Indochina: Tough Days on the Trail

WHEN Lam Son 719, the invasion of Laos, began early last month, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird predicted that there would be "some tough days ahead." Last week the Communists made good on that prediction--with a vengeance.

The main South Vietnamese force of 10,000 troops and 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers sat immobile barely 15 miles inside Laos on jungle-bordered Route 9. Out on the flanks, where elite airborne and ranger units clung to rugged hilltop fire bases, Communist toops launched a series of furious assaults. First blood was drawn at an outpost about 14 miles inside Laos, where the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) 39th Ranger battalion held out valiantly against a North Vietnamese force of regimental strength for three days before abandoning its positions. By the time the survivors had hacked their way through to another base two miles away, no fewer than 323 of 500 Rangers were dead, wounded or missing.

Deeper inside Laos, at an outpost known as Hill 31, an ARVN airborne battalion was locked in a ferocious seesaw struggle with a Communist force of up to 2,000 men, backed by Soviet-made PT-76 light tanks. As the fighting raged, the smoking hulks of broken Communist tanks and shattered U.S. helicopters littered the battlefield; B-52 strikes thundered so close, said a downed chopper crewman, that the dust "made our eyes water." Though the outcome of the battle remained in doubt at week's end, the Lam Son toll was already substantial: in three weeks, no less than five ARVN battalions had, for all practical purposes, been knocked out of action.

Cocky young ARVN troops who had enjoyed easy triumphs on the plains of Cambodia grew fearful in the dark jungles of Laos. "The first week everybody was happy and confident, writing letters and trading souvenirs," reported a Japanese photographer with the lead tankers. "Now they are homesick and worried."

Mounting Skepticism. In Saigon, the popular mood was sullen, even acrimonious. Vietnamese complained that Lam Son was a U.S. concoction designed to accomplish U.S. goals and the ARVN was paying a dear price. Every hour, truckloads of fresh corpses rolled into the Bien Hoa military cemetery, where gravediggers had been ordered to double their normal 100-graves-a-week pace.

In the U.S., reports of the bloody fighting raised ominous questions. Was another Dienbienphu in the making on the Ho Chi Minh Trail? Or were the mounting skepticism and the darkening headlines caused, at least in part, by the impossible conditions imposed on news coverage (see THE PRESS)? By way of reassuring the U.S. public, the Administration launched a vigorous public relations campaign.

In an 80-minute press conference at the Pentagon, Laird and Lieut. General John W. Vogt Jr., a ranking member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that ARVN was racking up impressive kill ratios in Southern Laos and in Cambodia. Overall, the casualty totals for the first three weeks of the operation were, if ARVN figures are to be believed, 19,715 Communist dead v. 2,208 ARVN dead. U.S. casualties have been 40 killed and 34 wounded. Casualty rates aside, was ARVN stalled? No, said Vogt. The weeklong halt on Route 9 was a deliberate "pause" to give commanders a chance to watch and assess enemy movements. Said Laird: "The operation is going according to plan."

A Matter of Time. Though Administration spokesmen described the operation's goals in modest terms, sources in Saigon conceded that the original objectives were more ambitious but were being tailored to fit a disappointing performance. By last week:

> ARVN armor on Route 9 was to have thrust 25 miles to Tchepone, where main branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail meet before snaking off into South Viet Nam and Cambodia.

> A combined Thai-Laotian force from Savannakhet, near the western border of the panhandle, was to have moved eastward along Route 9 to Muong Phine, another major junction and site of the main enemy supply caches. That force is only halfway to its destination and bucking heavy resistance.

> An ARVN force was to have been choppered 48 miles across the trail area to Attopeu, an important Communist-occupied Laotian town on the edge of the Bolovens Plateau; but helicopters supplying the Route 9 operation have been too busy to be diverted to the Attopeu mission.

A number of factors have upset the original expectations. Boxed into static positions, ARVN artillerymen with 155-mm. eleven-mile-range howitzers are often outreached by North Vietnamese gunners with 130-mm. pieces that can fire a shell 17 miles. Fog blankets fire bases and curtails vital air support.

Rather than fade away, as they did in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese troops have moved into defensive positions and reinforced themselves with unexpected speed. Some 35,000 Communist troops are arrayed around Tchepone in a great semicircle facing the ARVN advance. Pentagon experts say that another 20,000 North Vietnamese troops are converging on Route 9 from north and south. They will soon be joined by 6,000 fresh troops from the three North Vietnamese divisions above the Demilitarized Zone.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu's suggestion that it was "only a matter of time" before ARVN troops would drive north of the DMZ was designed to frighten Hanoi into keeping its reserve troops in place. But Hanoi's warning that such a thrust would bring China into the war seems to have ended threats of an invasion of North Viet Nam--a contingency that the U.S. would endorse only if the Lam Son forces were near annihilation.

With worries mounting about what was happening on Route 9, the normally unflappable General Creighton Abrams, U.S. Commander in Viet Nam, threw a monumental tantrum at his headquarters in Saigon. "You people are telling me what you think I want to know," he stormed at his intelligence officers. "I want to know what is actually happening." Said one source: "He was so mad he was dancing on the table tops."

Continuing Flow. Early in the week, Abrams, U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Thieu conferred for a full hour on the Laotian situation. Next morning, Thieu summoned Lieut. General Do Cao Tri to Saigon. Hoping to get the Laos operation moving, Thieu decided to shift Tri from the successful Cambodia venture and put him in charge of Lam Son, replacing moon-faced Lieut. General Hoang Xuan Lam. But 2 1/2 hours later Tri was dead (see box).

For all Lam Son's problems, no pullback is being considered yet. And the groundwork for calling the campaign a success is already being prepared. At least some minor parts of the nine major Ho Chi Minh Trail routes have been sliced up. Much of the 4-in. pipeline that runs from the North Vietnamese port of Quang Khe down into Laos has been destroyed. Undeniably, the operation has also bought time for Phnom-Penh and, as Thieu claims, it may well have forestalled a Communist offensive in South Viet Nam's five northern provinces.

But the operation has not touched the main Communist supply areas, which lie west of Tchepone. And as one Administration official candidly admitted: "So we boast that we've cut three or four routes. That's nothing. There are literally four or five times as many left where the flow continues."

Fixing the Date. Whether Lam Son's liabilities will prove assets for Richard Nixon's critics remains to be seen. Campus teach-ins opposing the invasion featured Eugene McCarthy at Harvard, Averell Harriman at Yale and Ed Muskie at the University of Pennsylvania. Muskie came out strongly for setting a fixed date for withdrawal of all U.S. troops. His Senate colleagues seemed to agree; 35 Senate Democrats (of a total of 54) voted in caucus last week for complete withdrawal by the end of 1972. Still, the reaction has been mild compared with what happened after Cambodia last May. Moreover, if ARVN manages to hold its own against the superior Communist force, much of the criticism might lose its bite.

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