Don't be Taken Alive!
This was one of the first things I was told at my initial briefing on my first trip into Laos. Col. Bradley made it very plain. It was better to die in a battle or a firefight than to be taken alive by the Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese. Of the many people lost in Laos and named as MIA's, few ever surfaced again. Only now, with the cooperation of the North Vietnamese government are we able to begin to understand what happened to these people. Real numbers are hard to come up with because of the skewing of statistics. Some 450 military personnel, USAF pilots, FAC pilots, Special Forces personnel, and various military advisers were lost in Laos never to be heard of again. Yes, there were a few miraculous escapes, but not many and you could number them on two hands.
There are some statistics that need to be stated here. Of the losses in Laos, either aircrews shot down or special forces personnel in untenable positions , 61 percent were rescued. Now, the term rescued can have two meanings and in Laos this was particularly true. Being rescued either meant being rescued by SAR activities or taken alive by the Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese troops. Because of this skewing of statistics, accuracy is hard to present. I don't know how they managed to make those kinds of calculations, but they did. After the war was over, the U.S. government said that 2 percent of American personnel captured in Laos by the enemy were returned. I don't think it was that high. That means that 37 percent of captured U.S. military personnel did not return and were listed as MIA's. Later some of these were determined to be KIA's reducing slightly the MIA numbers. As I wrote above, close to 450 Americans serving in the military were listed as missing in action in Laos. (If any one reading this blog has some different numbers, I would be glad to see them.) Literally scores of Special Forces troops went missing in N.Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Take into account that this does not include CIA, Air America, or indigenous troops that also went missing in that war. Over the last few years Laos has allowed some Grave Registrations Teams to search Laos for remains at known crash sites and some remains have been returned to the United States. It is much harder to track and find information on the Special Forces personnel that were lost as well as CIA and Air America people. This doesn't account for many of those quote-unquote "rescued by the enemy" aircrew members.
Col. Bradley told both Bailey and myself that you were as good as dead if taken captive. You would be mistreated, abused, beaten, tortured, and after all of that, they would do it all again until you died from your injuries. Or, if they saw you didn't have any information forthcoming, they would just take you out and shoot you. There were a few who escaped, but with most cases of those who escaped and survived the ordeals of capture, it was because they had a will to survive. They were able to endure the beatings and mistreatment and never give in to despair or depression. They waited for that one moment of inattention by the guards, or an unlocked cage or building to make good their escapes and most always had a plan on what they were going to do once they escaped. They probably spent what time they had between beatings and interrogations to develop a plan of survival once out of their captors hands.
There are some statistics that need to be stated here. Of the losses in Laos, either aircrews shot down or special forces personnel in untenable positions , 61 percent were rescued. Now, the term rescued can have two meanings and in Laos this was particularly true. Being rescued either meant being rescued by SAR activities or taken alive by the Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese troops. Because of this skewing of statistics, accuracy is hard to present. I don't know how they managed to make those kinds of calculations, but they did. After the war was over, the U.S. government said that 2 percent of American personnel captured in Laos by the enemy were returned. I don't think it was that high. That means that 37 percent of captured U.S. military personnel did not return and were listed as MIA's. Later some of these were determined to be KIA's reducing slightly the MIA numbers. As I wrote above, close to 450 Americans serving in the military were listed as missing in action in Laos. (If any one reading this blog has some different numbers, I would be glad to see them.) Literally scores of Special Forces troops went missing in N.Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Take into account that this does not include CIA, Air America, or indigenous troops that also went missing in that war. Over the last few years Laos has allowed some Grave Registrations Teams to search Laos for remains at known crash sites and some remains have been returned to the United States. It is much harder to track and find information on the Special Forces personnel that were lost as well as CIA and Air America people. This doesn't account for many of those quote-unquote "rescued by the enemy" aircrew members.
