- In the world’s most heavily bombed country, 20 million UXO have been cleared in the 45 years since clandestine US war ended
- That leaves another 80 million still to be dug out and defused, if foreign governments continue funding the work.
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Disarmed bombs in Xépôn, Laos. Picture: Halo TrustThanksgiving is an American tradition that is unknown in most of the world. Fifty years ago, however, it landed in Laos, the small, impoverished Southeast Asian nation that was to become perhaps the longest-suffering casualty of the United States’ war in Vietnam.
Thanksgiving is held on the fourth Thursday in November. In 1968, that fell on November 28, and on that day, at the height of the war and on the orders of president Lyndon B. Johnson, turkey dinners were helicoptered in to American soldiers who were on a mission to sever the Ho Chi Minh Trail – the network of paths and tracks that constituted North Vietnam’s military supply lines to the south of the country – that ran through eastern Laos.
Đọt Chuối Non 