For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Historical documents indicate sophisticated Viet Namese Communist intelligence work and planning. Colonel Heng Samrin’s defection and the establishment of the new Khmer Viet Minh structure allowed the Hanoi Communists to revive their old plan of installing a Viet Namese-controlled regime in Phnom Penh which would appear to be a legitimate Khmer government. In late 1977, a PAVN “meat grinder” campaign, as far as the east bank of the Mekong River, was designed and executed to demoralize the Khmer interior while the PAVN assessed the KK’s strengths and weaknesses in guerrilla and large-scale conventional assault warfare. All the while, Hanoi propagandized against Pol Pot. This, in the wake of Western denial of the Kampuchean holocaust, followed by guilt over that denial, served to disguise Communist hegemony in a cloak of moral benevolence.

  The Krahom did little to improve their image. In January 1977 they attacked three villages in Thailand, leaving behind piles of mutilated corpses, gruesome piles easily accessible to Western media personnel. The Viet Namese increased their reportage of Khmer Rouge atrocities—the spear rape of women, the slitting of pregnant women’s abdomens and the smashing of the unborn against the faces of the dying mothers, the traumatic mastectomies of large-breasted women, and the torture and decapitation of Viet Namese males (in the documents they are always fishermen). In late 1978, as waves of political and racial purges continued to roll back and forth through the Khmer interior, as the Center continuously sought to weed out ever more “enemies of the people,” the Viet Namese army massed for a new final offensive.

  PART FOUR

  DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA

  I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty.

  —Cambodian minister Sirik Matak in a letter to American ambassador John Gunther Dean delivered as U.S. personnel fled Phnom Penh, 12 April 1975

  I will remain until the end on the side of the Red Khmers, my allies whom I would never betray.

  —Norodom Sihanouk’s 12 April 1975 written response to U.S. liaison chief in Peking, George Bush, on U.S. initiative inviting the Prince to retake control of the Phnom Penh government.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  NANG WALKED THE PLATFORM. His black uniform and red-checked krama were new. Though scarred, he was spotless. Beneath an afternoon sky splotched gray, a dozen flags and banners hung listless. The upper winds had shifted, wet air was gradually supplanting dry. Mist had begun to form, to ooze from the forest floor. It hung in the low vegetation, making the jungle walls impenetrable.

  For a week peasants of a new people’s group had labored—crudely nailing, lashing or simply laying boards, logs and bamboo poles together—raising and extending the platform under harsh glares from scattered yotheas and urged on by enthusiastic utterances from an old people’s foreman. In the middle of nowhere, the platform resembled a commuter train station without the rails, without the stationhouse. Simply a raised platform eighty meters long by three meters wide with stairs at each end, a simple platform erected on an exact north-south axis.

  Nang stopped below a banner: EQUALITY—JUSTICE—DEMOCRACY. He faced the empty clearing, raised his arms, both fists clenched so as not to expose his claw. “Soon,” he shouted to imaginary multitudes, “all will see Norodom Sihanouk.” He brought his arms down, chuckled, “Yes, tell them that.”

  During early construction, he had not walked the length of the platform but had only climbed the south stairs and peered down, grabbed the foreman if he, Nang, saw a board out of line, and politely requested that the offensive protuberance be aligned.

  As completion neared, Nang examined the structure centimeter by centimeter, cajoling the workers to make repairs, demanding reinforcements, visualizing the platform in operation.

  He walked back to the south stairs, stared down the empty length, laughed inwardly. The jungle along the western edge had been cleared. On the east it was close, high, thick, blocking his view toward Preah Vihear. To the north, rising above the tree-tops, he could see the rocky cliffs of the Dang Rek mountain escarpment less than four kilometers away. He paused. All around him he sensed wilderness, virgin forest awaiting his order and creation. He looked down, off the platform edge. The drop, he thought, is not so great to make them afraid yet great enough to make them hesitate. He barely heard the radio his site assistant had brought, “...the Revolution seeks to achieve an independent, unified, peaceful nation...a democratic state enjoying territorial integrity, a national society infused with genuine happiness, equality, justice and democracy, without rich or poor, without exploiters or exploited...”

