Spillover into Laos

The neutralization and partition of the kingdom of Laos stipulated by the Geneva Accords of 1962 has served Hanoi's war against South Viet Nam admirably. Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through the Communist-controlled portion of Laos have flowed the men and supplies enabling North Viet Nam to keep the war going, and Laotian rice has helped keep Ho's warriors fed. The U.S. regularly bombs the Trail to slow the flow. But unlike Hanoi, Washington has been unwilling to violate the ban on foreign troops in Laos and strike directly overland to interdict the enemy traffic southward.

The North Vietnamese and their Pathet Lao allies have, in turn, been careful not to succeed too well in their continual skirmishing with Royal Lao troops. Overdoing it on the Lao battlefields would upset the precarious balance between the two halves of Laos-and thus justify allied intervention under the Geneva treaty. But last week that balance was in danger of being tipped. In eastern Laos the Communists were creating a major staging area for an attack across the border at U.S. Marine positions south of the DMZ. In northern Laos, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers inflicted a major defeat on Royal Laotian forces, overrunning the strategic valley of Nam Bac.

Bumper-to-Bumper. The upsurge of trouble in Laos came as the scarred battlefields of South Viet Nam fell relatively silent after two weeks of the fiercest fighting of the war in which a record 5,084 Communist soldiers were killed. Said U.S. Commander General Wil liam C. Westmoreland: "The Communists seem to have run temporarily out of steam." But probably not for long. Watching the North Vietnamese buildup across the border, Westmoreland expects a major enemy attack at Khe Sanh either shortly before or after the seven-day lunar new year celebration of Tet that starts Jan. 30.

Since Oct. 15, Red trucks have been streaming southward in bumper-to-bumper convoys. The Trail has been expanded in many stretches into a two-lane highway that is artfully camouflaged and heavily defended by dug-in and mobile antiaircraft batteries. So serious is the increase in traffic that the U.S. is now bombing more in Laos than in North Viet Nam. In December the U.S. flew 6,722 combat sorties over Laos, hitting fuel dumps, traffic and gun emplacements along the Trail, v. only 5,692 over North Viet Nam. Even so, roughly 80% of the trucks get through, and the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh were oiling their weapons in preparation for the worst. Other Marines at "The Rock Pile," the fallback base 16 miles northeast of Khe Sanh, hurried to complete an airstrip so that supplies and reinforcements can be flown in, and giant B-52s daily dumped tons of bombs on infiltration routes from Laos.

Crumbling Resolve. The Communist aims in northern Laos were less clear.

The town of Nam Bac sits in a fertile valley astride communication routes from Dienbienphu in North Viet Nam to Communist areas of Laos, and was an important Royalist island in Pathet Lao territory. The Royalists had taken the town from the Reds two years ago, started a rural-development program, and promised the peasants that they would defend them.

That resolve crumbled as the Royalist troops at Nam Bac were hit by five battalions of Pathet Lao and an estimated 18 battalions of North Vietnamese, whose dedication to war dismays the amiable Laotians. After a two-day skirmish, the Royalists fled their fortifications, leaving behind seven howitzers, scores of mortars and even their laundry fluttering from clothes lines. Some 4,000 of the routed Royalists disappeared into the jungle. Though many will undoubtedly turn up for duty again some day, their absence at the moment reduces by 20% the strength of the Royal Laotian Army. In addition to the ground attack, the North Vietnamese also made their first bombing strikes on Laos, hitting the village of Muong Yut, whose inhabitants are fiercely anti-Communist Meo tribesmen. Two of the planes, 1947-vintage Soviet AN2 crop-duster biplanes rigged with bomb racks, were shot down.

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