The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (32 page)

7. About-Face

It was on the first day of Lee Lue’s funeral in July 1969, when Communist advances reached new levels of success, and morale had not only crumbled among the Meo but in the capital of Vientiane itself, that the new American ambassador, George McMurtrie Godley III, arrived in Laos. An array of disturbing problems faced him with no ready solutions to hand.

At the same time, in Paris, Prince Souvanna Phouma charged that there were sixty thousand Vietnamese waging war in his country, and admitted that he had authorized U.S. bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

As a diplomat Godley was something of a peculiarity, one of a handful of the State Department’s paramilitary ambassadors who had experience working hand in glove with the CIA. Godley had cut his teeth in the Congo in the mid-1960s, first as deputy chief of mission and later as ambassador, where he had controlled a clandestine air force flown by Cuban mercenaries and commanded a covert army. He had played a critical role in crushing the Stanleyville uprising and building up President Joseph Mobutu as a pro-American military strongman.

The relationship had turned sour when Godley refused the president the use of the CIA mercenary air force to napalm the Stanleyville native quarters, a vast area of bamboo huts that would have burned like tinder. ‘There was no question that it would have killed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of women and kids,’ Godley said. ‘So I grounded his air force.’
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In retaliation, Mobutu ordered Godley to leave the country before he was declared
persona non grata
. (The ambassador often appeared at informal parties in Vientiane wearing a garish African shirt, with facing portraits of Mobutu emblazoned across its left and right panels. He joked that the president had made up thousands of pairs of trousers, with the beaming portrait of Godley sewn into the seat, which had been distributed free throughout the Congo.)

Godley had become closely acquainted with the operation in Laos when he visited Vientiane as the head of a State Department team on a two-month inspection tour of the embassy. ‘I was very much impressed with the show that Bill Sullivan was running and the work that the Country Team was doing. I thought very highly not only of the government’s objectives but also of the way in which we were trying to achieve them.’ He returned to Washington to spend a year as deputy assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs before becoming the ambassador to Laos in July 1969.

Godley was a hawk, although his military expertise was limited. He had volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps at the end of World War II and had served briefly as a private. He joked that when the Japs heard Mac Godley was coming they gave up - but the North Vietnamese proved to be made of sterner stuff.

The Americans were resigned to an extremely pessimistic view of their military options in Laos by this time. At the beginning of August 1969, plans and policy officers of the joint staff had already come to the conclusion that only political considerations could prevent the Communists from eventually overrunning most of Laos. A gloomy State-Defense-CIA paper was sent to President Nixon. The only bright spot in the report was the observation that the enemy had difficulty reacting to surprise behind-the-lines assaults launched by Meo guerrilla units operating from helicopters and supported by fixed-wing airlift.
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The advent of the Nixon administration, at the beginning of the year, had brought with it a change in military strategy that had altered the nature of the war in Vietnam and upped the stakes in Laos and Cambodia. Under Johnson, military strategy was composed of a mix of three ideas: gradual escalation, highly restricted operations, and acceptance of sanctuaries. It was also stated policy that the United States did not intend to threaten the existence of the North Vietnamese regime. The goals of this strategy were to negotiate for an independent South Vietnam, while keeping China and the USSR out of the war.

Nixon favored massive and quick military action, increased bombing of the north itself, and cross-border operations into the sanctuaries. Declared policy was ominously silent as to what might happen if North Vietnam persisted. At the same time, to avoid the risk of bringing China and the USSR into the war, the president pursued a policy of detente attractive to them both. Secret peace negotiations with North Vietnam, meanwhile, were opened in 1969 by Dr. Henry Kissinger.

The war was escalating, but at the same time America began withdrawing troops, which meant strengthening the army of South Vietnam to the point where they would be able to take over the war - a policy called Vietnamization. Firepower lost by the dwindling U.S. forces was to be replaced by an ever-increasing rate of bombing.

