Cherchez la Guerre

For correspondents covering the Indonesian civil war, the main problem has been to find the war. With no defined front line in vast Sumatra--more than twice the size of Korea--most of the skirmishes between the rebels and President Sukarno's government have been as haphazard as blind man's buff.

Hunting for the war, newsmen dashed over the jungled distances in sometimes-scheduled airliners, river boats, buses and ancient taxis. When they did find something to write about, they had the problem of getting it to Singapore. The Chicago Daily News's Keyes Beech finally had to send one dispatch by ship, a two-day trip. Luckier newsmen used the rebels' clandestine radio transmitter in Padang, sent out hand-tapped signals that were monitored by the news agencies in Singapore, 300 miles away.

Typical of correspondents' search for the war was the trip last week of LIFE Photographer John Dominis, the Associated Press's John Griffin, and Magnum Photographer Marc Riboud. Armed with a letter from rebel headquarters giving them passage to the front, the trio set out in a wayward bus named Picnic. Stumbling across a battle convoy, they produced the letter--only to learn that they were among government troops.

When another hardy group of correspondents rushed to find out how U.S. Caltex employees were faring in Rumbai, a town in contested Central Sumatra, they found a scene that made a novel page in war correspondence. Reported the New York Times's Bernard Kalb: U.S. kids were playing tag on a paved street, an American woman dived into a glittering pool, and "a couple of American men, sipping ice cream sodas to the tune of jukebox music, were chatting about what kind of season the Yankees would have."

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