For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Immoral fucking phalang!” Kosol’s voice explodes. Everyone in the tent, half the camp, hears. “Red-haired fucking bitch.” He throws a towel he’d had on his shoulder on the baby. Immediately Vathana’s hands, arms swing to protect her. Kosol barges by Sophan, shoves Samnang to the ground, storms from the tent.

  “Ms. Donaldson,” Quentin, the reporter from Boston, said. Rita looked at him. He was pale from witnessing the festering and filth of the wounded, ill from the volume of dead. She herself, though hardened, was queasy. More than queasy. Angry. The boy she’d paid to find Vathana had returned with a French-speaking friend who’d told her Mrs. Cahuom had just given birth to a baby girl and could not come. Stupid girl, Rita had thought. What kind of person would bring a kid into this world?!

  Quentin smiled. He needed reassurance, yet he tried to keep it light, to not irritate the veteran correspondent. “Hey,” he said. “Did you hear about the miracle?”

  “Hum?” Rita would not allow herself to be friendly.

  “Did you hear about the lady here who gave birth to a blue-eyed, red-haired baby when the bomb fell. Some of these local yokels think it’s a miracle. Ha! An angel, they say.”

  Rita’s look stopped him cold. He huffed, half turned away. “Shit,” he stammered. “You don’t have to be so sensitive. I’m not writing the story.” His smile was gone and he too was angry. Then with his head cocked, he said, “Oh, I get it. ‘Yokels.’ Look, none of these people understand English.”

  In the tent Teck knelt beside Vathana’s cot. He held her hand. Samnang hung from his back. Samol sat on Sophan’s lap on the cot’s end, and Louis stood behind Teck. “Step by step,” Teck whispered. His heart was bursting with love for his exhausted wife. “You’ve taught so many the prayer. I looked at the pagoda. I was so afraid. Every step a prayer. Every step a prayer for a miracle.” His face was radiant.

  Vathana looked at him. Her eyes closed, opened halfway, closed. The swaddled baby lay in the crook of her arm.

  “My father is dead,” Teck whispered to her. “We don’t know where your father is, when we will see him again. Should we ask my mother to name her?”

  Vathana smiled weakly but did not open her eyes. Then she whispered, “no. she is named.”

  “Eh?” Teck whispered, not hearing her.

  “Pech,” Vathana said. “pech. pech su livanh.” She fell asleep.

  There was no option. No words could assuage the feelings, the anger, the hate. Even later when Met Sen said, “Come with me,” he could not release it. The clean and pure victory against U.S. imperialism was empty in the absence of a final victory over FANK and Lon Nol. Not simply a victory. Revenge.

  Nang ran his pincer index finger down the scab and scar. For two weeks they had carried him north in a hammock hung from shoulder poles. He wouldn’t have done that for any of his wounded yotheas but they were doing it for him. The shame, the disgust, further fueled his inner rage, yet there had been no options. He’d walked as soon as he was allowed. The rains came heavy. A porter had guided him by pulling him with a rope. Each day had been a cleansing struggle purifying his hate and vengeance. They stopped north of Skoun where FANK commanders had abandoned their troops on 2 August and the troops had broken and fled and Angkar had had a great victory devouring and evacuating the enclave. Nang touched the scar where it parted his hair above the left eye. He picked the edge of the scab. The rain had softened it and it smeared beneath his fingernails. His left hand fingers followed the scar to his eyebrow. The skin was a glass-smooth lump. Why the shrapnel had not totally blinded him he didn’t know. His eye had been damaged yet he was sure it was healing. He closed his right eye to test the left. Yotheas and porters were rising from their rest. Through Nang’s left eye they were but blurry green or black oblongs. He closed both eyes, thought he heard the drone of T-28s, shivered. Even with both eyes open he could see Duch’s head, see Duch’s face staring horrified at Nang’s; not because of his, Duch’s, own wound, but because of Nang’s.

  Nang rose. His fingers followed the scar below his eye where it split into two main branches and a dozen interlacing twigs. Puc, Von, Thevy, Ung, Duch were all dead. Rath, Sol and No had control of the remnant of the 91st. Nang didn’t know where he was going. Nor why. All he’d been told was “Trust Angkar.”