In Laos, where there were not enough human resources to replace the Meo, Thailand was encouraged to send more ‘volunteers.’ And still more bombing was scheduled. (Before 1969 a total of 454,998 tons of bombs had been dropped on Laos - from now on more than that would be dropped each year.)
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Although since the departure of Ambassador Sullivan the Rules of Engagement had been relaxed to allow wider bombing of inhabited areas on the Plain of Jars, they were not abandoned completely, as critics have charged. But the increased bombing sorties, combined with the successes of Communist troops, led to a growing sea of refugees and an inevitable rise in civilian casualties - each time the war forced a move 10 percent of the refugees died. (These consequences of escalated bombing were immediately blamed on the new ambassador, who came to be called ‘Bomber’ Godley by some journalists and disaffected members of his staff. Significantly, the massive increase in bombing sorties was allocated to Laos during the interregnum when Ambassador Sullivan had returned to the United States and before Ambassador Godley arrived.)

‘Never in the history of warfare has a military element been more shackled in its operation than was the USAF in Laos,’ Godley stated. ‘The rules of engagement were voluminous, complex, and precise. It could not engage enemy ground forces unless requested by the Lao government and approved by the embassy. It could not bomb within one hundred yards of an inhabited dwelling, nor could it endanger inhabited villages. The types of ordnance it could use had to be approved,
etc., etc., etc.

‘If there was the least deviation from existing rules in target selection, this had to be approved by the embassy ... reviewed ... occasionally disapproved or modified ... We were repeatedly charged with ^discriminate bombing of civilians. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Errors no doubt occurred, but I am convinced they were not wilful. In every case when we heard of an alleged mistake, the Air Force investigated it as thoroughly as possible and, in some cases, meted out severe disciplinary action.’
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Inevitably, the gap between embassy policy and battlefield reality was a large one. It was impossible to monitor the rules and control the placing of every bomb in Laos, although this was the intention under Godley, as it had been under Sullivan. The embassy had no right to monitor or control where the Lao or Meo T-28s put their bombs. And all the Laotian regional military commanders had the right and the ability to attack where they wished.

But throughout all the interviews conducted with Ravens, Air Commandos, and Air Force fighter-pilots - who in individual instances openly admitted to hitting civilians by mistake, or bombing wats (Buddhist temples) they knew to contain guns, or even field hospitals known to shelter enemy troops and caches of ammunition - no one ever conceded that civilians were deliberately targeted (unlike the French who, in Laos during the first Indochina war, regularly razed troublesome villages and dropped napalm as a matter of routine).
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Civilian casualties were a consequence of the over-reliance on air power, not a deliberate tactic or matter of policy.
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But the war was becoming enormously unpopular at home and Godley’s hawklike utterances, and apparent relish for the job, alienated many journalists and the more skeptical members of his staff.

On the first day of Lee Lue’s funeral it seemed as if his death had broken Gen. Vang Pao. Yet somehow, as the elaborate mourning and drinking stretched out over the days, he seemed to draw on some hidden reserve of superhuman resilience. Perhaps he had been strengthened by the show of solidarity of the Laotian high command who had come to Long Tieng to pay their respects (and who had left greatly impressed by the Meo operation); perhaps, mulling over the possibilities of combining surprise tactics with air power, he foresaw new opportunities; perhaps he wished to avenge the great warrior of the Meo nation. Whatever the reasons, by the beginning of August 1969, Gen. Vang Pao had resolved once more to go on the offensive.

At this stage in the war, defeatism had reached a very high level of strategic thinking, and the last thing the Americans expected from Gen. Vang Pao was victory. Even the optimists dared not hope for more than the Meo doggedly holding on at Long Tieng, but the general knew that the enemy were over-extended by their victories, and their lines of communication were stretched - factors that had been intensified by an unrelieved period of terrible weather.

Gen. Vang Pao planned to turn this to his advantage in Operation About-Face. Flown in by Air America choppers, and supported by Ravens and T-28s operating out of four Lima Sites in enemy-held territory, Meo and Thai guerrilla units led by the general would disrupt supply lines in the rear, particularly Route 7 leading back into North Vietnam. At the same time, Royal Lao Government forces, supported by massive U.S. air, would reestablish their presence on the southern fringe of the Plain of Jars and press forward. But in order to launch tins ambitious offensive, with all of the necessary air support, a break in the weather was needed.