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| Pathet Lao Soldiers |
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| NVA Soldiers |
I don't think any soldier, sailor, airman, or marine worries a lot about dying. It's going to happen someday, someway, no matter how you try to avoid it. What worries us all is how we are going to die. I always figured, that if I took a bullet in the bush, it was probably better than dying of cancer or some other horrible disease. But, after hearing Col Bradley, I was convinced I did not want to be captured, that was for sure. An interesting story from the Air America files is about Phisit
Intharathat and how after an Air America C-46 was shot down north of Savannakhet, he survived capture, torture and injury to eventually escape his jailers. We ran part of the SAR on this aircraft and in the process, were shot down as well. However, we, at least, were able to crash land away from where large concentrations of Pathet Lao were located. Plus, we were relatively heavily armed. Phisit ws not that lucky. I recommend you read his story at http://www.air-america.org/Articles/Phisit.shtml. Hopefully, my next post will tell the story of our being shot down looking for the C-46.
I, like a lot of others in Laos at the time, had heard of the stories about Tony Poe. I don't want to plagiarize anyone else's work, so I will only tell you that you can look up his name through a google search, and read about him. I will tell a story or two about him later in this blog concerning my dealings with him. But, I will say this, if you saw the movie "Apocalypse Now", the character of Col. Kurtz came from the life and times of Tony Poe. The minute I saw the movie and saw Marlon Brando as Kurtz, I knew who they were portraying in the movie. It was as if I was back at Long Tieng and reliving the past. The one CIA person I had a lot of personal contact with, other than Col. Bradley, was Tony Poe. It was ritual that when I came back to Long Tieng, I brought him a couple of fifths of Canadian Club Whiskey. In my case, over the period that I came and went in Laos, that amounted to about 35 to 40 quarts of liquor. He was a legend by the time I met him in 1963.
I am getting off track here, the point I want to make about Tony Poe is that he was doing to the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese what the enemy was doing to our personnel. There was a "no holds barred" kind of mentality going on. There were no boundaries you couldn't cross. There were no stop signs when it came to cruelty on both sides. Torture and death could await soldiers on all sides. And, I have no idea what happened those individuals that the CIA took control of. I will almost guarantee that they never surfaced again nor were they ever heard from.
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| In Laos, growing rice between the mountains. This was Pathet Lao territory in the eastern part of N. Laos. The setting looks to made for a parachute drop, but along the edges of the rice patties were 22 an 37 mm AAA guns not to mention the guns on the ridges. |
On the day of my first official briefing I was told something else. Col. Bradley made a comment that has stuck with me since. In essence, he said this: "Here in Laos we are not concerned about collateral damage. We do what ever it takes to win no matter how many non-combatants are killed or injured. You cannot let the collateral damage trouble your soul. It's a fact of war." Well, that was easy for him to say I guess, but it wasn't that easy to do. I remember seeing the broken and torn bodies of women and children after an air strike or artillery barrage. There is no way you can see that and not have it "trouble your soul."
One of my grandsons once asked me if I was ever afraid in Laos. I was always afraid. Sometimes I was scared s....less. Anyone who was in that environment could never say they were unafraid unless they were crazy or lying. Fear is the biggest enemy anyone has to face. You were always in danger when you were in the field because, basically, you were always in enemy territory. Sometimes you were working with indigenous personnel you had never seen before and didn't know if they were really on your side or not. Missions originating in Saigon by MACV were always subject to compromise by moles at MACV headquarters. The safest missions always turned out to be those run by the CIA. They knew how to keep a secret and how to misdirect the enemy. Afraid, yes I was afraid and I am not ashamed to say that, but in the end, you do your job, scared or not. It was what you were trained to do, so you carried on. It was what it was. By the time I had been in and out of Laos several times, I had the old "Indian fighter" mentality. I would save the last bullet for myself rather than be captured and tortured. And, like I said in another post, I really think that someone on my team had the responsibility to make sure I didn't fall into enemy hands.
