All In (3 page)

After receiving uniforms, my father's group was herded to a large field in the middle of the base. A platform had been set up on one end. General Vang Pao, the great Hmong military leader, walked out on the platform and gave a brief speech welcoming the new draftees into their grand struggle for freedom against the Communists.

The general had barely finished talking when a Lao Army officer marched out and started barking orders. Other officers began directing the draftees to different parts of the base. My father's military training was already in high gear.

A few of the officers were Hmong. Others were Lao and Thai. Walking amongst all of them were the first Americans my father had ever seen other than the missionaries who'd visited his village.

No matter who barked orders, my father knew who was
really in charge of the camp. These Americans didn't wear military uniforms but were CIA officers. My father didn't know it at the time, but he'd come into the army at the moment the CIA had decided to launch full-scale guerrilla and counterinsurgency operations to try to drive the North Vietnamese out of Laos.
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As luck would have it, my father and the rest of the Hmong serving in the Lao Army were the foot soldiers assigned to carry out this strategy.

Basic training consisted of learning to shoot a military rifle, to throw hand grenades, to load and unload ammunition, and to set traps for the enemy. All the while, in the distance, the trainees could hear shelling from fighting between Pathet Lao and Hmong soldiers.

Even though my father was officially part of the Royal Lao Army, the Hmong were never considered regular army. Drill instructors didn't waste time trying to teach him and the other Hmong how to march or anything like that. Instead, every day consisted of new lessons on fighting and surviving under extreme conditions.

About the time my father had acclimated to the army base, the training ended. General Vang Pao needed soldiers right away. After sixteen days of preparation, my seventeen-year-old father was declared ready to fight.

When it came time to ship out, my father asked if he could be assigned to the platoon of his brother, La Zang. General Vang Pao granted his request.
Dlaim ntawv.
It was just his luck that this would send him to some of the most brutal fighting of the war.

Under the direction of the CIA, General Vang Pao sent
my father's unit behind enemy lines to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, the primary supply line for the North Vietnamese troops fighting in South Vietnam. Without the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the war in Vietnam would probably have ended in a matter of months. Almost the entire path ran through Laos and Cambodia. As far as the Hmong were concerned, stopping the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam did nothing to help drive the Communists out of Laos. However, because the United States had asked General Vang Pao to send troops to attack the North Vietnamese along the trail, that is exactly what he did.

My father had no idea where he was going when the orders came to ship out. Before that, he had pulled his brother aside. “No matter what happens, La Zang, I will not leave your side. If we are meant to die, we die side by side.”

“Absolutely, we are in this together to the very end.”

While this may sound overly dramatic to some Western readers, the Hmong and Lao armies were not like the American military. When fighting grew fierce, or when men went down with injuries, the situation often degenerated into every man for himself. If you didn't have a close relative watching out for you, you didn't survive long.

My father and La Zang had not only each other but also the privilege of serving with their uncle, a longtime army veteran who'd fought alongside the French against the Japanese during World War II.

On the night my father's basic training ended, several American helicopters dropped into the training base.

“This is it. Let's go,” La Zang yelled to his platoon. “Everyone, grab your gear and follow me.”

My father grabbed his M-1 and small pack and took off after La Zang, who was in a dead sprint toward one of the helicopters. Their unit jumped in and took off.

Throughout the flight, my father closed his eyes and prayed. Two weeks removed from a stone age village, he now flew over the jungle, headed straight east. He'd never even ridden in a car, let alone a helicopter.

A short time later, the chopper dropped.

“Go, go, go,” La Zang yelled.

When they landed at the primitive base camp, my father had never been so glad to see solid ground. La Zang gave their unit eight hours to rest and eat.

It would be the last time my father would sleep for another two days.

My father's first mission as part of an elite guerrilla fighting squad of twenty soldiers set the tone for his four years in the army. His platoon was ordered to go to a hill overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail and wait. Communist soldiers were supposed to come down it sometime that day, most likely in the morning.

“Our instructions are simple,” La Zang explained to his platoon. “General Vang has ordered us to keep them from reaching their destination no matter the cost. Get some rest, brothers. You'll need it.”

The platoon marched a full day and night through the jungle to the rise overlooking the trail. My father spent the entire time
praying to God and to his ancestors for protection.

His prayers were answered. The unit managed to reach its destination without being fired upon.

As they waited for the enemy to arrive, they rested to regain their strength.

A heavy fog hung over the valley below. They could hardly see anything. A rumbling sound came from a distance.

La Zang stood, motioned to his unit, and passed the word: “It's time.”

They attacked, taking the Communists by surprise. A fierce fight ensued. My father and uncle's platoon inflicted a great deal of damage on the enemy and drove them back.

Grenades filled the air. Explosions went off all around my father, who would later call it the worst day of his life. All around him, Hmong soldiers lay wounded or dead. He came upon one soldier whose face had been blown off. Other men lost arms and legs to land mines and mortar shells. He had never witnessed so much death.

The worst was yet to come.

My father looked over just in time to see an explosion knock his brother to the ground. Fearing he was dead, my father rushed to him.

La Zang was alive, but the shrapnel from the grenade had cut into his stomach. Medical tests would later show that his large intestine had been cut in three places.

My father knew his brother would die without immediate medical attention.

When the Communists retreated, my father and great-uncle
picked up La Zang and joined the platoon heading back toward the base while a couple soldiers fell back and set booby traps to keep the Communists from following.

About an hour later, my father heard the grenade booby traps exploding behind them. They were being chased. Though the platoon picked up their pace, the Communists closed the gap.

