The Wounded Land

We arrived at the airport (the little building next to the runway) an hour before our flight, and went next door to a restaurant and drank beer. I ordered one large beer and two glasses for Rick and I, but instead we received two large beers and four glasses. (Apparently it is customary to order one bottle with two glasses per person in Laos so this was sort of understandable.)

Our flight was right on time. We walked from the cement building out to the tarmac, and on to the plane. Probably one of the last places on earth where a metal detector is not used.

As we flew away from Ponsavan, the aforementioned bomb craters were certainly evident. Most of the bombing that went on here was American bombing of (then-rebel) communist positions that were attacking the Air America airstrip (which we just took off from).

I say most bombing: I have no idea what we bombed and how often, to tell the truth. Obviously some bombs fell on the nearby town we had visited earlier in the day. I have no opinion one way or the other about 40-year-old strategic bombing choices because I wasn't there. It's all wrong, of course, in a historical perspective. Whether it was sound military reasoning or just some awful animosity on the part of my countrymen that directed those bombs to fall where they did, on the parents and grandparents of those pretty kids walking home from school (I'm sure their parents and grandparents were just as pretty then), those pretty houses, those pretty fields... all of it... I don't pretend to understand or have all the details. I probably don't want to know.

The whole Viet Nam war? The grand scheme of things? That, of course, can be grasped and judged. That single bomb crater two thousand feet below me caused by a bomb that landed a few yards from someone's hut? I really cannot say.

Ponsavan wasn't really a great place to visit as a tourist, but personally it left the biggest impression on me. All I saw were just some circular dents in the earth... forming a long chain across the landscape... left there 40 years ago by men much like myself. However, I saw that dented land and the people who live on it up close... and it did make me stop and think.
(Since I take all my photos with a camera phone, and the M16-wielding Lao soldier (disguised as a cute little Lao Airlines stewardess wielding a tray of orangeade... but I wasn't fooled) told us to turn off our phones while in flight, I had to snatch the airborne crater photo from lcompanyranger.com