Ramblin' Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail : Part 4

Continued from last month.

The story passes from Ung's lips to Nick's ears, then from Nick's to mine. I dare not open a notebook. We pause on the road to pass around some cigarettes, and we all smoke together. The jungle around us exists for the moment only to provide a natural setting for our exchange. I squat low between Nick and the Papa to face Ung slightly above me on the sienna dirt road. The merciless noon May sun, not so different from the sun that illuminated the battle of LAMSON 719, beats down upon us all. We're in Ung's world. He looks to see if we are bothered by the heat, the humidity, the bugs, anything that would signify an impatience or desire not to listen. We're not. As we smoke, he talks without emotion, except to add in his stoic humor about his own war experience, which includes losing not one but two wives to the bombs falling on the village. I register every word, transfixed on the little Pathet Lao cadre and read his every facial expression so I can better match the translated words and carry them away from this scene without spilling a single one from my memory.

He sometimes talks directly to Nick and sometimes to me. Once in a while, the Papa breaks the intensity with an aside based on his own experience as the military fiasco of LAMSON 719 unfolded here in La Haw and finally resolved itself in Ban Dong. Ultimately, it resolved the Vietnam War on this section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Hand Grenade

The Americans wanted Xepon badly, but they appeared to have no understanding of the people who lived there, according to Ung. "They thought that by planting a couple of flags, they could control the whole place." He grins. "Then they'd leave thinking everything was fine."

In the early 1970s, U.S. flags flew over South Vietnamese Army Headquarters in Xepon, Ban Dong, and a few other places along Route 9. However, disagreement among the American leadership about how much effort to focus on The Trail and how much on ground fighting in South Vietnam undermined any perceived control of The Trail where Laos Route 9 crosses it. Materiel made it through almost undeterred, particularly at night, between the guard posts or sentries placed far too infrequently to be effective against the patient and deft bo dois and conscripted Lao villagers helping the North Vietnamese soldiers to transfer themselves, their weapons, and their supplies southward.

Instead, the Americans looked for anything that moved along the Trail—and sometimes things that didn't move—and bombed it, according to documented U.S. military policy at that point of the war in that area. Before 1973, targets could be destroyed only on command. By the time of LAMSON 719, U.S. pilots had orders to bomb without prior request anything that looked suspicious. The orders quickly passed through the sieve-like intelligence to those using the trail, and the bo dois created silhouettes of black stones in the shapes of tanks, trucks and encampments to draw the eyes and bombs of the American flight crews away from the real action.

Briefly, the LAMSON 719 operation was an ill-fated all-out effort by Americans using South Vietnamese troops to rid the area of enemy forces and gain control of the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the 17th parallel once and for all. The operation involved thousands of helicopters (hundreds were lost), tanks, artillery, and even more thousands of South Vietnamese ARVN troops and American advisors.

Bathtime on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Later in the day, walking with Ung, Nick, and the Papa to look at a couple of live 500-pounders still alongside the road we took into La Haw, I pause over a valley meadow that looks somehow familiar, although I know I've never seen it before. I picture the sight of helicopters breaking over the crest of the low but steep mountains and descending into the meadow to discharge ARVN troops into the koke forest. I imagine the rhythmic pounding of the Huey rotors and the popping of the Pathet Lao guns coming from the surrounding jungle, returned by the pinned-down ARVN. I hear the roar of American F-4s, like I used to hear every day flying from Bergstrom Air Force Base near Austin, laying down cover fire and setting the jungle ablaze with napalm. I think of the village up the hill, its 30 thatched roofs covering empty bamboo shells, the women and children hiding where they think it might be safe from the fighting while the men try to rid their village and surrounding rice paddies of the intruders.

Nick asks Col. Ung why they didn't just leave. Patiently, Ung looks down and nods his head to express his understanding that anyone outside might think this an obvious solution. But the Buddhism here is intertwined with an ancient animism, where the people worship a deep connection with the Earth. "I told my people, 'We can't leave. We are like the grass and the water.'" Ung's eyes ask us to understand and to not judge. They seem satisfied by our response. He continues.

