Showdown in Laos

THREE weeks after the attack on the Ho Chi Minh Trail had begun. South Viet Nam's rugged Quang Tri province, the chief staging area, became a major stop on the VIP circuit. Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, new to the Senate Armed Services Committee, flew in by executive jet, only to be waved away from Khe Sanh when Communist mortar fire suddenly thudded in. South Viet Nam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, resplendent in his standard field getup--black flight suit, purple scarf and revolver--arrived to visit South Vietnamese marines. "I tried to visit Laos myself," he later told reporters. "But I was told it was much too dangerous."

Alphonse-Gaston Show. It was dangerous all right, and it promises to get more so, soon. After two weeks of small gains and large casualties, the Lam Son 719 forces were at last on the move again. Leapfrogging six miles past a stalled armor column on Route 9, swarms of U.S. helicopters laden with ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) troops flapped deep into Laos, settling into landing zones blasted out of the jungle by parachute-dropped 15,000-lb. bombs. From one of the new bases, code-named Sophia, 1,500 crack ARVN 1st Division troops punched five miles northward through brisk Communist fire. Backed by prodigious U.S. airpower, they exultantly entered Tchepone, the key Communist transshipment site that had been pinpointed as a major objective. Almost immediately, 1,000 reinforcements were helilifted to the heights commanding the battered town, and ARVN commanders prepared for what may well be the climax of the Laotian campaign: a pitched battle with massed North Vietnamese forces. Tchepone bid fair to be the scene of one of the few set-piece battles of the war --reminiscent of the fierce Plei Me struggle of 1965, when two ARVN regiments, long before anybody talked about Vietnamization, trounced a North Vietnamese force of equal strength. Some officials went so far as to talk of Tchepone as the potentially decisive battle of the Indochina war.

Already the Lam Son 719 bloodshed has reached a scale that Major General Frederick Weyand, the deputy U.S. commander in Saigon, describes as "worse than Tet." Even so, until last week the Laotian venture in some respects resembled what one Washington official describes as "an Alphonse-Gaston show. The South Vietnamese fought hard, but they also sat back and waited to see what the North Vietnamese would do. The North Vietnamese attacked outposts, but their main forces sat back and waited to see what the South Vietnamese would do."

Arms Linked. In resuming the advance, Saigon and its U.S. mentors were apparently seeking not only further disruption of the trail but also a badly needed military and psychological triumph. With a visible victory, some critics noted, the allies could call the whole operation a success and then call it off. What about the talk of severing the Ho Chi Minh Trail? "To really cut the trail," said a U.S. officer, "you would have to have ARVN stretched from one Laotian border to the other with their arms linked." Nevertheless, most estimates indicate that truck movements along the trail have already been halved.

To get its offensive moving again, Saigon committed some 2,000 fresh marines to the Lam Son operation, bringing ARVN strength in Laos to more than 14,000: another 16,000 ARVN troops are in reserve in Quang Tri. The Communists, meanwhile, were throwing some formidable forces of their own into the Tchepone area. As many as 35,000 North Vietnamese regulars form a fan-shaped deployment west and northwest of the town, which U.S. bombers long ago reduced to rubble. In their bloody attacks on the ARVN hilltop positions on the eastern edge of the trail, the Communists used only PT-76 light tanks (and lost half the 80-odd PT-76s they had in the area). In the flatter terrain around Tchepone they will be able to use their fearsome 35-ton T-54 medium tanks. U.S. fighters and helicopters that ventured into the Tchepone area last week drew fire from new surface-to-air missiles--the first Communist SAMS that have ever been fired from outside North Viet Nam. In one day last week, Communist antiaircraft fire brought down 37 U.S. helicopters: 30 damaged birds were later retrieved (see box). The enemy also began making things hotter for the allies in Cambodia: a surprise Communist attack on Kompong Som left much of the country's only oil refinery in flames.

While they prepared for the expected big battle near Tchepone, both sides stepped up their verbal gamesmanship. Would ARVN invade' North Viet Nam? Hanoi has hinted repeatedly that such a move would bring China into the war. Nevertheless, for the third time in two weeks, South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu suggested that ARVN might be "forced" to go north.

In Washington, President Nixon said that plans for the sort of U.S. air support essential to such an enterprise were "not under consideration." But he also refused to deny that Saigon might try to go it alone. Taking no chances, Hanoi called out the militia in Ha Tinh and Nghe An provinces in the North Vietnamese panhandle. Tanks and troops were rushed to form a defense line across the panhandle 90 miles north of the DMZ, while coastal towns were alerted to watch for ARVN landing craft.

Ky the Composer. Nixon, during his news conference, declared the Laos operation a "success" and quoted General Creighton W. Abrams, the U.S. commander in Saigon, as saying that it proves the South Vietnamese can "hack it." But some South Vietnamese, stunned by the growing number of bodies being shipped home for burial, were not as delighted with the venture. The Saigon daily Xay Dung protested that as far as ARVN was concerned, the U.S. was guilty of "flying a kite and then cutting its string." In a speech last week, former Prime Minister Tran Van Huong claimed to be "amazed" at some of Lam Son's problems, including inadequate air supply and combat support. The suspicion was that Huong spoke at the bidding of the Thieu government, which has been prodding the U.S. command to provide more air support.

American pilots have already flown an impressive number of helicopter sorties in Laos (more than 26,000), but the 600 choppers assigned to Lam Son have been sorely taxed for several reasons. For one thing, Communist mines and ambushes have upset plans to supply the main ARVN column (10,000 men) on Route 9 by road. In combat, ARVN commanders have often been unable to spell out their needs in comprehensible English when faced with real trouble. Hill 31 was overrun largely because the first Cobra gunships on the scene carried no armor-piercing rockets: the ARVN officer who radioed for support forgot to mention that 20 snarling Communist tanks were churning up to his defense perimeter.

By now, U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders hope, most of the kinks have been worked out of Lam Son. Certainly, Saigon has not overlooked anything that might improve ARVN's chances in the fighting to come. Vice President Ky has even commissioned Vietnamese composers to fashion songs celebrating ARVN bravery, nobility and sacrifice. Whether they will be tunes of victory, too, remains to be seen.

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