For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Bok leaped, dove with his massive bulk ready to crash, ready to crush the wasp which had stung him. Nang sidestepped, jump-kicked, smashing Bok’s ribs with his heel, the huge body crumpling to earth like a great bag of sand, lying, writhing, retching.

  Nang rolled Bok over. Bok’s eyes clouded behind wet surfaces. His abdomen constricted as his body attempted to suck air through the blood-vomit-clogged airway. Nang removed an ankle-thong from his pack, dangled it over Bok’s eyes, smiled a beaming, pleasant, impish smile at his mentor. “Don’t you remember?” Nang clucked in Jarai. “For political reasons.”

  Fighting about Bu Prang continued for six days with much of the action being two miles south of the camp where four hundred troops of the ARVN Mobile Strike Force fought to stalemate nine hundred entrenched Northerners.

  A two-day artillery duel erupted between Bu Ntoll, Duc Lap and Bu Prang, culminating with the first U.S. Air Force fighter bomber strikes against the NVA complex in Cambodia.

  Khat Doh, “seeking revenge” for his uncle, Bok Roh, took part in much of the early November fighting. On the 15th, six days after his thirteenth birthday, he was honored for heroic actions against imperialist forces. Major Bui personally congratulated Nang for destroying two armored personnel carriers and for killing one tank crewman escaping a disabled vehicle through the bottom emergency hatch. The honors were bittersweet. Medical section leader Thi, perhaps the only Viet Namese Nang had ever liked, along with six patients, was killed when a 250-pound bomb exploded and caved in the infirmary. That night Khat Doh disappeared.

  On 31 December 1969 Met Nang, a.k.a. Khat Doh and Cahuom Samnang, reported, amongst many details, to his Krahom general, Met Sar: “Without our victory the North Viet Namese cannot win.”

  CAMBODIA: Factions, Influences and Military Disposition

  HISTORICAL SUMMATION

  Part 2 (1969-1970)

  Prepared for

  The Washington News-Times

  J. L. Sullivan

  April 1985

  WITH THE KHMER ECONOMY in shambles, with industrial output and agricultural production at record lows, inflation and trade deficits at record highs, with ever more government-controlled area being lost, the North Viet Namese Communists accelerated their long-term plan, Campaign X, to conquer Cambodia. At the same time, American will diminished further over the outcry caused by President Richard Nixon’s 3 November 1969 speech and the beginning of the exposé of the massacre at My Lai.

  Entering 1970 Cambodia was a ship smoldering throughout its hold, though flames had not yet appeared in the portholes or smoke yet begun to billow from the deck—a ship tossed by international waves created by the shifting of two major opposing elements, like continental plates beneath an ocean. The violent jarrings reverberated through every faction.

  By January the NVA had the military might—the supply lines, the troops and the political cadres—to force the collapse of Cambodia. Their only concern was how America would react. Throughout the American war years in South Viet Nam, the North Viet Namese generally chose when and where each battle would take place. It had been the sanctuary system along the Cambodian and Laotian border which had allowed this unilateral decision making. Now they asked themselves, at this time of U.S. deescalation, would the Americans choose to ignore the Khmer nation that had been a thorn in the side of two administrations, or would the United States, in its self-perceived “world-police” role, feel it must stave off the fall of Phnom Penh?

  Political purpose and military objective define the scope and intensity of any army’s, or nation’s, war effort. Under a dictatorial regime, or among guerrillas attempting to seize power, the cult of personality determines the political-military aim and thus the scope and intensity of the effort. The more absolute the control of the leadership, the more absolute its influence. The Hanoi-Politburo, led by Pham Van Dong, Le Duc Tho, Vo Nguyen Giap and the residue of the spirit of Ho Chi Minh, held near total control of their own nation and only slightly less control over the Laotian Pathet Lao and the Cambodian Khmer Viet Minh. In the battle for Cambodia, these men directed the largest and best-equipped military forces. They determined the scope and intensity of the war in this theater. American and South Viet Namese actions in regard to Cambodia would have a major impact on the North Viet Namese Communists, but 1970 was a year of such quick changes that many observers would never understand what happened. Some U.S. and ARVN actions affected the NVA and VC in ways exactly opposite to the usual interpretations.

  The NVA campaign precipitated turmoil and crisis within the Cambodian government and produced what historian Ben Kiernan would later call “the second civil war.” The NVA drive caused the explosive emergence of a new faction, the Khmer Rumdoah (Khmer for Liberation); filled Norodom Sihanouk’s power vacuum and sucked in additional foreign armies; and led to enormous increases in recruitment by all Khmer factions, by forcing the polarization of Cambodian society. In the end it also produced factional fratricide amongst the Communists.

