For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  On 5 June the Communist attack commenced exactly as it had on the third and fourth. Again the defenders held, though the fighting was bitter and all the homes and buildings in the outlying areas were destroyed. Peasants either had fled into the city days earlier or were captured or killed. By dawn the small adjacent hamlet of Am Leang was in NVA control. Again the attackers withdrew and dispersed. Again the defenders reinforced the city’s perimeter turning Kompong Thom into a walled fortress. On the evening of the sixth, the day on which South Viet Namese Vice-Premier Nguyen Cao Ky declared before the Cambodian National Assembly that ARVN forces would assist FANK whenever and wherever requested, the NVA struck in the familiar pattern. Again the defenders countered with tremendous enfilades from the southern berm. Again NVA rocket and mortar rounds exploded along Highway 6 and across the defenders’ line. Within the city, ammunition reserves reached a critical level. Troops, weapons, ammunition were transferred from north barricades to south. At 0300 on the seventh, the 91st, using their APCs for the first time in the battle, struck the north wall. Other elements hit the northwest, damaging the hospital, the west and the east. By 0400 the APCs, with a thousand soldiers in support, had broken through and flooded the north quadrant. By five the west attackers had overrun FANK positions, scattering defenders amongst the homes and alleyways of the city. At six, troops at the south gate blasted through, crossed the Sen River and swarmed in. By dawn Kompong Thom had fallen to the NVA.

  Met Nang entered Kompong Thom not as a liberator or as a conquering soldier, but as a spy, an agent, a nationalist, a yothea of Angkar Leou. At first he hugged the shadows between narrow back street shops. Then, increasingly confident, he directed his armed band to rip down and burn the large posters of Lon Nol that adorned various public and private buildings. Sporadic fire could be heard throughout the city as pockets of FANK resisters were ferreted out by the Viet Namese.

  “Soth”—Nang flicked the barrel of his new rifle—“tell them to watch over the Khmers. This...” Nang stopped, held up his hand for silence and stillness. From the far end of the street a reinforced squad of NVA soldiers appeared, advancing cautiously in well-spaced pairs. Nang studied the faces of the two pointmen. They were empty—no fear, no hate, no elation-only automaton vigilance.

  This, Nang thought, this is it. This is the fight, the main battle. This is what Met Sar meant. Hadn’t he warned Nang? Hadn’t he told Nang that this battle, this victory and the resulting alignment of forces would change Kampuchea for the next thousand years. Yes, Nang thought. Every action is justified. Every death is an investment in the future of Khmer civilization.

  Nang pointed to several yotheas, indicated they should retreat, circle the building south. To others he indicated north. To Soth he whispered, “take two through the tailor’s shop, four into the gristmill.”

  The North Viet Namese soldiers proceeded slowly, perhaps too slowly, perhaps because their leader was far more used to fighting amongst trees and peasant huts than amid city buildings. About them the block seemed lifeless, inert. The day had dawned clear. High above Kompong Thom an American OV-1 Bronco reconnaissance plane photographed the area. Speeding up Highway 6 from Baray a combined FANK and ARVN armored column closed in on Kompong Thom. In the streets everything remained silent. Then, as if the buildings themselves were armed, a single automatic weapon, then twenty-eight, erupted, killing eleven NVA conquerors, sending the rest into retreat.

  “Cache their weapons,” Nang ordered as his yotheas fell upon the corpses, stripping the soldiers of anything of potential value, slicing their abdomens, then vanishing into back alleys to the silent cheers of Khmer townsmen astonished by the speed and cunning of these small, black-clad boys. From hidden, makeshift alleyway bunkers Khmer men and women emerged, the older ones bowing, their hands clasped before them in grateful leis, hands held high signaling the utmost respect; the younger, less formal, asking, “Where are you from? Who are you?”

  “Yotheas of Angkar Leou,” the boys whispered as they scurried toward the next ambush site.

  “Join us.” Nang clutched at every youth that approached. “Join the Movement. Join Angkar Leou. We are the soul of Kampuchea.”

  Ten blocks east the band repeated their ambush, then six blocks north, then in the southwest quadrant. Then the ARVN shelling began and Nang ordered his platoon, now thirty-seven strong, to retreat to the forest.

  Kompong Thom fell to the NVA on 7 June. On the eighth, FANK forces with uncoordinated “fifth column” assistance ousted the Viets.

