For the Sake of All Living Things (28 page)

Nang chirred, an odd yet specific Jarai sonant mannerism indicating confusion, but before Bok could rattle off a string of questions in that language, Nang asked in slightly broken Khmer if the officer spoke the Cambodian language.

“So, who are you?” Bok asked in Khmer. He reached a hand to his face, massaged his chin, glowered at the cowering boy. Nang repeated the lies he’d told earlier, embellishing with even more details. As he spoke he respectfully lowered his head. Inside he shuddered, confused. Could this truly be Bok Roh? Bok Roh the violent manic savage? Could this man, sitting in a wicker chair, reading a newspaper not unlike his father used to, be the target of his vengeance?

“He says”—the large man turned from Nang and spoke to the officers in Viet Namese—“that his father was French-Khmer and his mother Jarai, that both were killed by American bombs on the village of Plei The.”

“Do you know the village?” one officer asked.

“I do. I don’t. I know the area.” Bok glanced back at Nang.

“When did he say they were bombed?” an officer asked.

Bok translated. To the officers he interpreted the answer, “Two years ago. Maybe three. He says he was very young.”

The oldest officer shook his head. “
Tien su no
! Hell! Why do they bother us with these little problems?”

Nang bowed and stepped to the officer. Feigning confusion, absorbing as much detail as possible in the two-second glance, he shook his hand back and forth over one corner of the map and muttered Plei The.

“Tell him I don’t care where it is,” the officer snapped. “It’s not on this map.”

“Come here boy,” Bok Roh said in Jarai. His voice was calm, gentle. “You look familiar,” he said. He eyed him up and down. “Maybe like I did when I was seven or eight.” Bok chuckled, stood. Nang rolled his head back, feigning shock at the giant’s height. “I could use a porter who’s good at languages. These Viets won’t stoop to learn.
Parlez-vous français
?”

“Oui.”
Nang laughed.
“Unpeu.”

In the distance, thunder exploded again. Bok Roh froze. He snapped his head toward the older officer.
“Tien su no!”
The man shook. The thunder rolled toward them without pause. The younger officer jumped. The older rose slowly, deliberately, snuffed the lantern. All about soldiers could be heard scurrying. The thunder grew. The earth trembled. Bok grabbed Nang, forced him to the ground. He covered the boy with his body as the first bomb flash erupted. The earth burst. Roar and concussion swept across the ground. Bamboo slivers shot like arrows into the hut. Steel shards sliced soldiers at the column’s south point. Dirt clumps crashed about the center. Nang felt pinned, not safe. Bok’s body covered him. Bok Roh who’d killed...was over him! A second concussion flattened the shack. Above, over a thirty-kilometer stretch of border, U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers computer-released their ordnance, eighty 500-pound bombs each. Fifty sorties, each designated for a half-mile-wide by two-mile-long bomb box, targets identified by electronic sensors and aerial infrared reconnaissance.

Another series of crashes. Closer. Erupting burning sucking the air from the graying sky, throwing them up, crashing down, earth banging like hammer-smashed anvil, smoke blackening the fog. Nang pushed up, gulped for air, wanting to see, hear, witness. Bok Roh held him. Then the giant lifted him like a football scooped in one hand tight against his side, crouched, ran. About them men screamed. The bombing stopped. Fires smouldered. Huge rings, craters, were blown clear, clean as new-plowed paddies. Nang’s ears stung, hurt, hurt not only at the ear but all the way to the top of his throat. The sky lightened. Bok Roh halted. He seemed surprised to find Nang hanging from his hand. Nang was shocked, not witless, not dazed, but awed by Bok’s power. He squirmed from the giant’s grasp, dropped to the earth. Then he took the big man’s hand and led him to a crater berm. “Come. Come,” Nang whispered. “If they follow up with troops we’ll need cover.”

Bok Roh too was shocked. His face was burned, his left arm bloody. The concussion of the closest bomb had left him stunned. He shook his head violently, attempting to stop the roar though the bombers had long flown by. Then he started. Khat Doh’s sense of survival rocked him. Beyond them sergeants snapped at men, organized, counted.

Then all was quiet.

Slowly jungle noises returned—birds chirped, a monkey whooped, a small enemy reconnaissance plane buzzed. Nang crept from the giant’s side, squatted behind him, beneath tilted bamboo cover. A lieutenant approached, reported to Bok Roh. There were two dead, seven seriously wounded. The column would not move until the reconnaissance plane went off station.

“You must eat,” Nang whispered to Bok Roh. He had gotten the giant’s ration and his own, had eaten a third of the giant’s. “You must eat,” he repeated calmly. “They say we’ll move shortly. There are Americans to the north.”