  The Americans had been legislated out of action yet the offensive had not rolled forward. Indeed, it had sputtered worse than under the bombings. Nang did not know, was never to know, that air strikes had killed perhaps half, perhaps more than half, of the attacking KK yotheas, their conscripted porters and their militia aides. The cessation of bombing had coincided with the destruction of the Northern Zone Army and the crippling of those of the South and Southwestern Zones. Only the Gray Vultures of the Eastern Zone were able to pursue the battle, and they were now smashing FANK’s defensive ring about Kompong Cham.

  They walked north for another week. Each day new reports reached the column. The yuons had attempted to assassinate the high generals of the Center, not once, not twice, but three times. Each time loyal yotheas had sacrificed their lives protecting the leadership of the Kampuchean revolution. The battle for Kompong Cham soured. Lon Nol had decided, with the relief of Phnom Penh, to commit totally to the salvation of that Mekong River city. On 18 August FANK reinforcements from the heartland reached Kompong Cham. Then FANK’s 80th and 50th Brigades caught a poorly commanded, poorly controlled Krahom force in a hammer-and-anvil operation, annihilating most of the yotheas, the stragglers fleeing to take refuge in the university and monastery of Angkor Wat—structures which the Cambodian air force would not bomb. More reinforcements arrived—twenty, naval convoys—and Kompong Cham was recaptured by FANK. Seventy percent of the city was in ruins. Still the Center claimed partial victory. The civilian administration had been wiped out and the Khmer Krahom had evacuated twenty to thirty thousand regained people.

  North of Kompong Thom, Nang’s column crossed paths with the transportation and security companies escorting the Center. The next two hours changed the direction of Nang’s life.

  “Eh?” Met Reth said quizzically, looking at the line of wounded. “That one you say?” Met Sar’s bodyguard had been sent for Nang, sent to bring him to Sar for debriefing and reinspiration. “I don’t see him.”

  “The one with the pink scar through his left eye, there,” the porter said.

  Met Sar smiled very wide when Nang arrived but after the first moment, Sar did not look at him. “We,” Sar lamented, “have suffered greater than any revolutionary army ever! Look at you.” Nang shuffled uncomfortably. A moment before he’d arrived he’d imagined Sar would hug him, would hold him and praise him for his hard work. “Two hundred days of bombings,” Sar went on. “Two hundred nights without interruption. No other nation has suffered so under the thumb of American imperialism. Only we. And only our superhuman will has enabled us to survive. Aah, look at you. You’re still alive, eh? A symbol of defeat! Go. Go away. Perhaps Met Sen has something for you. I won’t look at you again.”

  The sense of abandonment was immediate. Reth led Nang out. Total confusion flooded the boy’s mind. Yet immediately he was before Met Sen and Met Sen was hugging him and comforting him.

  “You never had a chance,” Sen said in his wispy voice, “to loot that capital. Ah, too bad,” he said. “Never a chance to play city folk. You will yet. I promise you, Met Nang.” Sen looked deeply into Nang’s destroyed face. “There are special privileges for a man of your record,” he said. “So come with me. Work in security with me, Met Nang of Kampuchea. We are far from finished. So Sar broods about Kompong Cham? So what? He’ll get over it and the imperialists and the lackeys will always neak-luong themselves. If you help me, I’ll take care of you. Come with me into the secret zone. Security—this is where the true power is.”

  The next eighteen months for Nang, for Chhuon, for Vathana were extensions of the descending spiral which was dropping Cambodia into the worst horrors of human history.

  Throughout the A
merican spring and summer of 1973 revelations by Watergate investigators had accumulated and multiplied. Wiretaps, ordered to plug the leaks which had spilled the news about the secret 1969 Cambodia bombings, were exposed, as were the “plumbers’ ” break-ins. Each new report spurred bigger headlines and deeper searches. The Nixon administration shelved its dubious policies and plans for Southeast Asia and entrenched for the coming domestic battle.

