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

President Johnson’s decision to declare a bombing halt, on March 31, 1968, of the northern two-thirds of North Vietnam, the area in which the Rock had been so effective in directing all-weather strikes.) But for the Meo the loss of the sacred mountain was more than a military reversal, it was a spiritual calamity with complex psychological consequences. As the news that Phou Pha Thi had fallen passed from village to village along the mountain grapevine, the morale of half a million Meo slumped.
    It heralded the beginning of a terrible period for Gen. Vang Pao. In the five years since 1963, he had fought a seesaw war. During the dry season, December through May, when the roads were passable, the enemy took the offensive, only to fall back into a defensive position in the months of the monsoon, when the Meo usually regained lost ground. The margins of land between the opposing forces sometimes changed hands twice a year. Even during this period of comparative balance there was a creeping escalation as the enemy fielded more troops and weaponry each year and the Meo strengthened their defensive positions and launched stronger offensives backed by ever-increasing air power.
    In the dry season of 1967 the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese began to build all-weather roads. This enabled them to extend the period in which they were effective, dependent as they were on wheeled vehicles to haul supplies and munitions, and to bring up heavy weapons. Perhaps provoked by the installation of radar on the Rock, they undertook a major push throughout the region of Sam Neua, involving eleven battalions of North Vietnamese reinforcements. [17]
    The effect of this new strategy and escalation by the enemy had already been felt before the attack on the Rock. Government forces defending the royal capital of Luang Prabang had been chopped to pieces, while two provincial capitals in the Laotian panhandle had come under heavy attack. Both the Royal Laotian Army and Gen. Vang Pao’s forces began to rely increasingly on U.S. air power.
    The partial bombing halt over North Vietnam meant there were idle U.S. jets and a surplus of bombs available, and these were immediately switched to Laos. [18] But bad weather made even the increased air power ineffective. Fighters remained unable to get off the ground, friendly outposts fell one after another, and Vang Pao’s forces were swept from the province. With the loss of Site 85 at the foot of the Rock, the Ravens fell back to staging out of Site 36 at Na Khang, now their most northerly base, defended by fifteen hundred Meo.
    The enemy, under the cover of the poor weather, had amassed five battalions by early May with which to challenge the Na Khang garrison. But just when things looked most bleak, the weather changed. The Ravens began a frantic effort from dawn to dusk to direct air to beat back the massed enemy army. Hundreds of sorties of U.S. jet fighter-bombers blunted the enemy thrust.
    The commander of Na Khang was Lt. Col. U Va Lee, a close relative of Vang Pao, one of his most trusted field officers and a very tough soldier indeed. Known among the Americans as ‘the Indian,’ thirty-five-year-old U Va Lee had spent most of his life fighting, and he carried an M-16 about with him as a businessman might carry a briefcase. He had an intimate knowledge of the area, and when he was not fighting on the ground he flew in the backseat with a Raven to validate targets. (Vang Pao had provided a whole squad of men, known as Backseaters or Robins, who could advise the Ravens on the terrain and differentiate between friendly and enemy areas. This was the only targeting authority the Ravens had to consult in the area of northern Laos. All other targets in Laos had to go through the embassy and were cleared by the ambassador himself.)
    John Mansur had heard all the stories about the Indian, and was pleased to have him as his Backseater on his first strike mission in the country. ‘I had heard he was the John