0012

Dimensions: 8 x 5

This picture is a drawing of the airplanes shooting the town of Phonesavan. In the year 1969, the month of July, around Wednesday the 13th there were F105 airplanes which attacked my village from 6 p.m. for one hour. These airplanes flew around in the sky passing back and forth. At one time there was an I.R. 19 which dropped a smoke bomb down on the village in order to mark the place for further bombing. Then the F105 warplanes strafed and dropped rockets and 150 kg. bombs on the village and the people without stopping.

So the people's houses burned and were completely destroyed. The people in the village were hit by bombs and killed, together with more than thirty who were wounded. Because these airplanes dropped bombs on the village without stopping, the people had no place to go to escape the battle. They had never before experienced anything like this. It caused parents to be taken in death from their children. And children from their parents in great numbers, causing the people's tears to flow. Because the airplanes had dropped bombs on the ricefields and rice paddies of the people, the people saw that they could not withstand these hardships so they fled into the forest and the jungle or different streams and caves.

We saw that it wouldn't pass over so we took ourselves and fled to the side of the government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister. Because the war was most severe, we had to hurry from our homes, ricefields, rice paddies, cows and buffalo and come here in poverty.