For the Sake of All Living Things (102 page)

As Nang’s face healed, as his hearing partially returned, he was set to work on this expanded security concept. By November Nang had gathered a small core of subordinates; by February 1974 he had his first class, not of soldiers but of security agents. His dream of being a teacher was again fulfilled yet again he found the fulfillment penultimate. By mid-1974 he was itching to be back in battle.

For Chhuon the twentieth anniversary of Cambodian independence from France, 9 November 1973, was a moment of great sadness. Angkar bestowed its blessing upon Phum 117 and all of Khum 4 by forcing the settlement to abandon its nearly harvestable rice and to again relocate on uncleared ground—a mere six miles west. Communization at the new site was raised to a new level—a new alien mentality to the Krahom inverted pyramid of Khmer culture. Angkar Leou, the High Organization, the Party, now was institutionalized not only to yothea trainees but also to the peasantry as the highest abstraction of love and devotion.

In December Neang Thi Sok died of cholera...died of Krahom policies which forced unsanitary and starvation conditions upon the population, forced them to renounce their pasts, forcibly removed them from their cultural roots, forced them to exist without modern or even semimodern means to protect themselves from hazards in their environment. In January Chhuon was allowed to return to the old settlement, to dismantle his two-man cocoon, carry it to the new site and rebuild it as a one-man hut.
Chrops
, internal spies, multiplied. Chhuon barely trusted his simplest thoughts to his closest friends, Sichau and Moeung.

In 1973 North Viet Nam added 200,000 replacements to its forces in South Viet Nam and along the Cambodian border. Soviet and Chinese military equipment deliveries reached record levels and continued to increase in 1974.

In Neak Luong Vathana withdrew more and more deeply into herself and her family. The refugees, many who had lived in the camp for three years, who had suffered intermittent harassment or terror at the hands of NVA, VC, FANK and ARVN units, who had been horrified by the errant American bombs that had killed 137 and wounded 268, now had a new fear. Local youth gangs rampaged out of control—uncontrollable because FANK had taken all their fathers and uncles, the traditional authority in the culture, and because the nation’s leadership, while ineffective, set an example of corruption and brutality. The refugees came to be afraid of remaining in the camp at night—some even during the day, except to stand in line for rations.

With three children, including the Amerasian Su Livanh, Vathana spent virtually no time with the associations, only a little at the hospital and orphanage. Sophan took over many of her routine duties in the Khsach Sa camp. Kosol, Nem, Doctor Sarin were no longer a part of Vathana’s life. Often she dreamed of Phum Sath Din and of the wonderful years of her childhood. Teck came infrequently, his duties with the Auto-Defense forces, the constant improvement of the “last-resort line,” keeping him at the front. Daily Vathana trekked to the southern berm to bring him provisions, supporting not just him but also Louis. In all the hardship Teck found himself happier than ever before. He was now a man with a cause, a man with a family to protect.

At the beginning of the dry season in 1974 Madame Pech again offered to have Vathana and the children live with her in Phnom Penh. Constantly Vathana thought of the offer, telling herself, At least we’ll be near Aunt Voen, at least we’ll be away from the gangs, at least I will not spend every night clutching Captain Sullivan’s pistol. Without the weapon Vathana too would have dispersed nightly with the refugees into the swamp. Captain Sullivan’s pistol...she often thought. Captain Sullivan, not a single word from him since he left Cambodia. Still, Vathana could not bring herself to leave Teck in his need, to move to the city that had been John Sullivan’s home.

In January 1974 the Krahom temporarily regained momentum. From dispersed patrols and small unit ambushes they moved to heavy artillery raids. Their main targets were the densely packed refugee camps of Phnom Penh. By March they had killed over a thousand dependants and destroyed more than ten thousand homes and huts. In March FANK rallied and drove the KK from the rocket-launch belt, and for seven months, until the end of the next monsoon season, the capital breathed easier.

The United States continued to assist the Lon Nol government and to supply FANK units. In May Kampot, Oudong and Lovek were recaptured or relieved of siege by American-supported FANK units. Arms and ammunition were delivered by U.S. C-130 cargo planes to Phnom Penh airport and carried forward by armed U.S. helicopter teams. The C-130s were escorted by fighter-bombers that engaged enemy troops under the terms of protective reaction. In addition America continued to send in “special teams” on temporary duty. Senator Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, helped to shape the American public’s mood by denouncing this involvement on 15 March 1974. As the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said this “...covert and illegal war cannot be condoned by Congress.” Southeast Asia has been a “breeding ground...of lies, deception and illegal practices long enough.”

