The Tank Man's Son

by Mark Bouman

  They called me Papa.

  40

  “MARK, WHAT ARE YOU doing right now?” The voice on the phone was Bill, a missionary living in Phnom Penh. Joan and I and our two boys were hours away at the orphanage in Sihanoukville, by the Gulf of Thailand.

  “Whatever you do, Mark, do not come to Phnom Penh.” Bill’s voice was shaky. “There’s scattered fighting here. We’ve got a curfew in place. Tanks are rolling in the streets, and the fighting is moving from the outskirts toward the city center. We think they’re heading for the airport. This might escalate into something big.”

  “Something big” was code for civil war.

  Bill’s warning didn’t worry me much, however. Joan and I had only been in charge at the orphanage for a year, but we had made it through plenty of tense situations already, and I didn’t think a few tanks up in the capital would be of any concern to us.

  What did worry me were the kids and staff I was responsible for. No matter what happened, I needed to keep them safe. And the best way to do that was to stay put. So it was easy to reassure Bill. “No problem, we’re not going anywhere.”

  Bill’s call confirmed local gossip, but we’d heard similar things before. The Cambodian people had just endured twenty years of bloodshed and upheaval. Mistrust was a way of life, and violence was, for many, the natural response to conflict. Even in peaceful situations, like during the New Year celebration, we’d stand outside and watch tracer bullets light the sky from all directions. It seemed as if owning an automatic weapon—indestructible AK-47s, mostly—was a requirement for being a citizen.

  Occupied as I was with the orphanage, I didn’t give Bill’s warning any more thought.

  “Mark, this thing is escalating.” It was Bill again, less than a day later. “The airport was destroyed by the tank battle that took place here yesterday. The markets and banks are all shut down. Food is disappearing, and if you have any money in the bank, you can forget that—whatever cash you’ve got, make sure you hang on to it. All commercial flights in and out of Cambodia have stopped. We’ve been declared a war zone. There are a few thousand foreigners trapped right now with no way to get out. I heard Thailand and other nearby countries are going to evacuate their embassy personnel tomorrow. They’re bringing in military transport aircraft to get them out.”

  “What about our embassy?” I asked.

  “They’re saying you have to find your own way out. They don’t want to make a big scene by evacuating all the Americans. The embassy rented the large ballroom at the Cambodiana hotel here in the city. We’ve sent some of our people to the evacuation center there—might be safer. One of our missionaries got caught in a firefight. She couldn’t get out of her house, the fighting was so bad. She’s a wreck and wants to go home right now, but I don’t know how that’s going to happen. Most of the others want to stay. You might want to look into some other means to get out of the country just in case. Do not try to drive to Phnom Penh. The road’s been cut, and soldiers are robbing people in broad daylight—shooting drivers and stealing the cars. There’s looting everywhere.”

  “Don’t worry! I have no intention of moving.”

  “It’s crazy here, man—fighting’s spreading around the city, and fires are burning from the artillery and even tank blasts. You should have heard the shells screaming overhead last night.”

  I couldn’t help picturing the tanks—probably Soviet-era T-55s. “We’ll stay here at the orphanage until this thing blows over,” I managed.

  “Mark, this might blow into Sihanoukville before this is over.”

  I hung up in disbelief and drove along my usual route to the orphanage.

  I heard the news as soon as I pulled into the orphanage: troops were on their way from the capital. I fought the temptation to panic, gulping air through pursed lips. If the fighting came to us, no part of the country would be safe. Our only chance was to leave, or risk getting caught in the cross fire.

  But how could I run at the first sign of trouble? And what was the best way to protect my family and staff?

  This can’t be happening, I thought over and over, as if on the thousandth repetition the chaos would magically resolve itself. A feeling of helplessness swept over me, something I had not experienced so powerfully since my youth. It was that all-too-familiar burst of hysteria I felt when I saw Dad bearing down on me, belt in hand. My mouth was cotton.

  It was somewhere inside that terror that I found comfort. I had spent my entire childhood living with fear. Uncertainty was my air and water. And here I was, still alive. Even happy, at least most days. I’ve been through this before, I told myself. And it was that truth that removed the paralysis from my mind and muscles. I knew I was capable of doing something, even if I didn’t yet know what. Like Dad had done too many times to count, I’d find a way to make this work.

  I received another phone call, this time from Ron, the regional director of our mission organization. We had some American college students helping at the orphanage for the summer, and Ron made it clear that we needed to get them out of Cambodia.

  “Like, yesterday,” he emphasized.

  I stood, frozen, in the quad between our buildings at the orphanage. I’d worked on all the structures surrounding me—painting, plumbing, and wiring, not to mention counseling, praying, and crying—from the chicken coop all the way to the dormitory. What was I about to do?

  The children knew something was happening. They came outside quietly, looking at me and waiting. None of the older kids wanted to approach me to ask the question that was on all their minds, and none of the younger kids could form the question—except one small girl, who approached me and tugged on the side of my pants. “Papa,” she asked, “are you leaving us?”

  What could I say? I loved her—truly, I did—but would she have any reason to believe that when I fled?

