Word: savannakhet
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...ease. In case of battle, U.S. combat troops would probably not be the first to go into action in Laos. Instead, U.S.-manned helicopters and transports would drop guerrilla forces of Thais, Pakistanis and Filipinos into the fighting sectors while U.S. troops occupied the Mekong River valley towns from Savannakhet through Paksane and Vientiane, up to Luangprabang; this would provide strong defense for the towns while freeing 12,000 Laotian soldiers for action. Meanwhile. U.S. guerrillas would move in and beef up training of the native groups...
...roam the elephant, tiger and gaur. In winter, the hills of Laos are alight with opium poppies, and in summer the floods brought by the monsoon rains lap under the stilted houses and over the 500 miles of meandering dirt roads. Years ago, someone built a railroad station in Savannakhet, but never got around to building a railroad. The Me kong River, crashing down from a canyon in China's Yunnan province, then slowed by silt and sewage on its 1,600-mile run to the South China Sea, is the principal means of transportation and is known...
...prince soon demonstrated the qualities that make Laotians the despair of Western diplomats. A plump sybarite who in quieter times is fond of repairing to the French Riviera, Boun Oum announced no ringing program. Instead, he flew south most nights to sleep in his quiet and safe former headquarters, Savannakhet. At lunch, his favorite companions turned out to be not candidates for the cabinet but girls from the Vientiane dance halls...
...turned for further aid to his good friend, Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov. Helpfully, Abramov flew in six 105-mm. howitzers and eight 120-mm. mortars as well as a batch of North Vietnamese to teach the Laotians how to use their new weapons. At his stronghold to the south, Savannakhet, General Phoumi countered by convening most of the members of the National Assembly. They voted Prince Souvanna out of office and named as the new Premier Boun Oum, a silver-haired, pro-U.S. princeling from Laos' lush southern hill country. Then by river boat, foot and plane, three...
Laotians, who have gone through two coups d'état in a year, last week had a coup de radio. From the southern town of Savannakhet, Prince Boun Oum, 52, tall, silvery-maned royal inspector general and pretender to a long defunct kingdom, took to the radio to declare that the new neutralist government in Vientiane was handing the country over to Communism, and announced "the seizure of power and the abrogation of the constitution in order to bring peace and happiness to the country and the people." The prince is kingpin of the rich southern Laotian valleys, famed...