  Nang stared north over the trees, envisioned the entire site—not the platform, not just the few camps already established but a sprawling complex, a seemingly liberal, highly advanced state agricultural commune with the best housing, the best provisions, the best equipment, the most productive paddies. They’ll flock to me, he thought. Willingly. Glad to be sent up. He fantasized dozens of separate communes dispersed in his wilderness like leaves dropped in a pond—independent, isolated, yet all in the same water. He saw, amid the best communes, his prisons, his confession centers, his platform designed to protect the revolution and guarantee internal security.

  “...a society in which all live harmoniously...”—Nang flicked his face toward the radio—“...in great national solidarity...”—the voice of Democratic Kampuchea, soon to be Radio Phnom Penh—“...to do manual work together and increase production for the construction and defense of the country...” Shunned, Nang thought, by weak-stomached, two-headed snakes at the Center. A quick titter escaped from his throat.

  From a jungle trail at the southwestern edge of the clearing a column of people emerged. “Welcome,” Met Nang shouted from atop the long platform. They walked timidly, a line of seventy captured FANK officers and NCOs surrounded by their families, four hundred people in all. As they approached the platform and clumped before Nang, who’d moved back to center stage, their fears dissipated. Amongst them were but a few armed yotheas.

  “They will come,” Nang had told his underlings weeks earlier, “and they will see the platform, the clearing for five thousand, and they will believe. Tell them”—he had smiled—“they may bring nothing to the Prince’s reception. Say, ‘You understand, Brothers. Security.’ Have them place their belongings neatly on the benches in their huts. Say, ‘It will be there when you return.’ Have them straighten their uniforms and clean the children’s faces.”

  To his surprise they’d come exactly as he’d said. Now he chatted briefly, seemingly absentmindedly, with an officer, a yothea, a young mother.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Pa Kham.” “Oudong.” “Roka Kong.”

  “All from the Northern Corridor, eh.”

  “Yes.”

  “No one from the capital?”

  “No. The capital still holds, doesn’t it, sir?”

  “Perhaps. But you’ll see. Samdech Euv will tell you how glorious the future is. Though you’re much too early.”

  There was an enforcer in each new phum, a chief in each sangkat (the term khum was being eliminated), a controller in each srok; and all were to be suppliers for Nang’s high-level reeducation facility. In Dumbon 11 alone there were sixty-four commune-farms, kasethans, from which his site could pull “resources,” sixty-four communes needing purification, sixty-four camps of potential resistance requiring the most scientific police work and surveillance. Already the Viet Namese sickness threatened Kampuchea. Spies and subversives were plotting with the CIA and/or the KGB to overthrow the new order before it was even established, and the overseas Chinese capitalists were seeking to regain their perverted exploitive businesses. He, Nang, he’d told himself, would expose the networks, purify the people. He would excel. The Center would never shun him again.

  “We were told to come now if we wished to be close enough to hear,” a captured major called up to him.

  “Eh. Not for three hours,” Nang responded. “That would still be early. Even th
e Prince’s advanced security escort hasn’t yet arrived.”

  “Met Nang,” a yothea called up, “should we march them back?”

  “Hum! Which camp are you from?”

  “A-26.”

  “That’s what, four kilometers?”

  “More like five.”

  “They’ve already come so far, eh? Don’t make the little ones march. Have them all come up here out of the dirt.”

  “Yes!” The yothea nodded. “That’s good, eh, Sister?” “Better up there away from the ground snakes, eh, Little Brother?” “Let me help you to the stairs, Auntie.” When the ex-government soldiers and their families were aligned along the platform, Nang shouted to a distant yothea, “We have a cameraman, eh? Have him take a photo for each family.” Then to several nearby officers he said, “You’ll have a photograph of the day you were with Samdech Euv, eh?”

