Indochina: A Cavalryman's Way Out
SUDDENLY, the Vietnamese ground war came back to life.
For three years, the northwest corner of South Viet Nam had been a misty, mountainous no man's land. Khe Sanh, where 6,000 Marines had endured a bloody 77-day siege in 1968, was a moonscape of shell craters flecked by twisted steel runway sheets and discarded shell casings. A few miles to the south, the Rockpile was overrun by weeds. On a bluff overlooking the Laotian border, the hulks of battered Soviet tanks still lay rusting at the Lang Vei Special Forces camp, where ten Americans and 225 South Vietnamese died in a single night of hand-to-hand combat.
Last week the forbidding ruins, relics of an earlier and rougher stage in the war, were abruptly jolted from their silence. From jumping-off points 50 miles away, long columns of tanks, trucks and armored personnel carriers ground into the rugged western reaches of Quang Tri province, raising towering columns of dust. Overhead, gunships darted around in search of enemy troops. Giant Chinook helicopters flapped into long-abandoned bases, depositing men and massive earth-moving machines. At Lang Vei, a halftrack pulled up loaded with expectant-looking G.I.s. One soldier had a single word painted on his helmet: "Laos?"
Good question. All week, rumors of an invasion coursed through the world's major capitals, and frenzied speculation focused on what the U.S. was up to. By keeping everyone guessing--including the Communists--the Administration infuriated more than a few Congressmen, diplomats and newsmen. But it also pulled off a kind of psychological-warfare coup.
Ten months ago, Richard Nixon took the world by surprise when, pointer in hand, he went on nationwide TV to disclose, in too apocalyptic terms, the expansion of the war into Cambodia. Last week he said nothing at all about the vast operation under way in Military Region I, South Viet Nam's northernmost war area. When a six-day "embargo" on news from the area was lifted, more than 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops were involved in strikes that not only spanned the length of South Viet Nam but vitally affected its neighbors as well. Was the main object to sever the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail? Was it a feint to throw the Communists off balance? Was an invasion scheduled and then delayed because Nixon developed a case of cold feet--as some sources suggested but the Administration denied? Whatever the case, the operation suggested that in the process of retreating from South Viet Nam, the U.S. was churning up all of Indochina even more thoroughly than it did when the big American buildup began half a decade ago.
Pulling Up Short
By week's end, three separate operations had unfolded. In the coastal provinces on the Gulf of Siam, ARVN (for Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) troops prepared to slice into new infiltration routes that the Communists had been trying to extend from the Cambodian seaport of Kep into the southern part of South Viet Nam. Northwest of Saigon in Tay Ninh province, 18,000 ARVN armored cavalrymen surged over the border into the Parrot's Beak and the Fishhook. Both sanctuaries were cleared out last spring, but now Communist troops were beginning to drift back.
The main thrust--and the one shrouded in mystery--developed in rugged, sparsely populated and Communist-infested Military Region I (formerly known as I Corps). There the U.S. command massed a total of 20,000 ARVN and 9,000 U.S. troops, plus at least 600 choppers. The juggernaut advanced westward on, above and around Route 9, an all-weather dirt road running 40 miles across South Viet Nam into Laos. At Khe Sanh, road graders rolled across the red clay plateau as troops patched one shell-torn runway and built a second to handle up to 40 big C-130 transports a day. Long-disused combat bases with names like Vandergrift, Bastogne and Veghel, snaking south toward the A Shau Valley, were also reopened. Significantly, many of the U.S. troops involved in the operation were told that they could expect to remain for one to three months.
Farther west, Lang Vei was set up as an advance command post for the massive operation, code-named Dewey Canyon II.* Barely 200 yards from the border, a sign was erected: WARNING: NO U.S. PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. The caveat reflected congressional prohibition of the use of American ground troops outside South Viet Nam. One shirtless G.I., bathing in a tributary of the Pone River, which, forms the border with Laos, said with a smile: "Don't worry, this is Vietnamese water." ARVN troops, too, pulled up short of the border.
