BATTLE OF INDO-CHINA: Amphibians of the Cis Bassac

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

One of the world’s greatest rivers is the Mekong, which rises in Tibet and flows* 2,800 miles to the sea at the southeastern corner of Indo-China. The Mekong delta is a 100-mile-long wedge of swampland, rice fields, palm trees and mangroves, called the Cis Bassac. “The Devil does not want for water here,” say the French who use the Cis Bassac as a base for operations against Communist guerrillas infesting the thick Foret Inondee to the west and the marshes of the Plaine des Jones to the east. Fifteen times in the last year the French have gone out after the Communists in the Cis Bassac. Only twice have they made contact, each time by falling into a Communist ambush from which only superior firepower saved them. Last week the French made another attempt to track down and destroy the guerrillas. TIME Correspondent John Dowling saw the fight, cabled:

FRENCH Commander Colonel Raoul Lehagre heard that three Communist battalions had joined near the Catholic village of An Hiep, in the upper end of the Cis Bassac wedge. To attack them, he sent 1) a battalion of the Foreign Legion; 2) two battalions of Vietnamese and Annamite units; 3) two batteries of 25-pounders; 4) a squadron of the small amphibious vehicles called “Weasels.” A tiny navy of LCMs and LCVPs (small landing craft) under Ensign Pierre Le-corche was ordered to hold the Mekong River line.

By Day: Hot Green Swamps. The Legionnaires closed in from the east, the Vietnamese and Annamites from the north and south. Above them a single French plane spotted the Communists, called artillery shots. It was strange country to fight over: hot green swamps, flatlands laced with muddy, jungle-lined creeks.

Surprised, the Communists began a fighting withdrawal, threw one battalion into the path of the Foreign Legion to buy time. But French officers took their German Legionnaires on into the Communist machine-gun and mortar fire, finally into a bayonet charge. When the Legionnaires reached the Communist line, they found that the Reds had pulled back, taking their wounded with them. Four times through the heat of the day the cursing, green-clad Legionnaires, red with sweat and black with paddy mud, made their attacks. Each time the Reds withdrew. To the south, French soldiers crossed neck-deep streams under sniper fire. They put their dead and wounded in a dugout canoe and went forward. From the river, Ensign Lecorche led his LCMs and LCVPs cautiously into the jungle by way of a narrow stream. A sniper’s bullet hit Lecorche’s second in command, and when Communist machine guns and automatic rifles opened up from both sides, Lecorche’s tanned, half-naked young French sailors answered with .so-caliber machine-gun fire, blew the Communists out of the trees and mud emplacements.

By Night: Escape. By evening the Communists, packed in a tight circle, were being dive-bombed and strafed by two Bearcat fighters from Saigon. Then came the tropic darkness, and clouds to obscure the moon. The French thought they had the noose drawn tight. Not until next morning did they find out that one French unit had failed to reach its planned position on the river. Through this gap the Communists had escaped in the night.

Back down the river came the French, tired, covered to their necks in mud, their dead wrapped in mattings, their wounded in slings or limping on canes. They had killed 88 Communists, captured 25. Colonel Lehagre smiled quizzically. Said he: “In another 18 months the war will be over in southern Indo-China. But right now, I think they are gathering again right over here.” He pointed to a spot on a map. “And when they do, we will go out after them again and again and again.”

*During May’to October, floodwaters, backing up on the delta, cause the last 240 miles of the Mekong to flow backwards into Lake Tonle Sap in Cambodia.