  “I have to take our helpers to Thailand,” I said, “but I’ll come back as soon as I drop them off.”

  She walked away, and I couldn’t tell whether she believed me. Part of my heart went with her.

  Just then Joan drove through the orphanage gates, braked to a stop, and waved me over to the driver’s window. “Mark, no American can stay behind.”

  “I know; I’m working on it.”

  “But Mark . . . we all have to leave—and stay out. Even you.”

  This news was devastating. Yet despite the rip in my heart, I had to focus on the task at hand: we Americans needed to leave—immediately.

  I collected the college students and my family. “Let’s go!” I yelled.

  “But what are we going to do?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But we’re getting out of here. Now!”

  It was just like Dad had often said: “There are leaders, and there are followers. Most people can’t think for themselves—they’re just followers, waiting to be told what to do.”

  What Dad hadn’t mentioned was that there was a good chance the leader everyone was following would be scared witless and have absolutely no idea what to do next.

  We piled into the van, I floored it, and despite Bill’s warning, we took the road to the capital. An hour out of town we reached the first roadblock. About a dozen soldiers were covering the road, some standing directly on the asphalt and some in flanking positions along the shoulders. All were heavily armed and staring at our van as we approached. I slowed down and prepared to stop. I had no idea what was about to happen or what we should do.

  The lead soldier stepped forward and pulled a pistol from his belt, which he cocked and pointed at me. The knots in my stomach suddenly became unsolvable tangles.

  The van bounced to a stop. I rolled down the window. Everyone inside was quiet. I could see the soldier walking toward me, still pointing his pistol at my head. It was a cheap Chinese Type 54, but I knew it could still shoot me plenty dead.

  A thought flew into my mind: I’m going to act like a clueless tourist. Crazy. Stupid. Maybe even suicidal. I can’t explain why I chose
to do what I did. Maybe it had something to do with the chaos of my childhood—with Dad’s modus operandi of it doesn’t have to be pretty as long as it works.

  I hoped against hope that this would work. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to break out of my chest. The soldier reached my window and stopped. I could see down the barrel of his pistol, and behind that I could see his eyes, hostile and stony.

  I smiled a cheeky smile, waved, chirped out a singsong “Hello,” put the van in gear, and pulled away.

  The other soldiers who had been on the road had already moved to the side, expecting their leader’s pistol would be a sufficient roadblock. The leader realized we were leaving, but he stood rooted in the road, immobile and still clutching his pistol. He had an expression on his face that seemed to say, “Wait! You haven’t paid me yet!”

  In seconds we were clear. I looked back over my shoulder, and I could clearly see the soldier, still standing in the middle of the road, still holding his pistol extended. He must be as confused as I am, I thought. Neither of us knew what had just happened. All I knew was we were driving away, safe for the moment and closer to our goal.

  That scene repeated itself twice more on the road to Phnom Penh. Both times I played the part of the clueless tourist, smiling, waving, and driving away despite the gun pointed at my head. Both times stunned soldiers simply watched us leave.

  When we finally entered the capital, the scene was straight out of a disaster movie. Streams of people were becoming rivers, all flowing out of the city as fast as their legs could carry them. Women hugged children to their chests, and men carried baskets and satchels and pushed carts. Children lugged whatever their small arms could hold. Kitchen utensils, pots and pans, and bundles of food were balanced precariously atop heads. Bikes were loaded down with makeshift saddlebags. The river of humanity was flowing away from the fighting, away from the smoke and shelling, like water flowing downhill.

  And we were headed upstream as fast as we could drive, desperate to reach the airport.

  The stench from dozens of fires burned our nostrils. Occasionally we cringed as an armored personnel carrier or a tank rumbled past, driving toward Sihanoukville. Some looked ready for battle while others moved slowly, piled high with loot. Televisions, motorcycles, refrigerators, sewing machines, and other stolen goods were stacked to overflowing on top of instruments of destruction, and a sudden memory flashed in my mind of Dad driving his tank away from the wrecked farmhouse, the tank’s deck and turret absolutely buried in bricks. Smoldering cars and tanks clogged the road, and we had to steer around them like a skier avoiding trees. Every few blocks we passed bodies sprawled on the pavement, gruesome reminders of what was taking place.

  The roadside trees had been stripped of their foliage by tank and mortar blasts. Gas stations were in shambles, having long since been robbed and left in ruins. Even the pumps had been stolen. The main hospital had a hole in its side that looked as if a tank had simply driven through. If we passed a single intact window, I never saw it. Here was the real-life version of Dad’s war games, and it was anything but a game.

  The international airport was just as bad. A hole the size of a Volkswagen Beetle had been blown in one terminal wall from a tank round, and many other walls had been reduced to rubble. A dozen Cambodian police officers stood guard in front of the entrance, brandishing batons and sporting machine guns slung over their shoulders. Locals were threatened or beaten if they dared approach the airport entrance.

