The Best Insurgency in Laos Books of All Time

The true stories of about 500 of my single-pilot combat flights, almost all of them in Laos and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. I spent 22-1/2 months flying in the CIA's setup Mohawk unit with the armed OV-1 Mohawks - until my timing and luck all ran out at the same time and I was medevac'd to the Air Force hospital at Clark AFB in the Philippines and then a series of Air Force and Army hospitals.In 1964 the CIA setup the 20th ASTA (later the 131st Aviation Company) and made it a MACV asset, outside of the normal I - IV Corps structure that had the other unarmed Mohawk units.

While based near Hue in South Vietnam (I Corps, just below the DMZ), we flew entirely in Laos and North Vietnam for over seven years until the last months of the war. Our secondary base for over six years was Udorn RTAFB, Thailand where we flew nightly hunter/killer teams with the Air Force and Laotian forces attacking Chinese trucks and tanks across northern Laos, near (or sometimes across) the border far to the northwest of Hanoi. This was the war in the Plain of Jars (PDJ) and much of this was run from the secret CIA airfield at Long Teign (Lima Site-20a), the most secret airfield in the world and home to much of the Air America fleet. Our two dozen Grumman OV-1 Mohawks were the only armed ones, and of the five Army Mohawk units, the other four operating only in South Vietnam, the 131st lost more aircraft and men than all the other units - combined. Nightly, from Phu Bai we flew pairs of SLAR/IR hunter/killer teams in southern Laos (Steel Tiger North and South) with the AC-130 Spectre gunships attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail around the clock. There we faced huge amounts of flak and other heavy anti-aircraft fire that were not an issue inside of South Vietnam. We ran SLAR, IR and VR (armed visual) missions around the clock in the southern ends of North Vietnam, including 24/7 SLAR missions right along the coast up to about Vinh. There the issue was Soviet SAM missiles, and flak and the rest of the heavy machine guns. Ditto for Laos. And we never got a single man back out of Laos at the end of the war. You go down in Laos - and you are gone for good.

The tale of a young Green Beret medic, Vietnam combat veteran with the top secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who was recruited by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).Schofield worked 5½ years providing medical support for the Hmong and other Hill Tribes who fought the CIA’s secret war in Northern Laos, and was among the last Americans to leave SE Asia in May 1975.It was a surreal time and place that would be impossible to even imagine today.

“Schofiled’s book reflects a genuine love for the Hmong and their culture, as well as a vast knowledge of their efforts during our ‘secret war’ in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. Read and learn some actual facts; not overblown rhetoric from another barstool hero.” —Stephen R. Leopold is Colonel, SF, USA (Ret)“Schofield’s book will be a welcome, informative addition to recent books released on the early days of Green Beret history in Southeast Asia. De Oppresso Liber.” —John Stryker Meyer is author of SOG Chronicles,Across the Fence and On the Ground.

In February 1971, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) launched an incursion into Laos in an attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy North Vietnamese Army (NVA) base areas along the border. This movement would be the first real test of Vietnamization, Pres. Richard Nixon’s program to turn the fighting over to South Vietnamese forces as US combat troops were withdrawn.

US ground forces would support the operation from within South Vietnam and would pave the way to the border for ARVN troops, and US air support would cover the South Vietnamese forces once they entered Laos, but the South Vietnamese forces would attack on the ground alone. The operation, dubbed Lam Son 719, went very well for the first few days, but as movement became bogged down the NVA rushed reinforcements to the battle and the ARVN forces found themselves under heavy attack. US airpower wreaked havoc on the North Vietnamese troops, but the South Vietnamese never regained momentum and ultimately began to withdraw back into their own country under heavy enemy pressure. In this first in-depth study of this operation, military historian and Vietnam veteran James H. Willbanks traces the details of battle, analyzes what went wrong, and suggests insights into the difficulties currently being incurred with the training of indigenous forces.