From Ban Xon to Wardak

Mike Shepherd

Description

Tavang Sing, the son of a CIA mercenary and a woman who lived in the Hmong village of Ban Xon in Laos, was born after his father was captured by the Pathet Lao in that country's civil war in the 1960's. After his birth his mother took him to Chicago, where as a teenager he became involved with a street gang. But, with the help of a stranger, who turns out to be his long lost father, Tavang left the gang. He then graduated from high school and Northwestern University, and joined the Peace Corps in Laos. Upon his return, he graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law. He then became a lawyer, and eventually a politician.

After the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Tavang joined the military to exact revenge on Osama bin Laden, one of the masterminds of 9/11.

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 02 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781475979831
• Langue: English

Extrait

FROM BAN XON TO WARDAK

MIKE SHEPHERD


From Ban Xon to Wardak
 
 
Copyright © 2013 Mike Shepherd.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7982-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7983-1 (e)
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 07/28/2023
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part II
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
PROLOGUE

I N 1945, AFTER becoming aware of the deplorable living conditions on French-owned rubber plantations and labor camps, the Royal Laotian government’s Prince Souphanouvong, along with his half-brother Prince Souvana Phouma, led an armed revolution against the French, with assistance from Vietnam president Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh Communist army, and together they expelled the French from Laos. Phouma then established a neutralist coalition government that consisted of both pro-Western and pro-Communist factions. The latter came to be known as the Pathet Lao, whose forces were aligned with the Viet Minh, while Souphanouvong’s pro-Western faction was aligned with the Royal Laotians, whose military was supported and funded by the United States.
In the early days of the coalition, both factions strived to gain an advantage in the government, but in a 1958 national election, the Communists received the most votes which alarmed the staunchly anti-Communist U.S. Consequently the U.S. put pressure on the neutralist Phouma to resign his position in favor of an American-backed successor Phoui Sananikone, and we sent military aid, aircraft and Special Forces advisors into the country in support of Sananiknone. This was countered by the Soviets, who supplied arms, vehicles and antiaircraft weapons in support of the Pathet Lao, while North Vietnam, in response to the introduction of the U.S. Special Forces advisors into the situation, sent in cadres to train their Laotian Communist comrades.
 
In 1959, the conflict between the pro-American Sananikone and the pro-Communist faction led to Souphanouvong’s arrest and the country’s swing toward the West. As a result the Communist military forces were to be integrated into the Royal Laotian Army. However, upon learning of Souphanouvong’s arrest, a Pathet Lao battalion scheduled for integration fled to the North Vietnam border and waged guerrilla warfare against the government whose positions on the strategic Plaine des Jarres—a fifty-square-mile plateau in the mountainous northern part of the country—became endangered. As a result the U.S. answered a request by Sananikone for assistance, by dispatching Special Forces teams to assist the Royal Lao government army. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his last days in office, rejected direct military intervention, but he sent CIA operatives and Green Beret advisors into the country to recruit Hmong tribesmen living in the mountains surrounding the Plaine des Jarres as insurgents to wage guerrilla warfare against the Communists in support of the pro-Western Royal government forces. And when Hanoi sent additional troops into Laos, the succeeding Kennedy Administration authorized the CIA to increase the size of the Hmong army, which reached several thousand. A thousand Thai mercenaries joined them. For several reasons, including clan divisions and political rivalries that stemmed from the French colonial days—the Hmong fought on both sides. Some 100,000 cast their lot with the Pathet Lao, and about 250,000 sided with the Royals.
Thais and pro-government Hmong blew up North Vietnamese Army (NVA) supply depots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ambushed trucks, mined roads and generally harassed the Communist forces. But then, under the leadership of General Vang Pao, the Hmong resorted to conventional warfare, and they launched an all-out offensive against NVA and Pathet Lao forces, utilizing U.S. air power augmented by the Hmong’s fledgling air force of World War II vintage T-28 fighter bombers. The operation proved to be a huge success: the Hmong reclaimed the entire plateau, capturing food, ammunition, heavy weapons and tanks.
But the victory was short-lived. The NVA brought in an additional two divisions of crack troops, whoquickly regained all the lost ground, and threatened the major Hmong base at Long Tieng. In response, Washington authorized B-52 strikes on the Plaine to oust the NVA, and the country was on the brink of all-out war.
In 1961, in an effort to resolve the situation in Laos, a multi-national conference convened in Geneva, Switzerland. Its proclamation, known as the Laotian Accords, contained four basic articles: all nations outside of Laos would respect its sovereignty and refrain from interfering in its internal affairs; aid to Laos could not include the establishment of military bases within the country; no nation could form a military alliance with any Laotian faction; the establishment of a coalition government which the neutralist Prince Phouma would head, with the Communist Prince Souphanouvong as second in command.
The coalition was tenuous at best, and armed conflict intensified between the two factions. Despite the Accord, North Vietnam continued its involvement in Laotian affairs—an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops operated in Laos in support of the Pathet Lao in their conflict with the government.
For 14 years warfare ebbed and flowed through Laos. In 1975, America’s Hmong allies finally lost. An estimated 30,000 of them had been killed. Tens of thousands of survivors who had sided with the U.S. were driven from their mountain homes, becoming refugees. Forced into camps in the lowlands, they had to learn to survive in mainstream Laotian society, a culture altogether foreign to them. Thousands more made their way to Thailand, and many eventually ended up in the U.S., including General Vang Pao, who went into exile in California.
Meanwhile the Marxist-Leninist state, known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) claimed control over nearly every aspect of human life in Laos. The LPDR has had many problems since its takeover in 1975: many of the country’s students, merchants and farmers fled, draining the nation of its brain pool and eroding its commerce and agricultural base.
CHAPTER 1

T HE SPOTLIGHT ILLUMINATED the mountain top clearing as the helicopter descended. Five men—three CIA mercenaries, and two U.S. Green Berets—faces and hands blackened with mud and charcoal, quickly disembarked and scattered into the surrounding jungle. They waited in ambush for any Pathet Lao who might have seen the insertion.
After lying low for nearly two hours, they regrouped in the clearing, which was well-lit by a half moon. Any more light would give them away, but it was barely enough to see through the underbrush. They communicated their next move with hand signals. They would follow an elephant trail into the valley below where the Nam Ngum River ran. They knew from recon aircraft photos that it would lead to the remote Hmong village they sought. It was on the southwestern edge of the Plaine des Jarres, a grassy fifty square-mile plateau, surrounded by mountains, in the northern part of the country. They intended to persuade the inhabitants there to take up arms against the Pathet Lao, who had been raiding the Hmong’s opium, corn, rice and vegetable crops, chickens and pigs, to supply their army with morphine and food.
The special force was led by CIA mercenary Jackson Truax. He was a former Green Beret who had secretly been in Vietnam as early as 1962, where he tried to persuade the Montagnards to engage in guerrilla warfare against the fledgling Viet Cong Communist insurgents. They were trying to undermine the pro-Western South Vietnamese government of U.S. puppet President Ngo Dien Diem. His men called him “Black Jack” because of his dark eyes, hair, side burns and mustache. He was lean, but muscular, and tall—about 6'3".
The rest of the group included:
Master Sergeant Doug Wilson of the Green Berets, a stocky, well-built man of medium height