 The PEO's election advice to the Royal Lao Government politicians—to run a single slate of candidates to avoid splitting the votes—went unheeded.Indeed, in one instance, the supporters of one defeated RLG candidate told him he had never asked them to vote for him.By May 1958, the U.S. Department of Defense was proposing a training mission by civilian technicians to the Royal Lao Army to retrain four of its branches—logistics, communications, ordnance, and combat engineers.