  The Krahom also entrenched, jerking along in sporadic fits of minor offensives, terrorist acts and withdrawals. By the time of the legislated halt of American bombing (15 August 1973), half the Khmer Rouge attacking force had been killed. The Krahom, and FANK too, recoiled from the long campaign. The Krahom Army of the North lay low and licked its wounds much as the NVA had after the 1972 Easter offensive in South Viet Nam. For the rest of the year the Krahom rebuilt and reequipped their battalions, and they stockpiled materiel for the final battle. In addition to their military losses, the Krahom suffered significant political setbacks, both with the population under their control and with their “allies.” American intelligence reports concluded:

  The most significant development during the past quarter was the increasing disaffection of large segments of the population with KC [Khmer Communist] control. Reports from the countryside in all six KC regions reveal a rather widespread failure of the Communists to enlist the support of the villages under their control, as well as a general inability to recruit desirable persons into their organization. The openness with which the population has voiced its displeasure varies widely including several areas where dissenters have begun to band together and demonstrate publicly, despite a relatively strong KC presence. [The Situation in Cambodia, October 1973 (CIA report number 7881/73,)]

  For the Krahom the situation further deteriorated in November 1973. On the 6th, Communist rank and file troops in Kampong Trach District openly revolted against the local Krahom leadership; in the ensuing firelight Rumdoah soldiers succeeded in stopping Krahom yotheas from forcing the evacuation and relocation of the “liberated” population. Two weeks later in Kampot Province peasants and Rumdoah troops, armed with scythes, machetes and rice knives, drove off a KK force that had come to collectivize and confiscate the local harvest. The villagers were doubly incensed by yothea denunciations of Norodom Sihanouk. Along the Viet Nam border the NVA continued its massive, unopposed buildup. Hanoi, viewing the exhaustion of the Cambodian factions, both KK and FANK, judged it had gained at least a year along its western front. In secret negotiations with Krahom leaders, the Hanoi Politburo thus agreed to keep its forces out of the Cambodian interior in exchange for a Krahom promise to end the purge against Khmer Viet Minh and Rumdoah cadre. In the enclaves of the interior, Ith Sarin’s Regrets for the Khmer Soul peaked in popularity. Its descriptions, along with those of a growing number of escapees from the “liberated” zones, of Krahom evacuations, “pure flame” policies, ruthlessness, and even growing Rumdoah totalitarianism, foretold virtually all the horrors that were to come. The Lon Nol regime, believing the book was Communist propaganda, dismissed the revelations. The Krahom leadership, however, was incensed. Security in the liberated areas was tightened. Krahom security chief Met Sen, along with zonal security officers, set out to establish high-level reeducation facilities in the “secret zones” for “students” requiring extensive and long-term classes on how to live in a pure society.

  As Nang’s face healed, as his hearing partially returned, he was set to work on this expanded security concept. By November Nang had gathered a small core of subordinates; by February 1974 he had his first class, not of soldiers but of security agents. His dream of being a teacher was again fulfilled yet again he found the fulfillment penultimate. By mid-1974 he was itching to be back in battle.

  For Chhuon the twentieth anniversary of Cambodian independence from France, 9 November 1973, was a moment of great sadness. Angkar bestowed its blessing upon Phum 117 and all of Khum 4 by forcing the settlement to abandon its nearly harvestable rice and to again relocate on uncleared ground—a mere six miles west. Communization at the new site was raised to a new level—a new alien mentality to the Krahom inverted pyramid of Khmer culture. Angkar Leou, the High Organization, the Party, now was institutionalized not only to yothea trainees but also to the peasantry as the highest abstraction of love and devotion.

  In December Neang Thi Sok died of cholera...died of Krahom policies which forced unsanitary and starvation conditions upon the population, forced them to renounce their pasts, forcibly removed them from their cultural roots, forced them to exist without modern or even semimodern means to protect themselves from hazards in their environment. In January Chhuon was allowed to return to the old settlement, to dismantle his two-man cocoon, carry it to the new site and rebuild it as a one-man hut. Chrops, internal spies, multiplied. Chhuon barely trusted his simplest thoughts to his closest friends, Sichau and Moeung.

  In 1973 North Viet Nam added 200,000 replacements to its forces in South Viet Nam and along the Cambodian border. Soviet and Chinese military equipment deliveries reached record levels and continued to increase in 1974.

  In Neak Luong Vathana withdrew more and more deeply into herself and her family. The refugees, many who had lived in the camp for three years, who had suffered intermittent harassment or terror at the hands of NVA, VC, FANK and ARVN units, who had been horrified by the errant American bombs that had killed 137 and wounded 268, now had a new fear. Local youth gangs rampaged out of control—uncontrollable because FANK had taken all their fathers and uncles, the traditional authority in the culture, and because the nation’s leadership, while ineffective, set an example of corruption and brutality. The refugees came to be afraid of remaining in the camp at night—some even during the day, except to stand in line for rations.