"I was in charge of a lot of men. We chased the South Vietnamese out of the fields where the helicopters left them and up the mountain. By late afternoon, we had them surrounded on top where we could keep and eye on them. They couldn't go anywhere." The Pathet Lao didn't attack. They had contained the threat and needed only to wait. "Then we saw a helicopter come in and pick someone important up. We had a pretty good idea of who it was."

It was, as the comrade had concluded, South Vietnamese General Nguyen Van Tho, the ARVN commander in charge of the LAMSON 719 operation. Col. Ung also concluded where the helicopter would take him—ARVN Headquarters in Ban Dong, six kilometers away.

"I gathered up 30 of my best men," the Colonel begins, but Nick interrupts.

"How did you pick them?" Nick asks.

"That was easy" replies Ung, "By this time, all my men were either very good or dead." He continues. "We got the appropriate uniforms [meaning South Vietnamese] and an American flag and an American jeep. We drove up this road into Ban Dong to the headquarters. We got into the room where he was without any resistance."

A Former Porter During the War

The ARVN troops were infamous for their lack of courage and commitment, unlike the North Vietnamese, who were rooted in their cause to reunite their country under communism. On the plane home a month later, I spoke with a South Vietnamese man who escaped with his family to California a year after the fall of Saigon. He told me that, in his opinion, the North should have lost so that Vietnam could have become protected by the Americans to become an industrial giant like Japan after World War II. I asked him if he had ever seen the movie, The Mouse that Roared. He smiled wryly and said he had.

Nick also knows that to prevent officers from being recognized and killed or captured, neither side wore their ranks on their uniform during a battle. That would have made it hard for Ung's Pathet Lao mission to identify Van Tho or know who was in charge. Nick asks, "How did you know which one to get?"

Col. Ung replies, "That was easy. They all pointed to him." The Papa looks down at the road and away to conceal a smile.

Ung tells us, "We arrested him, but we wanted to allow him to save face. We didn't take his sidearm. We even left it loaded." He sees that Nick and I look very confused. "What was he going to do?" he asks, anticipating our next question, "He had six bullets." He smiles as he sees our appreciation of the situation.

Ung in His Village's New School

Ung tells us that they provided a way for the general to address the officers and troops directly under his command—between 300 and 600 of them as best we can tell—after a few days. They never told him what to say, says Ung, but he told the ARVN that although he had surrendered and they were under arrest by the Pathet Lao, they were free to go. He suggested they leave the area peacefully—which they did—and head back home to South Vietnam. Ung says the Pathet Lao held Van Tho under house arrest for 41 days, after which he also returned to Vietnam.

Nick commented later, "What a public relations coup!" Before joining the ARVN, the young men in South Vietnam were recruited effectively by both sides, each stating its case. The ARVN soldiers could never have felt fully obliged to any other outside influence, American, Soviet, or Chinese. Their side suffered from bitter infighting, even among the Vietnamese, and many were more into the war for what they could steal and sell than for any altruism, according to many Americans who served with ARVN troops. (That was not the story from the Americans who fought alongside the Lao tribesmen who sided with them. Instead, they found the Lao—mostly Hmong tribesmen recruited by the CIA—dedicated, brave, and reliable.)

Unlike the South Vietnamese soldiers who often raped and stole from the Lao villagers, the North Vietnamese employed them on The Trail and in many cases provided food and medical care. The NVA communist soldiers prided themselves on being more cultured than the southerners (a problem that also caused dissension among the ranks of the North Vietnamese Army and their southern communist counterparts, the Viet Cong) and generally more polite and committed to their cause. Nick believes it is likely that the ARVN soldiers who were sent home after observing the differences and being treated with respect by the Pathet Lao following Van Tho's surrender at LAMSON 719 either quit fighting or changed sides. They would certainly have told their story of having been surrounded but not attacked, forced to surrender but not humiliated, and then set free on their honor.

