For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “He doesn’t speak English, sir.” Sullivan leaned forward and in French said, “Monsieur, my officer compliments you and your people on their goodness.” The driver nodded acknowledgment.

  The jeep passed through the central marketplace and turned toward the river crossing. Huddled at the intersection was a pride of FANK APCs and scout cars. Each vehicle’s front, sides and rear were decorated with large, bright Black Cobra insignias. Children with buckets of riverwater were washing, polishing, as soldiers flashed toothy smiles at young girls.

  “Look at that shit,” the major moaned. “They’ve got more patches than there’re places to put em.”

  “This your first trip out of Phnom Penh, sir?”

  “Look at those bastards. Little Tigers! They sure as hell aren’t like the ’Bodes in the Delta. Be lucky to keep the Viets out another three months. Hell, throw the Commies some Khmers. That’ll keep em off the ARVN’s ass.”

  “First trip inta the country, ay, sir?” Huntley followed Sullivan’s lead.

  “First and last. I’m telling Mataxis to send me back to Nha Trang. At least the indigenous there have some military posture. I’m unvolunteering.”

  “Well sir”—Huntley nudged Sullivan behind the major’s back—“there’s a ARVN riverine craft at the dock. They’d be headin’ back ta double-P. Ya doan have ta be heah. Captain knows the procedure.”

  After the ferry crossing they traveled east then northeast along Highway 6. They passed through thriving villages and through ghost villages where battles had left only heaps of uninhabitable rubble. Every kilometer of roadway was dotted with FANK troops, some in defensive posture, some looking more like boy scouts at a hot-afternoon jamboree without planned activities. The inconsistency appalled Sullivan though he said nothing. Not only were the FANK units uneven in attitude, but even in passing he could see their military issue differed drastically.

  The major had left. The degree of his discomfiture with the Khmer countryside puzzled both Huntley and Sullivan who were among the few Americans of the MEDT who consistently ventured away from the capital. “Two tours in Nam Bo”—Huntley laughed after the senior officer had boarded the ARVN craft—“you’d think he’d be used ta this.”

  “Ah, his wasn’t two tours in Nam. His was two tours in an air-conditioned American box. Could of been in a Holiday Inn for all he knew.”

  “Yup!”

  “Shit! Give him some credit. He came this far. Besides, he’s good with requisitions. Should of stayed a supply sergeant. He knows materiel.”

  “He’s still a dork.”

  Without the major, Sullivan relaxed and the trip, like the day, became enjoyable. The driver spoke sparingly, his French seemingly adequate for nothing deeper than directions and idle chitchat. At two in the afternoon they entered the small, seemingly deserted market town of Skoun, which lay at the southwest corner of a strategic traffic island formed by the junction of Highways 6 and 7, a three-sided island with sides of twenty kilometers. At the north corner was Phum Pa Kham and the road leading to Kompong Thom. In the east corner was the tiny village of Preas and the main road to Kompong Cham. Within the delta, scattered hamlets dotted the level plain of rice paddies. To the northeast lay two hundred square miles of some of Cambodia’s densest and richest plantations and to the northwest, all the way to Kompong Thom, lay a low country of intermittent lakes, swamps and swamp-forests with stretches of reclaimed rice fields. Skoun, in the southwest, sat like a cap on the base of a funnel formed by the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, sat like a protective cap shielding the northern approach to Phnom Penh. In the crotch of Highway 6’s dogleg from east to north was the headquarters of FANK’s First Brigade Group.

  The American MEDT had been authorized on 8 January 1971. Of sixty men, sixteen were allowed to billet in Cambodia. The MEDT’s first chief was Brigadier General Theodore Mataxis. On 17 April 1971 an additional fifteen U.S. officers were authorized, though the team was not immediately brought up to strength. In June, General Mataxis requested an expansion to two thousand men. Two weeks later the authorization came through channels, for fifty men in Cambodia and sixty-three to remain in South Viet Nam. The team’s primary mission was to ascertain FANK’s equipment needs, to judge if equipment requested was needed, if the requesting unit had personnel trained in its operation and if the equipment would help FANK pursue its military goals in conformity with U.S. policy.”

  Sullivan checked his map. He directed the driver to the turnoff for the FANK garrison. “No go there,” the Khmer said in English.

  “Ah’ll be dipped in shit,” Huntley blurted. “Mister Kon, you speak mah language.”

  “No speak. No go. Bad man.”

  “Who’s a bad man?” Sullivan said in French.