Vaguely Orwellian
There was every indication that for the South Vietnamese, it was only a pause. At least one and perhaps two cross-border thrusts aimed at immobilizing the Ho Chi Minh Trail seemed imminent. One obvious target lay right down Route 9--Tchepone, a Communist staging area and a key control point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail 25 miles inside the Laotian panhandle. A second possibility was that ARVN troops would be helicoptered to the mountainous Bolovens Plateau, which forms the western flank of the trail. Their likely objective: Attopeu and Saravane, two Laotian river towns captured last spring by North Vietnamese troops, apparently in an effort to secure the trail's flanks and provide a starting point for a riverine route into Cambodia.
Last week's action. White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler advised, was only "the first phase of the operation." Until mid-April, when Nixon is due to announce a new U.S. troop withdrawal, a series of jabs at enemy stockpiles and supply lines can be expected. The object, the Administration insists, is to cover the U.S. retreat that has been under way since June 1969, when Nixon announced the beginning of a phased withdrawal of the 543,000 troops in Viet Nam. Since the manpower escalator stopped, the U.S. troop level has been reduced by more than 40% ; by May 1, fewer than 284,000 troops will remain. Among them, only 40,000 will be regularly assigned to combat duty.
In the process of covering the retreat, however, the Administration has raised the question: Has the U.S. got into the position of invading Cambodia to ease the pressure on South Viet Nam and then sponsoring an invasion of Laos to ease the pressure on Cambodia? Many Americans who believe that Nixon is serious about getting out of Viet Nam nonetheless are unsettled by the way in which the war has slopped over into previously neutral areas, and especially by the vaguely Orwellian-sounding argument that the U.S. must get deeper into the war in order to get out faster and safely.
Actually, up to a point, the Pentagon makes a logical case for this strategy: to keep the enemy off balance and off American backs as the exodus goes on. U.S. muscle in Viet Nam is shrinking by the month, and that is the operative fact. Thus, in a sense, the President is like the fellow backing out of the saloon with both guns blazing.
Nixon's surrogate in this enterprise --and the man who must actually wield the guns on the way out of the bar--is General Creighton W. ("Abe") Abrams, 56, the U.S. commander in Viet Nam. A veteran tank commander with a jut-jawed, no-nonsense air, Abrams is pursuing a strategy of withdrawal that would be familiar to any student of cavalry operations: give way gradually but strike continually at the enemy, harass his troops, destroy his supplies and keep him off balance. Moreover, Abrams is trying to replace U.S. ground forces with U.S. planes and South Vietnamese soldiers. He means to use these like a cavalry troop, anywhere that the Communist forces are vulnerable.
Since the Cambodian port of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) was closed to them last spring, the Communists have had to rely solely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move men and supplies down to South Viet Nam and Cambodia. With the advent of the dry season, they have made fuller use of the trail than ever before (see box. page 28). American commanders have longed to cut the trail ever since the U.S. entered the war. Contingency plans providing for everything from hit-and-run attacks to a permanent troop barrier across the route were drawn up in 1965, but there were formidable arguments against such moves. Aside from the political consequences, there was the fact that at least two divisions might be needed to secure the trail for any length of time.
Mulling over the future prospects of Vietnamization, Nixon ordered a study last November of what kind of trouble the long quiescent Communists could be expected to stir up--and when. The answer: Viet Nam's hour of maximum danger would come late this year, with the onset of the 1971-72 dry season. According to White House thinking, the Communists would devote most of their energies in the current dry season to replenishing their men and supplies. Then, next year, Hanoi's General Vo Nguyen Giap would be able to rev up the war from Mao's Phase II (small-unit guerrilla war) to Phase III (large-unit warfare). One objective would be to hit the Saigon regime at a time when the U.S. was able to throw few troops to its support. The other objective, in this hypothesis, would be to inflict a mortal political wound on Nixon by means of Tet-style attacks, thus paving the way for the election of a new President inclined to a hastier exit from South Viet Nam.
Ranger Probes
To crimp the Communist prospects for 1972, the allies would have to stem the flow of men and supplies--especially supplies--in 1971. Shortly after the turn of the year, Nixon decided to take action. Just before Defense Secretary Melvin Laird left on his three-day trip to Saigon in early January, Nixon laid down his general objectives.
In Saigon, Laird discussed Nixon's worries with Abrams. The first signs that something big was afoot came in mid-January, soon after Laird departed. General Cao Van Vien, chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint Chiefs of Staff, told his subordinates that there would be no more talking to the press --particularly about operations in Military Region I. Soon after, Abrams met Vien and Major General Tran Van Minh, the South Vietnamese air force chief, to discuss strategy. The three met twice more in the next two days.
