Remembering Laos

Andrea Fowler slowly reached up, put her finger on the AK47
automatic rifle, and gently pushed it to one side.

“Excuse me,” the soldier said, shifting the barrel away from her infant daughter’s temple so that it now pointed to the roof of the patio.

A child himself, the boy had a slightly embarrassed smile on his face but remained standing by the picnic table, watching
as the American and her adopted Lao daughter cut up magazines and pasted the pieces onto big sheets of paper — a diversion to keep them busy while the boy soldier and his army peers barricaded the house. He hadn’t meant to get that close. But drawn by the magazine, he had inched nearer and nearer, forgetting what direction his gun was pointed.

“There was such a poignant sweetness about both his intense interest in the pictures and his embarrassment at touching a small child with the barrel of his very deadly weapon,” says Fowler, a 1991 MPA graduate.

That moment has remained with her more than a quarter century after she and a handful of other volunteers working for agencies like USAID and International Volunteer Services (IVS) — as was Fowler’s case — were held hostage for almost two weeks in 1974, by the Pathlet Lao, a Communist nationalist movement that eventually seized control of Laos and continues to rule today as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Fowler and her two infant girls, adopted from the local orphanage where she was volunteering, had just arrived at the home of a USAID worker to spend the holidays in Ban Houei Sai, a provincial town in the southeastern corner of Laos, where the country intersects with Thailand and Burma — the infamous “Golden Triangle” of the heroin trade. Her son, Adam, and husband, also an IVS volunteer, were driving to the town by motorcycle via Thailand and would arrive a few days later.

Instead, their plans for a fun-filled holiday in the country they had called home for nearly three years changed in an instant when Pathlet Lao troops attacked a nearby government fort in an attempt to capture a corrupt colonel who had been withholding, and then selling for profit, the soldiers’ wages — rice rations that fed their families. That night, the fort, the
surrounding town, and everyone in it —including the American volunteers — were taken hostage.

Fowler says that during those two weeks, “there were times of great tension and fear,” as they were uncertain what was going to happen. Most troubling was the night they were monitoring traffic between the U.S. embassy in Vientiane, the nation’s capital city, and the Pathlet Lao leaders camped out in the fort, which was on a hill near the house where she was staying. Listening on a secure radio that had been smuggled to them by a Lao employee of USAID, Fowler and the other captives suddenly heard a Pathlet Lao shout, “We’re going down the hill to kill the Americans.”

“In moments, we heard a Jeep roaring down the hill,” she says. “Several heavily armed men burst into the house, made us all sit, grabbed Jack [a USAID worker], waved their weapons at us, and left. It was a very bad night. We didn’t talk. We just waited and listened, for hours. Finally, the sound of a Jeep…and then Jack was in the house, shaken, but unharmed.”

There were better memories, as well, including — as is often the case in traumatic situations — forged bonds that have never been broken (the group of hostages reunited in Laos 20 years later), as well as music, thanks to a good stereo system in her friend’s home.

“We kept the music playing most of the time, occasionally blasting it to cover the talk during our frequent ‘sitrep’ (situation reports) meetings,” she says. “We still have flashbacks when certain songs come on the radio. ‘Don’t Rock the Boat’ and ‘When Will I See You Again?’ yank us right back to those days.”

Eventually, the soldiers decided that it was in their best interests to let their hostages go. A happy moment, she remembers, but one still filled with tension.

“We left in small boats, one or two at a time, and crossed the river into Thailand. As the first group left, carrying the kids, a friend in a body cast, and a friend who was a nurse,” she says, “the rest of us held our breaths. We weren’t certain that the boat wouldn’t be blown out of the river as they crossed. Pretty scary. Nobody breathed much on either side of the river until everyone was across safely.”

Surprisingly, Fowler, now living in Georgia, says she wouldn’t trade her Laos experience for anything, “though you can be certain that none of us hope to repeat it.” She and her family stayed in Laos for several months after the two-week siege, leaving in the evacuation when the country fell to Communism in May of 1975.

“People who weren’t in Laos are surprised by this, but none of us who were there are at all surprised, even now. We loved living there,” she says. “The day we left was one of the saddest of my life — and scariest. I overheard one of the Pathlet Lao say to another that my daughters looked like Lao kids and that I shouldn’t be allowed to take them. I told my son to keep a tight hold on my shoulder bag, pushed my ‘babble button,’ and started walking fast across the tarmac to the plane while yammering on about the wonderful victory they’d won and the great challenge they were now involved in as they made Laos a ‘paradise’ for the people. Thanking my lucky stars that I spoke Lao, I left the Pathlet Lao shaking their heads in bewilderment.”

—Lory Hough