Americans at Work

Rain was falling on Laos last week. The nights were cold, the war was bogged down in mud. and only the Americans were doing any work.

Five hundred U.S. Marines unpacked their gear at Udon in northeastern Thailand, just 45 miles southwest of Vientiane across the Mekong River. They were equipped with 16 helicopters, ready to help fly men and supplies to the fighting front when and if they were ordered into action. In the Laotian capital of Vientiane, the only four helicopters on duty were pocked with bullet holes, and their U.S. civilian pilots, flying under contract to the Laotian government, were badly overworked. Said one, who had spent weeks darting through thunderstorms and skirting mountain peaks and groundfire from the Communist Pathet Lao: "My luck's beginning to run a little thin." Added another: "Those hills are ringed with Russian antiaircraft guns. We have to fly in low, just skimming the hilltops."

Thin Luck. One converted World War II bomber was busy hauling supplies-- cement, rice and nails--for a village self-help program that the U.S. hoped would win some friends. Old C-475 ferried arms, food, cigarettes and beer that floated down by orange and white parachutes wherever a royal army contingent could be spotted through the clouds. Luck ran out for one U.S. embassy C-47 on an observation mission, which ran into a hail of ground fire and crashed. The U.S. gave seven crew members up for dead, the first U.S. casualties of the Laotian war. The only survivor--an Army major--was reported a prisoner of the Communists.

New Recruits. With no cease-fire assured, the U.S. got a guerrilla operation of its own going in Laos. The main recruits: anti-Communist Meo tribesmen, a rugged breed who live only above 3,000 ft., raise opium and Husky-like white dogs. (Standing advice to U.S. pilots: "If you're shot down, find yourself a Meo and hang onto him for dear life. Those little guys will save your hide.") Last week U.S. guerrilla warfare experts, members of a new outfit called the Liaison Training and Advisory Group (LTAG), helicoptered into mountain valleys behind the enemy lines, where Meo tribesmen gathered as many as 400 strong to greet their new weapons and instructors. The Meo's Colonel Vang Phao now runs a mortar and rifle range in the mountains with U.S. help. One Meo guerrilla band ambushed a Pathet Lao column last week, killed 30 and wounded some 60 more.

And that was about all the fighting that got done. The royal army did advance about 15 miles on the road north of Vientiane, but only because the Pathet Lao withdrew. The Pathet Lao took the small town of Tha Thom in central Laos after the royal army fled. U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Harry Felt himself flew into Udon to try to buck up the pro-Western army chief, General Phoumi Nosavan--but with no noticeable results. Complained one military man in Vientiane: "This is war, dammit, but the Laotians are just not willing to risk getting killed. They don't think past tomorrow, and many not even as far ahead as tonight." In the event of a major attack by the Pathet Lao, he added gloomily, "the army will scuttle off like rabbits."

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