The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (55 page)

The invasion was a closely kept secret in Washington, where only a handful of people in the Pentagon and State Department were aware of it, while detailed plans were drawn up in Vietnam on a strictly classified need-to-know basis. It seems that considerable effort was also made to keep knowledgeable people who might be critical of the operation in the dark - including the former ambassador to Laos, William Sullivan. ‘I won’t say they waited until I was out of town, but I was not invited to the briefing,’ he said.

When he returned to Washington and heard about the planned invasion, he was so concerned that he insisted the Pentagon give him the briefing that had been given to the president. ‘It turned out they had used a map that showed no topography. I thought that was totally unfair and told Henry Kissinger they ought to do it over the topographic maps, which would show that all the ridgelines ran north and south - and that our people coming in from Vietnam would have to go over these ridgelines, while the North Vietnamese reinforcements would come right down the valleys. Which is exactly what happened.’

But Kissinger’s problem was to persuade all the U.S. principals involved of the wisdom of the undertaking, not to sow doubts. ‘It was a splendid project on paper,’ he wrote in his memoirs.
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By 1971 Kissinger’s power was at its height. He had practically usurped the responsibilities of the secretary of state, had encroached upon areas usually controlled by the secretary of defense, and was for all practical purposes the chairman of the joint chiefs.
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Through skillful maneuvering he managed to bring everyone into line, whatever their initial misgivings, finally obtaining the agreement of the prime minister of Laos, Prince Souvanna Phouma, through Ambassador McMurtrie Godley (although Souvanna’s son, Prince Mangkhra Phouma, insists his father was presented with a
fait accompli
).

Despite the rigorous attempts to keep the planned invasion secret, there were leaks in Washington. As early as the end of December 1970, staff members who worked for Sen. Edward Kennedy on the refugee committee told journalist T. D. Allman - who had exposed the existence of Long Tieng and reported the first B-52 raid on the Plain of Jars - that they had heard the administration was going to invade Laos. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Allman said, dismissing the invasion as a wild rumor, and simultaneously passing up the story of a lifetime. Six weeks later he was to read of the invasion in the world’s press. Later he reflected philosophically, ‘Knowledge of Laos could be a disadvantage.’
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But the secret got out anyway. Incredibly, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, briefed the Saigon press corps on the invasion five days before it was launched, imposing an embargo on the story until the operation was actually underway. The news was immediately widely leaked, the first time many senior U.S. officers to be involved in the invasion heard of the plan. The North Vietnamese, well prepared in any event for such an attack on a route upon which they had become totally dependent, were now specifically forewarned.

‘The operation, conceived in doubt and assailed by skepticism, proceeded in confusion,’ Kissinger wrote, using a sentence with a Churchillian cadence to describe a military gamble cursed with ill fortune from the moment it was launched.
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Everything went wrong.

The South Vietnamese committed their very best soldiers to the invasion, which jumped off on schedule on February 8, 1971. The lack of U.S. troops was to be compensated for by tactical air support, assault and armed escort helicopters flown by U.S. Army pilots, and massive B-52 strikes. But terrible weather limited the tactical air support, and there were periods of fog so bad that even the helicopters could not operate. A continuous downpour of rain turned the main invasion route into a quagmire.

The incursion stalled far short of Tchepone within twelve days, while the enemy counterattacked in strength. Communication links between South Vietnamese infantry and artillery broke down. Some troops fought well, but they were no match for the experienced NVA, and even the elite units broke under sustained assault.

In Washington the debacle was viewed in horror. ‘Kissinger willingly assumed a field marshal role when things went well,’ Gen. Bruce Palmer, Jr., later wrote, ‘but, not understanding the nature of war and its treacherous uncertainties, became irritable and upset when LAMSON 719 stalled... At the climax of the crisis Kissinger could stand it no longer and sent his trusted “deputy field marshal” Haig to assess the situation personally.’
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The report Haig brought back from Vietnam destroyed the last of the White House’s illusions of what the invasion might achieve. Kissinger railed that the operation deviated from the original plan - an armchair critique unencumbered by the realities of the battlefield.