After his last session with Vien & Co., Abrams and white-haired U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker swept into President Thieu's Saigon Palace --brushing past a phalanx of startled Vietnamese officials who had been waiting to offer the President Tet holiday greetings. Not until four days later, when they were summoned to an urgent briefing at MACV headquarters in Saigon, did reporters have any idea that something was afoot.
Intelligence officers ticked off indications of a major Communist buildup, including a flood of supplies in the Laotian pipeline. According to the briefers, 90% of the materiel earmarked for South Viet Nam was being shunted into I Corps. The buildup obviously presaged trouble in the coastal cities of Hue and Danang. But MACV asserted that it also posed a "serious threat" to U.S. troop withdrawals and that a "preemptive offensive" was planned with "limited objectives." Few reporters in Saigon doubted that the jargon was a verbal screen for a direct ARVN assault on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
For weeks as many as 1,000 South Vietnamese rangers had been probing deep into the panhandle to size up the task of taking on the trail. Moreover, for some time, 3,500 mercenaries known as Jungle Tigers and trained in Laos by the CIA have been venturing occasionally into the trail area and Communist supply depots in northern Cambodia.
The U.S. command not only slapped an embargo on news of Dewey Canyon, it also imposed an embargo on reporting the fact that an embargo had been imposed. In Washington only a handful of top policymakers knew what was up anyway. This time, there was none of the hour-by-hour agonizing at Camp David that contributed to the tense atmosphere in Washington during the Cambodian foray. Nixon, in fact, left for a long weekend at Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands.
Abroad, particularly in Communist capitals, speculation was presented as fact. In Moscow, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin charged flatly that American and South Vietnamese troops were involved in "an outrageous invasion" of Laos. In the U.S., the response was remarkably temperate. About the angriest reaction came from Democratic Presidential Hopeful George McGovern, who blasted the Administration for imposing "the longest news blackout of the war."* Added he: "What a way to run a war! What a way to manage a free society!" The U.S. command in Saigon defended the embargo as essential to keeping the enemy guessing about allied intentions.
The mildest reaction of all came from the man whose country's sovereignty was violated by the supposed invasion. In Vientiane, Laotian Premier Souvanna Phouma was surprised by the invasion stories--he had to call U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley to check them out. The Premier said he was opposed to any foreign intervention but added blandly: "We have no control over the Ho Chi Minh Trail area. That is an affair between the North Vietnamese and the Americans."
By the time Nixon returned from the Caribbean, the Dewey Canyon troops were poised at the Laotian border. In the Oval Office, the President met for more than an hour with his top National Security Council advisers--Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, CIA Director Richard Helms, Foreign Policy Adviser Henry Kissinger and Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Ellsworth Bunker, in Washington for consultations, also sat in.
Without a thrust into Laos and a strike at the trail, Dewey Canyon II did not seem to make much sense. The expenditure of resources was enormous; by week's end helicopter pilots had logged 493 gunship attacks, 216 air cavalry missions, and 4,025 separate lifts of troops and supplies. But the initial results did not seem to justify the outlay. In the first five days, the operation's 29,000 troops destroyed two trucks, exploded one ammunition storage area and found one 57-mm. recoilless rifle, the mount for a mortar and a few dozen 105-mm. artillery shells.
Buying Time
Even so, U.S. commanders insisted that the very spookiness of the operation had achieved solid results simply by alarming the Communists. There were reports that enemy troops had concentrated at key positions along the trail to prepare defenses--and made tempting targets for extremely effective air attacks. Merely by moving up to the border, the Dewey Canyon II forces may have knocked the Communists off balance.
Just as all actions were rated in terms of body counts back in the war's Pleistocene era, they are now gauged in terms of buying time. Originally, it was figured that the Cambodian foray would "buy" no more than eight months of freedom from significant enemy activity. Now White House aides are saying that in Military Region III (the Saigon area) and IV (the Delta), where war has all but faded away, the buy may amount to 18 months. The massive operation that reopened Cambodia's vital Route 4 last month is judged to have bought a month to six weeks of time for Phnom-Penh. If ARVN troops were to stage periodic raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail until the monsoon rains return in May, the flow of supplies and Communist operations in both South Viet Nam and Cambodia would be crippled for months. In round figures, says Abrams, the trail is worth a year, and some strategists insist it may be worth twice as much.
