The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War by Christopher Robbins Page A

actually being fought by the Meo, who were under the command of Vang Pao, who was officially under the command of the chief of staff of the Royal Lao Army. For the Ravens, the CIA and Gen. Vang Pao added the final convolutions to their eccentric command relationship, to the point that it defied analysis.
    Everywhere was the furious activity of war, an endless traffic of men and aircraft. Pilots walked back and forth from the ramp to the operations shack. Troops milled around at the edge of the runway waiting to board helicopters. Mechanics checked airplane engines, and armorers loaded bombs. Soldiers came and went, carrying their wounded and their dead.
    There seemed to be a great many children everywhere. Tiny imps, no more than six years old, ran errands for armorers, hanging loads on the wings of fighters of the Royal Lao Air Force. The ten-year-old males wore combat fatigues, carried grenades looped in their belts, and were dwarfed by the antiquated American carbines, M-16s, and captured enemy AK-47s they carried.
    Every day just before dusk, Long Tieng went through the combat equivalent of rush hour. Planes and choppers began to come in every few seconds, making their final landing of the day before dark. Large, silent, unsmiling Americans in fatigues led files of small, exhausted men from the runway. The native fighter pilots, stiff with cramp after ten hours of combat in the cockpit, were lifted gently from their planes by helpers. Interspersed in the traffic were the Ravens’ O-1 spotter planes, known as Bird Dogs, returning from all points of the compass.
    If Steve Canyon could step from his cartoon strip, accompanied by Terry and the Pirates, this would surely be their home. ‘It was such an exotic place,’ Fred Platt said. ‘It really had the feel of some pirate hideaway, with guys with tattoos and daggers clutched between their teeth. I felt the moment I set foot there that I had found home.’
    At the bar of the Raven hootch the newcomer was introduced to the men he would be working with. Nobody made much of a fuss - a welcoming grunt, a quick handshake, maybe a half-smile. But it was a wonderful moment. Almost always there was an instant empathy, the first experience of the mystical bond of fellowship the Ravens shared. ‘It’s difficult to explain, but after all the crap and bureaucracy of the military it was magic,’ Craig Morrison said. ‘The guys! Even though you didn’t know the individuals you were instantly one of the troops. I had never met any of them but felt I knew all of them. It was almost déjà vu .’ (The six-month tour meant a rapid turnover as Ravens completed their duty and returned home, or were wounded and killed before their time. Some extended their tours, but for most the war in Laos was a flood of impressions condensed into a brief period. The narrative of this book is punctuated, sometimes with an abruptness that is jarring, by their arrivals and departures. Quite simply, this was the way it was. While the author has avoided logging each and every Raven in and out of the country, he has imposed an order and continuity on events that were often experienced at the time as an incomprehensible chaos of incident. An overview of the war is provided by a chronology of events at the back of the book.)
    Things were done differently at Long Tieng. There seemed to be no overt recognition of rank and no military bureaucracy whatsoever. War planning for the whole military region was decided each evening over dinner with Gen. Vang Pao. Various Meo military officers, CIA case officers, intelligence people, and the senior Raven went to the general’s house every night to dine off the local food, washed down with shots of White Horse whisky.
    The newcomer would accompany the senior Raven to the dinner to meet the general. The meal was friendly but almost formal, with Vang Pao seated cross-legged on the floor at the center of the table, his advisers and officers sitting next to him. In person,