Sports-Shirt Soldiers

On the steel-mesh runway of Wattay Airport in Vientiane, a group of athletic-looking Americans in bright sports shirts and baseball caps busily loaded machine-gun belts and rockets aboard the four new T-6 "training" planes of the Royal Laotian Army. Not far away, behind a desk littered with documents stamped "secret," was their shirt-sleeved boss--former Brigadier General John Arnold Heintges, 48. The general tells his visitors: "Call me mister."

No Stars. Heintges directs a U.S. outfit that amounts to a military advisory group in Laos. But it must operate in mufti. Reason: the 1954 Geneva agreement that ended the war in Indo-China.

That agreement declared that only the French could advise the Laotian army--a clause that ignored the fact that the French had never shown much interest in train citizens of their former colony for anything. The U.S. was authorized only to supply the army's hardware and pick up the bill for its troops' pay and maintenance. As millions of dollars worth of U.S. military aid to Laos rotted through the years from improper care, the U.S. decided it had to tackle the problem itself. The instrument chosen was a State Department outfit called the Programs Evaluation Office, which had been delivering the arms along with some rudimentary instruction in their use.

With French permission, PEO was expanded 19 months ago from 30 to 162 men. The recruits were seasoned soldiers; of the present force, 37 temporarily dropped out of the military to come to Laos and the rest were drawn from the retired list. Under their flapping shirts is more than one gung-ho tattoo, such as "3rd Division Forever." At the top is Heintges, Coblenz-born son of a former German officer, and a 1936 graduate of West Point who rose rapidly through the infantry officer ranks during heavy fighting in Italy and France during World War II. After the war he was made chief of the military advisory group in West Germany. To take on the Laos job (and a State Department salary of $23,000 a year), Heintges turned in his general's star and officially disappeared from military rosters. He is not currently listed in published Army records as either active, inactive or retired.

Heintges himself is frank about his role. "Certainly this is not a civilian operation," he says. "Our business is military." Heintges keeps 66 men in Vientiane, has the rest scattered over the country in eight field training teams. They ride pony-back over mountain trails to supervise front-line delivery of medicine, food and pay (all U.S.-supplied). Tough ex-sergeants direct rifle and mortar practice (but the teaching of tactics is banned, since it has nothing to do directly with the handling of U.S. equipment). A priority job for his men these days: seeing that expensive parachutes, used in supply drops, wind up back in packs rather than on native girls. "One principal concern," Heintges says, "is to see that the American taxpayer gets his money's worth."

Close Work. In a touchy situation like Laos, Heintges' men inevitably get close to combat--and to politics as well. They openly favor General Phoumi Nosavan's pro-Western troops, and during last month's successful battle for Vientiane carried their concept of "training" so far that they were even seen stringing communications lines for Phoumi's men. This led to British and French suspicions that PEO was actually firing Phoumi's howitzers for him--a charge that leads Heintges to snap: "Absolutely not so!" His men are also confused with Central Intelligence Agency operatives (who are on the scene but presumably wear no 3rd Division tattoos, confine themselves to intelligence reports and trying to counter Communist politicking in the villages).

Heintges' responsibility for the U.S.-made hardware goes right up to supervising what he calls "end use"--meaning when the guns start firing. He therefore is privy to Laotian battle plans, "advises" the Laotians not to use their new planes and helicopters for raids on villages, where civilians might be killed. "Chief, I've got a request for a chopper," said one PEO man last week, strolling into Heintges' office. "There's some doubt about the area." Baggy-eyed from 18-hour days and down 32 Ibs. from an attack of dysentery, Heintges got up to confer. "We can't be too careful," he said.

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