By June, the spectre of the impeachment of Richard Nixon, for keeping, or ordering to be kept, secret the “Menu” bombings of Cambodia on and since 17 March 1969, had paralyzed U.S. commitments to Southeast Asia. On 16 May the village of Dak Pek, north of Kontum in South Viet Nam, fell after being battered by seven thousand rounds of NVA artillery. Eleven days later Tuy Atar fell to the NVA after a thousand-round barrage. The United States did not respond.

Monitoring the American scene, the high command of the Krahom met in June 1974 to plan “the final offensive to liberate all Kampuchea.” At this meeting the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh was formally discussed for the first time. Also analyzed was the new NVA offensive in South Viet Nam. Encouraged by the stimulation of American internal contradictions and motivated by fears of an NVA victory over Saigon which would release troops to attack Cambodia, the Center decided to launch the final battle with the upcoming dry season.

On 9 August 1974 Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. Nixon’s early Cambodian policies and his paranoid attempts to keep them secret were at the root of the Watergate scandal. Despite the tremendous progress of Viet Namization, despite the first signs of the maturing of Cambodia’s Auto-Defense Force and the crippling of the Khmer Krahom, Watergate caused the final collapse of American will to defend anyone in Southeast Asia.

At the end of 1974 the U.S. Senate—as North Viet Nam’s 7th and 3B Divisions attacked Phuoc Binh, capital of Phuoc Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon; as Krahom armies again besieged Phnom Penh—voted to reduce military and economic aid to Cambodia by 47 percent. (Aid to South Viet Nam, which had been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1973 to $700 million in 1974, was cut to $300 million in 1975.) Hanoi, the Krahom Center, Moscow and Peking concentrated their attention on Phuoc Long Province. The ARVN, they all saw, no longer had the mobility or power of main force units to stage large-scale, flanking counterattacks to halt or recapture strategic sites. Perhaps more importantly, America’s intention had now become clear. Phuoc Binh, a major provincial capital, fell 6 January 1975. Still the United States did not respond. In Saigon, in Phnom Penh, in Neak Luong, the mood was one of abandonment, betrayal, hopelessness and gloom.

By the end of January 1975 the NVA had increased its forces in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam to five divisions. This was the staging for the battle of Ban Me Thuot. Throughout Southeast Asia there were scattered spots of panic. At Neak Luong 350 FANK soldiers deserted (not to the Khmer Krahom but to back-alley hideouts), placing the onus of defense more heavily upon the local militia. By mid-February FANK losses for 1975 stood at 4,260 dead, 10,000 wounded and 1,000 missing. In addition more than 12,000 dependants had been killed. The Mekong was again cut near Neak Luong and all FANK garrisons downriver were destroyed.

On 10 March at 0200 hours the NVA launched the main attack of its final drive—a mechanized assault led by T-55 tanks and BTR-60 armored personnel carriers—against Ban Me Thuot.

For the Krahom, for Nang, for Vathana, for Chhuon, for all Cambodia, the race for salvation seemed to be a race to win or hold out until after the Communist victory in the neighboring land.

T
HE SHELLING STOPPED. ALL
was quiet. Then an odd noise came out of the mist and smoke and dark. He cocked his head trying to stretch his ear, his hearing. The noise was clear, familiar, yet Teck could not identify it. He pivoted his head, back, forth, back-forth, looking without seeing, searching the line, wondering if others had heard, had identified the source. He placed it in the shroud of yetdark a hundred meters out, a hundred to his right. Perhaps a thousand, perhaps fifty—chir-rick-chrik...chir-rick-chrik. Not moving, he thought, yet because of the shroud he wasn’t sure. Then it stopped.

Behind him Louis slept in quiet agitation as if churning thoughts drove his bodily twitches but his body knew to muffle its sleep noise. A howitzer far behind the line fired. For three months the sounds of war had been constantly upon them; the quiet made him tense. His mind raced. He checked his M-16, his bandoleers of magazines, his gas mask. In January the Communists had started using incapacitating gas fired from B-40 rocket launchers. Equipment delivery had responded. The entire Auto-Defense force, along with FANK’s main force units defending Neak Luong, had been inundated with masks, U.S. jungle fatigues and small arms ammunition. Food remained scarce.