  Along the border, Communist forces regrouped and counterattacked U.S. forces near Mimot; in South Viet Nam, VC terrorists punished the Allies by murdering 114 civilians at Thanh My, 17 miles southeast of Da Nang.

  A battle pitting four thousand ARVN and two thousand FANK soldiers against fourteen hundred NVA and Khmer Viet Minh troops at Kompong Speu saw that south central city fall to Hanoi’s forces on 13 June, only to be retaken and looted by the Allies on the sixteenth.

  By 20 June, Phnom Penh was both inundated with refugees and nearly completely cut off from the Cambodian countryside: in the north the battle for Kompong Thom reflared; rail lines to the west (Battambang and Sisophon) were severed; huge stores of rice at Krang Lovea were seized by the NVA; Highway 1 just north of Neak Luong was again cut; and several bridges of Highway 4 (over which all of the interior’s fuel oil traveled) were blown up. The popular crusade against the North Viet Namese, which had attracted more than eighty thousand volunteers to FANK in three months disintegrated as morale fell because of minimal superpower support and military realities. Only the late arrival of drenching monsoon rains bogged down the armies.

  American aid to Cambodia, which had totaled about eight million dollars since March, dried up. Though 34,000 ARVN soldiers remained in Cambodia, the Americans were gone. Again Richard Nixon spoke to the American people. He ruled out any future use of U.S. forces in Cambodia. He further said the United States would not assist the ARVN with air support. The one card he continued to hold was the option of bombing the enemy, but any such bombing was, by law, to be uncoordinated with ground troop activity.

  Chhuon lay on his back. It was dark. The rain was very heavy and the noise of the drops pounding on the roof, splatting in the mud of the orchard, dinging off a pot in the kitchen, increased the tension in his chest and abdomen. Sok rubbed his forehead. The light pressure of his wife’s fingers hurt but he neither moved nor spoke. On the other side of the plaited palm-frond partition Hang Tung shuffled papers, preparing for the regional chairman’s visit. The rustling of the pages irritated Chhuon. Sok placed a tiny candle in a holder the size of a bottle cap, lit the wick and placed the light on Chhuon’s forehead. He lay very still, closed his eyes, falling into himself, attempting to see the demon. Sok covered the candle with a glass cup. The flame immediately dimmed and Chhuon felt the sucking. The light flickered lowly. Sok muttered a prayer then fell silent. The suction became stronger. Chhuon concentrated on the demon, working his mind, pushing the demon from the back corners of his skull, from down by his throat, from his inner ears, prying the demon into the open area behind his eyes, pushing, pushing. The flame died. A small ember glowed below a thin wisp of smoke. Then that too disappeared. The suction lifted the skin of Chhuon’s forehead but the demon floating behind his eyes remained anchored with lines to his ears. Chhuon went to work. The cable to his right ear needed cutting. He conjured up a hacksaw and set to, rhythmically, all but imperceptibly, rocking his jaw as the saw blade chiseled tooth by tooth into the cable. Then he shuddered. The demon, like a living amoebic ghost, rolled, shot a protoplasmic finger to the top of his skull. Chhuon tried to close the bone but the goo oozed into minute cracks and became embedded. In the dark Sok lit a second candle, placed it on Chhuon’s forehead and covered it with a cup. The first suction had been strong enough only to lure the demon into the open; the second, stronger, forced it to counterattack. All inside his mind faint fingers grew like crystal trees branching, spreading, grew expanding and ne
tting and taking over. Chhuon trembled. His body became rigid. Sok, sure it was a reaction to the departing evil, whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Still the fingers flowed, penetrating easily now into tissues they’d never before attempted to control. How easily they moved. Chhuon wept, inside, watching the movement, temporarily exhausted, unable to fight the spread. Sok replaced the first cup with a third as Chhuon had instructed before he lay down for the choup rite. Now the demon twitched like a spiderweb tapped, plucked like a violin string, twitched confused abandoning fingers deep in virgin tissues, consolidating and reinforcing the gains about the larynx, thickening the lines to the skull anchors, rebuilding the cable to the ear. Chhuon’s breathing stopped. From deep, deep in his abdomen, a star, a tiny sun, rose, light rays blasting into a fog-shrouded darkness, stabbing, then suddenly shifting, the glow moving no longer in him but a hand’s width above his stomach, swirling, illuminating the entire exterior. Still Chhuon did not breathe. From the far side came Hang Tung’s complaining mumbles. The sun blipped, disappeared. The demon turned invisible. Chhuon lay very still, breathing slow shallow breaths. He lay confused, uncertain if at the last moment the demon had been exorcised, sucked into the bottle and suffocated, or had it simply rehid? Had the sun vanished, or had it returned to his center triumphant? He lay, not certain, not certain.

