Laos

A big stone Buddha at one end of town somehow managed to survive the bombing, sitting outdoors now in what used to be a temple, cross-legged and serene, his gaze fixed on what used to be a city. The rules of engagement probably saved him. U.S. Air Force pilots weren't supposed to take out religious structures. Save for an ancient Buddhist shrine on a hill overlooking the non-city, everything else is gone, which makes this old provincial capital a fitting testament to the American war legacy in Laos - a legacy best summed up in a word.

The Vietnamese government has joined Laos in rejecting U.S. requests that investigators be allowed to search for missing servicemen who have been reported held captive there, members of Congress who just returned from Southeast Asia said yesterday. Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R., Alaska), who led the congressional delegation, said each country gave an "absolute refusal" to requests that teams of U.S. or international investigators be allowed to follow up on the 95 reported sightings that remain unresolved.

American Ken Swick is turning a love of Laos and its people into a business opportunity he hopes will benefit both countries. "When I first went to Laos I was only 21 years old. It was 1961, and I was in the U.S. Air Force. I was maintaining and fixing old airplanes," he said. "I fell in love with the culture and the people. They're an amazing people, very helpful, very kind," the Rev. Swick said. He also admired the Laotians' commitment to maintaining a relationship with the United States during the war in Vietnam.

The congressman who is expected to soon chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee has accused the Laotian and Vietnamese governments of capturing and imprisoning an important Hmong refugee leader with close ties to the United States. Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R., N.Y.) said that because of the alleged abduction of Hmong leader Vue Mai, who mysteriously disappeared last year, the United States should change its policy of supporting the return of Hmong refugees, often against their will, to Laos.

Don't be misled by the steel gray of the stones fronting this Upper Darby house, the front lawn dimmed to a dull brown by the approach of winter. Walk past the chain-link fence, through the front door painted a forgettable shade of beige, and inside the modest home. The reward will be a cornucopia of smiling colors, gardens vibrant with blossoms, and worlds filled with marvels and human triumphs. You can't help but be buoyed by visions of the Hmong people of Laos as they work the fields, dance and eat, fall in love, and raise children.

The cherry trees in Washington are heavy with buds, pale pink, bursting to open. The capital is fresh with spring; tulips sprout in civilized red and yellow patches. The monuments stand bright against the skyline, bright against the new grass. U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Arthur E. Bader Jr. died Nov. 30, 1968, in a Laotian jungle. His remains were buried yesterday. His monument will be in Section 34, not far from a spiraling, narrow road, in the sweeping white peace of Arlington National Cemetery.

The Pentagon planners called it Lam Son 719, a massive incursion designed to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail in southern Laos once and for all, with 17,000 South Vietnamese troops supported by swarms of U.S. warplanes and helicopters. That offensive ended in disastrous retreat, staggering ground losses and heavy American casualties in the air: 176 dead, 1,042 wounded and 42 missing in action. More than 21 years later, American military personnel were back in southern Laos this month, fanning out once again across dense tropical terrain in choppers and trucks, this time searching for 20 Americans still listed as missing in action.

More than 10,000 Hmong refugees will be repatriated to Laos from their camps in Thailand in the next year - for many of them, against their will - according to a United Nations-sponsored agreement reached last week. American and U.N. officials report that the memorandum of understanding calls for the return to Laos of 8,000 Hmong by the end of 1994, and 4,000 more by mid-1995. In addition, the two remaining refugee camps for Hmong in Thailand would be closed by the end of 1994.

The young monk wanted to talk. He was so friendly, trying hard to communicate with the little English he had learned at the monastery, and he wanted to know everything about the United States. Were there monasteries there, too? How did people pray? Would I like to visit the wat where he lived? It was all intriguing, and other young novices with shaved heads and saffron robes gathered to listen. But there was a problem: The sun was about to go down over the Mekong River and I wanted to be at a particular spot up the dirt road to watch it happen.

Nearly 40 years after their plane went down on a night mission in Laos, six members of the U.S. Air Force's Fourth Air Commando Squadron were laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. Their remains, which had laid undisturbed in dense jungle for years, were buried in a single standard stainless-steel coffin. The solemn ceremony was accompanied by all the pageantry the Air Force could muster. On a crisp, windswept fall morning, the casket covered with their nation's flag was carried on a horse-drawn caisson that followed a military band that could be heard before it came into view of the hundreds of people who traveled from all parts of the country for the burial of men long dead.