  “Lieutenant colonel,” Kon said in English.

  “You with us,” Huntley said in English. “No trouble you.”

  “Monsieur Kon—” Sullivan began, but before he could say another word the driver stopped the vehicle and jumped to the road. “Monsieur, we will take you...”

  Kon, his hands together high, bowed. “Merci. Merci. I walk. Wife’s brother in Skoun.”

  “Geez,” Huntley said. He climbed from the rear seat and settled behind the wheel. “That gives me the creeps.”

  A moment later, speeding toward them from the garrison came a red, yellow and black jeep mounted with a 106mm recoilless rifle, the tube painted like a purple and green dragon. In the jeep Sullivan could see six or seven soldiers, two bare chested, one, driving, in a formal white and green uniform. The jeep headed toward them. Huntley slowed, pulled to the edge of the built-up dike road. The jeep aimed square at them. Huntley moved farther, dropping the right wheels over the slanting edge. “God a’mighty...” he screamed at a hundred feet. “Fuck em.” Huntley jerked the wheel left, gunned the gas. The Khmer driver flicked the wheel hard right, left. Huntley’s wheels were stuck over the edge. The Khmers’ jeep veered, skidded, corrected, whisked past, soldiers shouting, laughing, racing out of sight toward town.

  “Tonight, Captain”—a tall Khmer lieutenant colonel smiled broadly—“tonight we will eat and drink. Tomorrow you will come with my battalion to Turn Nop.”

  Sullivan bowed his head to the map spread before them. Lieutenant Colonel Chhan Samkai pointed to a village about eight kilometers to the northwest. Between the garrison and the village the map indicated almost nothing but swamp forest. Chhan was amiable, his French fluid and elegant. About him his advisors were impeccably dressed, the central room of the headquarters immaculate.

  “I would like that very much,” Sullivan said. “Do you suspect resistance in the area?”

  “Turn Nop is an evil village.” The colonel retained his smile. “You see, we have had two reliable informers.”

  “Are there NVA units?”

  “No. No.” Samkai’s mouth was so stretched in smile that Sullivan was sure it hurt. He wanted to tell him it was okay not to smile so, but there was no tactful way to broach the topic. “The people are Rumdoah. Good Khmers but”—the colonel tapped his forehead with a finger—“they do not possess right thought.”

  For several hours the Cambodian officer entertained Sullivan and Huntley with tales of derring-do, hardships and deprivations.

  “Pourquoi, monsieur?” Samkai lamented. He gazed through the open door. The late afternoon rains had subsided to a drizzle. “To the army in Viet Nam, American aid is without limit, but to Cambodia every gram is weighed. Pourquoi?”

  At half light, 9 August 1971, Sullivan heard the slow vibration of a military vehicle convoy. “Come on, Ron. We better saddle up.”

  “Yeah.”

  As they emerged from the guest sleeping room they were immediately engaged by Colonel Chhan. Sullivan glanced about for APCs, jeeps or trucks. He listened. He could feel the low rumble but couldn’t locate the convoy. A barefoot FANK soldier in a tattered uniform without rank was intercepted by one of Chhan’s aides. Khmer words flew harshly back and forth. The men stopped, bowed. The so
ldier froze in an insolent posture as the aide approached the colonel. Again words flew. Then the aide returned to the soldier.

  “Something about petroleum?” Sullivan smiled to Chhan.

  “You have learned Khmer, eh?”

  “I’m very sorry, only a word or two. But petroleum...”

  “Yes. It’s a French word, eh?”

  “Oui,” Sullivan said. Then he asked, “Do you receive enough petroleum for your vehicles?”

  “As I told you last night,” Chhan said, “it’s always a problem.”

  “There’s enough to go to Turn Nop, no?”

  “He’s a poor soldier.” Chhan indicated the barefoot man. “If he were good, he would buy petrol. Perhaps he drains the tank and sells it. Now he wants more.”

  Upon entering the small compound the previous day, Sullivan and Huntley had scanned the perimeter. The section facing town was impressively fortified with three rows of tightly anchored concertina and tanglefoot, with a punji-stake moat between the outer and second rings. Now, as Huntley maneuvered his jeep behind Chhan’s and they passed out the rear gate, Sullivan shuddered. The back of the compound facing the heavy vegetation of the swamp forest had not even a single strand of wire. He turned to Huntley, their eyes met. Huntley’s did a quick 90 to heaven. Neither spoke.

