Word: amkha
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...land with little or no communications, they were merely uninformed. When one freshly arrived newsman asked Defense Minister Sounthone Pathammavong for a quick briefing on the situation, the minister shot him an injured look, plaintively asked: "Can you tell me?" In Samneua, Brigadier General Amkha Soukhavong blithely informed reporters that "only about 20% of our troops are missing"-only to be just as blithely contradicted by Lieut. General Ouane Rathikone, chief of staff: "All our men were either killed or taken prisoner...
...outposts crumpled, 39-year-old Brigadier General Amkha Soukhavong, the Laotian army's regional commander, sat on the porch of his headquarters in Samneua City, peeling litchi nuts and staring morosely at the mildewed Roman Catholic church across the street. For French-trained General Amkha, who still holds the rank of captain in the French army, it was a nightmare war. What news of the front he could get came from runners, a handful of Red prisoners and an endless stream of refugees :women with babies, men burdened with mattresses and sewing machines, a ten-year-old boy toting...
...river on rafts and rubber boats powered by out board motors, and Red patrols pushed within seven miles of Samneua City, telling villagers that it was futile for them to flee to the provincial capital since it would be in Communist hands in a matter of days. General Amkha seemed to agree. To cheer up his downcast aides, he cracked: "I am more afraid of Tokyo taxicabs than of the Communists." But his seven battalions, numbering more than 4,000 men, were dispersed in the surrounding countryside, and he apparently had no intention of making a do-or-die stand...
Grave Situation. "It's real war here in Samneua," reported Laos' commander in the north, French-trained, 39-year-old Brigadier General Amkha Soukhavong, to a TIME correspondent visiting the general's headquarters in the provincial capital of Samneua town, deep in a mountain valley not far from the fighting. "I've been losing men daily. My head is just about bursting. I've sent telegram after telegram to the Ministry of Defense explaining the gravity of this situation. I've not had any reply yet. I have asked Vientiane repeatedly...
...General Amkha was not seeking more troops; as the French learned in 1954, orthodox methods of war do not work in the jungles of Samneua province where there are no roads and where the monsoon has turned the few tiny airstrips into quagmires. What he wants is money, medical supplies, food and weapons to give to villagers in the threatened countryside. "We must win people's hearts, arm them, organize them into guerrillas and send them after the Reds. We have a saying in our country: 'When the hand is pierced by a thorn, use a thorn...
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