  “Uncle, come here! I need you.”

  Chhuon did not respond, as if in ignorance the summons could be avoided. How hard the past months had been on him, on his family, on the village. Ever since Kpa’s visit in July he had felt the demon, known of its existence, wished to exorcise it, yet had not had the will or the strength. With each order obeyed he’d grown weaker, grown sadder. After the Americans invaded in the East, invaded only to be disgraced and beaten into withdrawal—according to Hang Tung and the Khmer program on Radio Hanoi played over the village’s new public address system over the village’s one radio—Chhuon’s hopes had died and in the despair the demon had thrived.

  Kpa had appeared at that time, appeared before dawn, dressed in black, armed, wanting Chhuon to gather his family and to flee. “I can rid the village of Committee Member Hang,” Kpa had whispered with incongruous formality.

  “If Hang is killed,” Chhuon whispered back, “twenty will be executed. It is so written.”

  “They are already dead,” Kpa had said.

  “I can protect them,” Chhuon answered.

  “No!” Kpa shook his head. He left before Hang woke, promising to return, but he’d not been seen again.

  For weeks Chhuon whispered with Sok whenever Hang left. “We might escape to Phnom Penh. My sister Voen will help us.” “Yes. Voen and Chan. He’s a rich man now.” “We’ll stop in Stung Treng. Cheam must flee too.” “How I would like that. Kim always makes my heart light.” “We’ll stop first in Neak Luong. Mister Pech will help us, too.” With that mention, Chhuon would be silent. He found he could not speak of his eldest daughter who immediately came to mind when he mentioned Mister Pech—as if to speak of her would damn her to suffering as he’d damned his favorite son and youngest daughter to violent death. Chhuon knew he was more afraid of the flood held behind that dam than he was of Hang Tung and the yuons. And, too, there was uncertainty over reports of Samay’s having left the monastery, having fled, having joined the maquis. To leave might be to abandon him. Yet to stay meant Peou, Sakhon, would be educated in the new school, and that too worried Chhuon. The terrifying ferocity of the bombings deep in the forest which shook the village were not as horrible as the well of horrors behind the floodgate in his mind.

  More weeks followed. Each day’s talk became shorter. The pipedream, the fantasy of escape, barely smoldered.

  “Uncle? Did you hear me? I need you.”

  Sok lay a hand on Chhuon’s wrist. Quietly she rose and padded to the front room. “My husband is deep in sleep,” she said politely. “May I—”

  “Then wake him.” Hang’s features sharpened as he glared at the weathered woman, old at forty.

  “Uncle.” Hang smiled broadly. “The commissar wishes to know what our maximum contribution can be. The army is short of rice.”

  Chhuon wiped a fake wooziness from his face to stall for time. “The village is beyond its maximum,” he said.

  “No. No. I’m certain we can find more generosity in the villagers.”

  “Many of the families have no rice,” Chhuon answered.

  “Then let those join the People’s Liberation forces. They’ll be well fed.”

  “They are the old and the children.”

  “Ah, the others are holding rice, eh? Assemble the chairmen of the interfamily groups. You will tell them...um...each group will contribute ten sacks of rice.”

  “Five hundred...”

  “No! Hundred-kilo sacks. Each group will contribute a thousand kilos of rice. That’s what I will have for the commissar. Today!” Hang paused. He smiled. Then his smile vanished. Lowly he said, “Any group refusing to cooperate will be dealt with severely.”

  Chhuon did not look at Hang Tung but over his head. To disagree with the committee member, Chhuon knew, was useless. “I will...”—Chhuon muffled a belch, turned—“...tell...” He fell to one knee, gasped, hunched, grabbed his stomach.

  “Uncle?!”

  “It’s...it’s this damned...heat...” Chhuon sputtered. He regained control of his breath and straightened. “Goddamn,” he growled.

  “It’s painful? Yes. That I can see.”

  “Yes. Damn. It hits me like that. Without warning. I must lie down.”

  “It would be better to stay upright, Uncle. Walk. That’s the best thing. I’ve asked the doctor for you.”

