Word: vang
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Progress is more evident at Vang Vieng, the vital crossroads town 75 miles north of Vientiane where Kong Le maintains his 8,000-man neutralist army. When Kong Le moved in last year, after being pushed off the Plain of Jars by the Pathet Lao, Vang Vieng was a jumble of wrecked trucks, shattered huts and rusty barbed wire. Now tidy, white-washed barracks climb the hills around Vang Vieng's 4,500-ft. airstrip (recently resurfaced by U.S. aid), and a small sawmill snarls busily, cutting planks for a new school, shops and houses...
Watching such vignettes in the Southeast Asian powder keg last week, Hong Kong Bureau Chief McCulloch mused that "covering Laos is like being Alice in Wonderland-surrealistic, exasperating, frequently incomprehensible but often utterly delightful." A lunch with the cover subject, General Kong Le, in his headquarters village of Vang Vieng was a study in the country's need as well as its plenty. It was served on a table covered by a red checked tablecloth "with so many holes in it that it must have been riddled by a shotgun." But no one needed to go away hungry from...
Kong Le was on his way to inspect one of his outposts at the edge of the Plain. As his aircraft slewed to a halt near the village of Vang Vieng, he jumped down and stared around at the straggly cluster of palm-thatched huts and muddy walkways that would be his headquarters for the next fight, for it was here that he expected the Communists to resume the attack. Kong Le and his headquarters looked worn, scruffy, far from impressive. But he stood almost alone in Laos last week as the West's only effective battler against Communism...
...Kong Le mused about the long-range prospects in his thatch-roofed headquarters at Vang Vieng, guns boomed hollowly beyond the blue volcanic peaks around him. What will it take to win his war? "More soldiers," he said, "more money to pay them with, specially that, more artillery, more rifles and machine guns and mortars, more land mines-everything, should the U.S. be willing to provide that again." He shrugged. "I suppose that depends on what the U.S. wants to do in Southeast Asia. And only the U.S. can answer that question...
...tent on the Plain of Jars, wearing a T shirt, a pair of Levi's and rubber bath shoes, Kong Le perches on a stool morosely studying a map beneath the light of a swaying hurricane lamp. The picture is discouraging: the Pathet Lao are advancing in the Vang Vieng area, 13 neutralist soldiers are missing after an action at Ban Boua, a 100-truck Red supply convoy from North Viet Nam arrived at the Pathet Lao headquarters at Khang Khay. At such news, Kong Le is apt to wince, rub an old battle scar on his forehead...