Inside, Nang was bursting, frenzied. Again he was alive, unscathed, liberated from fear of harm, elevated by having cheated death, yet he was confused, enthralled with the giant, this new giant, a man who could kill him or save him at will.

“Let me change the dressing and clean your arm.” Nang bowed.

“Khat Doh, you should learn Viet Namese,” Bok said in Jarai as Nang unwound the first hasty bandage.

“Because they won’t stoop to learn Jarai,” Nang retorted.

“No, because they fight for us all,” Bok Roh said. “Because their victory is inevitable.”

“They would as soon destroy Jarai as Americans.” Nang coughed the words out apologetically. Again, in the sky over the valley a small enemy plane buzzed.

“The American war is aggression against all the peoples of Southeast Asia,” Bok said sadly. “The Americans violate our fundamental national rights. Ouch!”

“There’s much dirt in the cut.”

“It’s not deep,” Bok said, leaning over, eyeing the scraped skin below his elbow. Nang lifted Bok’s hand, rolled his arm, forcing him to see the deeper jagged slash on the underside. Bok grimaced. The wound was not deep but looked nasty. Nang smeared on an antibacterial salve. “They escalate the war with these B-52s and their poison gases,” Bok said. “These are crimes against our people. Defoliating crops so people starve is a crime.”

Bok squeezed his hand into a fist, testing the arm. He watched Nang work. “Where did you learn this?” He spoke slowly in Viet Namese. Nang understood the words “where” and “learn” but he did not answer. Bok asked again in French.

“Around,” Nang answered in Khmer.

Forcefully Bok Roh said, “You know too much not to learn Viet Namese. I’ll teach you. You’ll be my aide.”

Nang looked up. A porter came with Bok’s backpack and gear. Sheathed at the pack’s side was a huge machete. Nang smiled.

Bok Roh was not a soldier of the North Viet Namese Army. Nor was he a member of the National Liberation Front, or of FULRO, or of the Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces. He might have been labeled Khmer Viet Minh though even there he was not a soldier. He held a peculiar position, one which gave him the status of a middle-level diplomat or an officer—though he represented no government, commanded no troops, analyzed no intelligence, prepared no supplies and planned no operations. Indeed, the giant had no freedom. He was as much a prisoner, even if willingly, of the NVA as he would have been had he been held captive in a jungle jail. Bok Roh was incarcerated by his past, by conflicting brutal mercenary actions. He was trusted by no one, held outlaw by all, valued no greater than dust. Yet, with his massive physical stature and his mastery of thirty languages and dialects, he was also invaluable.

Bok Roh was pensive, lonesome, a man who buried his mental agitation in books, magazines, reports. Each day he pored over English, French, Chinese and Viet Namese newspapers. When at Bu Ntoll he studied Tolstoi in Russian, Mishima in Japanese and Marx, Engels and Hesse in German. His eye for the written word was nearly photographic; his ear for the spoken nearly perfect. Yet each year he found his talents of less value to others, of less pleasure to himself. He no longer wrote the speeches he delivered but relied on NVA political cadre to tell him exactly what to say. No longer did he question village raids or massacres, but abdicated total responsibility to NVA intelligence and operations officers.

A hundred meters above and several hundred meters south of the camp a white phosphorus marking round burst. Again there was scurrying, soldiers scratching the earth, forming depressions, jumping into fighting positions or hugging crater berms. Two hundred meters south of the way station six 105mm howitzer rounds exploded. Bok grabbed his pack, reached for Nang. The boy was down, shrunken to a ball like a hard-backed insect, shrunken into a small foot-deep depression. Six more rounds screamed in, exploded in succession. Bok dropped beside Nang, pulled his pack over them. Six rounds exploded at the camp’s edge. Soldiers began running, fleeing north. The rounds, shot from Bu Prang, were being walked north in lines a hundred meters apart—three aerial bursts and three contact detonations in each salvo. Mortar rounds, dull thunks, dropped in behind the howitzer explosions. Again Bok reached to pull Nang under him but Nang sprung, sprinted from the giant’s hand. The man raced behind the boy. To the east planes buzzed. Another salvo burst behind them. Soldiers screamed. Forty, fifty dashed, crashing through vegetation, north, fanning out east, west. The salvos chased them. A group broke east. Nang started to follow. Bok caught him, grabbed a shoulder of the running boy, threw him, dove with him into a stream, below the surface, to the side. There they forced themselves up, under a tree’s overhanging root clump. Nang gasped, water cascaded into his mouth. Bok grabbed his head, forced him up. To the east claymore mines exploded, machine guns and assault rifles barked. Artillery rounds exploded north. Then farther north.

