For the Sake of All Living Things (106 page)

“Once,” Teck mumbled. “The Khsach Sa camp, it’s been liberated?”

“Maybe,” the soldier said. “Maybe leveled in the fighting, eh?” Teck’s heart dropped lower. More announcements came from the speakers. The captured soldiers began to separate by ranks. “Officers there.” The man who’d talked with Teck nudged him toward the smaller group. Down the street yotheas were pulling furniture from the apartment building and piling it against the wall. Some shot the refrigerators. Others burned cars. A few raced, crashed commandeered motorbikes. Cooking pans and transistor radios were confiscated and tied to backpacks and web gear. Anyone protesting was forced into the alleys. Fires burned in every direction.

“
Parlez-vous français
?” a Krahorri officer asked a senior-looking underweared prisoner. “
Oui
,” the man answered. He was hustled away.

Teck glanced back at the soldier who’d nudged him. There was no place to go. Nothing else to do. He stepped slowly to a group of lieutenants. His feet dragged, his mind felt like wet muck. Rumors, opinions, flowed subtly all about him. “Siem Reap has fallen, too.” “They’re pulling six thousand from here. Going to use them on Phnom Penh.” “Those bastards deserve it.” “They’ve already set up street committees to monitor security. We should have surrendered months ago.” “Listen to that. Listen! That
is
Samdech Euv!”

Teck’s group was trotted barefoot down the main street to the government building. “...There will be a general amnesty...”

Sihanouk’s voice surrounded them. “...All government employees, leaders and soldiers, if they surrender unconditionally to the glorious liberation forces, will be granted amnesty...”

Inside, one by one. “You are...”

“Pech Chieu Teck.”

The Krahom major laughed. “Pech Chieu Teck, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Son of Sisowath Thich Soen?”

“Yes.” A smile flicked to Teck’s face. To be recognized, he thought, by a major, that’s something. The smile sagged in the melancholy of his fatigue and bereavement. Cambodia was dead.

“You are a very corrupt supply officer, eh?”

“Brother.” Teck bowed his head. “I...”

Met Rin interrupted. “When did you come from Phnom Penh?”

“That’s what I must tell you,” Teck said. “I am surprised you know me, but you are right. Once I was with supply, in the capital. But I was not meant to be corrupt. I was very young, you know. The corruption sickened me so I quit...that’s maybe two years. Now I am just a corporal in the Auto-Defense.”

“Just a corporal, eh?” Major Rin said pleasantly. “A bourgeois corporal, eh?”

“For that, Brother,” Teck answered, “I am very sorry. You know, I admire what you have done for our country. The war is over, eh? It is a great burden lifted from our backs.”

“Ha!” Rin chuckled behind closed lips. “Corporal Pech, you could turn white to black.”

“Truly, Brother,” Teck answered calmly. “I want only to help the nation, to join the entire population in reconstructing our country.”

“You shall.” Rin smiled. To the guards in the office Rin nodded. They grabbed Teck’s elbows.

Teck jerked. “Now what?!” he demanded.

Rin smiled pleasantly. “Now,” he said, “you will help build the country.”

Teck froze. He stared Rin in the eyes and he sensed a tremendous shallowness. “You are not Khmer after all, eh?” Teck shook his head. The guards grabbed him again. Sadly Teck muttered, “You are only Communists.”

Behind the mayor’s office the executioners laughed. “Another one,” one said, “who’s spit on his own chest.”

Night descended upon the Khsach Sa camp. Many people had come, run through, vanished. A hospital worker had pulled Vathana away from her children. “Your sister, Sophan, they killed her. You must flee.”

Vathana had stared blankly, at once convinced and disbelieving. “I will wait for my husband.”

“Go now, Angel.” The worker sped on.

An old association friend had come. “Angel, you worked with the poet.”

“Yes, everyone knows.”

“He was Viet Minh. They’re killing all the Viet Minh.”

“I’m not Viet Minh.”

“They’ll kill you anyway. Go quickly.”

“Teck will come.”

All afternoon they had heard the fighting and withstood the flow of those deserting and those fleeing the forward line of the Krahom. Late in the afternoon when the sounds of battle slowed, a few Krahom advance soldiers came and told them to remain where they were until they were called. That began the refugee camp evacuation. Then came dusk and the flames leaping into the dimming sky as the pagoda and orphanage were consumed. Vathana prayed and clutched her children and prayed and collected their few belongings and rolled them into a bundle and prayed again. She prayed to Buddha, she prayed to the spirit of the sky, she prayed to Norodom Sihanouk. “You are such a gentle king.” Vathana’s lips moved but she made no sound. “I love you very much. Bring us peace. I miss you very much. Bring us peace.”

