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"We left the Laotian airstrip at Pakse at 10:25 a.m., flying at 2,500 ft. Some 23 minutes later, my pilot announced: 'We are now at the Cambodian border.' Two minutes later we had located the trail. It snaked out of Cambodia, clear as a road map. The area was flat and only spottily foliaged. I could see the Se Kong River in the background. A note I made at the time says: 'No question about it. From the river going east [toward South Viet Nam] is a large road. The trail winds and turns, the trees growing thicker in a narrow valley.' Sometimes we lost sight of the road. But it seems safe to conclude that it is one continuous trail capable of carrying trucks from Cambodia through Laos into Viet Nam. We flew eastward, diving to less than 1,000 ft. for as close a look as we could get. We decided to unload our ordnance—two napalm canisters, 24 rockets and 700 rounds of .50-cal. machine-gun ammunition per plane—in a heavily forested area about four kilometers north of the Cambodian border. One after another, our planes dived in, hoping to hit hidden trucks under the foliage."
As many as 40 trucks a day use the gravel-topped Sihanouk Trail. The trail bristles with 12.7-mm. antiaircraft emplacements, and other sources say that there are at least 30 Viet Cong supply depots strung along its length. A dozen North Vietnamese regiments are currently poised for action in South Viet Nam, and of these, at least four are inside Cambodia. Half of the remaining eight are within easy marching distance of the Cambodian sanctuary and the supply lines of the Sihanouk Trail. Its strategic value to the Communists is as an alternate route to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This main southbound network has been improved by 200 miles of new roads surfaced with crushed stone and often concealed by bamboo trellises covered with branches. Down it flow an estimated 5,500 to 7,000 men each month. In an effort to stem the tide, Guam-based B-52 Stratoforts last week carpet-bombed infiltration outlets in South Viet Nam's "Zone C" for the eighth time in eleven days. But only Ma and his antique, prop-driven T-28s have been hitting the Sihanouk Trail.
Since Cambodia's Sihanouk now offers the Reds active support, he is risking a widening of the war. If the Communist monsoon offensive is to be checked before the rains come, both trails must be severed—or at least heavily interdicted—before they join up in a ribbon of men and supplies that cannot be cut. Though there is no indication that the U.S. will cease to respect Sihanouk's phony neutrality, his policy inevitably carries with it the chance that more and more of the bullets of war will spill over into Cambodia itself.