  Below the headquarters compound and separated from it by a wooded field and four hundred meters of paddy lay a second compound, a fetid ramshackle quagmire looking more like a concentration camp than a friendly military complex. Inside its gate two old, filthy olive-drab Isuzu buses jammed with infantry troops billowed blue smoke. Behind them was a single three-quarter-ton truck with an M-60 machine gun mounted on the cab roof.

  Sullivan stretched his back, rose up in the seat to look deeper into the compound. Hundreds of starved-looking civilians—women, children, elders—stood clumped, watching, waiting for the men to leave for the daily patrol. “That’s not it,” Sullivan mumbled.

  “Not what? That looks worse en that Neak Luong camp.”

  “Where’s the armor? They’re supposed to have five APCs. There’s gotta be...Feel em? I can feel the vibration.”

  “Yeah. Why don’t we stop that Chhan mothafucker? How come he or one a them aides can’t ride with us?”

  “Then we’d be advisors.”

  “Augh, shee-it! Kiss it. I just wanta know where ta go.”

  “Yeah, well...”

  “Well fuck. I’m gettin’ somebody.” With that Huntley revved the jeep, slipped the clutch. It engaged with a lurch. They pulled up beside Colonel Chhan’s vehicle. “Hey.” Huntley stood, yelled. Sullivan grabbed his shirt, tugged him back into his seat. “Hey, sir!” Huntley jabbed a pointing finger at the buses then to the empty backseat of his jeep. “Hey, Colonel...” (lowly) “jerk-off...” (then loudly again) “I need uno aide. Need me talk-talk.”

  Sullivan lowered his head, covered his eyes. “Cool it, Ron. Cool it.”

  “Get somebody we ken talk ta,” Huntley demanded.

  “Whoa.” Sullivan stopped Huntley cold. “Let me handle it.”

  “Shit...,” Huntley mumbled. He slapped his leg to feel for his .45, then reached beside the seat to make sure his ammo box of grenades was secure.

  The lead bus belched and backfired. Two young boys pushed open the flimsy wire-mesh gate. The bus rolled forward straining to climb from the compound up the slight incline to the raised graveled road. The second bus, its mufflers or exhaust manifolds shot, roared slowly into position behind the first, the noise masking the colonel’s words to Sullivan. The colonel’s jeep pulled in behind the truck. “Let you handle it.” Huntley groaned. “Fuck!”

  “There’s still gotta be five...”A quarter kilometer farther down the road, five clean, camouflage-painted M-113 APCs clattered softly from a third compound. Whatever noise their engines and tracks made was lost in the roar of the unmuffled bus. “Yeah. See! I knew I could feel em.”

  “Where in hell they come from?” The buses rolled forward, stopped, let the APCs lead. A sixth armored vehicle remained on the side road leading to the third compound. “Look down there,” Huntley said, pointing with his chin, his back to Sullivan. The Americans stared into the third camp, a neat fortress with, as best as they could see, well-developed defense berms. “How ya figure, J. L.”—Huntley turned to Sullivan—“that one place ain’t fit for grandma’s pigs, one place is some sorta piece a furniture, en one place is for real?”

  Sullivan cocked his head, winked, hooked a tight fist in the air. “Training,” he said. The appearance of the APCs made him feel secure, not because of their power but because of what he knew of the unit. “This group’s got one battalion trained at Nha Trang. Look at it. That compound’s a replica of a Special Forces site. I shit you not.”

  “You shit me not, ah-right. Now, let’s get some dinky-dau fucker that can tell us what’s goin on.”

  The FANK 1st Brigade Group convoy took up final staging positions a half kilometer east of the hamlet of Turn Nop 3. Five APCs moved to equidistant points. Behind them bus-borne infantry troops dispersed, spread out on line. West of the hamlet lay the main village.

  “I’m sorry, Sir Colonel Chhan...” Sullivan said apologetically. He, Huntley and Chhan Samkai stood atop the sixth APC watching the action develop. Midmorning sun seared their backs. “...But it seems some of your soldiers have forgotten to follow your orders.”

  Chhan Samkai pretended to busy himself with a map, then with a set of field glasses. The APCs clattered forward closing the deserted kilometer-wide semicircle about the hamlet. Behind them soldiers clumped into lines. Chhan Samkai coughed.

  “I’m learning so much from your able command presence,” Sullivan said in fluid French, “but they must have forgotten your orders about dispersing and sweeping. And, Sir Colonel...well, my eyes aren’t as good as they should be...I can’t see the anvil force.”

