Hell on the River

"You can't slow down," said Si Chung Lo, 37, a short and dapper freighter captain from Hong Kong. "You're inviting them to shoot."

Lo had just brought his shell-scarred Lucky Star to the dock in Phnom-Penh last week -the 3,500-ton lead ship in a convoy that had to run a gauntlet of Communist gunfire to reach the encircled Cambodian capital. Normally, such ships -manned by Chinese crews that get large, unspecified war bonuses to do the work -set out every ten days from the South Vietnamese port of Vung Tau with cargoes of machinery, machine parts and fuel. The latest convoy, however, was delayed two weeks while U.S. bombers tried to clear a passage through Communist gunners along the Mekong riverbanks.

The most dangerous part of the 150-mile run up the Mekong from the China Sea came between An Long, 20 miles south of the Cambodian frontier, and Neak Luong, site of a Cambodian naval base 32 miles southeast of Phnom-Penh. With radios at An Long blaring reports of heavy enemy crossfire ahead. South Vietnamese river pilots refused to guide the ships the last few miles to the frontier while Cambodian pilots declined to cross the frontier into foreign waters. Some captains, deciding to proceed anyway, argued loudly for arms. "Give us some machine guns," demanded one. A South Vietnamese officer refused. "No, we will have gunboats and air cover to protect you."

There is, in fact, little protection. Patrol boats shadow convoys, but air cover seldom extends south of the frontier. Once in Cambodian waters, the freighters take aboard a Cambodian pilot and a navy radio operator who tunes in on military frequencies for word of fighting around the bends in the snaking river. "I watch the pilot and the radio operator," says Captain Lo. "When I see them put on their helmets and flak jackets, I do the same. That's all we can do -and hope for the best."

In last week's run, the relatively fast (twelve knots) Lucky Star came under cannon fire one night three miles south of the Cambodian border. Two 75-mm. cannon and a B40 rocket scored direct hits on the vessel's superstructure. Two tankers on Lo's stern caught 14 rockets. When Lo looked back, he saw a smaller cargo vessel, the 1,500-ton Ally, burning and beached on the riverbank. In all, ten of the 18 vessels in the original convoy decided to turn back to An Long.

Lo pressed ahead, only to discover that even friendly forces were dangerous in the darkness. An American plane "came ripping across the river about a tenth of a mile off my bow and dropped a bomb in the water," says Lo. "I don't know what the hell it was doing."

Not even Phnom-Penh is safe. Last January, the Lucky Star was attacked in the harbor by North Vietnamese frogmen using plastique explosives. A month earlier, the Lucky Star's sister ship, the Bright Star, was holed by plastique and sank. Cambodian soldiers routinely stand lookout duty against frogmen, occasionally lobbing grenades off the piers or spraying the water with machine-gun fire. For the crew of the embattled Lucky Star, however, the guards are simply a nuisance. "I wish they would go away," gripes one of the deck crew. "All they do is keep us awake, smoke our cigarettes and drink our beer."

There is talk that freighter captains may refuse to go on running the Communist blockade because of the high risks involved. In fact, some of their cargo is less than crucial. Among the imports brought through Communist shellfire last week: glass beads, French wines and tomato sauce.

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