For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

“Where?”

  “I saw a flash in the trees.”

  “You can’t see that far!”

  “Says who...”

  “He is coming!”

  The runner loped from the concealment of the trees to the exposure of the dike. At first he looked small, looked as if he were barely approaching, as if he were stationary bouncing up and down afar on the long dike. Slowly there was more paddy behind him than in front. His speed seemed to quicken and he became a man, no longer a toy.

  “Nang! Met Nang!” the runner screamed as the distance fell to fifty meters. “Nang! Get me to him!”

  “What message are you carrying?” yotheas asked.

  “They’re coming,” he panted. “Get me...to...Nang!”

  “Who?” yotheas shouted, trotting with the runner.

  In minutes Met Hon emerged from the house into which the runner had disappeared. “Met Nang wants the platoon leaders and one man from each cell. Now.”

  Farmers who had reached the close paddies returned. Women who had set to work braiding palm mats or preparing the day’s meals put the tasks aside. The unnamed hamlet had never experienced such suspense, never, until the 2d of the 104th moved in with its violence.

  The cell and two of the three platoon leaders exited the house of Hem Teng where Met Nang had been invited to set up his CP. To the boy they were somber, cold. Not one deviated from a direct line to his cellmates. Not one answered a question from the villagers. Not one let even the slightest grin or warmth betray his face. Immediately they armed themselves, packed their rucksacks and formed. At first the villagers were amused, then a pall crept over them and permeated their damp souls. Slowly they meandered to the village center, toward the end where Nang, Hon, Rath and Duch remained sequestered with the hamlet chief, his wife and his two sons.

  Met Bun, leader of Rabbit Platoon, burst through the growing crowd. He’d been fishing in a nearby creek swollen with floodwater yet full of hundreds of silvery fish with red bellies. “There are new orders?” He blurted the words as he entered the house.

  “Yes,” Nang answered loudly. “The Americans will bomb here in thirty minutes.”

  “Then we must evacuate.”

  “Yes. We’re giving the fighters a few minutes to collect their gear and tell their hosts. In a moment we’ll tell those outside. The evacuation has been organized.”

  In the hamlet the yotheas circulated, not to tell their hosts but to disarm the militia boys. In the few peasants who witnessed these actions a wariness of the yotheas spiked. Unseen by most, the black-clad company abused their Khmer hospitality, rifled the homes at which they’d been welcomed, taking food, money, knives, machetes, any items they desired.

  “The Americans are going to bomb!” Nang shouted. “Everyone must go. Everyone.”

  “Wait, let me tell them.” Hem Teng grabbed Nang’s sleeve. Nang whipped his arm away.

  “The bombers are coming,” yotheas shouted. “Go home. Grab a blanket. Follow us. Run to the treeline.”

  “You said...” Hem Teng was at a loss. In his house Nang had been adamant about reducing panic but now he and every yothea promoted it.

  “Run. Run. Run. Let me help you. We must rush.” “No. Leave that.” “Don’t take anything. One blanket.” “The bombers killed a village last night. Now they’re coming here.” “Follow us.”

  The first families poured onto the dike down which the runner had come. Before them, two cells urged them to quicken the pace. Yotheas dropped back to help the youngest children and the very old while those in front demanded that the quick clear the dike road as soon as possible. “When they come they’ll strafe the dike,” yotheas told the peasants, told one another. “They shoot everyone. Get to the treeline. We’ll bring the children.”

  More families poured onto the muddy dike. Peasants fell in the slick slime only to be jerked up by yotheas. “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Run.”

  In the hamlet many lingered—some refusing outright to leave, others packing belongings. “Don’t take that. You’ll be back tonight. One day at the most.”

  Rush! Rush! Rush! The pace was frenetic and in less than ten minutes all but the stubborn had reached the dike conduit to the sanctuary of the treeline. Even Hem Teng, his wife and eldest son had left.

  “There are no bombers.” Hem Daravong laughed cynically when Nang reentered the village chief’s home. Nang smiled but did not answer. “What will you do to them?”

  “They’ll be protected,” Nang said softly. “The bombers did kill a village last night.”

  “What village?” Daravong’s nares flared. This ugly boy was repugnant, his ideas repulsive, his organization loathsome.

