The Past > Viengxay under bombardment from 1964 to 1973
How did people in Viengxay live through nine years of bombing?
The Voices of Viengxay Oral History project was established to record memories of Viengxay during the war. Their stories help us to understand what it was like to live through the bombing.
Shelter in the caves
The leadership knew Xieng Xeu could not provide shelter from air attacks, and they had surveyed the area for alternative headquarters. The Nakai area, about 7km from Xieng Xeu, was chosen for its remarkable landscape of limestone karsts honeycombed with caves.
When the first bombs were dropped, the administrative and support staff, the leaders and Nakai residents moved to live in the caves in Nakai and in the surrounding forests, and they began to build the 'hidden city'.
The immediate priority was shelter. What is now central Viengxay was occupied by the Pathet Lao leadership, organisation staff, soldiers and their families. Each section of the Pathet Lao organisation, some of the neutralist parties and some foreign representations, had their own cave office and quarters.
But the hidden city extended far beyond this, and the leaders' caves that can be visited today in Viengxay tell only a part of the story. About 20,000 soldiers, staff, farmers, workers and local families lived and worked in the area from 1964 to 1975. Homes, ministries and the facilities needed to support the population of the 'hidden city' were constructed in about two hundred caves, over a large area from west of Viengxay to the east, near the border with Vietnam.
Building the caves
Supported by technical expertise and materials from friendly countries - mainly Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union - some caves were fitted with internal ceilings and walls as well as concrete floors, and were partitioned into rooms and offices for working and living in. Water tanks were carved out of stone or made in cement in order to store the water that the staff of each quarters collected from nearby streams and springs.
Sheltered cooking areas were identified just outside the caves, and indoor cooking areas built for use when it was impossible to cook outside. 5 metre long extraction pipes were built in the cooking areas so that the smoke would appear far away from the actual kitchen, in order not to draw attention of the spotter planes.
Printing presses, a fuel depot and light industry factories were established to support the war effort. Essential services such as schools, hospitals and markets were set up, and an underground theatre constructed to entertain the population. Anti-aircraft guns were sited on the tops of the karsts, in caves and in open areas of the Viengxay basin.
Some of the natural caves were blasted out to enlarge them, and several caves were joined together under the mountain peak to make a large complex over several floors. For safety, entrances were concealed as much as possible. To get to some of the caves, such as the artillery cave high up in the peak behind the military command complex, people had to climb up on rope or bamboo ladders. When missiles began to target inside the caves, half-metre thick concrete blast walls were built to shelter the cave entrances. However these also blocked out the small amounts of light and warmth from the outside.
Food and distribution of essential goods
Food, clothing, fuel and supplies needed by the 20,000 or so people who lived in the area had to be organized. Farming was disrupted by the bombing, and the large influx of people added to the supplies required. Quarters were allocated in caves organized by work sections, who shared rations, cooked and ate together. Each quarters made their own plots to grow fresh vegetables, working on them early in the mornings. Women went to the forests to collect wild foods such as bamboo shoots, vegetables, fruit and anything else that could be eaten to supplement the basic diet.
In the outlying areas, farmers raised livestock under cover of the forest, working at night. When aircraft approached everyone took to the shelters, and when they left they continued their work again. As money was not widely used, people living in the most heavily bombed area bartered with the farmers, taking dried goods and bringing back chickens and fresh foods.
Most women wore the long traditional Lao women's skirt, known as 'sinh kantoke', which was distributed from the huge textile weaving cave near the Vietnamese border at Nameo.
Daily life and health care
For families living in Viengxay during the conflict life could be hard, as separations lasted for years. Women's burdens, especially, were extra heavy: they worked in their organizations, found and grew food for their families and cooked it during safe times when fires could be lit. They often had to raise their children by themselves for years.
For children growing up in and around the caves, daily life was restrictive, and everyone eagerly awaited the regular entertainment shows. Films were shown in the largest cave in the central Nakai area - Xanglot - that housed the Military High Command. It was packed with soldiers in barracks there, and the numbers increased when local residents came to its huge natural theatre. Performance troupes travelled around the area to entertain communities and troops with traditional songs and dances. Weddings, sometimes between couples who had waited years to marry, were simple, often no more than a ceremony and celebratory glasses of tea and some biscuits.
A health service was established, with hospitals built inside caves and staff in each cave quarters around Nakai trained in basic health care. Medical staff trained at a college in Ban Navid.
About 7 kilometres east of Viengxay, in Xieng Luang, was the largest hospital in the area. It was built in a huge cave tunnelled through three karst formations and had three wards. The inside was tiled and fitted with a low ceiling to protect patients from water dripping through the rocks, and there were several operating rooms. The hospital was built with Vietnamese help and was staffed by Lao doctors and nurses, Vietnamese professors and Cuban doctors who were sent by their governments to support the people of the area - it was called the Friendship Hospital.
When people were seriously ill and had to get to the main hospitals, it was a dangerous journey that usually had to be made at night. Many children were born in the hospital cave and the caves where their mothers lived.
Reminders of war
All the military hardware used was unable to stop the Indochinese countries from achieving their own forms of government. The different alliances operating during the conflict meant that peace in Laos was dependent on peace in Vietnam. A ceasefire between Vietnam and the USA was signed in January 1973, and in February a ceasefire was signed in Vientiane. Peace had finally come to Viengxay.
In Viengxay today, as in many areas of northeastern Laos, you can still see bomb craters across the landscape. The most famous of these is in Mr. Souphannouvong's garden, made into a pool in the shape of the heart of the Lao people.
A more deadly reminder is UXO - explosive ordnance that didn't detonate when it was fired or dropped. Major UXO clearance operations are at work around Laos, but it will take around 20 years just to clear land for farming.