A Huge Bridge Blown Out in the War

The one thing everyone seems to agree on after LAMSON 719 is that the bombing in the area stopped immediately, "the very next day," Ung said. Unfortunately, it shifted just as quickly and intensely south to Cambodia.

But for Ung's village (he prefers to be called by only that name, not Col., not comrade, nor any other honorific), the Pathet Lao had figured out how to stop the battle for The Trail that had been destroying their lives. The outcome of LAMSON 719 represents the psychological, if not strategic, turning point for the Vietnam War on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At that point, construction and reconstruction of The Trail proceeded unabated until a journey that once took six or more months—mostly on foot—could now be made in 11 days by jeep or specially modified truck at an average speed of 15 kilometers per hour.

In effect, we were speaking to the man who won the Vietnam War—not North Vietnamese nor Viet Cong, but a simple, crafty diminutive man from a small, primitive village in a poor, simple country fighting against superpowers only to continue to live in its huts and to preserve its culture.

Ung takes us around more of the village, and it seems almost anti-climatic to hike to the site of one bomb or another. So there are bombs. After nine days on The Trail, we know that. We observe another now-familiar scene, farmers surveying a rice paddie with metal detectors before beginning work on the field to prepare it for the coming rains and the next crop. Ung tells us that two bombs went off here only the day before, but nobody was hurt. He tells us about some not so lucky earlier in the season two villages over. Two had died, but one had recovered when a medicine man was able to restore his absent phis, or spirits.

Then he scampers up a three-meter bank in half a dozen quick, surefooted steps to the site of our last bomb for the day, lying in the open amid some recent excavation for the road. Nick, who recently turned 40, takes four tries to get up the bank, slipping and sliding back down the loose, fresh dirt. I determine to make it in one pass, but I whack my knee pretty badly on a protruding rock as I crest the top. I bite down hard to not show how much it hurt this 52-year-old. Not that Ung would notice; he is already fifty meters farther along toward the bomb. Ung, who once served as part of the Lao contingent for the French fighting against communists in the first Indochina War (1947-1954), is 89 years old.

The Papa, Ung and The Author

This bomb is a big one stamped "Made in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," or something to that effect, on the side near one of the fuses. Some marks on the side show where someone has tried to cut it open with a saw. "They use the stuff inside to start fires," Ung explains. He says they don't worry as much about the kids any more as the adults—those who don't know how to disarm them safely before cutting them into pieces small enough to take to Vietnam and sell for scrap. Finally, he leads us back to the village schoolhouse, where dozens of kids join us for pictures under the posters showing what bombs look like and what to do and not to do when discovering one. We gather with Ung and the throng of villagers under the giant banyan tree before we leave and kneel down in a traditional homage pose to thank Ung for his graciousness in sharing his story and his time—at least three hours of it. We pay him for his efforts and leave him with a bottle of Russian vodka. We promise to return for another visit, but only after we drop some needed medicines off the next day before departing the area for now.

Perhaps my lesson about each person having a story comes from an unassuming, little, brown former communist soldier on the other side of the world, but it makes me realize that each American, too, has a story. Since our day with Ung, I have found every person, whether I have known them all my life or we have only just met, more interesting and easier to understand.

Here's to Laos!

On the way back along the dirt road toward Ban Dong, now each of us on our own motorcycle (the third one and its rider having appeared while we were gone from the village), Nick and I reach out to each other and encourage the riders to close the gap. We ride holding hands, skydiving-style, on the road through the koke and forest that led us to the point of this jouney on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The End

Kevin Gibson graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in advertising after working his way through school as a skydiving instructor. There he first met North by North East director Nick Ascot, basically doing the same thing. Kevin continued in the sport as a magazine editor and instructional program developer, entrepreneur, and consultant. He has maintained a life-long love of bicycling and the outdoors and plays and teaches finger-style blues guitar near his home in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. He is currently promoting and leading cycling tours for North by North East as a low-impact means of experiencing nature, culture, and history along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.