On Highway 13: The Long Road to An Loc

TIME Correspondent David DeVoss was with the 20,000-man relief column of South Vietnamese troops on Highway 13 last week as they tried to break through an NVA blockade to reach the provincial capital of An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon. His report:

THERE were beaucoup VC," said Sergeant Lam Son, a twelve-year veteran of the ARVN 9th Regiment, who earlier had been fortunate enough to escape from Loc Ninh, the town that was overrun by the North Vietnamese in their drive on An Loc. "They [the North Vietnamese] had about 30 tanks and many of us were killed. We kill many VC, but they too strong." When I met the sergeant, he was preparing to move north again toward the besieged city of An Loc. His unit was in the village of Lai Khe, 30 miles south of An Loc, which was being used as the base for the buildup of the relief column.

For one entire day, a seemingly endless convoy of trucks poured into the town, carrying troops from the 21st Division, normally stationed deep in the Mekong Delta. Everyone seemed confident, except for the American helicopter crews waiting to carry some high-level U.S. military observers to the battlefront. "They'll never win this war as long as the Vietnamese let those guys fly choppers," said one Army captain, gesturing toward the dozing crew of a ramshackle Vietnamese Air Force "Huey." "These guys can't fight and won't fight. You'll never catch them in the air after 5 p.m. Just look at that," he laughed as a troop-laden chopper lurched toward a vacant landing pad.

The next day, the column moved 13 miles north to Chon Thanh, a lazy town of tin houses with thatched roofs between Lai Khe and An Loc. The townspeople, exuding the blithe fatalism common to many Vietnamese, seemed to be enjoying the show. "Some people are scared," confessed Restaurateur, Tu Ca, "but not enough to leave. Some of the rich have taken their children to Saigon, but all the regular people stay." Ca intended to stay and defend his reputation for serving the town's best chao long (a soup concocted of pork, noodles and vegetables).

An unreal sense of well-being extended even to a dark, sandbagged burrow on the town's south side where ARVN Major, Tran Ai Quoc, had set up a command post. As his battery of radios crackled in the background, Quoc reported that the situation around the town was quiet. It had better be. His retinue of lieutenants and enlisted men had been drinking Ba Muoi Ba brand beer and De Kuyper creme de menthe. An attack then would have been a disaster.

The following day, the Saigon press corps arrived to witness what they had been told would be a triumphal march to the north. The optimism was bolstered by U.S. Major General James F. Hollingsworth, who dropped from the sky in his chopper (code name: Dynamite Six). "The North Vietnamese are trying to get back to Cambodia now," he said. "We are going to kill 'em all before they get there. These NVA are like mice in a haystack." Another U.S. adviser was less sanguine. "This is just like the First Battle of Bull Run," he muttered, alluding to the civilian spectators and festive atmosphere that attended that Civil War engagement.

That day the column moved about three miles. From atop an armored personnel carrier, the landscape looked like the Oklahoma Panhandle--thigh-high dry yellow banana grass, and clumps of scraggly trees on either side of the road. It was an ideal terrain for U.S. aerial domination--or so it seemed.

Suddenly the optimism and euphoria began to fade. VC sappers dynamited a culvert on Highway 13, five miles north of Lai Khe, shattering the comforting illusion that the road was safe. Two patrols of airborne troopers marching toward An Loc were badly mauled in ambushes. Then at 11 a.m. the next day, enemy rockets and mortar shells pelted the column's artillery. ARVN tanks blazed back furiously, but with little success. An ARVN tank was hit by a B40 rocket and exploded into a blazing wreck. Tac air was called in, and for 40 minutes, VNAF Skyraiders, U.S. Air Force Phantoms and C-119 gunships bombed and strafed. Nobody knew if they hit anyone, but at least the mortars were silenced.

In the ensuing lull, ARVN troopers scavenged sandbags from a bunker that had been blown apart by an enemy mortar round. Some soldiers dug their fox holes deeper while others stared impassively at the immobile grass. Over campfires fueled by empty ammunition boxes hung pots of homemade noodle-and-vegetable soup.

"Beaucoup hot," said one trooper, looking at the heat waves rising from the asphalt highway, which was pitted and cracked from the mortar shelling.

"Beaucoup VC," we replied.

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