Where they lay

By the way, I’m about 50 pages into a book that is very interesting. One of the main missions of the US government in Laos today is a full accounting of all the MIA from the Vietnam war. The Ho Chi Minh Trail led straight through Laos, and in our efforts to stop, or at least slow, the flow of soldiers, arms, and food from the North to South Vietnam (not to mention our support of the Royalist Lao Government against the Pathet Lao, the precursor to the current Lao Government), we lost a lot of jet and chopper pilots, and special forces sent to interdict the soldiers traveling the trail and to “paint” larger targets with laser guidance for bombers overhead.

In all there were about 500 MIAs in Laos at the end of the war. Starting in 1986, there has been a sustained program by the US military to repatriate ALL of the MIA from Laos, and they have found and identified about 130 so far. It’s really amazing, actually. Teams come in from Hawaii to research and identify dig sites based on US military records, interviews with local Lao who might remember where chopper or jet crashed (or have come across debris while farming or foraging), and even interviews with former Vietnamese soldiers who were on the trail South and might have witnessed something.

The Lao Government has been very open to the US gov’ts efforts, allowing 50 US soldiers at a time go out in the field (called a Joint Field Activity, or JFA). The soldiers are broken up into investigative teams and recovery teams. The investigative teams are the ones who try to determine where X is, that is, where a potential crash site, etc. is. Remember, this happened over 30 years ago in the jungle, and any large metal pieces were scavenged long ago. So they are looking for just about anything that might point to being the place that a crash (or firefight) took place. Once they determine where X is, a recovery team comes in and digs. Each dig is led by an anthropologist or archaeologist in terms of the technical dig, and each team consists of about 15 soldiers, usually led by a Captain. Each dig site also employs about 70-100 Lao locals, and the military also does humanitarian projects, such as building schools and clinics in the villages near the dig sites, in order to build some positive relationships and to encourage the locals to cooperate with the teams.

Anyway, I’ll hopefully get out to a dig site sometime soon, but I don’t think it’ll happen until after the heaviest of the rainy season.

But, I’ve just started a book that I’m told is a very good telling of what the JFAs entail, and why they are doing what they are doing. So far, it’s really good. Check it out if you want.

It’s called Where they lay. Click the link for more info.