  “You are very gracious,” a middle-aged ex-lieutenant said.

  For an hour the soldiers and their families and the minimal escort waited. The photographer methodically worked his way down the line arranging families about the father-husband, snapping a picture, then moving a few feet to the next. The mist in the jungle grew thicker. The clouds reddened as the sun dropped. Then from the jungle trail came a reinforced company of strack, black-clad yotheas, marching neatly, two by two, shoulder arms, bayonets affixed. “They’re the best, eh?” Nang said, forcing all attention on the soldiers as they entered the clearing. “The Prince, he should have the best, eh?”

  The yotheas marched, eyes fixed straight, to the south stairs. Two by two they climbed. Without shouted orders, without a side glance the entire column ascended the platform and spaced themselves perfectly along the entire length.

  “If the Prince is coming we should jump down,” the ex-major said, loud enough for those about him to hear.

  “No!” Nang snapped. “I mean, no. Not that way. This is the advance guard. There’s still time.”

  A whistle blew and the spaced yotheas, facing north, spun, snapped their rifles into assault position, aimed their bayonets at the ex-FANK personnel.

  “No one move.” Nang’s voice was coarse, authoritative. “All FANK soldiers, two steps forward. Kneel.” Slowly a few obeyed. “Kneel!” Others moved more quickly. The pressure of their prostrate peers brought the few who wished to resist to their knees. Like clockwork from north to south, one yothea of each pair stepped behind the ex-soldier before him. Children clung to their fathers but were pushed away. They grabbed their mothers’ legs. Women began weeping. Most were numbed by the change, disbelieving what their eyes were seeing, yet believing because they had always believed, believed since capture, that this was their true fate. Then, in gasps, entire sections pleaded, “Have mercy, Brother. Samdech Euv, he wouldn’t...”

  “Eliminate!” Nang barked the order. Seventy yotheas lunged from behind, burying their bayonets in the backs of the FANK men. Seventy lunged from the front stabbing throats, faces, hearts. Wives shrieked. Children, faces contorted in horror and agony, froze, fell. Some lurched forward, threw themselves on their fathers. A few mothers shoved children from the platform, wanting them to run to the forest. Immediately from below, unseen yotheas leaped, impaled the boys with lances, decapitated the girls with axes. Again and again the FANK troops were stabbed, blood spurting, oozing, splashing beneath footfalls. Then from the south end the mop-up team proceeded up the line, family by family. As a man lay dying his family was forced to kneel by his body. They too were bayoneted. Airless, windless, breathless—when all were dead, when no voices and no moans could be heard, when the only sound was the trickle of blood dripping from the platform into puddles below, Nang quietly ordered old-people-drawn carts from the forest. Methodically the carnage was pushed from the stage into small wagons and tugged from the site.

  “Met Ku,” Nang called to his site assistant.

  “Yes, Comrade High Controller,” Ku responded.

  “How shall we clean the platform before the next group?”

  “There’s the peasant workers’ platoon. They draw water from...”

  “That’s too far. Look at this mess. With so many this will never do.”

  “Perhaps...for now?”

  “Yes. For now. Until...something more efficient...”

  Betrayed, she thought. The street was not vacant. She had expected to be alone with her children yet scurrying in the dark from burned-out cars to building-rubble heaps like rats at the city dump avoiding cats, scores of people, shadows, blipped at the periphery of her vision. How could I have been so wrong? she thought. The street was dark. How, she thought, could I have ignored all the signs? All the warnings? Su Livanh slept in the khan that hung from Vathana’s neck. Samol held her hand. Samnang walked at her other side. How, Vathana thought as she stepped softly, leading her children from Neak Luong, could I ever have believed anything they said? Kosol! The associations! Even Teck! My poor Teck. “They’re Khmer, eh?” At the end they’d shown their true colors. At the end the Patriots had sunk all the boats along the levee. “Owned by Chinese capitalists,” they’d said. The internals had set fire to all the government buildings and to the pagoda and the apartment building. Then Khmer Rouge soldiers had looted the town, had shot any civilian caught looting. For a week the crying had been continuous.

