The Celebrated Buddha

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

Advancing in five columns, Viet Mink Communists were in sight of the ancient Laotian capital of Luang Prabang last week. Flying in with French reinforcements, TIME Correspondent John Dowling reported: THE plane, loaded with Legionnaires, JL jeeps, artillery, barbed wire, ammunition, slips smoothly into the grass airstrip. We step out and the hills and mountains enclose us in their green embrace. To the west, rising from the jungle, is a hill surmounted by a white, bell-shaped stupa (shrine) whose glistening, golden spire points needlelike at a soft blue sky. To the east and south tower the forest-clad mountains Phu Xan Noi and Phu Xan Luan, looking like huge elephants.

The town is 2 1/2 miles from the airstrip, on a spit of land at the confluence of the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers. We reach it over a frail bamboo bridge floating on native dugout canoes. Here the jungle seems to be about to swallow the city's few houses and streets. Charming white temples and graceful stupas, elaborately decorated with legends and characters from the Ramayana relics of India, are everywhere crowded by tall green rustling palms, fragrant frangipani trees and scarlet-blossomed poincianas.

Tranquil Buddha. In a modest white palace overlooking the mile-wide Mekong sits worried 67-year-old King Sisavang Vong, afflicted with gout, but refusing all urgings that he leave his capital. Like his Thai people, the King is a fatalist. In the temples his people lay offerings and burn incense before tranquil, smiling images of Buddha, confident that whatever comes, it will inevitably change, as the mystic circle of life completes itself. It is exactly 500 years since Luang Prabang was last invaded.

In the temple opposite King Sisavang Vong's palace sits the most celebrated Buddha of all: the golden Luang Prabang, at least 1,100 years old, from which the town takes its name and its religious and political significance. The expression on this graven, gilded 'image is one of silent, secretive, comforting contemplation. People come thousands of miles to worship before it. Black-haired Thai maidens pray that the enemy will be defeated, and this week the chief bonze assured them that the enemy would be. The battle that is in preparation will, in effect, be fought for possession of the celebrated Buddha; for if the Communists are able to install their puppet Prince Souphanou Vong here, they stand to gain great prestige with the Buddhists of Southern Asia. The riverside town has no tactical importance.

Flaming Hillsides. Now, to disturb its serenity, comes the ragged backwash of war, refugee Laotians and Thais, men from the hills, a few weary, bearded soldiers, the remnant of overtaken outposts, who have escaped over jungle trails or by floating down chutelike rapids on improvised rafts. Behind them come five Viet Minh columns, the nearest now within sight of us. They have traveled fast, but they have not had an easy passage. On the way in, we saw Hellcat and Bearcat fighters filling the tight green valleys with the orange-red bursts and the soot-black smoke of napalm. Now the sound of bursting bombs comes like slow thunder from the distant valleys.

The weather is holding, and General Raoul Salan has airlifted a formidable last-minute defense force into Luang Prabang. While they dig in for a long siege, patrols fend off the Communist vanguard.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.