Crom in Laos: December 2013

Secret War Remnants - Are Everywhere

Between 1965 and 1975 the Americans tried to deny the Plain of Jars to the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) through the use of air power. The American public would not tolerate the opening of another theatre of war in SE Asia using US ground troops but the Americans wanted to stop the North Vietnamese using Laos as a route through which to take men and munitions to South Vietnam for the war being waged there. The Plain of Jars was considered to be critical to this effort and so the American CIA and Air Force supported the Hmong troops fighting the Pathet Lao and NVA with extensive bombing. More bombs were dropped by the Americans on Laos than in Germany and Japan combined in the Second World War - between 1.6m and 2.1m tons (depending on source of info), 260m items of ordnance. 30% didn't go off and are still in the ground - live. The Lao call it "The American Secret War" because the American public were unaware of it for the first 5 years. The war was by the CIA in secrecy and its main operating base was at Long Tieng - the runway looks quite a challenge - who approved that?!
Long Tieng photos

A variety of weapons

Cluster Bomb Unit contained 665 bomblets known locally as "bombies".

The US-made Cluster Bomb Unit CBU-25 shells opened after release and spread the 665 ball-shaped BLU-26/B anti-personnel fragmentation bomblets ("bombies") over a wide area. They had three different fusing options: detonatation immediately on impact, as an airburst 9 m (30 ft) above ground, or after a selectable but fixed time after impact. The cases are cast from steel, and the bombies contain roughly 300 steel balls for fragmentation. They contain 85g of Cyclotol explosive. These so-called ‘guava bombs’ are very common and are still found today throughout Vietnam, Laos, and parts of Cambodia. They were dropped in large numbers during the Secret War; in one sortie a B52 could deploy 25,488 bombies.

Cluster bomb video
AFP news report on UXO in Lao PDR

Jars Sites

Near to Phonsavan are many Jars sites which are the main tourist attraction in the area. The jars are iron age stone containers. There are many bomb craters near to the three main jars sites and much of the area surrounding the jars sites has not yet been cleared of unexploded ordnance (UXO) so it is necessary to stay within the areas marked by the Mines Advisory Group markers - bricks, half painted white.

Jars Site 1 - note bomb crater to the left of the jars

Jars beyond a bomb crater

Jars and crater

Crater and jars

Some say that none of the jars was damaged by the bombing. This is not true - they were all intact prior to the ‘Secret War’ and now there are many which are broken - some from bombing others from gun fire. The bomb craters are 10 - 15m wide and several metres deep. At site 1 the N Vietnamese and Lao soldiers lived in a cave and trenches around the hill (shown below), and there are large craters just outside the mouth of the cave and across the hill.

Look at Google Earth and you can see bomb craters all over the place on the Plain of Jars - mainly on hill tops. Most hill tops also have trenches which are not so easily spotted on Google but easily seen on the ground.

Cave entrance

Some people in the cave must have died as there are many small cairns which have been built in their memory

Cairns for the dead

Bomb crater outside the mouth of the cave

Stay to the white side of the bricks

Tranches on the hill top

Jar split by the impact of the bomb right behind it

Trenches

Stay to the white side of the markers

Muong Souy

The area around Muong Souy which is about 45 km by road west of Phonsavan saw heavy fighting throughout the Secret War. As a result it the subject of many pages in Christopher Robbins's excellent book "The Ravens".

Cave used as a hospital by the NVA

NVA HQ near the top of a local ridge - a climb of about 1200 steps to reach it.

LS 108

The CIA built many landing strips (known as "Lima Sites") around the Palin of Jars. Lima Site 108 was at Muong Souy.

LS 108 - Looking NE along Runway 06 from about 2/3rds of the way along the runway

This northeastern part of the runway (above) fell into NVA hands on 24 June 1969. Heavy fighting continued and on 27 June the Hmong, Thai, and Neutralist forces were evacuated by Air America and it fell to the NVA.

From the same point looking back along Rwy 24

It was whilst attacking the NVA troops during the battle that the Hmong T28 pilot Ly Lu was shot down and killed. The death of this fearless and fearsome pilot was so hard-felt that the government troops, in their dejection, lost further ground around Muong Souy taking heavy casualties. In subsequent advances by the Hmong it was retaken.

Looking NE along Runway 06 from about halfway along the runway.

Muong Souy became a position of such strategic significance in the war that Henry Kissinger advised the President to bring the B52 into use in Laos if the NVA advanced beyond it. The B52 had not hitherto been used in that theatre. The escalation was approved and on 17/18 February 36 sorties of B52s dropped 1,078 tons of bombs to try to stop the NVA taking the village. On 24 February 1970 it again fell to the NVA.

Looking NE along Runway 06 from about 1/3rd of the way along the runway. The houses are new.

Muong Souy was retaken in the coming weeks in 1970 but fell back into Pathet Lao/NVA hands later the same year. In September 1971 it was again taken by General Vang Pau's Hmong troops only to be lost finally when the Pathet Lao and NVA overran it towards the end of the war.

Looking NE along Runway 06 from near the road which crosses near the threshold

Piu Cave

The memorial below stands near the Pui Cave where nearly 400 people were killed when a US aircraft fired a rocket into the cave in 1968. It is a huge limestone cave but as I didn’t take a torch I could only go in about 50m. The cairns are built by the relatives of those who died and the event is still remembered every year.

Piu Cave

Memorial cairns

Plain of Jars near Phonsavan, Laos

The jars are the main tourist attraction in the area. They are carved out of large blocks of stone. Yang said that there are two theories about the creation of the jars.

1 During the 6 century BC the blocks were dragged by elephants from a few miles away from the quarry. The stones were carved out to form jars using iron-age tools (you can see the striations of the tools). They were used to make whiskey or rice wine and the iron-age Laotians had a big party. Or many big parties.

2 As above, but Unesco believe they were used for burial ceremonies.

Naturally the locals prefer their theory! One of the jars at site 1 was, they believe, the first to be made out of several stones and a mortar used to try to make it water-tight. This process failed so they resorted to carving the centres out of blocks which are water-tight for a year. They had lids although there was only one that we saw that had a lid which didn’t fit because the one for which it was made had been broken by a US bomb.

Jar Site 1 and Mr Yang

Iron-age tools used to cut the rock

Graham and a bomb crater

The original jar for the lid had been destroyed by a bomb

Jar Site 1

There are those who say that none of the jars was damaged by the bombing. This is not true - they were all intact prior to the ‘secret war’ and now there are many which are broken - some from bombing, others from gun fire. There are many bomb craters near the jars sites, 10 - 15m wide and several metres deep. At site 1 the N Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers lived in a cave and trenches around the hill (volcanic plug?), and there are large craters just outside the mouth of the cave and across the hill. There were craters near all 3 sites.

If you look at Google Earth you can see bomb craters all over the place on the Plain of Jars - mainly on hill tops. Most hill tops also have trenches which are not so easily spotted on Google but easily seen on the ground. The sites have been cleared of Unexloploded Ordnance (UXO) along the paths so one has to stay on the white sides of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) marker bricks.