  “To the east,” Nang said.

  From the dike there were shots. The first people were reaching the trees. “Don’t stop,” yotheas ordered. “Follow that trail. It leads to our last camp in the grove to the north. Not you, Grandma. You go this way. It’ll be best if the old and very young take shelter amongst the column on the highway. The Americans won’t bomb there. We’ll be sure you’re brought back together. Head for the road. Head for the highway.”

  “Would you like to join us?” Nang asked Daravong. “You know we are the only true representatives of the Khmer people.”

  “So you say.”

  “Come with me.”

  “If I don’t? Are you going to kill me?”

  “No. I won’t kill you. If you wish to kill yourself that’s up to you. Now”—Nang’s voice became stern—“go to the dike.”

  “No.”

  “I’m under orders to deny you to the Viet Namese.”

  “To what?”

  “If you don’t come with us, you’ll be captured and conscripted by the yuons. You’ll be used against your own people.”

  Reluctantly, bitterly, Daravong acquiesced, moved. “We won’t return, will we?”

  “There is a more beautiful village in the North,” Nang answered. Again his voice was soft.

  On the dike the two boys turned. Black-clad figures were scurrying from house to house. Smoke rose from beyond the closest row, then from every structure. Flames leaped from the smoke. From the paddies about the hamlet air was sucked into a swirling rising firestorm. In minutes the settlement ceased to exist.

  A tremendous thunderclap jerked Sullivan from his bent-back sleep. He sprang up, awake, alert yet disoriented. In the dark his left hand searched for Vathana, his right grabbed the M-16 he’d commandeered a week earlier. Another thunderclap jolted him, jolted the sky, and the rain shook loose and crashed hard on the sedan roof. He shook his head. Amid the sky’s cacophony he heard other rumbles. He squeezed his eyes. Opened them. His night fantasies vanished as if he’d never dreamt.

  For ten days Captain Sullivan had visited various FANK units, visited, observed, was pleased, was horrified. Rita Donaldson had dogged him at first but her mission was to grab a story and scoot back to the capital to file it before another reporter filed the same observation, thought or impression which they called news. Still he, Sullivan, found himself looking over his shoulder each time he approached a FANK unit.

  Two weeks had passed since the vanguard of Colonel Um Savath’s task force had reached Kompong Thom and the column had settled, stalled. On the raised roadway twenty thousand troops plus dependants bivouacked. From Skoun to Pa Kham and up through Tang Kouk, Rumlong, Baray, Tang Krasang, Puk Yuk and on into the provincial capital, FANK had camped without spreading out, staying high if not dry, in the lanes of Highway 6 above the flooded land. Officially the road was open, but the congestion of the column made it, for cargo trucking, all but impassable. Sullivan had been able to move up as far as the Chinit River bridge north of Baray only by bribing his Khmer escort and driver and they in turn bribing various unit control personnel. There he unobtrusively counted the men of one battalion carried as 450 strong. He’d found forty guarding the bridge, seventy-five to eighty living with their families in the dependant camp. In his mind he’d shaken his head. It was the worst unit he’d fou
nd. The degree of deceit appalled him. Ten percent was one thing, seventy-five another. These bastards, he’d lamented in his mind to Vathana, this elite scum. Immediately “elite” brought to mind Madame Pech, or Sisowath as she now called herself, and the “elite” who were milking the American cow while honest commanders had to beg for supplies, while troops of the most vile had to pay for rations, medical supplies and ammunition.

  The return trip had presented more difficulty. On the twenty-second a trickle of peasants had mixed with the dependants. At first he’d thought it was farmers and hamlet women come to sell their produce and wares but the people had had nothing with them, had not stopped, had not set up shop. By the twenty-third it seemed clear that only the old and very young were coming to the highway. “Has someone talked to these people?” he’d asked his escort. “Of course,” the liaison had answered, indignant. Immediately he’d known he’d blown an opportunity, had placed the man on the defensive. The next day the highway had been clogged not only by the column but with hundreds of pushcarts, with thousands upon thousands of children and thousands more of enfeebled elders shuffling along north or south, or simply sitting on any open bit of blacktop—all without provisions, without pots to cook in, without tarps for shelter. They begged for food. Surrounded by six hundred square kilometers of ripening rice they begged because they had no way to harvest, to thresh, to winnow or to cook.

