THE PASSING OF AN EXTRAORDINARY PATRIOT
(an unsung hero to all but the Hmong people)

I only met him once, at the Plaines des Jarres, up in the highlands of what was then the Kingdom of Laos, when things were still relatively calm and peaceful there.

And though ours was just a brief shaking of hands during a casual introduction by a Laotian colonel accompanying me, the friendly yet fierce intensity of his gaze as we did so firmly impressed in my mind, that this general….was the real deal….unlike so many others I had to deal with back then. Whether I made any impression on him, I can’t say. I like to think it was a positive one, and not that of yet another rear headquarters staffer coming up from Vientiane to clutter up the landscape around him (and there were a lot of those).

Obviously a soldiers’ soldier, General Vang Pao had the clear aura of a fighting field commander. He was that impressive, despite his diminutive size, and he would soon show us in the most spectacular way how true that was, not only as a great tribal war-chief, of incredible personal courage, but as a singularly dedicated leader of his troops and people.

In any event, shortly thereafter, I had left the Kingdom for home leave, and re-assignment to Thailand, before he and his Hmong forces became engaged in heroic action against the North Vietnamese invasion of their mountain homeland (author Christopher Robbins, in his book – The Ravens – probably provides the most vivid description of those events, and their incredible resistance against overwhelming odds).

Sadly, both he and his people were ultimately abandoned and shabbily treated by our government. Something for which those of us who had worked, trained, supported, and even fought alongside with these most loyal allies of ours….still feel a deep disgust and shame to this day. The Hmong had served their purpose. American interests and real-politik objectives made them expendable, and they’ve paid a terrible price for that privilege…. decimated by “Yellow Rain”, the bombing slaughter and destruction of their highland villages, scattered out of the Kingdom to languish for years in dismal Thai refugee camps, with only some grudgingly allowed to settle in the alien land of their erstwhile friends, far from their own mountain world.

Worse yet, and ironically, thanks to the post 9/11 hysteria about terrorism, General Vang Pao and some of his people were labeled as terrorists, because they sought to free their homeland from the grip of the Communist regime that had tried so hard to wipe them out. It’s not one of the more honorable chapters in America’s recent history.

Well, he is gone now, and my greatest regret is that I never had the honor, as many others did, of serving with him and his troops in that desperate struggle of so long ago. All I can do is to honor his memory by offering a soldier’s ultimate respect….a silent salute…. for the heroic commander and extraordinary Hmong patriot he truly was.

CENTURION