  Chhan Samkai pretended to be totally immersed in the operation. He coughed again, then asked an aide for the radio handset. In Khmer he growled harsh orders into the transmitter. In the field before them one vehicle stopped. Behind it a file of troops stood still. Four columns continued to move in.

  “Captain Military Equipment Team,” one of Chhan’s aides called to Sullivan in English, “you must leave now. When the yuons attack you must not be hurt.”

  In April 1970 the U.S. 5th Special Forces had opened three sites in Viet Nam to train Lon Nol’s soldiers. By August 1971 twenty-four battalions had been through the training cycle. Headquartered in Nha Trang, the FANK Training Command was charged with the task of transforming the Khmer army—one battalion at a time. On 1 March 1971 the unit was redesignated the U.S. Army Individual Training Group. Chhan Samkai, like some FANK brigade-level officers, felt the schooling was beneath his station. His armored unit, men and command, had been trained in June.

  The APCs stopped just short of the hamlet. Huntley watched closely. The village appeared to be without life. A cluster of foot soldiers, then a second pack, sprinted forward firing wildly. Almost immediately a home burst into flames.

  “Thank you for your concern for our personal safety.” Sullivan’s speech was slow, metered. As he spoke he and Huntley scanned the battlefield. The remaining soldiers swarmed toward the hamlet. Villagers were pulled from their houses, wrangled to a makeshift pen about the central well. “I would prefer to remain.” Even from a distance it was obvious Chhan Samkai’s infantry troops were looting homes, carrying out baskets of rice, rolls of cloth, anything transportable of value. “If I’m to be able to inform General Mataxis of your needs...”

  Suddenly a skirmish broke out between an APC and a squad of infantry. Across the paddies Sullivan could hear the armor commander screaming at the ground troops. Some scattered. Some dropped their booty and marched toward the track. Other tracks began backing away from the hamlet and the infantry soldiers. Bursts of automatic weapons fire cracked hot over the ragged ground force.

  “Captain,” the aide ordered, “you and your driv
er must come right now. If you are killed by yuons it will be a diplomatic crisis. You cannot die here. Maybe go to Baray.”

  It was after midnight. Met Sar turned on the lamp. His paranoia was great. Although the Movement maintained its central headquarters on Mount Aural, Sar no longer spent consecutive nights there, no longer consecutive nights anywhere. The encampment east of Baray was dark, the hidden bunker was musty, cool. Sar shivered. The morning had been extraordinarily hot and the afternoon rain had barely moderated the temperature. By contrast the night was cold. Sar removed the batch of papers from his case, set the case at one end of the small collapsible table. He stared at the words he’d written. Yet on his mind was Nang. Word had come: he was alive, he was organizing Kompong Thom. Sar hunched, bit down hard.

  ...since we took charge of the revolution, despite great hardships, the Movement’s progressive philosophy has never caused a setback. Our decision of 1967 to launch armed revolution put us in the most advantageous position when Norodom Sihanouk was ousted in March 1970. Even though that decision was berated and spurned by both the North Viet Namese political leadership and our Chinese allies, it proved to be an enlightened move.

  Sar paused. He pulled his heavy shirt up about his shoulders, pulled the collar up about his neck. A chill skittered across his broad back. It’s not yet time, he thought. Met Nang, he thought. We must maintain the appearance of a united front. He scratched through the last sentence then dog-earred the page and flipped to the beginning. For months he had scribbled notes, sketched pages, recorded his thoughts. What lay before him lay before Kampuchea. The sheet before him was no longer loose notes but the rough draft of the Khmer Communist Party history. In its final form it would not be a compilation of dates, anecdotes and personalities but a master plan for the future based on the Party’s view of the past, complete with strategy on how to obtain defined ideals and the righteous justification for those plans and goals. It would be a manifesto, a religious scripture, the pure word. Politically, the Krahom had matured. For years Sar and the Kampuchean Movement had developed in the shadow of Viet Namese communism, in the shadow of its unsavory ideology of a fraternal Indochinese union masking Hanoi’s desire for regional hegemony. The time had come to firmly cast that idea, and with it the Chinese Maoist thought which had so badly bungled that nation’s socialist construction, to monsoon gales. It was time, too, to shun the Russian model which to Sar was a Western ideology clothed in internationalist jargon, an Occidental fascism bent on neo-imperial expansion. It is time, thought Sar. Met Nang, he thought, it is time for us to have a document of Khmer purity—of Khmer independence, national sovereignty, self-reliance and revolutionary violence.