Tragedy in Paradise: A Country Doctor at War in Laos

I met Dr. Charles "Jiggs" Weldon several times many years ago. He was somehow related to my mother (I am ashamed to admit that I haven't kept up with such things, until recently). I only wish that I really knew enough about the man at that time to sit and talk with him about his experiences in Laos, I really had no idea. Jiggs Weldon has written a fantastic book about the struggle in Laos and the futile efforts to support the Laotian people in their battle against the communists. He goes into detail about his experiences taking care of the civilians and soldiers. It is basically a collection of short stories that pieced together tell the story of his time in Laos. They had to battle the communists and fight the U.S. Government for adequate funding. This is a must read for anyone having interest in the events of Southeast Asia. Ultimately when the U.S. left Viet Nam, Laos was abandoned to the communists and the Royal Laotians were butchered by the Pathet Lao and their mentors, the North Vietnamese (who were financed and equipped by China). It was clear that Dr. Weldon loved the Laotian people and was heartbroken by the outcome. I always figured that is why he never came back to the U.S. and died in Thailand in 2002.

An amazing disclosure of the real facts of the American secret war in Laos. Dr.Charles "Jiggs" Weldon died recently. He,no doubt, deserves a prayer of gratitude from all of us for the gift of his compelling memoir.

I laughed, I cried, and came out wiser from reading "Tragedy in Paradise". I only wish there were another Doc Weldon out there, somewhere, who would write the sequence to the plight of the Lao people in Laos, be they Lao Loum, Lao Theung, or Lao Soung.

Doc Weldon is one of the truly heroic and most-beloved figures of the war years in Laos. He once again serves all Americans well by recording the events of his time and reminding us what it means to be an American. Great things can be accomplished even in pursuit of a lost cause.

Charles Weldon (``Doc'' to most) has done us and the future a favour by writing his account of what surely was one of the most heroic, saddest wars of the 20th century. A legend in his prime during the height of the conflict in Laos, ``Doc'' Weldon paints a highly personal, sometimes emotional picture. The book is one of the few public recollections by the small group of men and women who participated in the Laos war of the 1960s and early 1970s. Tragedy in Paradise is extremely readable. It is a series of short chapters, each detailing an event in the Weldon tour of Laos. It details how he fought for aid money from skinflint Washington, and worked to establish a health system in a country which had nothing but a desire for one. The central figure is the crusty but kindly doctor, a caregiver by choice and administrator by order of the penny-pinching bureaucrats. Most them don't really care too much about Laos or its people, so long as the regulations are followed and the career tickets are punched. A main figure is one of those Laotian legends, Edgar ``Pop'' Buell, who could have been the model for the Ugly American. Buell made a deserved reputation as a dedicated friend of Laos, its people and particularly his beloved Hmong. In short, though, the book describes, in startling detail, how this tragic little war was lost, in the eyes of the men and women at the sharp end of the stick. It shows the duplicity of the senior Americans involved.