  By the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, as the sedan crept at a speed slower than a child’s walk, Sullivan had not been able to stand it any longer. Rumors of forced hamlet evacuations and impending bombings were rampant. Some elders wailed with unrestrained grief while children sobbed or shrieked. He had reached the town of Tang Kouk, the section of roadway which ran tangentially west of the town, when he requested the escort and driver to let him out to stretch and urinate. From there he’d meandered amongst the people.

  A kilometer south he’d seen the road rising to the bridge over the main drainage canal between Tang Kouk and Pa Kham. Sullivan had walked toward that point, weaved his way between soldiers and dependants, APCs and oxcarts, terror-stricken peasants and a few hotshot junior officers with souped-up jeeps. “Do you speak French?” he called to various peasant groups. “Français? Français?”

  An old man. “Oui.”

  At last. “Why have all the people come to the highway?”

  “We were told to come.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then why doesn’t the government ask us? Why not the army big shots?”

  “I will tell them to do so.”

  “Now the government comes back.” The old peasant shrugged his shoulders. “Now the yuons come back. Now the Patriots. Who cares?”

  “Then why do you leave your land?”

  “I plow. I plant. I weed. I harvest. The government tells us to get out, the Communists are coming. We hear that on the radio. The Communists tell us to get out, the government is coming. We see them on the road. Then the Patriots tell us to flee, the planes are coming. Good, let the planes come. They can destroy all the soldiers. Good, eh? They will destroy my fields and my dikes. Not good, eh! Not good for me. The Patriots burned the village so no one will capture it. Not good for me, eh! The planes come and blow up my son. Go away! You go away.”

  Another thunderclap jarred the sedan. Sullivan gritted his teeth. The first bombing raid in the western part of Caoutchouco Plantation east of Phum Chamkar was flown a few minutes past midnight on 24 October. Acting on ground-sighting reports, a single B-52 released eighty-four 500-pound bombs in a target area said to house an NVA regiment. Over the next two days the bombing increased significantly.

  Then, close by to the south, a huge fire cloud leaped from the earth. Then came the explosion, then the concussion sweeping the bivouac like an angry wind. Blackness returned and the rain beat hard on the roof. Sullivan flung the door open. Already the escort officer had leaped from the car, from the roadway, and was off somewhere in the dark murk of the paddies. Sullivan stood tall, looked about. In the distance he could feel the unmistakable rumbling quake of high-level sorties pummeling the plantations to the east. About him people dashed in aimless frenzy or—rolled back to sleep or simply sat, frozen, unable to think of a direction to go. Just north, at the intersection to Tang Kouk, several FANK APCs turned on their headlights, aimed themselves toward the deluged fields, silhouetted themselves by their own lights. To the south there was more commotion. Sullivan reached into the sedan, grabbed his ammo bandoleers, his steel pot, his weapon. He slammed the door. The distant rumble came again, lasted less than a minute, then stopped. He marched south; toward the bridge, the commotion. Where the road began its rise over the canal, a Patton tank fired its machine guns, red tracers looping into the downpour for 300 meters then vanishing as if extinguished or blocked from view. Candles, flashlights and straw torches illuminated the road. Soldiers ran from their units to the dependant camps to make sure their families were safe, and from the dependant camps soldiers ran to their unit loggers to receive orders and prepare for an attack.

  Sullivan walked. He cursed himself for not understanding the language, for not having taken the PRC-25 radio from the sedan even if he couldn’t understand the transmissions. He walked determinedly, cursing himself and his country for the half-assed effort, for the Nixon administration’s seeming approval of Lon Nol’s latest political blunder, for not having seen the attack coming and for not having advised—yes, damn it, Rita Donaldson or not—advised, found a way to subtly convince Colonel Chhan of the intelligence importance of the road refugees. He stopped. He had to have the radio. Now he ran, frantic, anguished by the thought that someone might have stolen it. The distance was short. He was there in minutes and indeed four young boys were pillaging the vehicle.

