposedly to act as a reminder to the Communist Pathet Lao that USAF personnel were on hand to resume air operations if the necessity occurred. The enemy saw this for what it was - an empty bluff. The countermeasures threatened if they broke the agreement were nullified when the power of the U.S. president, the chief executive of the administration, was frozen by the inquiry into the Watergate break-in. The Ravens were not allowed to fly or even move out of Vientiane. ‘Sadly, we were there doing absolutely nothing,’ Chad Swedberg said.

Time passed slowly in a city where, without the war, there was nothing to do. The Ravens rose at 10:00 and passed the mornings taking language classes from a local who came to the house. The afternoons seemed endless. In the evening there was dinner and a movie, after which everyone went down to Charlie’s to drink beer and play darts until the early hours of the morning. The Purple Porpoise had closed after its owner, Monty Banks, suffered a stroke and returned to Australia. Madame Lulu too closed up shop and returned to Paris after spending the greater part of a lifetime in the Far East. [241]

Half of the Ravens were duly sent home. [242] Chad Swedberg left, after a specially chartered Air America plane had flown down to Pakse to pick up Princess Hamburger. The mongrel returned with him to America, her regal title enabling her to be listed on the airplane’s manifold as ‘Priority Passenger - Do Not Bump.’ One by one the Ravens were sent from the country, until by the end of September 1973 only H. Ownby was left. ‘I was housemother, so it was my job to close up the hootch. The saddest part was figuring out what to do with Mr. Van and Mr. Tung - the cook and the housekeeper.’ Van was someone who would always fall on his feet, and he left for Bangkok; Tung was a less adaptable character, and the Americans remaining in Vientiane collected two thousand dollars to enable him to take his family and settle across the Mekong in Thailand.

‘The house was closed as a typical military operation. I went through it with the property officer, checking off an inventory. It was eerie - a great big empty house. I turned out the lights, locked up, and walked away.’

The last of the O-ls had been flown out of Vientiane in a four-ship. They took off from Vientiane and executed the traditional ‘missing man’ formation, usually done as a fly-past at a military funeral when one plane pulls up and out of the formation in a symbolic act of remembrance. ‘It was a tribute,’ Jack Shaw said. ‘To Hal, and the Ravens who had died. To the Lao we left behind, and the Meo we abandoned and betrayed. To the American POWs left in the country. It was our way of saying we might have been made to go, but we would never forget.’