President Obama awarded the country's highest honor, the Medal of Honor, to the family of a Berks County man killed 42 years ago in a secret CIA mission in Laos. "Today, we present the Medal of Honor to an American who displayed such gallantry more than four decades ago: Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger," the president said Tuesday at a White House ceremony. "This medal reflects the gratitude of an entire nation. " Etchberger's sons, Cory and Richard Etchberger and Steve Wilson, and his brother, Robert, attended the ceremony.

Richard Etchberger died in Laos in 1968, saving fellow Americans at a top-secret radar station overrun by North Vietnamese commandos. Etchberger, who grew up north of Reading, was nominated that year for the Medal of Honor. But there was a problem: The United States was not supposed to have troops in Laos. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to award the medal. On July 7 of this year, Etchberger's son, Cory, received a phone call. "Will you please hold for the president?" a woman asked.

Richard Etchberger died in Laos in 1968 saving fellow Americans at a top-secret radar station that was overrun by North Vietnamese commandos. Etchberger, who grew up north of Reading, Pa., was nominated that year for the Medal of Honor. But there was a problem: The United States was not supposed to have troops in Laos. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to award the medal. On July 7 of this year, Etchberger's son, Cory, received a phone call. "Will you please hold for the president?"

Love is like a bridge over troubled waters. That sums up the cliched - if innocuous - message of Our Family Wedding , an innocuous, cliche-ridden romantic comedy that tries to cash in on the cachet of Stanley Kramer's 1967 classic, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner . African American med-school grad Marcus (Lance Gross) and Latino law-school drop-out Lucia (America Ferrera) plan to marry and move to Laos to do volunteer work. The lovers' respective families react badly to the biracial match.

During volunteer archaeological work in Laos in 2007, retired businessman William F. Henderson came upon something more exotic than million-year-old pottery. Snake soup. "One of our Lao colleagues arrived one evening with a quite impressive snake, about seven feet long," he wrote. "When he removed the snake's head, there appeared to be another snake head inside. He began pulling it and withdrew a second snake that had been eaten whole. . . . "I did have some broth the next day that was pretty good," he wrote, but he did not ask whether the snakes had contributed to it. On Sunday, Mr. Henderson, 81, who for 18 years was a volunteer at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, died of lung cancer at his home in Glen Mills.

I love the Obama family's White House garden. It's a great way to promote the value of fresh, homegrown food, and I hope many will follow the example that the president and first lady have set. But today I am urging President Obama to pick up a pen instead of a garden hoe, because hidden in the garden's onions and tomatoes is a connection to international humanitarian law that deserves his immediate attention. Today, villagers in Laos are celebrating the 15th anniversary of an effort to remove American bombs from their soil.

Leave your watches and calendars behind when you come to this dreamy river town. Louangphabang is a mural of the 1950s, somnolent and undisturbed, a place where the ghosts of French Indochina still whisper in the breathless heat of summer and the mighty Mekong River rolls past palaces and villas of royalty long dead or banished into exile. Louangphabang was once the home of Laos' royal family and the capital of this landlocked, impoverished country where 80 percent of the roads are unpaved.

Nearly 40 years after their plane went down on a night mission in Laos, six members of the U.S. Air Force's Fourth Air Commando Squadron were laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. Their remains, which had laid undisturbed in dense jungle for years, were buried in a single standard stainless-steel coffin. The solemn ceremony was accompanied by all the pageantry the Air Force could muster. On a crisp, windswept fall morning, the casket covered with their nation's flag was carried on a horse-drawn caisson that followed a military band that could be heard before it came into view of the hundreds of people who traveled from all parts of the country for the burial of men long dead.

The Haddonfield wrestling program will hold a ceremony to name its wrestling room in honor of Air Force Capt. Ronald L. Bond on Feb. 7 at 5 p.m. at the school. After the ceremony, the Bulldogs will host Haddon Township at 7 in a Colonial Conference match. Bond was a three-year letterwinner at Haddonfield in wrestling from 1962 to 1965. As a junior, Bond was a district champion and a region runner-up, and he helped the Bulldogs win the district team title and a co-championship in the Delaware Valley Conference.

He was once a gang leader who hunted humans in Laotian jungles, a tattoo with the words "Face to Face" needled onto his forehead. The flesh-inked message announced Bounmy Luangamath as a hard case anxious to destroy all comers. Now, Luangamath is a captain and minister with the Salvation Army, working among Laotians in Philadelphia. Born to Buddha, he converted to Christ. Born to rural poverty and violence, Luangamath became a man of peace, preoccupied now with the 2 a.m. troubles of urban immigrant families adrift in a new place, unmoored in America.