To many critics, Abrams' math does not add up. Getting involved in wars in Cambodia and Laos as well as South Viet Nam could make U.S. withdrawal more difficult, not easier. "By edging Cambodia closer to war than it had been," says TIME Saigon Bureau Chief Jon Larsen, "we inevitably moved it from a secondary concern to one almost as intertwined with our interests in Indochina as South Viet Nam. The same will be true of Laos." Another problem is that if ARVN is to be called upon regularly for cavalry duty in Cambodia, and possibly Laos as well, it might be spread perilously thin. U.S. air, artillery and logistic support will be needed to bolster ARVN's actions beyond its borders, even if no U.S. ground troops are sent in. Finally, Abrams' wider war almost certainly means that Laos and Cambodia will be torn apart. Quite aside from the human cost, it is unlikely that any neutralist political force --or neutralist government--will have much chance of surviving in these countries under these conditions. Yet some critics believe that just such neutralist governments offer the only long-range hope for a political settlement.
At present, Indochina's three main combat areas are in mixed condition: LAOS. As the struggle over the Ho Chi Minh Trail heated up, so did the "forgotten war" in Laos, where some 65,000 Royal Lao troops and Meo tribesmen have fought a seesaw seasonal struggle for almost a quarter of a century. Traditionally, the non-Communist forces have gained ground during the monsoons, when the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese regulars in Laos are unable to move supplies. With the arrival of the current dry season, it was the Communists' turn to advance, as usual. The 80,000 Communist troops in Laos made the most of it. Moving quickly, they captured Muong Phalane, routed government troops from Muong Suoi on the edge of the Plain of Jars, began to encircle Luang Prabang, the royal capital, then marched on Long Cheng, site of a large CIA base and headquarters of General Vang Pao's weary army of Meo Special Forces. In the south the Bolovens Plateau was under particular pressure. Communist troops, in the words of a U.S. official in Vientiane, have been "oozing westward" in recent weeks, increasing their force level from nine battalions to 13 or 14. A South Vietnamese drive into Laos might well cause the Communists to step up their own westward push.
There were several reasons for the vigorous Communist advance. On one level, it was a punitive jab at Souvanna Phouma. The Premier is anxious to end the Laotian fighting, which has forced an incredible number of refugees into U.S.-run camps: 700,000, or 30% of the population. But hard-liners on the right threaten real trouble if Souvanna should open serious peace talks with the Pathet Lao or if he should suffer another major defeat. "If Long Cheng or the Bolovens Plateau falls," said one Laotian general, "Souvanna is finished." The Communist advance was also a signal to Abrams that if the U.S. menaced the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese would take over most of the rest of Laos.
Vientiane, the administrative capital, is showing signs of nervousness. Last week there was the rare sight of Royal Lao troops ana-a pair of vintage American armored cars passing through the city on the way to the airport. Said one diplomat: "After that attack on Phnom-Penh, you can never be sure."
CAMBODIA. Last spring's drive on the Communist sanctuaries was a-short-term military success. But now Cambodia is beginning to look like a long-term liability, with 50,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops roaming over much of the country. Cambodian forces were taking another beating last week, this time in a battle with NVA regulars at Saang, 18 miles south of the capital.
North Vietnamese units have begun to return to the old Communist sanctuaries in Kompong Cham and Kratie provinces, hard by the South Vietnamese border. COSVN, the Communist command post that President Nixon held up as the Grail of last spring's Cambodian operation, is now said to be located in Kratie. South Viet Nam's President Thieu is worried enough about the return of the Communists to his own country to have set a limit of 20,000 or so ARVN troops in Cambodia at any one time. But that raises the question of whether Premier Lon Nol, even with his army swollen to 160,000 men, would be able to survive without more substantial assistance from Saigon and the U.S. Indeed, one of the objectives of an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail would be to relieve Communist pressure on the Phnom-Penh regime.