Then came a naked soldier. He ran into the tent. He ran to her corner, blubbered, “If you cry, they shoot you.” Vathana rose, grasped an old krama to give to the young man. He took no note. “Pech Chieu Teck,” he reported. “I saw him. They ate his liver.”

HISTORICAL SUMMATION

Part 4 (1974-1978)

Prepared for

The Washington News-Times

J. L. Sullivan

April 1985

T
HE STORM AND TSUNAMI
set off five years earlier by the shifting of international plates did not end with the fall of the three Southeast Asian capitals to Communist regimes. Aftershocks of mass evacuations, concentration camps, bloodbaths, starvation, waves of forced migration and murder, and continuous attempts at cultural extermination continued to batter the peoples of Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos. In the West, political and social repercussions rumbled through America. And the war, wars, fighting, did not end! Not only did battles continue to be fought within each nation, but almost immediately fighting erupted between Democratic Kampuchea and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

Having won the spoils of war, one must ask,
why
did the new regimes pursue policies which led to more internal and external conflict and killing? Why did the Communists of both Viet Nam and Kampuchea strive to eliminate some or all cultural memory? What drove the victors?

Also, how important was, is, the end—the final collapse or final victory, depending on one’s perspective? Of course it is important as a historic event, as a human tragedy or human triumph—but is the event itself important in terms of understanding the event itself?

It is not in the scope of this report to recount all the political chatter, the attempts to negotiate “controlled solutions,” the verbal ruses; nor can all the battles and maneuvers that led to the fall (“liberation”) of Phnom Penh, Saigon and Vientiane be detailed. Yet, to understand the impact on the Cambodian people, it is essential to reconstruct at least a skeleton of that time.

A SOURCE OF AMERICAN MISUNDERSTANDING

Conclusions about the final collapse, often based on media reports, have tended to be simplistic and shallow. To those who believed deeply that American involvement was wrong, illegal and/or immoral, Saigon and Phnom Penh fell because the U.S.-backed regimes were corrupt and had the backing of neither their people nor their armies. The falls signaled the end of a long and bitter American mistake. To staunch supporters of American efforts to stop the Communists, those Southeast Asian capitals fell because the United States, through diplomatic sleight of hand, and beneath a veil of “peace with honor,” “decent interval,” and “legislative mandate,” quit and abandoned Viet Nam and Cambodia by drastically reducing military aid, by effectively pulling the rug from under its friends.

Generally, Western press coverage of the events of that time, and reviews and reports of those events in the ensuing years, have focused, like a coroner’s conclusions, on the final outcome, on the last four months, without analyzing the events of 1973 and 1974. For example, in the 641-day period from 1 March 1973 (after the Paris peace agreement was signed) to 1 December 1974 (before the final offensives began), the three major U.S. television networks aired 785 news stories relating to Southeast Asia—an average of less than three items each per week. Of those items, 219 related to the fighting in or bombing of Cambodia. By contrast, the networks broadcast 645 news stories in the 61-day period beginning 1 March 1975 (when Saigon’s and Phnom Penh’s collapse seemed certain)—an average of twenty-five items each per week. Newspaper and news magazine coverage. followed similar patterns. Among the numerous accounts of the falls, there are a few good ones.
The Fall of the South
, part of the Boston Publishing Company series
The Vietnam Experience
, presents a balanced assessment.

THE FALL OF PHNOM PENH AND SAIGON

On the evening of 1 April 1975 the enclave of Neak Luong, swollen to a quarter-million people by refugees and FANK soldiers, fell to Krahom yotheas. The fighting had been intense and the city smoldered for days. The fall of Neak Luong released 5,000 Communist soldiers with six newly captured 105mm howitzers to join the assault on the capital.