On March 9, President Thieu called off the invasion, and the surviving troops withdrew over a twelve-day period that became a nightmare. Although they had made some gains - the enemy had sustained twelve thousand dead and their lines of communication had been temporarily disrupted, factors that would delay their next major offensive - none of the original objectives of the invasion was achieved.

At the end more than five thousand of a South Vietnamese assault force numbering seventeen thousand were killed or wounded; more than a hundred U.S. Army choppers were lost in combat, with another six hundred damaged, many of them so badly they would never fly again. The USAF also lost seven fighter-bombers. American casualties in this non-American assault totaled 176 dead, 1,042 wounded, and 42 missing in action.
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Most significantly, even at the height of the fighting, the North Vietnamese maintained a sufficient flow of supplies to their forces inside South Vietnam.

Critical weaknesses of the South Vietnamese Army had been put in sharp relief: principally, an overdependence on U.S. firepower and air support, and a measurably poorer performance because of the absence of American advisers. The rout shook the Saigon high command, which now took a pessimistic view of their chances of surviving a future without the Americans.

In public the White House put a brave face on things. President Nixon endorsed Kissinger’s assessment of the operation: ‘If I had known before it started that it was going to come out exactly the way it did, I would still have gone ahead with it.’
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But in his memoirs Kissinger admitted, ‘The Laos incursion fell far short of our expectations.’
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In a televised speech on April 7, 1970, President Nixon declared, ‘Tonight I can report Vietnamization has succeeded.’ Benefit of hindsight led him to modify this extravagant claim in his memoirs, although he still maintained the invasion had proved worthwhile because there was no Communist offensive in 1971. ‘The net result was a military success but a psychological defeat... in South Vietnam where morale was shaken by media reports of the retreat.’
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The reports, which included TV film of panicked soldiers clinging to the skids of American evacuation helicopters, might not have told the whole story, but they provided a graphic account of the rout and hell which LAMSON 719 became.

The verdict outside the White House was more outspoken. ‘A totally irresponsible exercise’ was William Sullivan’s judgment. The current ambassador, G. McMurtrie Godley, said, ‘I never thought it would be the failure that it was - with the terrible loss of life.’
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Once again the war was viewed from Washington through distorting mirrors, and it was thought that the careful use of words could transform defeat into victory. In Laos itself it was increasingly difficult to sustain the illusion.

The war in Laos had moved south in earnest after the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, when part of the Communist supply route into South Vietnam was cut off. Later still, in 1971 when the South Vietnamese Army invaded Laos in an attempt to cut the Trail, the panhandle again became the principal area of activity. The main base for the Ravens was Pakse, a sleepy place on the banks of the Mekong with the atmosphere of a Mexican border town. Situated on the edge of the Bolovens Plateau - the panhandle’s geographical and strategic equivalent to the Plain of Jars - it controlled the gateway to the south.

When the plateau was in friendly hands, Thai artillery and roadwatch teams on the Bolovens were able to help control the roads which ran beneath it. During 1965, increased use of the Trail led to greater food requisition and impressment of the local population, and there was an escalation in military activity as the enemy extended their control westward. As the war dragged on and the North Vietnamese improved the Trail, they also made efforts to control the Bolovens, and January 1968 marked the beginning of three years of sporadic and sometimes bitter fighting.

North Vietnamese military strategy in the Laotian panhandle was to isolate the towns in the Mekong valley, and by the end of 1969, Communist troops had most of them surrounded and also controlled the roads. As in the north, towns and territory changed hands on a seasonal basis; similarly, the deficiencies of the Royal Lao Army were made up by tribal irregulars and Thai mercenaries led by U.S. Special Forces officers seconded to the CIA.

Deprived of the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville in March 1970 because of the U.S. invasion of the country, the North Vietnamese began to use the Se Kong River as a main waterway route. This meant disposing of the Royal Lao Army’s garrison at Attopeu, which threw down its arms and retreated rapidly when the enemy announced their intended attack.

