Return From Exile, and Death
On 20 August 1973, as the communists were beginning to triumph in their war to conquer Laos, Thao Ma returned from exile heading a convoy of 60 trucks. The Thao Ma column quickly took over Wattay Air Base. Thao Ma and six other pilots launched a T-29 strike against army headquarters. However, while they were airborne, the Royal Lao Army retook the airfield in a counterattack. Thao Ma was shot down as he was landing. He survived the crash, and was executed after his surrender. He was 42 years of age.
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Famous quotes containing the words return from, return and/or death:
“Then came the Lord Chamberlain with his white staff,
And all the people began to laugh;
And then the Queen began to speak,
‘You’re welcome home, Sir Francis Drake.’”
—Unknown. Upon Sir Francis Drake’s Return from His Voyage about the World, and the Queen’s Meeting Him (l. 5–8)
“I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, a plant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“If thee thy brittle beauty so deceives,
Know then the thing that swells thee is thy bane;
For the same beauty doth, in bloody leaves.
The sentence of thy early death contain.”
—Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608–1666)