Word: patheticness
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...side was ably represented by his half brother, "Red Prince" Souphanouvong, who commands the Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas. Souphanouvong pressed his points hard, and Boun Oum soon collapsed. Boun Oum agreed to merge the royal army with the Pathet Lao-though just how this could be accomplished while the Pathet Lao were still periodically storming army outposts back in Laos, nobody could explain. The three princes bucked to dreamy King Savang Vatthana the thorny task of picking a coalition government, a procedure that would effectively bypass the National Assembly, where Boun Oum still commands a strong anti-Communist majority. Boun...
Five royal army soldiers who had just escaped from the Pathet Lao reported last week that the Communists' prize exhibit for impressing villagers these days is a group of three captured Americans. They are shuttled from town to town and paraded through the streets, roped together with their hands tied behind their backs. The Laotians said they had seen the graves of two more Americans in a small village near the Plaine des Jarres...
...peace talks in Geneva last week, on the hopeful assumption that a cease-fire was at last in effect in Laos, when the news arrived from Ban Hat Bo, a village near the Mekong River in central Laos. After a heavy mortar barrage that lasted two hours, 1,000 Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese soldiers had attacked to a frenzied blowing of bugles. The Ban Hat Bo garrison fled, along with their five U.S. military advisers. One of them noted bitterly that the Communist assault, with its tooting bugles and the human-wave technique, was "Korea all over again...
...Laotian Army, after it fell back from Padong a week earlier, would now be able to consolidate its hold on stronger positions and stop the Communist drive. The truth was that morale was so badly shattered that the army probably could not win a battle anywhere in Laos. The Pathet Lao claimed to hold "four-fifths of Laos" (a better estimate: about half), and it seemed determined to keep gobbling up more while talking peace at Geneva...
...from Nice, where he has been sunning himself, came the U.S.'s favorite Premier, Prince Boun Oum. From Geneva, looking as relaxed as a pair of tourists, came Russia's favorite Premier, "neutralist" Prince Souvanna Phouma, and his brother, "Red Prince" Souphanou-vong, who commands the Pathet Lao. Prince Souvanna greeted his rival warmly and talked in friendly style about getting together on a "broad-based coalition government." The way things were going back home, one diplomat cracked, "Boun Oum will be lucky to get the Education Ministry." After two days, about the only thing the princes could...