  “No way, jack!” He growled, snarled, barked in English, grabbed one child and threw him off the road. Then he rammed his face into the backseat, felt the floor. “Oh thank god!” He strapped the radio on and jogged toward the bridge, his helmet banging even though he held it, the light web gear barely keeping the PRC-25 from smashing his lumbar vertebrae.

  Sullivan glanced at his watch. The luminescence was dull. He moved toward a large straw torch. 0310. To the elders and children clustered below the fire he shouted in French, thinking, Damn em if they don’t understand, “You make yourselves targets with that light. Target! Understand? If there are—” in his anger he almost said “gooks,” then caught himself—“Viet gunners, they’ll see you. Understand?” No recognition. No response. A hard long quaking vibrated the road. In the distance—how far?—southeast where the plantation land jutted into the paddies and approached Highway 6—how far?—six, eight, ten kilometers, flashes, faint, not even certain. “Target! Understand?” Wet faces in the torchlight hardened, with fear, with hatred. Backs turned. Go away. You go away.

  Sullivan marched off, south. APCs and tanks had clustered near the bridge approach. Spotlights and mortar flares illuminated the twisted steel beams stabbing the blackness at eerie angles.

  “Monsieur! Monsieur Captain!” It was Captain Sisowath Suong, Colonel Chhan Samkai’s aide who had ordered Sullivan to leave Turn Nop when the skirmish between FANK APCs and infantry had broken out. “The bridges are out.”

  “I can see that,” Sullivan answered, angry, sarcastic.

  “No. No, monsieur. Not just here but over the Chinit north of Baray and near Phum Chamkar. All the main bridges. We are trapped.”

  At the edge of the plantation forests Colonel Hans Mitterschmidt filmed bright bursting flashes against the black night curtain. The B-52 devastation three kilometers south jiggled the saturated earth beneath him as if it were Jell-O. Uncomfortably his NVA escorts held oiled parasols over him and over the camera. “Sir, we’re much too exposed,” Lieutenant Nam Thay cautioned him in French.

  “Not so,” the colonel responded. “I want to move forward.”

  “It’s not safe, sir.” />
  “I didn’t come here to be safe. What are they doing over there?”

  “That’s the 209th Regiment. They’re preparing the battlefield, sir.”

  “Excellent. But so noisy?”

  “There’s no one to hear. The lackey army doesn’t send patrols.”

  Colonel Mitterschmidt dropped to one knee and hunched over his camera, a modified Bolex H-16 EBM motion picture camera with a specially designed 8mm to 90mm zoom lens set on a gunstock mount. As Lieutenant Thay held a flashlight, Mitterschmidt removed exposed film and inserted new. Then he placed the exposed film in a plastic bag and put that in the waterproof ammo can his porter carried attached to his rucksack. For several days the East German had filmed the NVA 7th Division in high-gear motion, closing in on their chosen battlefield. With the 7th came the 40th Artillery Regiment: antiaircraft and 130mm field gun batteries, 122mm rocket teams, and 120mm mortar squads. Quickly the infantry had shifted southwest, seemingly jumping from one forested area to the next, always moving, attempting to avoid aerial detection and subsequent bombing. Behind them came the artillery and, interspersed, the armor. The weather had been advantageous, a continual heavy mask of clouds rendering normal visual aerial detection ineffective. The more sophisticated electronic, radar, infrared and laser target detection systems had picked up the general movement but without cross validation most targets had been denied at embassy level. Behind the attack force had come long, heavily laden truck convoys—the concentration of heat-producing engines giving the bombers their only targets.

  With each kilometer covered, Mitterschmidt had grown more and more anxious, exhausted. To him each sight was new and he viewed it all as if framed, bracketed by the edge of the film. Whenever possible he filmed the troops in their prepared environment. In the past day his travel group had seen an intermittent parade of peasants marshaled toward some rear point by black-clad Khmer soldiers. These, too, he filmed as he ogled each group, searching for his Khmer students, knowing how ludicrous was his thought that elite dac cong might be used this way but unable to overcome the racial stereotyping, thinking all Khmers looked alike and thus one of the boy-soldiers should be known to him. Then there had been the first glimpse, beyond the forest, broken by vegetation, shrouded by rain, yet there, unmistakably, of a land torched. By early evening a double score of fires had dotted the flat land and the smell and sight of smoke quickened, neared, as night had fallen.