KHE SANH, South Vietnam-Vietnamese soldiers who marched confidently and enthusiastically into Laos three long weeks ago are returning to this forward command post near Khe Sanh visibly shaken and openly questioning the operation still continuing there.

"It's another world in there," a twenty-year-old paratrooper exclaimed to his fellow support troops-who had not yet gone in-as he jumped out of an American helicopter, minutes after leaving the front.

"Last night on Hill 30 it rained rockets. The medics tried to move the wounded but for two hours no one dared move from the bunkers," the boy said nearly breathless as he laid down his dusty M-16 rifle under a bush, and grabbed a tin cup filled with water.

"Will I go back there?" a twenty-two-year-old Ranger, two days back from Laos, asked.

"If they send me I have no choice. But I've gone once. It's someone else's turn. I want to return to my woman in Saigon," the young man shouted out in Vietnamese to a passerby.

For the men who have yet to be tested on the other side of the Xe Pon River, the boundary between Vietnam and Laos in this area, the desire to fight remains unchallenged, the spirit high. Their feelings usually contrast with those of their comrades who have tasted the North Vietnamese guns first.

"I will fight until I die or until all the North Vietnamese are driven back North," twenty-year-old Nguyen Chet, a support soldier in the 49th, Artillery Battalion, remarked, making certain others around would hear his words. Chet has not yet been to Laos.

Vietnamese believe fear is a sign of weakness and seldom like to express such feelings publicly. Such, however, is not the case for those who have been into Laos, have fought, and have returned to speak of their experiences. The heavy fighting the troops have witnessed gives the veterans a right to speak of apprehensions, a right not earned by the others.

"Two of my friends died in a rocket attack. They were on the ground just next to me at the time," one paratrooper said, his head wrapped in white bandages, his eyes peering through, as he waited to be treated in a hot tent serving as an emergency hospital.

"I have fought. No more. I just want to leave here and forget the war. I'm not afraid to die, but who will care for my children?" the twenty-seven-year-old said.

"We can fight if we have enough air support," one soldier remarked, two days after he returned from Laos. "But the rains have not helped, and the American helicopters cannot defend us if the anti-aircraft fire is too strong," he added.

Under a small tent held up by pieces of bamboo cut and tied together in much the same way Vietnamese huts are constructed in the countryside, eight members of an artillery support company discussed the Laotian operation during a rest period.

"Why aren't the Americans fighting with us?" a twenty-year-old asked, sitting on the edge of the green American army cot.

"They are watching us, seeing if we really want to fight," another soldier answered.

"No, it has something to do with the Treaty of Geneva," a third soldier volunteered hesitantly.