Visiting Vientiane, and an Unexpected Gift

From the desk of Kit Norland

Monks on scaffolding to refresh the walls of Wat Inpeng

I had never read a first-hand account of life in the Vieng Xay caves during the bombing of Laos until a Lao friend handed me a book last December. My spouse and I were visiting Vientiane, as we do periodically since retiring from the U.S. Department of State. We served at the embassy in Vientiane in 2000, and again in 2011. Our 2023 trip provided a touching summation of the time it takes to build trust, and the unexpected gift of a book about a French-trained Lao doctor who lived in the caves. 

Santa scales a wall without getting ensnared in ubiquitous hives of wires

First, a little background on the friend who gave us the book.

It’s a trope that the West values speed and hyperactivity while the East nurtures a less hectic pace. I thought of the difference in how we value time during an afternoon we spent with Keo [pseudonym]. We had first met in 2000 and, twenty-three years later, Keo was driving us around Vientiane when she casually said: “It’s good we’ve worked together since a long time ago. And that you come back to visit. And so, we have trust.”

In her unassuming comment, Keo underscored an undeniable reality: trust takes time. It’s not something we can speed up, however much it grates against our penchant to hurry. It’s not something we can establish through social media or technological avenues. As journalist Edward R. Murrow asserted back in the 1960s, the key to communicating is “the last three feet.” And in some cases, establishing trust across a tragic past may take decades, as Keo had reminded us.

Which led to Keo’s unexpected gift of a book about a friend, a French-trained surgeon who, along with his family, lived in the Vieng Xay caves during the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia. This book is a mélange of interviews in French, Lao and English arranged by two French researchers, “Journey of a Child of the Mekong: Interviews with Doctor Ponmek Dalaloy carried out in 2016 by Antoine des Graviers and Paul T. Brey.” It offers insights into difficult-to-imagine conditions of life in the caves. Dr. Dalaloy studied medicine in Montpelier, France, before returning to Laos in 1967. I focused on the interviews in French which describe his life as a surgeon in the caves. He recalls the dearth of medical supplies, noting that they had antibiotics from socialist countries while relying on “autoclaves [steam sterilizers]… operating on a wood fire to sterilize correctly.” (p. 101) In day-time, he explains, nobody made a fire or hung clothes out to dry “because we risked showing our presence. Such discipline was more than essential and useful, it was vital!” That discipline was “truly the foundation of our way of living or surviving in war! And live and survive not in a passive and submissive way, but in an active way, with the spirit of being master of oneself, because we were on the path to victory.” (p. 102)

Seems reminders are still needed "to show respect for the sacred place"

Dr. Dalaloy describes the caves as protectors: “…if we were able to escape death, it was indeed thanks to the protection of the successive natural and/or artificial caves which sheltered us given the number of times we had bombs over our heads on the solid stones of the rocky mountains in which these caves are located.” He and his family lived in a small natural cave “which was intended to be a kitchen, but which due to lack of water…had been given to us as a home from which I could quickly get to the bedside of the sick in case of emergency…..” (p. 102)

Sheltering in caves provided protection but did not prevent suffering:

“[People] heard the very loud noises of the explosions, we felt the very powerful blasts with a strong smell of sulfur which rushed into the cave when they were 250 kilo bombs….The bombings are terrifying at the moment of the explosion itself but they are brief. If you are protected by the cave you are safe and sound. But it is not without any impact; apart from the psychological effects, there are still long-term auditory effects due to the very powerful blast of the explosion which rushes into the cave and takes away everything that can be dragged with it. The biggest dangers are the repetition or frequency and mixing of types of bombs dropped at the same time! (p. 107). 

My interest in rarely-heard perspectives stems from writing an oral history of nine Vietnamese women who graduated in 1950 from the prestigious Lycée Marie Curie in Saigon and participated directly in the struggle for Vietnam’s independence. A Vietnamese-American academic has noted that roughly 30,000 books have been written about the Vietnam War—mostly by American men. Reactions to my book, The Saigon Sisters; Privileged Women in the Resistance (Cornell, 2020), underscore the need for different viewpoints, especially of women. 

We look forward to seeing Keo again in a year. Maybe we’ll get to meet Dr. Dalaloy and his wife. Maybe we’ll hear about their lives, in-person across “the last three feet.” If that does happen, it’ll be because of trust built over time.

Quaint fairgrounds, complete with rusty Ferris wheel, sit alongside the Mekong riverbed

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Sidebar: The passing of Jerome Doolittle (1933-2023), author of “The Bombing Officer” (Dutton, New York, 1982).

While we were in Laos, Jerome Doolittle, ex-U.S. Information Agency officer and author of “The Bombing Officer” passed away on December 3, 2023. His book about a bombing officer at the U.S. embassy in Vientiane during the war profiles Fred Upson, a young diplomat whose job is to approve or disapprove requests for bombing strike by the U.S. Air Force. 

Upson comes to realize that strikes are being made on villages suspected of sympathizing with the Vietnamese. Helpless civilians are killed. (While serving in Laos, Doolittle also helped two Lao families emigrate to the United States.)  John Bovey, a U.S. diplomat, reviewed the book in the December 1982 Foreign Service Journal. Bovey stated that Doolittle’s “… central theme is difficult: the corruption of innocence when power is misapplied by careerists, both military and civilian.”

A distinctly relevant theme today.