Cambodia's students, intellectuals, businessmen and bonzes still back the "government of salvation," and the army, though poorly armed and undertrained, shows great spirit. Whether that will be enough to hold off Communist regulars is doubtful. As Cambodian Poet Makhali Phal writes of her 7,000,000 countrymen, they are:
A people who do not weigh heavy
In the hollow of the palm of the Mekong;
A people who do not have boats, but pirogues;
A people who have, as fortresses,
Only temples in ruins; A people who have, for an army, Only their Thought and Faith.
SOUTH VIET NAM. Since Tet 1968, South Viet Nam's armed forces have grown from 730,000 men to a well-equipped force of 1,100,000. All told, Saigon has more than 2,000,000 men under arms, or more than 11% of the population. Eventually, the South Vietnamese air force is to be expanded to 50 squadrons, which would rank it seventh in size in the world. How good is ARVN? Abrams likes to tell visiting firemen in Saigon that 70% of South Viet Nam's army is "on a fighting par with U.S. troops."
Saigon's troops have replaced U.S. units along the border areas and around the capital itself. Except in Military Region I, there has been little in the way of enemy activity. Nevertheless, a new cockiness prevails, and according to Sir Robert Thompson, Nixon's favorite consultant on counterinsurgency, ARVN is doing very well indeed. "The fact that you're able to keep withdrawing troops at the current rate [about 13,000 G.I.s a month], that U.S. casualties are down to well under 50 a week, that even South Vietnamese casualties are down --this is the measure of it," says Thompson. "The balance of power has shifted as between the enemy's capability and the South Vietnamese capability."
Still, real Communist' strength remains the big question. Over the past two years, say pacification experts, the Viet Cong "infrastructure" has been whittled down from 128,000 active cadres to 62,000. Nevertheless, the Viet Cong are still able to collect taxes, recruit troops, and cut practically any road in the country, at least temporarily. Knowledgeable observers smile at on-ward-and-upward statistics rating the security of South Viet Nam's towns and hamlets. Solid assessments of enemy strength are made difficult because the Communists in North Viet Nam may be deliberately lying low. Directives have been intercepted ordering Viet Cong to do nothing to make American commanders think twice about the wisdom of pulling out.
In view of such directives, and ARVN's growing strength, need the U.S. really fear that Hanoi would pounce as soon as the American forces were small enough? And even if it did, would the U.S. really be able to protect its forces? Obviously, the Pentagon insists that the risk would be too great. But couldn't the U.S. set a date for total withdrawal, say by Christmas 1911, and in return obtain from Hanoi a safe-conduct to the beaches? In Paris the Communists have hinted that they would arrange such a safe-conduct, but only if the U.S. sets a firm date for withdrawal of all troops, not just ground combat troops.
It can be argued that no safe-conduct from Hanoi could be trusted--even though it might be in Hanoi's interest to keep it. A more convincing objection to the idea is that complete U.S. withdrawal, including support forces, would seriously undermine if not destroy the Saigon regime. Thus it is likely that Abrams' "cavalry" actions are not necessary primarily to protect U.S. troops but to bolster the Saigon regime and assure its survival. If so, that could be an entirely legitimate goal of U.S. policy (though its cost might be subject to debate). But that is not the way the Administration presents the matter.
The Pentagon marshals massive statistics to prove that Hanoi is increasing its flow of supplies, and must be plotting a major offensive that would endanger U.S. lives. As a result, many longtime critics have come around to the view that perhaps the Nixon strategy is the only safe approach. As Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken said last week: "As long as the trend is downward in Viet Nam, as long as U.S. forces don't go into Cambodia or Laos, most of the people up here [in Congress] are saying: 'Let's give Nixon a chance.' I think the President is on safe ground now."
That remains to be seen. Next year's dry season may prove to be the most trying test of the Administration's strategy. The North Vietnamese have been quiet for long periods before, only to erupt in disruptive offensives such as Tet. U.S. analysts are convinced that General Giap is planning a replay of 1968 for 1972. They are equally convinced that General Abrams can head him off at the pass--somewhere in Laos, perhaps, or maybe Cambodia--or possibly even in South Viet Nam.
* Its predecessor, a 1969 search-and-destroy operation conducted in the same area, was to have been named Dewy Canyon for the heavy fog that enshrouds the craggy terrain, but somebody slipped up on the spelling. * Wrong on one count. Many news blackouts have lasted much longer, among them the 18-day embargo imposed during the massive A Shau Valley sweep of 1968.
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