Again the howitzer report—seemingly random sporadic out-going. Beyond Louis was a small lean-to, Teck’s squad’s headquarters. No one slept there—superstition, unlucky, a magnet attracting artillery. Up and down the last-resort line Krahom mortars, 107mm rockets and rounds from captured 105mm cannons had blasted defender lean-tos to shreds. Radios with drained batteries slept there. On the civilian transistor they’d heard reports of rumors that Lon Nol was willing to abdicate if the Communists assured the government that peace talks would follow.

Teck looked over his shoulder. The low lean-to stood in vague silhouette. Beyond, almost in town, a huge, hazy orange-pink semisphere glowed in the blackness—the continuous military pyre, the unending obsequies of cremation. In three months more than twenty thousand government soldiers had been killed. Teck turned forward. The first graying of night’s mantle revealed the shattered tops of two tall palms which marked the bank of the Mekong. The sounds, he thought, had come from there. The sky grayed. A thin white vapor rising from the river spilled over the embankment, crept onto the dry paddies, thinned further and vanished. Teck looked out over the floodplain, down the sentinel line of broken palm trees protecting the riverbank. In the still air not a frond ticked, not a leaf rasped its brother like the rear legs of a cricket. Louis stirred.

In January the Khmer Krahom committed five thousand troops to closing the Mekong below Neak Luong. Using sophisticated Chinese Communist antiship mines, the 1st Eastern Brigade sank twelve freighters. By month’s end the Krahom, equipped by Peking—the results of a new agreement with Hanoi—with more arms and ammunition than ever before, controlled both banks of the river along with all major midriver islands. In February FANK’s 1st Division received a new commanding general and the previously mauled and demoralized unit regained its lost pride. FANK’s 1st took the fight to the Communists. Gradually they enlarged the southern enclave and pushed the front downriver. Throughout the country the Krahom sacrificed the lives of ten thousand yotheas stemming the counterattacks. KK desertions ran higher than ever, and again the Center had to scramble to stave off tactical defeat. FANK’s February successes spurred the Auto-Defense militia to greater aggressiveness. For several weeks these soldiers, too, counterassaulted with the newly coordinated armor, infantry and artillery. It was FANK’s finest hour, its period of highest leadership. By 31 March, though the defenders had fought hard, the closing of the river and the ensuing unlifted siege ran them dry. Food and certain military supplies, particularly batteries, needed to be scrounged. Communications with Phnom Penh and between units all but ceased. Inside the Neak Luong perimeter, sixty to seventy thousand artillery-battered civilians languished, half starved—the rice airlift to Phnom Penh did not extend to the southern citadel.

“You’re still up, eh?” Louis joined Teck on the berm.

“You slept well?” Teck asked, looking at his close friend.

Louis grunted. “Like water splashed in hot oil,” he said. “I’m so tired but I don’t sleep. Are there provisions?”

“I haven’t gone to see,” Teck answered. “Maybe there’s lemon grass fish with hot chili rice, eh?”

Louis scoffed. “The only hot chili here is between your legs. Look, Brother, I’ve saved this all year but you must give it to her.”

“Eh?”

Louis pulled from his pant-leg pocket a wad of cloth. Slowly he unwrapped it. In the gray air a thin ring shone gold. “When she comes, give it to her. Tell her to get us some better food. I have to have more to eat. All night I dreamed of food.”

Louis dropped the ring in Teck’s palm. Teck rubbed it with his thumb, feeling its smoothness. He did not speak but only looked at his friend. Louis did not look back but kept his head down. Down the line other defenders were moving. Behind them the pyre glow dissipated into the dawn. Louis mumbled, bitched lowly as he took up his position. Finally Teck said, “You still don’t like her, do you?”

“Aa...,” Louis sneered.

“Vathana. You’re still angry with her.”

“Without her I’d have starved.”

“No,” Teck said quietly. “I mean over the red-haired
phalang
.”

“She’s your wife. Not mine. I only think of you.”

“I know,” Teck said. “It’s good to have you watch over me. But, Brother, I’m not angry. For me, don’t be angry with her.” Louis cleared his throat, spit the night’s phlegm into the dry dust, did not speak. “Do you know what my littlest imp did yesterday? Or two days ago?”