  Behind the police line, hundreds of foreigners milled about in the parking lot, since the inside of the terminal building was almost completely destroyed. The airport was inoperative, and the foreigners were stuck between their hope of flying away and the utter chaos surrounding them in the city. The tarmac was deserted. No parked planes. No takeoffs or landings. Just glass, rubble, and the acrid stink—so familiar, so common from my childhood—of smoke and gunpowder.

  Now what?

  A van full of Americans pulling up didn’t go unnoticed. The police lines parted, and we drove into what was left of the main terminal.

  After the eerie approach through the city streets leading to the airport, things began to happen quickly. The word was that someone had chartered a jet from Thailand, and it was landing in twenty minutes.

  Bill emerged from the crowd. “Mark, you’re going to pay to get our personnel out of the country,” he said sternly. “Oh, and you’re paying to get a few other people out of here too. Hope you don’t mind.” Bill nodded toward a group of anxious Westerners, folks I’d never seen before. I tried to smile at them.

  “Pay that official over there,” Bill commanded. “They aren’t taking credit cards, traveler’s checks, or even Cambodian money—it’s American greenbacks or nothing, and you’ve got what they want, right?”

  Surprisingly, I did. I had taken money out of the bank the previous week to pay for structural repairs at the orphanage, but Joan convinced me to hold on to the cash for a few days, since the repairs were not urgent. Now, in a desperate situation at the airport, I was glad for my wife’s foresight.

  Sitting at a folding table on the side of the tarmac, in plastic lawn chairs, were two Cambodian airport officials. I approached and unfolded a thick wad of hundreds. The men smiled. Amazingly, the customs officer still demanded that I pay a seven-dollar “airport usage fee” for each person planning to leave. I glanced at the ruins all around me and thought, What airport?

  Thirty minutes later we heard the whine of a descending jet. The L-1011 dropped out of the sky, and the minute it taxied to a stop in a cloud of tire rubber, the crew dropped the door. The engines were still racing as we jogged across the runway. Joan led our boys, each by one hand, toward the plane. I was near the back of the pack, trying to count heads and make sure all the people I was responsible for were in front of me. Not that they’d be anywhere else.

  The engines were deafening. Everyone tossed their bags into a pile below plane as they leaped up the stairs. I scanned the tarmac, found it clear, and sprinted up the stairs as well. No seat assignments, claim tickets, safety checks—this was barely contained panic. The crew slammed the door closed behind me, and minutes later the pilot goosed the throttles and we leaped down the runway. The moment the tires left the runway, the entire plane erupted in cheers. “Yes!” “We’re outta here!” “All right!” “Hallelujah!” We had made it. Against all odds, we had made it, and exuberant shouts filled the airplane.

  But I felt sick. I stared out the window as we climbed into the sky. I could see columns of smoke rising from the capital. I couldn’t see Sihanoukville with my eyes, but I could picture it in my mind. What have I done, God? I just left an entire orphanage full of children in a war zone. Kids I promised to take care of.

  I closed my eyes. What have I done?

  41

  AFTER WE LANDED safely in Thailand, everyone who was not a career missionary was sent home to the States on the next available flight.

  The rest of us found a hotel in Bangkok, and our leadership team flew in from the States, along with several trauma counselors. I hoped the counselors were getting overtime pay.

  Most of us wanted to get back into Cambodia right away, but that was impossible. No airline was willing to risk flying into Cambodia. The airlines honestly didn’t know if they would be able to refuel or take off again, and in any case no insurance company would insure a plane in a war zone. We could have taken a boat, but if the airlines weren’t going to risk landing, it probably wasn’t safe enough for us to return a different way either. Every day we tried to get news about what was happening in Cambodia, and every day we were frustrated. Thai television, international newspapers, people we chatted with at cafés—no one seemed to know what was going on. CNN did little more than loop the same footage of fires burning throughout the city.

  I second-guessed myself constantly. What would have happened if I had stayed? What was going on at the orphanage? Were the children safe? Phrases I had read about the Khmer Rou
ge kept surfacing in my mind. No foreigners had been allowed back into Cambodia for thirteen years after that regime had taken over. Nearly a quarter of the population had been starved or murdered.

  The counselors sat us in a circle, and then one of them began.

  “Who would like to share what happened to you?” he asked.

  We waited for someone to start. And waited. Finally, one young woman raised her hand and began to tearfully recall what she had experienced. I listened halfheartedly. The only thing that haunted me was leaving the kids back in Cambodia, and that wasn’t anything the counselor could help me with.

  My mind wandered. Was there anything I could have done differently? Our escape had been pure chaos—nothing could have prepared me for it. I had done the best I could, but had it been enough?

  The woman’s account was still unfolding. “And then I saw a man with a gun. Some kind of long gun. He was shooting as he was running down the road, right in front of me.”

  “What were you thinking?” the counselor asked.

  “I was so scared. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life! The gun would have terrified me anyway, but then there were tanks going by, and soldiers sitting on top of them, and more and more guns.” She brought her hands up to her face, her chin quivering, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “I just can’t go back there! I wasn’t made for this!”

  The counselor thanked the woman for sharing, and two other women went over to the crying woman and placed their arms around her shaking shoulders.