Unlike most of the people I encounter at affairs such as that, this gentleman had had military experience. He spoke of the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which he was serving as an officer in the Army. We agreed that it was probably as close as we ever came to nuclear holocaust. He told of teaching about it at Bucknell and the total lack of familiarity on the part of his students, to whom World War II is also nearly unknown. I told him that I had really missed the whole Cuban thing. Although we read of it in The Stars and Stripes, we were on the other side of the world on Okinawa and were relatively unconcerned.

I told him that while on Okinawa, we too had almost gone to war; had, in a sense, actually gone to war, with China, but that no one knew about it. Since my new friend teaches courses that cover such historical developments, he was interested and asked that if I should write about it, I would forward it to him. I will. I enjoyed speaking with him and would be privileged to contribute to his courses.

Imagine an alert being called at 1 in the morning on January 1, 1961. In the best of circumstances, most people are intoxicated at that particular time. Now, imagine an airborne infantry unit on an island where a private's pay makes him richer than all but the most successful of the local population, where beautiful young women are willing to be very friendly for a few dollars, where enough saki to render you senseless can be purchased for a dollar or two, and then imagine the chaos that followed the calling of that alert. It was so bizarre that everyone coherent was openly amused. We couldn't believe that we could go anywhere or do anything for at least a day, so we just laughed and joked until the situation became clearer. That took a couple of days.

As so often happens in situations like that, someone in a high position, perhaps the President himself, had ordered that the whole thing be kept very secret, so no one even told us what was going on. That reached ludicrous proportions.

Our immediate problem was to get our equipment and ourselves into airplanes and the following sealift for a trip to someplace (where?). Since we didn't know where we were going or what we would do when we arrived, we had a hard time deciding what we needed.

In a day or two we were told that we were going into combat, that our entry into battle would be by parachute, no surprise there, but little else. We had to take everything we owned since there was no way to tailor the unit for the unknown mission. We drew ammunition, packed our vehicles, were inspected over and over, and generally cooled our heels while decisions were being made elsewhere. (In those days Americans "made" decisions. I have noticed that lately, following the British turn of phrase, we have started "taking" decisions. I liked it better when we made decisions, providing that we did, which was becoming questionable in this case.)

Suddenly, after days of doing less and less, we were ordered to the airfield, loaded onto aircraft, and flown away. Our commanders were told that only now could they inform us about where we were going, why, and what we were expected to do upon arrival.

Igor Beaver, as always, acted the most illogically of all the company commanders. He felt that he might get into some kind of trouble if any of his officers spilled the beans too soon, so he never told us any of the things we needed to know. As bad as that was for the rifle platoon leaders and squad leaders, who would hit the ground in total ignorance of where they were, who the enemy was, or what they were to do, it was even worse for me. I was the leader of the weapons platoon, a major component of which was the mortar section. The mortars could only fire from maps. We hadn't been issued maps, because, of course, then we would know where we were going. I guess Igor thought we could club the Chinese over the head with the mortar tubes once we realized that they were our enemies. In my usual fashion, I had made a fuss about being sent into combat without maps, and Igor told me that his most trusted ally, Sgt Lively, would issue them once we had parachuted. The odds of ever seeing Sgt Lively or the maps again were remote and nil.

Aboard each airplane were cases of live ammunition. This we issued in the air. Now, for the first time, we realized that this thing was for real. Only in that case would the Air Force allow a bunch of soldiers to have live ammo aboard one of their precious planes.

As suddenly as we had been loaded and flown away we turned around. Some five hours after we took off we landed back at Sukiran Airfield from which we had taken off earlier that day. Trucks were waiting and we were taken back to our barracks and told that the alert was over. Life returned to normal.

Of course, everyone wanted to know what had just happened. The other companies had been told, so it was only a matter of a day or less before we all found out. China had sent its army south into Laos, which, it turned out, hadn't sent an invitation. The United States was already there, fighting communist guerillas in Laos; at least our Special Forces were assisting Laotians to do that. When the Chinese came south, the United States was either asked or volunteered to come to Laos' aid. The 2d Airborne Battle Group of the 503^rd Infantry (Reinf) was (almost) sent in. While we were enroute, the Chinese reportedly turned around and went back home. If that is true, and I have no reason to doubt it except logic, it was a brilliant stroke by President Eisenhower.

We were the "strategic reserve" of the Pacific Command, they said; that was our raison d'être. So it probably made sense not only to the President, but to the Pentagon as well, to send us in such a circumstance. But, think about it. We were 2000 men altogether. Sometimes, in the Korean War, the Chinese would sacrifice 2000 men in a series of attacks on one single hill just to use up our ammunition before their real main attack began. "Never become involved in a land war in Asia," still rings in the ears of every veteran of Korea and Viet Nam. Why? Because there are millions and millions of Chinese and their country doesn't mind their dying for whatever political aim it has at the moment. Can you imagine how long we would have lasted against a few million Chinese? Chinese who had maps? Chinese who knew that we were the enemy?

The next week there was a short article in Time relating the story essentially as I have told it here. It was back on, say, page 30, and mainly featured the actions and speech of our most colorful first sergeant, Vincent Rogiers. First Sergeant, later Sergeant Major Rogiers, never used profanity. He called soldiers "chicken pluckers" and "cotton pickers" when he was upset. At his most inflamed he would call someone a "cotton pickin' chicken plucker." He acted like an overzealous father to his boys, inspiring them and urging them to bigger and better things. He had given them quite a pep talk as they prepared to jump into combat. The Time reporter was more struck by Vince's personality than he was by the likelihood that 2000 American Airborne Infantrymen almost died for Laos.