A War of Angry Cousins

(3 of 9)

After laying a carpet of artillery fire to soften Vietnamese defenses, an estimated 60,000 Chinese troops advanced in a broad surge along the jagged 480-mile border. Infantry, supported by T-59 tanks, spurted through the passes of the rugged, hilly terrain, bowled over Vietnamese outposts and fanned out in a broad, coordinated advance about six miles deep. By Hanoi's own admission, the Chinese after two days had occupied eleven towns and villages and had surrounded Dong Dang with tanks and self-propelled guns.

Then they appeared to pause.

In Peking, Teng assured a visiting Argentine diplomat that the invasion would be "circumspect" and "will not be extended or expanded in any way." That statement seemed to confirm the initial Western interpretation of the possible Chinese objective: a swift, hit-and-run offensive, and then go home. But the Chinese were not yet ready to withdraw. At this point the Chinese shock troops, led by General Yang Teh-chih, China's deputy field commander in the Korean War, had not tangled directly with Viet Nam's crack regular army—battle-tested by victorious successive campaigns in South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia and equipped with the latest sophisticated Soviet hardware.

Abundantly forewarned, the Vietnamese let regional border forces and local village militia take the brunt of the initial attack. An estimated three to five regular divisions (at least 30,000 troops) were held back. They were apparently arrayed in a crescent-shaped defense line that stretched from Yen Bai on the Red River in the west to Quang Yen on the east coast. Their mission: to defend the coastal plain surrounding Hanoi and Haiphong, and wait for the Chinese to show their hand.

On Tuesday, the fourth day of the war, the Chinese advance resumed with a vengeance. A seemingly formless front rapidly developed two main, logical prongs of attack: one in the northwest on the railroad line leading south to Hanoi, the other in the the east on the major rail link that parallels Highway 1, the jugular thoroughfare from Friendship Pass. Both thrusts appeared to aim directly at Viet Nam's capital. At the same time, an auxiliary Chinese force, spearhead units of an estimated three more divisions, probed toward the coast for a possible end run aimed at cutting off Highway 4 to Lang Son and later, perhaps, the main Vietnamese reinforcement and supply route of Highway 1, which years ago gained the dolorous nickname "street without joy."

In the west, as the bulk of the Chinese offensive doubled its penetration to ten or 15 miles, PLA infantry captured Lao Cai, a rail center of 100,000 on the Red River. To counter this threat to Hanoi, the Vietnamese marched north to engage the Chinese at Lang Son and Dong Dang.

"Several thousand men of both regular and regional Vietnamese units with heavy arms are advancing toward Chinese positions," a correspondent for Tokyo's Asahi Shimbun reported from Lang Son. He described Vietnamese trucks with 105-mm. guns rolling north on Highway 1; other vehicles carried troops, weapons, ammunition and fuel toward the border. Meanwhile, under the fire of long-range 130-mm. howitzers, columns of refugees fled south, leaving Lang Son to the troops, security cadres and government officials who teemed around staging areas.