Indochina: The Rising Tide of War

ETCHED majestically against the endless green curtain of Cambodia's jungle, the graceful colonnades and parapets of Angkor memorialize a civilization that ruled most of Indochina nearly 1,000 years ago. Last week, in the war that will determine Indochina's future rulers, Vietnamese Communist troops occupied parts of the massive, ancient complex, scattering storage areas, hospitals and military emplacements near its statuary and intricately carved walls. For the first time since 1431, when the forebears of modern Thailand pillaged Angkor, the seat of Khmer culture was occupied by foreigners.

The Communist presence in the ruins of Angkor was symptomatic of the war's tidal movement throughout Indochina. In supposedly neutral Laos, North Vietnamese forces overran and held the southern provincial capital of Saravane, which has for two years been a U.S. air-supplied island within the Communist-held countryside. The city's fall could well indicate that the Communists, who already control most of northeastern Laos, intend to tighten their grip on the country's southern reaches. In South Viet Nam, the Communists continued to step up the fighting in the northernmost I Corps with shellings, sapper raids and the bloodiest assault on civilians in more than two years (see following story).

Two Life Lines. But Cambodia remained the war's focal point. Along Cambodia's eastern border, U.S. troops, working against a pullback deadline that expires in less than two weeks, continued to uncover rich veins of buried Communist supplies in the sanctuary areas. But the U.S. sweep seemed only to push the Communist forces deeper into Cambodia. Roving forces of Communist troops kept pressure on three provincial capitals, including Siem Reap. the gateway to Angkor, and Kompong Speu, only 24 miles southwest of the capital, Phnom-Penh. The widening Communist attacks spread Premier Lon Nol's forces so thin that his strategists were seriously discussing a kind of grand enclave plan for the country. The Cambodian army would pull back to a corridor stretching from the seaport of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanouk-ville) to Phnom-Penh and northwest to the Thai border, tacitly ceding the rest of Cambodia to the Communists.

This plan would leave the government of Lon Nol with roughly half the country to defend, including the fish-and rice-producing region around the Tonle Sap and the Angkor area. The regions given over to the Communists would include the northeast, where they already dominate, the eastern border regions and the rugged Cardamom Mountains in the southwest.

The admission that Phnom-Penh does not control much of the rest of the country would be a severe psychological blow to Lon Nol's government but would probably constitute a wise military move. As it is, says one Western military analyst, the Cambodian army's desperate holding action resembles "a skater gliding over a lake of rotten ice. No matter how fast he tries, the ice keeps breaking up, and pretty soon there is nowhere left to skate."

While not quite an icebreaker, the fight for Siem Reap certainly required a lot of fast skating. After Communist forces launched assaults against the town and its modern airport four miles to the northwest, the government committed nine battalions, including a full brigade of paratroopers, one of the few elite military units in Cambodia. The Cambodians managed to secure the city and airport. But the Communists continued to roam at will throughout the countryside, including the Angkor ruins, which the government declared an "open city" to prevent any battle damage. From art lovers around the world came messages appealing for both sides to consider the priceless ruins neutral. At week's end a convoy evacuated Angkor's French caretakers, including Curator Bernard Groslier. Scattered fighting was reported among the treasures.

Magic Kerchief TIME Correspondent Robert Anson was the first newsman to enter Siem Reap after the Communist attack was blunted. Some of the fiercest fighting of the two-day battle, he reported, involved a Viet Cong attack on the high school, where more than 200 recently inducted 16-and 17-year-old boys and girls were garrisoned. A Cambodian officer who remained in radio contact with the group throughout a night filled with thundering mortar fire and the clatter of machine guns, said the terrified students cried into the radio "like a baby crying at night for its mother." But they were ordered to hold out, and they did. Two of their number, a 17-year-old girl and a teacher, were killed, but the youthful recruits drove back an enemy force much stronger than their own. Reports Anson: "All of the students wore a yellow kerchief tied dashingly around their necks. 'It is a magic kerchief,' explained one of their teachers. They think it will continue to bring them luck.' "

Such spirit, half nationalism and half naivete, is what keeps Cambodia going these days. But it is not going to work for long against experienced North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. In both Laos and Cambodia, the suddenly widening war in Indochina is placing pressure on the two governments, which in turn are appealing to the U.S. for help. But so far, the U.S. has been unwilling to respond with any real force.

A Communist diplomat, speaking privately in Paris recently, declared: "First the Americans invaded the Plain of Jars in Laos, then they invaded Cambodia. Such recklessness invites reprisals." Reckless or not, the U.S. foray is not the only reason that the Communists are on the move in Cambodia. The overthrow of Sihanouk was bound to provoke some countermeasures from the Communists, and Lon Nol's government might not have lasted even this long if the U.S. had stayed out of the sanctuaries. But one consequence of the

U.S. incursions was to push the war into relatively undefended areas. That could saddle Washington with ever wider responsibilities in the long run--or with the blame for evading them.

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