Cautious Crawl Through Laos

When the allies invaded Cambodia last spring, exuberant South Vietnamese units thrust 24 miles into the Parrot's Beak area in the very first day. Last week, 14 days after the first ARVN troops pushed across the Laotian border to strike at the Ho Chi Minh Trail network, they had covered only some 15 miles and were coming under increasingly intense enemy pressure. U.S. commanders insisted that Operation Lam Son 719, despite its slow pace, was scoring military gains. But Defense Secretary Melvin Laird warned President Nixon that the 17,000 ARVN troops and the 9,000 Americans who are providing logistical support and rearguard cover could expect "some tough days ahead."

The advance was kept to a cautious crawl for several reasons. Southeastern Cambodia is flat farmland; the Laotian panhandle is a tangle of dense, triple-canopy jungle. ARVN troops practically had to rebuild the old French Route 9 as they went, and they stopped frequently to set up protective fire bases and send out patrols for as much as six miles to the north and south to guard their flanks. Their vital link to South Viet Nam's Quang Tri province--a force of some 600 U.S. helicopters--was repeatedly socked in by bad weather.

Backing Up. Increasingly, however, it was enemy resistance that blocked faster movement. North Viet Nam moved two divisions out of areas south of the DMZ and into the Laotian panhandle, bringing total Communist troop strength along the trail to 30,000. Company-size units engaged the South Vietnamese in more than a dozen battles, usually night-time rocket and mortar attacks on lonely ARVN fire bases. In the heaviest fighting of the campaign, the Communists reportedly overran one base and cut off at least two others. South Vietnamese casualties officially rose to 147 dead and were probably much higher; Communist casualties were put at 704.

Withering antiaircraft fire continued to take a heavy toll of U.S. helicopters on cross-border missions. Altogether, 21 choppers have been destroyed in the campaign; many more were shot down but later recovered. The Communists also stepped up attacks on American positions around Khe Sanh, the jump-off point into Laos.

Nevertheless, ARVN's advance was slowly knifing through the ganglia of roads and footpaths that carry nearly all Communist supplies into the South. The South Vietnamese have yet to cut any of the large, all-weather routes that run farther to the west; sidestepping the invasion, Communist traffic has largely moved to these roads. But even that inconvenience has slowed transport. "The stuff is backing up along the trail," says a Pentagon officer, and the flow will be choked off even more effectively if ARVN can advance to Muong Phine, a central transshipment point.

Whatever else it may eventually accomplish, the ARVN thrust has already given the world a glimpse of a shipping system that has long defied some of the heaviest bombing in history and fueled a quarter of a million men for the better part of a decade. Ho's trail has sections of paved highway, but most of it consists of two ruts dug out by the wheels of countless trucks or leafy footpaths barely wide enough for one man. Photographer Ennio lacobucci, on assignment from TIME, accompanied ARVN troops along a two-mile stretch of one trail and cabled this report:

The troops took us from a helicopter to a trail about five feet wide. It had all been cleared from the jungle by hand; there was no bulldozer work. In clear areas, a trellis of bamboo branches had been carefully woven together and planted with live foliage so that you could not see the path from above. Every so often, just on the edge of the road, there was a checkpoint bunker that could hold two or three people. Farther apart, there were lots of depots slightly off the main trail. They were numbered--we saw Nos. 16 through 19 on our walk--and were indicated on the path by crosses carved into the bark of a tree and painted red.

The depots were about 10 ft. by 15 ft. in area and dug perhaps 6 1/2 ft. into the ground, like bunkers. The tops were made of logs, with camouflage over them. They were full of ammunition, rice, medical supplies and gasoline. Rubber pipes connected a pump in each depot to a nearby river, so that drivers could get water for themselves and their trucks. Signs instructed visitors to PLEASE PARK THE TRUCK, HAVE YOUR MEAL, YOUR DRINKS AND PLEASE SIGN IN AND OUT. Another sign read: THE ROAD IS HARD, BUT WE WILL MAKE IT.

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