Word: vang
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...wiliest guerrillas in the Communist Pathet Lao are Meos, who scamper by night over mountain slopes that would terrify the valley-dwelling Lao. On the pro-Western side. Colonel Vang Pao, a Royal Army Meo, has held stubbornly to a precipitous stronghold deep inside Communist territory, nicknamed "Happy Valley" by the U.S. pilots who must swoop down into it to land supplies...
Radio Hanoi has been wooing the Meos for years with Meo-language broadcasts, but the tribe reportedly split into pro-and anti-Communist factions after a quarrel over the division of the opium crop. Colonel Vang and his cousin, Health Minister Touby Lyfoung, lead the loyalist Meos. The Pathet Lao Meos follow Chief Phay Dang, described by Communist Journalist Wilfred Burchett, who once visited him, as "a noble figure with a fine head, the dignity and poise of a great Indian chief...
...Pentagon confirmed that the story was all too probable. Four U.S. soldiers stationed with the Laotian army as PEO military advisers were lost when the Pathet Lao overran Vang Vieng ten weeks ago. Also missing are three helicopter crewmen and an NBC photographer who went down in a crash behind enemy lines and a Long Island contractor who disappeared on a hunting trip...
...arranged in the usual haphazard way that Laotians get things done. The Royal Army insisted on meeting in no man's land near a village called Ban Vang Ky. As a point of pride, the Communist Pathet Lao demanded rather that the two sides meet at Ban Namone. Instead, a Royal Army lieutenant colonel and a Pathet Lao major ran into each other near a place called Ban Hin Heup and agreed to come back next day with some white flags and aides. They did, and agreed to a "theoretical and provisional" ceasefire, leaving the details imprecise. Nonetheless...
...from the U.S., pro-Western Premier Boun Oum of Laos eagerly accepted the ceasefire, and even set a day and time for the guns to fall silent. The rampaging Communist-led Pathet Lao agreed to the ceasefire, too, but meanwhile its troops keep right on fighting and advancing. At Vang Vieng, a military headquarters 65 miles north of the capital city of Vientiane, some 400 Pathet Lap launched a dawn attack and chased twice as many government troops 40 miles down the road toward the capital. Among the casualties: three members of a U.S. military mission intended to buck...