Late that evening word came that the remnant of the column of the NVA 272d Regiment should disperse, return to Bu Ntoll, forgo their planned part in the attack on Song Be City. Nang followed Bok Roh, backtracking to Cambodia. As he watched the large man’s silhouette, he thought, I am going to learn from you, Mister Giant. I’ll be your slave. Ha! And you’ll be your slave’s slave. Ah, what you can teach me, eh? But one day, you mutant
moi
, I’ll have learned all you can give. One day you won’t be surrounded by your lackeys.

From Ben Het in the North through Duc Co on Highway 19, south to Bu Ntoll and Snuol, farther to the Fishhook, Tay Ninh and the Parrot’s Beak, east of Svay Rieng and west of Chau Duc and Tri Ton to the terminus at Ha Tien—all along the Cambodia-Viet Nam border, the summer of 1969 was marred with artillery duels and infantry skirmishes. Thousands of soldiers were killed. Nearly ten thousand were wounded.

A general offensive, mini-Tet II (mini-Tet I having occurred in May of 1968), was launched on 12 August. Communist forces attacked 150 cities and bases throughout South Viet Nam, setting off the heaviest fighting in three months. The city hardest hit was An Loc, the capital of Binh Long Province, fifty kilometers west-southwest of Phuoc Binh and Song Be City. Also hit hard were Quan Loi, east of An Loc, and Tay Ninh, fifty kilometers farther south. Ninety-seven Americans were reported killed and 523 wounded during the three-day offensive. ARVN casualties were 107 killed, 371 wounded; North Viet Namese casualties were estimated at 1,597 killed. Not included in the estimate were 64 NVA killed on 9 August by artillery from Bu Prang or by small arms fire when, fleeing the artillery, they emerged from jungle thickets into a fusillade from a unit of the 173d Airborne Brigade.

In Cambodia internal factors and border pressure caused Prince Sihanouk to appoint a “salvage government” headed by Prime Minister General Lon Nol. Lon Nol’s first reports indicate there were, in August, thirty-five to forty thousand NVA soldiers on Khmer territory and that they were spreading west.

North Viet Nam’s president, Ho Chi Minh, died on 3 September at the age of 79. Norodom Sihanouk, in Hanoi for the funeral, publicly called for the withdrawal of all Americans from South Viet Nam. Simultaneously he expressed Cambodia’s support for the “just stand” of North Viet Nam.

On his return home, Sihanouk privately changed course. American B-52s had secretly begun bombing NVA/VC base camps and supply areas along the border of Cambodia on 18 March 1969. The first strike was called Operation Breakfast. Subsequent border bombings (also kept secret from the U.S. Congress and the American people) were labeled Lunch, Dinner, et cetera, and together became known as the “Menu” bombings. In mid-September Prince Sihanouk ordered his military chiefs to disclose to U.S. intelligence the known locations of VC/NVA sanctuaries. Additional secret bombings ensued.

For two months the North Viet Namese at Bu Ntoll planned and plotted a revenge attack on Bu Prang. For two months the two bases traded artillery shots across the border. For two months Lieutenant Hoa and many others nursed their wounds, first in the underground infirmary, then in surface patient dormitories. And for two months Nang, as Khat Doh, shadowed Bok Roh.

Khat Doh became the giant’s aide, and to the giant, the mountain boy, awestruck by Bok’s talents, size and apparent status, became his revival. In Nang’s eyes Bok Roh saw admiration; in his impish smile he found levity. Nang smiled for Bok Roh. He smiled and he continued to think, I’ll learn from you, Mister Giant. I’ll learn.

“Coso khong?”
Bok whispered in Viet Namese. Are you afraid? There had been another B-52 alert.

“Suc may!”
Nang laughed. Hardly.

“Nephew,” Bok Roh whispered. He switched to Khmer. “Tonight come with me. Skip Duc Lap.”

“Uncle, why? Where? I wanted a view of the American dogs.”

“Colonel Pham suggests I meet with the Dong Nai Regiment,” Bok Roh continued in Khmer.

“I don’t understand,” Nang said in Viet Namese.

In Jarai Bok whispered, “Here, don’t ask me.”

At dusk Bok Roh and Nang climbed from the earth. The bombers had unloaded their ordnance ten miles to the south. “We squeeze into the earth like worms.” Nang looked up at Bok Roh. “For nothing.” Bok looked down. He almost held out his hand as a father would to a toddler son. “They’re keeping to the other side of the border,” Nang said.