Stuck in the hootch at Alternate, the Ravens looked out on the relentless rain. The mountains surrounding them were hidden from view by dark clouds, and all the meteorological predictions for the future were dire. They had been told by the CIA that the weather was likely to remain bad for the next three months. But Operation About-Face was planned to kick off on August 15, only days away.

As the day approached, the weather grew worse. Gen. Vang Pao remained supremely confident: ‘Buddha tells .me the weather will be good.’ It seemed as if the general, in his eagerness to hit back at the enemy, had become a victim of wish fulfillment and self-delusion. In the meantime the CIA and the air attaché’s office dickered with the 7/13th Air Force about the amount of air to be allocated to the offensive. The Barrel Roll sortie rate had already fallen to half its daily quota because of the weather.

As the morning of August 15 dawned, Karl Polifka went to the window of his room and looked outside. It was clear as a bell. There was a chill in the air and a few scudding clouds fringed with gray, but otherwise it was a bright, sunny day and the sky was a brilliant blue. Folifka shook his head, scarcely able to believe the change so accurately predicted by Gen. Vang Pao. ‘This guy’s got a connection to somebody.’

The weather was to remain good enough for uninterrupted air operations for the next eight weeks, a seasonal freak. Using aircraft like artillery, a force of six thousand Lao troops and Meo guerrillas moved against the enemy. Tactical air sorties totaled 150 a day, enabling the government troops to take the hills, although the battles were bloody.
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Time and again it seemed as if Vang Pao was in the lap of the gods. Shortly after the launch of the operation he climbed into a helicopter, turned around in the cockpit, and announced, ‘Buddha tells me not to take this helicopter.’ He got out and took another. The first Huey took off and exploded in midair because its gas tank had been sabotaged with a grenade.

There were numerous instances of combat extrasensory perception that the Ravens experienced and accepted, but could not explain. It was as if a man grew so immersed in the details and realities of the battlefield, by flying so many hours each day, that he began to respond to its dangers subliminally, making critical decisions based on the experience of a hundred missions. ‘I certainly felt a lot of it on that tour,’ Polifka said. ‘Numerous times I would he flying along and, I swear to God, I could hear the clank of the gears on a traversing 37 - which is quite impossible. But something would make me break right or left - and I would turn off and the shells would explode in the path of where I would have been. There is no normal explanation for it.’

Operation About-Face was launched from Site 204, on the southern edge of the Plain of Jars - where the passes came out of Long Tieng - and from Site 15, on its western edge. Two mountains were attacked - one on the northwest edge of the plain, called Phou Khean, and the other on the southeast, called Phou Tham. They were tough, fierce operations with many casualties on both sides, but after two weeks the mountains were in the hands of the friendlies.

At the same time, troops from Site 32 - Boun Long - moved down in an attempt to choke off Route 7, where it came out of Ban Ban, and also take the 7/71 road junction. A small mountain just south of 7/71 was still held by North Vietnamese troops even after bombing had denuded it of all vegetation. The operation called for repeated ground assaults. Somehow, the enemy still managed to man machine guns and beat back each attack, but were finally overrun in a brutal fight.

Once the mountains on the ridge of the plain were taken the troops moved onto the plain itself, and the Ravens began to operate out of three strips - one to the south of the plain, one in the middle (Hotel Lima), and the Xieng Khouang strip - landing on the grass, where Air America refueled from drums of gas flown in by helicopter. (Most of the strips were pockmarked with bombs where the US AF had attempted to destroy them when in the enemy’s hands - a wasted effort, as the enemy had no planes.) The native T-28 pilots excelled them-selves, except they suffered from an unusual problem that led to a number of aborted takeoffs: eager to supplement their poor diets, the pilots were overloading their aircraft by stuffing the small baggage compartment with meat from water buffalo slaughtered in combat.