During the next sixteen days, the Krahom armies tightened the noose strangling Phnom Penh. Using tens of thousands of rounds of artillery, the Communists concentrated their fire both on civilian concentrations, including the sprawling refugee camps, and on FANK garrisons. American efforts to effect an orderly surrender and transfer of power were scoffed at by both government-in-exile leader Norodom Sihanouk and the chiefs of the Kampuchean Communist Party (KCP), Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Pol Pot. With military victory imminent they had no reason to negotiate. Of major importance to them, however, was capturing Phnom Penh, and thus Cambodia, before North Viet Nam could capture Saigon and South Viet Nam. As we have seen, the leadership of the KCP was, and had been for many years, fearful of Hanoi’s hegemony. KCP motivation in 1975 had not changed drastically from 1973 when the Krahom attempted to withstand American bombing in order to topple Phnom Penh before the ramifications of the Paris peace agreement allowed the NVA to recommence attacks on Khmer territory; it had not changed from 1971 when yotheas attacked behind NVA lines during Chenla II in an attempt to keep Hanoi from winning in Cambodia; indeed, it was the same motivation which sent Solath Sar (Pol Pot) to Peking in the early 1960s to attempt to establish an independent Khmer revolution with a separate sponsor and supply source; and it was the same impetus from 1954 when the KCP saw the Geneva Agreements as a sellout of the Khmer insurgency.

At 0500 hours, 11 April 1975 (Phnom Penh time), American Ambassador John Gunther Dean received permission from President Gerald Ford to commence Operation Eagle Pull—the evacuation of American embassy personnel and dependants from Cambodia. In slightly more than two hours the next morning, 82 Americans, 159 Khmer and 35 people of other nationalities were whisked via helicopter to U.S. ships in the Gulf of Thailand. Krahom soldiers marched into Phnom Penh five days later. America’s direct involvement with Cambodian affairs had ceased.

Saigon’s fall was perhaps more dramatic and more tragic, for the resistance to that fall, though bungled, was more heroic. For years we have been told Saigon fell with only limited resistance. Perhaps this impression lingers because there were TV cameras in Saigon but none west of Ban Me Thuot, outside Hue, in the Mekong Delta, or at Xuan Loc, with the actual fighting. This excerpt from
The Fall of the South
reflects the usual view:

Throughout the city [Saigon] isolated groups of government soldiers and civilians fired on the advancing [NVA tank-led] columns. Barely eliciting a response from the victorious army, these acts of resistance were largely futile. For the most part, the North Vietnamese marched easily into the city.

It was the lesser-known political and military events of 1973 and 1974 which established the conditions for the fall of Saigon and for the way in which that fall was perceived. Since the Easter Offensive of 1972, South Viet Nam’s Airborne and Marine Divisions, Saigon’s only strategic reserve—that is, the only divisions the ARVN command could call upon to blunt new offensives—were tied down in I Corps below-the DMZ. Throughout 1973 the NVA remanned, re-supplied and expanded its trail and sanctuary system unhindered by U.S. bombing. The expanded trail system included not only the old network in Laos and Cambodia but the new Truong Son Corridor crossing the DMZ and descending through the Khe Sanh plain and the A Shau Valley, past the triborder area, Duc Co, Dak To, the la Drang Valley, Duc Lap, Bu Prang and on south, west of Song Be City (Phuoc Binh) to Loc Ninh. Allowing the establishment of this new corridor, which enabled the NVA to have quick and extensive mobility along the western edge of government-controlled territory, would prove to be the fatal pathogen which led to the death of South Viet Nam. This corridor covered the exact physical area on which so many American-NVA battles were fought, areas which often, even as those battles were being waged, were described by American antiwar legislators as useless ground (for example, Hamburger Hill).

By June 1973 the NVA had recovered sufficiently to strike in the Central Highlands. The NVA 10th Division, led by the NVA 297th Tank Battalion and supported by the NVA 40th Artillery Regiment (130mm howitzers), assaulted at Polei Krong near Kontum. South Viet Namese counterattacks were so strong that two regiments of the NVA’s 10th Division were rendered combat ineffective. Again in August and September the NVA attacked in the highlands, this time the NVA 320th Division near Plei Ku. Again the ARVN was victorious although victory took longer. In October 1973 NVA Provisional Division 95 attacked farther south. The ARVN reacted well, shifting forces to counter the thrust. By the end of the year, the South had again stopped the North.

These battles illustrate several major points. The NVA could mass forces and attain numerical superiority almost at will, but these engagements, and indeed all NVA assaults from the cease-fire to early 1974, demonstrated the growing ability of the South’s Regional and Popular Forces to slow main force NVA attacks. The engagements also demonstrated the ability of, and the necessity for, mobile ARVN reaction forces to turn the tide of battle once the engagements commenced. At the same time these battles exposed serious weakness in the NVA command. As Captain Bill Betson, an instructor at the United States Military Academy, has noted, NVA “generalship does not match that of the South.” He further explains, however, that these battles show the “rifle platoon superiority of the North Viet Namese Army.”