A Hilltop Revelation in the Land of A Million Elephants

From the desk of Jim Jones

The purpose of my trip to Laos in December of 1971 was to gather information about the US-financed war in that country, but I learned something much more important. The Laotians I met were warm, wonderful people who did not deserve that calamitous war. 

The most remarkable event of my visit was a Dec.17 stop on a hilltop somewhere north of the CIA’s reputed headquarters at Bon Xong (Lima Site 272). The Jet Ranger helicopter provided by USAID landed at a Hmong settlement where the villagers were celebrating the New Year. Everyone was decked out in festive clothing.

Hmong women dressed for New Year

The village chief gave me a gracious welcome and invited me to participate in a game of pov pob, where unmarried boys and girls meet to toss a ball back and forth. Their moms were behind them asking questions and exchanging matchmaking information. Being unmarried, I joined the fun. On a sad note, there were only pre-teen boys in the game. There were no men in the village from teen years to the elderly, other than one Laotian soldier. They were either deceased or off to war.

With Hmong village chief in Laos, Dec. 17, 1971

The village chief offered a meal, but my USAID escorts said we needed to be on our way. We did go to his home on the hillside for tea. It was about 40 square feet with branch walls, a thatched roof and dirt floor. The village subsisted on slash and burn farming, which makes for hard work and sparse crops. Despite their hard life, these folks were kind, hospitable and persevering. They deserved so much better. 

Other stops that day included several USAID-funded projects–a hospital at LS 272, a refugee settlement east of Vientiane and a duck/pig farm north of Vientiane. At each stop I was impressed with the people I met. During the two previous days, I’d had lunch with our Ambassador to Laos, been briefed on the military situation by representatives of both countries and had opportunities to talk off-the-record with a variety of US personnel. Having previously served a tour in Vietnam, I was given what appeared to be a generally candid review of the situation. However, nothing was more important than what I learned about the civilians I’d had the privilege of meeting on the hilltop.

My previous service as an artillery officer in Vietnam gave me a good baseline of experience to understand the situation in Laos. I had lived and worked alongside Vietnamese soldiers, most of whom were from a Catholic village that had migrated south when Vietnam was partitioned in 1954. I worked with an orphanage operated by the Cao Dai Church and even had been invited to visit with the Cao Dai Pope. It all taught me that most people don’t particularly care about politics but just want to have a government that will keep them and their families safe from harm.

Hilltop Settlement

The reason for this trip was to learn the military situation in Laos and Cambodia and advise my boss, a US Senator from Idaho, of the outlook. There were a number of bills in the Senate to cut off funding for operations in Southeast Asia. I thought it would be a mistake to disengage so I decided to pay my own way to gather information to convince my Senator and others to keep our assistance money flowing. The US Departments of State and Defense made arrangements for my in-country travel and meetings.

When I returned, my Senator shared my recommendation to continue funding for development and civilian security, rather than paying for immense firepower. I’d learned in Vietnam that blowing up the countryside with massive bombing campaigns was dangerous to civilians and counterproductive in dealing with an insurgency. People are not willing to support a government that threatens the lives of innocent civilians like those wonderful people I had visited on the hilltop. Unfortunately, the US Government had other ideas. Funding for military operations in the three countries was not cut off until 1973.

B-52 bomb craters in Vietnam's War Zone C, 1969

It was known in 1971 that carpet bombing was taking place along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia, but the full extent was not disclosed until years later. Little was said about the massive bombing being conducted in Laos. The military people who briefed me in Laos had not seen fit to mention it. Again, the magnitude of the bombing there did not come out for a number of years.

During my Vietnam service in Tay Ninh Province, which shares a long border with Cambodia, massive B-52 strikes were a regular occurrence in what was designated as War Zone C. It was a major terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The strikes were not particularly effective because the intelligence was often faulty. We ended up blowing up a tremendous number of trees, with little of military value to show for it. You simply can’t bomb your way to victory in a guerrilla war. The duds from the strikes, plus those from artillery and tactical strikes, left explosive ordnance that would kill and maim civilians for years to come. The same had to be happening in large areas of Laos and Cambodia. 

A more pernicious munition came on the scene in the late 1960s–cluster bombs and artillery shells. My artillery unit started receiving cluster shells for our 8-inch guns (the barrels were 8 inches wide) in early 1969. They were 200-pound projectiles that held about 100 grenade-like explosives, which were scattered over the landscape when the shells burst in midair. I refused to use them in our operations because it was known that many would not explode, creating a deadly hazard for civilians for years into the future. The problem multiplied with bombs that contained many more of the deadly devices. The US should never have used that type of weapon in these countries. Protecting people like those I met on the hilltop should have been our highest priority.

Site 272 / Bon Xong

Legacies of War must be highly commended for its efforts to clean up the cluster munitions that still litter the countryside of the Land of A Million Elephants. The United States should shoulder the major share of the financial burden to make the country safe. While we are at it, we should join almost every other country in banning these insidious weapons.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served 8 years as Idaho Attorney General (1983-1991) and 12 years as a Justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He has written about his Vietnam experience and its effect on his life in “Vietnam…Can't get you out of my mind,” which is available on Amazon.