Word: laos
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...south. The trip home began at a camp south of Hanoi where units of infiltrators were assembled, then driven south by automobile to within 15 miles of the border. There, they set out on foot, following the spidery footpaths of the Ho Chi Minh trail west into Laos, then southeast across the mountainous border of South Viet Nam. The march was slow-five to seven weeks. Before they crossed into Laos, the whole band changed from their Viet Minh uniforms into the khaki of the Pathet Lao, and at the South Viet Nam border they changed once again-into...
Roses & Red Ants. Unfortunately, Premier Souvanna did not share Kong Le's new-found anti-Red sentiments, refused repeated requests to counterattack against the Pathet Lao. During the days of alliance with the Pathet Lao, Kong Le's men had been equipped with Russian tanks and guns. Now he was out of ammunition, and with U.S. military aid cut off under the terms of the latest Geneva agreement, he had to rely for supplies on jealous Rightist Phoumi, Deputy Premier in the coalition government. Kong Le got precious few supplies. His men, unpaid in nearly two years, still...
What Will It Take? Tenuously supplied by low-flying C46 transports, Kong Le holds on. Last week he looked longingly at the spot on his crinkled battle map that indicated the primary Pathet Lao supply point: Muong Sen, just over the border in Communist North Viet Nam, on Route 7. "The supply dumps there would make fine targets for bombs," he said wistfully, protesting, like so many other commanders in the age of limited war, against constricting "ground rules." Since the U.S. is obviously not yet willing to hit North Vietnamese targets, Kong Le hopes at least...
Chances are that the tough, ingenious Pathet Lao would find ways to fight on anyway. But the questions remain: Can the U.S. afford to intervene further in the little Laotian war? On the other hand, having gone this far, can it afford not to intervene? By committing itself to a sustained air offensive on Kong Le's side, the U.S. would at best be backing a long shot. Even if the disruption of the Pathet Lao supply lines permitted Kong Le to regain the Plain, it would only buy time and return the whole Laotian equation to where...
What caused some embarrassment in Washington last week was not the planes but their pilots. For it was finally common knowledge that the men in the cockpits have been U.S. citizens (the same type of plane is being used by the Laotian government against the Pathet Lao, is also occasionally flown by Americans). At the controls of one T-28 operating in the Ruzizi Valley near the Congo's eastern frontier recently was a lanky, 30-year-old ex-Marine pilot named Ed Dearborn from Gardena, Calif. His partner, also flying four flights a day to strafe the rebels...