A Soldier's Life

Laos was supposedly neutralized by the 1962 Geneva accords, but it is actually overrun by an antipasto of Asian troops. U.S.-supported mercenaries from Thailand and opium-growing Meo tribesmen from the northern hills help out the Royal Laotian Army. China has something like 20,000 troops in the country; they build roads while keeping a jealous eye on the North Vietnamese. Since 1952 Hanoi has had troops in Laos, which it used to describe as "deserters" and "volunteers." Now that it has the biggest single army in the country--65,000 troops--it does not acknowledge them at all.

To find out what life is like in the NVA, Simms interviewed one of only 158 NVA soldiers who have been taken prisoner in Laos. His report:

Tran Van Dai, 18, lost an eye during his few brief months of fighting in Laos. A rice farmer's son, he was drafted out of a small North Vietnamese hamlet about two years ago, even though he was so frail that he was allowed to carry only 80 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, rather than the usual 200. After hurried training--eight weeks instead of the usual six months--he was marched south and told that he was going to fight in a "great war." Last April his unit crossed into Laos on Route 559--the Ho Chi Minh trail--and moved down the trail from one numbered station to another for nearly three months. Strangely enough, they never encountered any U.S. bombers, but they did come across a unit from Haiphong that had lost about half of its 600 men in an air attack.

On the trail, Dai was issued rice and dried salted meat daily, plus two pounds of sugar and a pint of milk every 45 days. The officers were regularly issued ginseng root, the ancient Oriental aphrodisiac and cureall. On occasion, the troops would sell their clothing to buy chickens or a suckling pig.

By June Dai's unit began to move cross-country toward "Front 698" in south Laos, and life became tough. "We had nothing except 250 grams of rice and some salt. If we were lucky we found bamboo shoots and cooked them. There was no milk or sugar." Illness claimed 20% of the unit. Many of the wounded died en route to a field hospital, a seven-or eight-day stretcher trip. Surrounded, out of food and low on ammunition after hard fighting near Khong Sedong, Dai and some of his comrades surrendered.

Dai's gripes? Only officers were allowed to have radios. And then there were Dai's Laotian allies, the Pathet Lao. "All they wanted in life was a wristwatch, then a motor scooter and other luxury items," he complained. "They weren't serious. The ones I saw were just fooling about. All the old hands said that the NVA did all the fighting and the Pathet Lao just sat around."

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