  The heat subsided as Chhuon walked, the repressed bitterness did not. The first chairman’s reaction had been passive acceptance of the impossibility—the reaction Chhuon had expected—yet in the reaction he found great sadness. In the sadness he found bitterness. In the bitterness he found a spark of hope.

  From the northeast quadrant Chhuon slogged over the mud-thick path toward Ny Non Chan’s. He walked shoeless. The army had requested a contribution of footwear. No one in Phum Sath Din was allowed shoes other than flimsy Japanese sandals of aerated rubber which stuck in the mud. As he paced toward the village vice-chairman’s home the earth trembled. His knees seemed to rattle with the quaking. Chhuon froze. At first there was no noise! His head snapped up, eyes searching the dense overcast. He felt a slight concussive wind, then he heard the blasts. To the north, he thought. Perhaps six, eight kilometers. He squatted. The trembling continued for a full minute then ceased. Then farther north another bombing. Then quiet stillness.

  Chhuon remained in his squat. Again he looked up. The village paths were empty. Though he suspected exaggeration in most of Pen Sovan’s reports over Radio Hanoi he believed the broadcasts he’d heard about American B-52s raining death upon the land. He’d heard firsthand reports from soldiers, and he’d trembled inwardly time and again when Hang Tung had shouted bitterly about the United States waging its unprovoked colonial war against Cambodia. He knew, too, that the North Viet Namese were moving in more and more units in the wake of the American withdrawals, that it was these units which were without rice, and that the units close by never remained long in one place for fear of detection by the high-altitude bombers.

  What he did not know was that the North Viet Namese had begun large-scale expansion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia to ensure the invulnerability of the route. Approximately fifteen thousand trucks were now working the trail. New lines were being run to Stung Treng City and to Rovieng, a town fifty miles north of Kompong Thom.

  For a week rumors had crisscrossed the village of a new NVA armored unit encamped in the jungle to the north. Then Heng and Khieng had come in on pass, had strutted about flashing their new rifles at the younger boys and bragging about the tank crews whom they supported. The crews were all young women from North Viet Nam, they said. Women trained at the Soviet armor school in Odessa on the north sho
re of the Black Sea. With them, though not loggered together, were two batteries of 130mm self-propelled long-range artillery guns. An image flickered behind Chhuon’s eyes, a fantasy of the bombs destroying the tanks. The thought scared him. Anything which could so shake the ground, which could so quake mother earth as the bombers, had to be evil.

  Chhuon whispered a prayer, then quietly he vowed, “I will become enlightened for the sake of all living things.” Then he beseeched the Blessed One, “What has happened to my country? What will happen to my people?”

  At Ny Non Chan’s, before Chhuon was able to utter the new contribution order, Chan blurted, “We have great trouble.”

  “We always have great trouble.” Chhuon attempted to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing.

  “New trouble. Aiee!” Chan pulled Chhuon close. He bowed his head, shook in empathy. “A Viet Namese soldier,” he blurted. “He’s been caught consorting with...by force.”

  “Who?”

  “Their guards have him. There’s talk of denouncing him.”

  “Who did he pluck?”

  “She’s a good woman. I’m certain it was by force.”

  “Who?” Chhuon pushed Chan’s hands from his own.

  “I cannot believe she would bed them for rice. She cannot be that desperate.”

  “Brother”—Chhuon grabbed Chan firmly—“tell me who you are speaking of.”

  Chan avoided Chhuon’s eyes. Then he mumbled, “Ry. Your cousin’s wife.”

  For a long moment Chhuon said nothing. Then, quietly, firmly, he passed on the contribution order. “That,” Chhuon added, “is great trouble.”

  “The village can’t last until harvest. If...if we contribute...a thousand kilos...more than a week’s food for everyone...”

  Suddenly a shot cracked. Chhuon whipped around, stared, then spat, “Come!”

  The two men ran from the house, down the alley between the old homes of the Ny family, across the village center toward the wat. Before them a crowd of forty or fifty had formed about a North Viet Namese jeep. Up and down, the village street was lined with foreign soldiers. Chhuon squirmed into the mob, to the front. “Serves him right,” he heard several men say as he passed. Before him, lifeless, facedown in the mud, lay an NVA soldier. The shot had evidently been fired into his skull from behind as he’d knelt with his hands tied behind his back. Chhuon raised his eyes to the officer standing in the vehicle. The Khmer crowd increased to a hundred.