Word: laos
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...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...
Since 1962 Unger has handled three major and countless minor crises in Laos, ranging from the assassination of Foreign Minister Quinim Pholsena through bullet-spanging dustups between rightists and Pathet Lao forces. At the same time, he has managed to play endless rubbers of bridge with Prince Souvanna, and tries to get in half a dozen sets of hard-slamming tennis a month. When trouble appears, Unger as likely as not will send his children out riding along the banks of the Mekong River on their Laotian ponies, Victory and Puck, to show family calmness. He accepts the topsy-turvy...
...ground fire thumping through his craft, ejected himself seconds before the plane tumbled to earth. An American search helicopter out of Vientiane spotted the downed pilot at the edge of a clearing, but it was driven off by Communist fire that wounded the chopper's copilot. The Pathet Lao radio later announced that Klusmann had been taken prisoner...
Victory & Puck. Through two years of duty in Laos, Unger, 46, has demonstrated what one State Department admirer calls "that uncanny ability to keep several balls in the air at the same time." Born in California, Unger was educated at Harvard (B.A. in geography, 1939), experienced his first diplomatic crisis during the Trieste negotiations of the 1950s, and graduated to Southeast Asia in 1958. In the inter national cat's cradle of Bangkok he learned not only to speak Thai (which is related linguistically to Lao) but also how to keep cool in a hot climate...
Cards on the Table. By that standard, the bells cannot have been ringing in Laos last week. "It's been a very rough spell," Unger said during one of his rare breaks. "It's not good enough to sit here and try to put out fires from day to day. I wish we had more time for constructive thinking for the long run." As he explained the current crisis: "The Pathet Lao attacks in the Plain of Jars represent a flagrant land grab. We don't intend to see the whole country gobbled...