After a series of battles, the Communists gained control of the eastern rim of the Bolovens in August 1970. In 1971, regular units of the NVA replaced the Pathet Lao, and the nature of the war became fierce. The Laotian standoffs and gentlemanly agreements became a thing of the past. The CIA attempted to counter the new threat by fielding more Thai troops.

But by early April 1971, the enemy took Paksong, one of the small towns on the Bolovens and the closest to Pakse (a particularly cruel loss to the Ravens because it was the strawberry capital of the country). A plan to recapture it was greeted by the Ravens with pessimistic skepticism. Instead of relying on the Royal Lao Army, a young CIA firebrand - call sign Sword - was going to lead an attack with his irregulars - Bataillon Guerrier 403. He arrived in Pakse prior to the upcoming battle, and the Ravens were not impressed.

‘This guy had driven sixty miles to see the war,’ said Frank Kricker, one of the Pakse Ravens. ‘We were really leery having someone come from another place to show us how to fight the war.’ Kricker took one look at the newcomer, who seemed to be fifteen years old, and nudged his friend Bill Lutz: ‘I can’t believe this.’

Sword stood up at the briefing and spoke quietly to the assembled Ravens, who lounged disrespectfully at the back of the room. ‘I will need air cover at a quarter after five tomorrow morning - our troops are going in to take Paksong. That’s what we came here for and that’s what we are going to do.’

Sword left the room. The Ravens looked at one another, certain the newcomer had no idea of what he was up against. The NVA had barricaded themselves into the houses of the town, and it would take brutal house-to-house street fighting to move them. ‘Getting his battalion off its dead ass at five in the morning is going to be a good one,’ Frank Kricker said.

But at exactly five the following morning, Sword stood in front of his tribal irregulars and led them down the road in a forced march on Paksong. Using automatic weapons, grenades, and even knives in hand-to-hand combat, the troops fought their way through the town until by the end of the day it was in their possession. The soldiers returned to Pakse grinning, some carrying human ears as grisly war trophies. Sword looked as fresh-faced and youthful as the previous day, but the Ravens now saw him in a different light.

But only a few days later the enemy moved back into Paksong. Frank Kricker flew over the town on his way to see what he could find for a three-ship of Navy A-7s that had just checked in with him. Normally the NVA positioned heavy artillery or antiaircraft guns on the outskirts of a town, but flying overhead at three hundred feet Kricker found himself eye to eye with the gunner of a dual-mounted 12.7mm antiaircraft gun. The gun was parked beside a building right in the middle of the town. Kricker was so close that he could see the gunner’s face. ‘I would recognize him now if I saw him again. I knew right then it was all over.’

The gunner opened up at point-blank range. Kricker felt the plane coming apart around him as the shells ripped into it. The Lead A-7 saw the Bird Dog fly into the fire. ‘FAC’s hit - I see him going in,’ he radioed to his wingmen. ‘I’m in.’

The plane dived toward the town, followed by his colleagues. The engine on the O-1 had been hit and was over-speeding and the oil pressure had gone, but Kricker somehow managed to turn the plane and pull off. The Navy jets spread CBU and Rockeye, a thermite charge used to burn trucks, over the gun and destroyed it.

Some short distance from the town, Kricker’s engine quit. He was flying so low he had only moments to act. He slammed the plane down in a coffee plantation, where the trees snapped off the wings. ‘I thought my Backseater was hurt because I knew that somebody in the airplane was bleeding to death and I was hoping it was him.’

Kricker turned and saw his Backseater staring at him wide-eyed. Although he felt no pain, a bullet had taken off Kricker’s left toe and gone on to tear open his right hip. His jeans and left shoe were burned by the bullet. Almost immediately an Air America chopper was on the scene, and he was medevac’d to the hospital in Udorn, where forty stitches were put into his leg in an emergency operation.