Laos: The Bloody Battle To Get Out

JUST five weeks after they plunged confidently into the jungles of Laos, the best troops of South Viet Nam were engaged last week in a perilous and bloody battle to get out. Whether Operation Lam Son 719, as the Laotian invasion is officially called, could be judged a success or a setback was still a matter of considerable debate (see box next page). Beyond debate, however, was the fact that some units of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had been badly cut up in the fighting, and that North Viet Nam seemed ready and willing to sacrifice casualties by the thousands in order to deal the South a physical and psychological mauling.

That the ARVN withdrawal was not yet a rout was due very largely to U.S. airpower. Day after day, B-52s, F-4 Phantoms and F-100s, flying as many strike sorties for the Lam Son operation alone as they ordinarily stage in all of Indochina, kept the battlefield under incessant barrage. Giant B-52s, used like Phantom jets for close ground support, pursued North Vietnamese soldiers through jungle and elephant grass, dropping their 30,000-lb. bomb loads as close as 600 yards to allied positions. Everywhere ARVN soldiers went, they stumbled upon phalanxes of enemy bodies, or survivors walking about in a daze, talking of "death from the sky."

Going Nowhere. Still, the North Vietnamese pressed their attack on the ARVN troops--or at least some of them. The withdrawal from Laos was in fact divided into three fairly distinct parts, and Washington still maintained that it would not be completed until mid-April. According to the Pentagon, several thousand of the 20,000 South Vietnamese who went into Laos were sweeping southeastward toward home, hilltop hopping by helicopter and disrupting enemy supply routes. Some 10,000 more ARVN troops, whose armored column had been stalled for five weeks on Route 9, 15 miles inside Laos, began a slow creep back toward the border.

The real battle--and the most precipitous retreat--involved the elite 1st ARVN Division. They had been assigned to man fire bases named Sophia, Lolo, Liz and A Luoi, and Landing Zone Brown, all overlooking the invasion route on Highway 9. All were abandoned after undergoing continued shelling and massed attacks by the North Vietnamese. The ARVN troops destroyed their own artillery and fought their way through the jungle until helicopters could reach them (see following story).

Crowded Helicopters. One of the 1st Division's three regiments--the 3rd--returned with only 450 of its original 2,000 men still in fighting condition. For those troops at least, the orderly retreat had become a rout. Choppers that ordinarily accommodate eight men carried 14, some clinging precariously to the helicopter skids. Several lost their holds in mid-air and fell to death; others seemed barely able to hobble, apparently suffering from their days of marching through Laos' jungled mountains. One unconscious soldier had one arm wrapped around a machine-gun mount, while his comrades held him from inside the chopper; as the craft touched down, they let go, and he fell to the ground in a heap. A young U.S. adviser, watching from a Jeep, held the latest copy of Stars and Stripes, which carried the headline: ROGERS: LAOS DRIVE A SUCCESS. His comment: "Sure, and here come the victors."

The loss of the fire bases stripped some of the protection from the armored column on Route 9--though 1,000 Ranger and Marine reinforcements were rushed into Laos to help defend the highway, and heavy artillery was moved up to the border to zero in on the Communists. With the other bases knocked out, the North Vietnamese could now presumably concentrate their men and artillery on preventing the ARVN column's orderly departure; if they can bring to bear on Route 9 the firepower they used to blast the fire bases and LZ Brown, a nasty defeat could be in the making. Once again, U.S. airpower could make the enemy pay heavily. But the North Vietnamese army, now on the offensive, has already demonstrated that it is willing to pay a higher price for victory than the retreating South Vietnamese.

Ordeal by Fire

As 2,000 battle-weary soldiers of South Viet Nam's crack 1st ARVN Division were evacuated by helicopter from Laos last week, their comrades of the division's 4th Battalion, 1st Regiment remained behind to fight one of the fiercest battles of the war. Their story:

Fire Base Lolo, 22 miles inside Laos, came under attack almost as soon as it was set up by the 1st Regiment three weeks ago. Antiaircraft fire from North Vietnamese troops became so intense that U.S. helicopters were unable to bring in supplies or provide close air support. Lolo's commanding officer and his staff had to keep dashing from bunker to bunker so that Communist gunners could not zero in on their command post. The South Vietnamese were so busy ducking incoming rounds that at one point North Vietnamese wearing ARVN uniforms were able to set up machine-gun positions within the base's perimeter.

After three days without supplies, the South Vietnamese defenders ran out of artillery shells altogether and found themselves critically short of small-arms ammunition, food and water. Then, last week, came the order: destroy the artillery pieces and anything else that cannot be carried, leave the dead, and evacuate. The 4th Battalion was ordered to fight a rearguard action while the other three battalions of the 1st Regiment broke out of the encirclement. The 4th's ordeal began on the night the others pulled out. A North Vietnamese artillery round killed the battalion commander, the executive officer and several other senior officers.

Enemy Loudspeakers. Somehow the battalion got organized and moved out, heading slowly northeast toward Route 9. By the end of the first day, only 100 of the original 500 men were left, and they were desperate. They had received no supplies for six days and had not slept for three--and they were surrounded by the enemy. The battalion's sole surviving officer radioed for an emergency resupply. but U.S. helicopters were once more kept away by heavy ground fire. North Vietnamese loudspeakers called through the darkness for the men of the 4th Battalion to surrender. Few did, and by morning the beleaguered battalion--or what remained of it--had again managed to fight its way out of the enemy circle and call for help. "About all they've got left to fight with," said a U.S. adviser monitoring a radio across the border, "is machetes and bayonets." At noon, U.S. bombers began to blast a rescue landing zone out of the jungle.

Mission Accomplished. In mid-afternoon the first chopper, a Cobra gunship, swinging low to check the landing zone, came under heavy fire from the ground. It tried to roll out, but nosed into the jungle and exploded. The second, a Huey troop carrier, managed to land and evacuate 17 men. The third was hit by machine-gun fire and crashed. Two hours later, two more helicopters landed and rescued the downed chopper's crew and the last ARVN troops.

The 4th Battalion had accomplished its mission. But it had paid an appalling price. Of the 500 men who entered Laos, 32 came out aboard the rescue choppers. Of those, a third were wounded.

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