Finally, my father's platoon reached a place in the highlands where the trail narrowed between jutting rocks overlooking a cliff. All the while, they could hear the Communists gaining ground. To have any hope of escape, they had to take the trail.

“That's it,” one of the soldiers said. “We can't carry your brother any longer. He's slowing us down. If we don't leave him here, we'll all be caught and die.”

La Zang turned to my father. “They're right. I've lost so much blood I probably won't make it. Leave me. There's no need for all three of us to die here.”

“No, Brother, I won't do it,” my father said. “I will never leave you behind.”

Then my father and his uncle walked to the path through the rocks, blocking the platoon's path of escape. The two of them raised their guns, and my father declared, “If I have to die to save my brother, then so be it. But know this: we will not leave him behind. If you refuse to help him, it will not be the Communists who kill you. I will. If he dies, we all die.”

Seeing the look in my father's eye, the other soldiers knew he and his uncle were serious. My father was prepared to fight against his entire platoon to save his brother.

“Okay, okay,” the other soldiers said, “we will not leave La
Zang behind.”

They managed to get through the rocks without getting caught. The Communists stopped their pursuit but radioed ahead to others in the area.

While mortars rained on my father's platoon, they raced for one whole day and night to make it back to their base. My uncle survived, but two others from the platoon were killed by the mortar attacks.

Sadly, a few years later, after my father left active duty, La Zang was captured by the Communists. Along with his entire family, he disappeared into a Pathet Lao reeducation camp. My father would not see him again for thirty years, when we were able to locate him and bring him safely to the United States.

That first mission set the tone for the rest of my father's time in the army. Over the next few years he fought, often going days without sleep, always surviving on little food or water. Most of the time, he lived on whatever he could find to eat in the jungle. He slept in ditches and foxholes, in downpours and blistering heat.

At one point, he pulled off his wet boots and found his feet had turned white from the nonstop rain. He thought he might develop trench foot or gangrene if he didn't take the time to let his boots and feet dry out, but the constant shelling kept him moving on.

As luck would have it, one mission my father barely survived would later help save his family. In 1963, my father was stationed in a base that overlooked a valley. The Hmong controlled
the mountains on one side of the valley, the Communists the other. Day after day the two sides lobbed mortars and exchanged machine gunfire.

The Hmong depended on American cargo planes for their supplies. The planes didn't land but instead dropped the supplies by parachute to the men below. Most Hmong platoons received their supplies this way.

One day my father heard a huge explosion in the sky. Everyone looked up and noticed a cloud of smoke where an airplane was supposed to be. A few minutes later, a call came through the radio reporting that an American plane was down.

“Get your platoon and go find any survivors before the NVA get to them,” the commanding officer told my father.

Just as his first mission at the Ho Chi Minh Trail had been, rescuing the American pilots was easier said than done.

The cargo plane crashed on the far side of the valley near the mountains controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Hostile soldiers, booby traps, and land mines were positioned between my father's platoon and the downed pilots. On top of that, artillery fire continually rained on them. Nevertheless, my father did not once question the order.

From the day the first American airplane was fired on while flying over Laos, Hmong guerrilla fighters had fought and died to save them.

My father's platoon took off through the jungle in the dark. Six hours later, they came upon the crash site. No one was there. The Americans were gone. The platoon spread out and searched the immediate area. “
Tahaan
Vang Pao,” they
called out, translated “Vang Pao's soldiers,” as they searched the area for parachutes and survivors. Finally, they came upon a man hiding behind a rock near a small stream, a makeshift white flag in one hand.

“Vang Pao,” my father called out.

“Vang Pao?” the man said.

“Vang Pao, yes,” my father said, using the one English word he knew.

From behind a rock, the American pilot stood up and cautiously walked toward my father. Dried blood covered the side of his face, but none of his injuries appeared to be life threatening.

“Others?” one of the men in the platoon asked.

“No, no others,” the pilot replied. “They are all dead.”

My father's men didn't speak much English, but they understood the word “dead.”

“Quickly, come with us,” my father said in Hmong and motioned for the pilot to follow them. The men in the platoon surrounded the pilot like Secret Service agents around the president as they hiked back through the maze of booby traps and land mines toward their camp.

As soon as they arrived, a helicopter touched down at camp. They shoved the pilot inside, closed the door, and watched the helicopter fly him away to safety. My father never learned the pilot's name, and few records were officially kept of such rescue operations, but one thing was certain: the pilot was safe.

My father was on to his next mission.

Even with all that my father went through in the war,
dlaim
ntawv
, it was not his destiny to die. After six years of active service, most of which were spent behind enemy lines, my father put in a request for discharge.

During one of his sporadic leaves, he'd married my mother. It was, like most Hmong marriages, arranged by their two families. My grandmother had selected my mother for my father. The couple had grown up in the same village, yet my father had never thought of marrying her. After all, she was seven years younger. However, the families had other ideas. My grandmother paid the dowry to my mother's parents, and the marriage was sealed. By the time my father requested a discharge, my oldest brother had been born.

At first, needing every able-bodied Hmong male to fight, General Vang Pao denied my father's request. Six months later, my uncle, who'd now been promoted to the rank of captain, convinced his superior officer to grant my father's request. It didn't hurt that my mother and the commanding officer were related.

Not long afterward, I came along.

My father remained a soldier even though he wasn't with his platoon any longer. Our village was 40 miles from the front lines, and my father was in charge of its defense.

For as far back as I can remember, I heard cannons and bombs and gunfire. Some nights, the blasts sounded as if they were directly outside our house, even though they were miles away. I would lie awake, fearing the moment the Communist soldiers would storm our village and kill us all.