  With three children, including the Amerasian Su Livanh, Vathana spent virtually no time with the associations, only a little at the hospital and orphanage. Sophan took over many of her routine duties in the Khsach Sa camp. Kosol, Nem, Doctor Sarin were no longer a part of Vathana’s life. Often she dreamed of Phum Sath Din and of the wonderful years of her childhood. Teck came infrequently, his duties with the Auto-Defense forces, the constant improvement of the “last-resort line,” keeping him at the front. Daily Vathana trekked to the southern berm to bring him provisions, supporting not just him but also Louis. In all the hardship Teck found himself happier than ever before. He was now a man with a cause, a man with a family to protect.

  At the beginning of the dry season in 1974 Madame Pech again offered to have Vathana and the children live with her in Phnom Penh. Constantly Vathana thought of the offer, telling herself, At least we’ll be near Aunt Voen, at least we’ll be away from the gangs, at least I will not spend every night clutching Captain Sullivan’s pistol. Without the weapon Vathana too would have dispersed nightly with the refugees into the swamp. Captain Sullivan’s pistol...she often thought. Captain Sullivan, not a single word from him since he left Cambodia. Still, Vathana could not bring herself to leave Teck in his need, to move to the city that had been John Sullivan’s home.

  In January 1974 the Krahom temporarily regained momentum. From dispersed patrols and small unit ambushes they moved to heavy artillery raids. Their main targets were the densely packed refugee camps of Phnom Penh. By March they had killed over a thousand dependants and destroyed more than ten thousand homes and huts. In March FANK rallied and drove the KK from the rocket-launch belt, and for seven months, until the end of the next monsoon season, the capital breathed easier.

  The United States continued to assist the Lon Nol government and to supply FANK units. In May Kampot, Oudong and Lovek were recaptured or relieved of siege by American-supported FANK units. Arms and ammunition were delivered by U.S. C-130 cargo planes to Phnom Penh airport and carried forward by armed U.S. helicopter teams. The C-130s were escorted by fighter-bombers that engaged enemy troops under the terms of protective reaction. In addition America continued to send in “special teams” on temporary d
uty. Senator Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, helped to shape the American public’s mood by denouncing this involvement on 15 March 1974. As the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said this “...covert and illegal war cannot be condoned by Congress.” Southeast Asia has been a “breeding ground...of lies, deception and illegal practices long enough.”

  By June, the spectre of the impeachment of Richard Nixon, for keeping, or ordering to be kept, secret the “Menu” bombings of Cambodia on and since 17 March 1969, had paralyzed U.S. commitments to Southeast Asia. On 16 May the village of Dak Pek, north of Kontum in South Viet Nam, fell after being battered by seven thousand rounds of NVA artillery. Eleven days later Tuy Atar fell to the NVA after a thousand-round barrage. The United States did not respond.

  Monitoring the American scene, the high command of the Krahom met in June 1974 to plan “the final offensive to liberate all Kampuchea.” At this meeting the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh was formally discussed for the first time. Also analyzed was the new NVA offensive in South Viet Nam. Encouraged by the stimulation of American internal contradictions and motivated by fears of an NVA victory over Saigon which would release troops to attack Cambodia, the Center decided to launch the final battle with the upcoming dry season.

  On 9 August 1974 Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. Nixon’s early Cambodian policies and his paranoid attempts to keep them secret were at the root of the Watergate scandal. Despite the tremendous progress of Viet Namization, despite the first signs of the maturing of Cambodia’s Auto-Defense Force and the crippling of the Khmer Krahom, Watergate caused the final collapse of American will to defend anyone in Southeast Asia.

  At the end of 1974 the U.S. Senate—as North Viet Nam’s 7th and 3B Divisions attacked Phuoc Binh, capital of Phuoc Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon; as Krahom armies again besieged Phnom Penh—voted to reduce military and economic aid to Cambodia by 47 percent. (Aid to South Viet Nam, which had been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1973 to $700 million in 1974, was cut to $300 million in 1975.) Hanoi, the Krahom Center, Moscow and Peking concentrated their attention on Phuoc Long Province. The ARVN, they all saw, no longer had the mobility or power of main force units to stage large-scale, flanking counterattacks to halt or recapture strategic sites. Perhaps more importantly, America’s intention had now become clear. Phuoc Binh, a major provincial capital, fell 6 January 1975. Still the United States did not respond. In Saigon, in Phnom Penh, in Neak Luong, the mood was one of abandonment, betrayal, hopelessness and gloom.