  Neak Luong was not evacuated immediately. Under control of the Eastern Zone Army the population of more than 200,000 was not, on an hour’s notice, forced to flee. Locally FANK was disarmed but few conquerors remained. Like a wave over a sandbar they’d swept in, over, then continued west in a military rush toward Phnom Penh. A subtler pressure crushed in upon the inhabitants. The fighting had been ferocious, the last battles block to block, then house to house, causing immense destruction. For months there had been little food, little potable water. Now there was nothing.

  Day after day Vathana had crept about the camp, crept like a mole fearing light, crept, uncertain, scattered, numbed. She could barely talk. She hugged her children to her for hours, slept in fits. Each time she woke she looked for Sophan, looked to say, “Sophan, watch the children. I must take Teck his ration.” Then, knowing Sophan was not there, would never be there again as she had been for five years, such a part of Vathana’s life, of her routine, such a part of the children’s lives, not there...Not there. “Sophan, while I’m at the hospital, take the little ones to the river to bathe. Sophan, Sophan, Sophan...” To say the name meant to open her mouth and to open her mouth meant to allow the heartache to belch forth like an acrid gas, to burn in front of her. And yet she did say the name. And she called for Teck. “It could have been so much better, my husband. It could always have been like it was at the end. We did not have to lose our country to love each other. Oh Teck! How your children will miss you. How I will miss you.”

  Then the first Krahom cadre had returned. Then Vathana had packed their small bundle, clothing for the children, a sleeping mat, a blanket, a small cooking pot, the last of their rice. In her skirt waistband she’d rolled the gold chain necklace John Sullivan had given her. She’d placed Su Livanh in the khan, hung it from her neck, grabbed the two older children and escaped onto the midnight highway leading north.

  For a week the wind had carried the aroma of rotting flesh. It wafted in from battle areas where corpses lay unburied, it hung in the humid night air. It coated her skin, burned her eyes. Maggots had become flies in the mutilated carcasses lying where they’d fallen. Now the night air was thick with buzzing.

  She did not scurry as did others. With Su Livanh hung in the cloth and Samol, at four, and Samnang, strong at five and a half yet still a little boy, by the hands, how could she dart from concealment to concealment? Instead they walked calmly, lightly, attempting to keep to the shadows but also trying to appear normal. She spoke quietly, encouraging and reassuring the children. “In a few days,” Vathana said, “you’ll see your grandmother and grandfather.”

  “Grandpa’s house!” Samol’s voice was loud, enthusiastic.

&nbs
p; “No. Not the villa. Much farther away. My father’s house. You’ve never met him.”

  “Bu-ba-ba-ba.”

  “He loves you very much,” Vathana said to Samnang. “Before you were born he came to pray for you. He is the most wonderful grandpa.”

  They walked for hours. The outskirts of the city were in ruin. Sophan...Teck...The ache in her heart nearly swallowed her. A hundred times Vathana repeated inwardly, Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Yothea presence on Highway 15 leading north was sparse, by night seemingly nonexistent. Vathana paused frequently. Will I ever see the pagoda again? she thought. Then she thought, No, it has burned. What of my first halfway house? The levees? The fish market? Don’t look back, she thought, yet she turned and she knew she was near the spot by the river where she had taken John Sullivan. Where Su Livanh had been conceived. Why did you abandon me, Captain Sullivan? Don’t look back. The night seemed quiet, quiet between distant explosions. The air felt peaceful, peaceful between sporadic acrid-metallic waftings, between the clouds of flies and death smell. The children tired but bravely pushed on. Don’t look back. Oh, Sophan...Don’t look back. Oh, Teck...Oh, my Teck...Don’t look back. This hurts so much. Vathana’s eyes filled with tears.