  SIHANOUK’S ACTIONS

  On 10 December 1969, sixty days after announcing his support for North Viet Nam’s “just stand,” Sihanouk publicly loosed FARK (Forces Armée Royale Khmère, the Royal Cambodian Army) in major actions against NVA positions. The shift from supporting the NVA/VC presence to resisting the continuing buildup resulted partly from the secret U.S. “Menu” bombings and partly from Sihanouk’s fear that he had misjudged the strength and intentions of the North Viet Namese Communists.

  In January 1970 Sihanouk commenced the execution of a go-for-broke game plan. Cambodia’s head of state, with wife and entourage, flew from Phnom Penh to Rome to begin a round of alternate feasting and fasting at luxurious continental spas—an act the Prince saw as a personal physical and spiritual righting maneuver, much as he viewed the rest of his plan as a rebalancing of Cambodia’s “neutrality” between the yin and yang of superior alien powers.

  Sihanouk directed his now prime minister General Lon Nol to arrange in his absence a series of forceful anti-Viet Namese demonstrations. When the nation was in the grip of this Sihanouk-designed, government-manufactured crisis, the scenario went, the Prince would fly from Rome to Paris and then on to Moscow and Peking, with the precise plan of persuading the Viet negotiators in Paris and the Communist leaders in Moscow and Peking to bring pressure upon the North Viet Namese to withdraw from Cambodia or at least curtail their expanding activity throughout that nation. Upon his departure, he believed, the NVA had 35,000 to 40,000 troops in permanent positions in his country. In Rome he was presented with new Khmer intelligence estimates raising the total to 60,000 and indicating that the Viet Namese Communists were both organizing hundreds of villages to revolt against him and attempting to gain control of all Khmer rebel factions.

  In addition to Viet Namese soldiers, 400,000 ethnic Viet Namese civilians lived in Cambodia at the beginning of 1970. About 200,000 are said to have been either North Viet Namese cadres, agents working in Cambodia, the families of those cadre and agents, or the families of NVA soldiers operating either from the border sanctuaries or along the Sihanouk Trail. For years, some say since the 1950s, the Viets, both legitimate and insurgent, had established home and/or neighborhoods within every major Cambodian city, the heaviest concentrations being in Phnom Penh (120,000) and in the southeastern cities of Takeo, Svay Rieng, Prey Veng and Neak Luong, and in the east central city of Kompong Cham.

  KVM REPATRIATION

  Coupled with the presence of North Viet Namese soldiers, agents and civilians was the repatriation of the Khmer Viet Minh who had been held in North Viet Nam.

  Western historians disagree on when the Hanoi Politburo, through COKA, directed the repatriation of KVM soldiers and political officers, and on how many were repatriated. Some say 12,000 cadremen were repatriated between January and March 1969. Their activities, according to these accounts, threw the country into civil war. Others claim that only 4,000 to 6,000 were repatriated, all in mid-March 1970. A review of battle records suggests the re
patriation was not a single wave but a constant moderate flow beginning in January 1969 and culminating in February or March 1970. At any rate, all of Hanoi’s Khmer Viet Minh cadre were in position by mid-March 1970.

  By the end of January 1970, the KVM buildup and NVA movements had touched off what would become ever-escalating rounds of Communist fratricide; touched this off even as Royal Government Forces began new tactical operations to, ostensibly, reassert Cambodian sovereignty, halt NVA expansion and force a political guarantee from the North Viet Namese that they would withdraw after their victory in South Viet Nam. Simultaneously, NVA and Krahom intelligence indicated to their respective leaders that American diplomatic efforts were pressing Sihanouk to formally sanction additional high-level B-52 “Menu” bombings. NVA historical accounts call these reports ominous. Perhaps the reports caused a feeling of urgency amongst the North Viet Namese leadership, a need to attack and conquer Phnom Penh before Sihanouk’s approval of the raids—a need to achieve a fait accompli before the Americans could respond.

  As Royal forces moved east along main roads toward the border, Communist forces moved west on prepared secondary trails. In the Southeast, in Kampot, Takeo and Kandal Provinces, NVA/VC and KVM units systematically attacked and destroyed a line of small, lightly defended government border posts. The NVA then drew additional units from South Viet Nam in February, reinforced, and attacked from and expanded their established positions along the Sihanouk Trail, about Phnom Penh, and in the West near Siem Reap.

  By March the NVA had almost completed the move of its Central Office for South Viet Nam (COSVN) headquarters to a prepared position near Kratie. COSVN was operational and directing not only the Communist war in the southern third of Viet Nam but also in Cambodia (though much of the direction for Cambodia came from the COKA headquarters near Siem Reap). In every direction that Hanoi sent new KVM political cadre they also sent regular NVA military units.

  This distribution of Viet Namese and Khmer Viet-sympathizers caused Sihanouk, in Rome, upon reviewing the more detailed intelligence reports of his staff, to sigh “C’est fini!” It is over. It also triggered virulent anti-Viet Namese hatred in the general public and amongst the Khmer Krahom leadership.

  THE KHMER KRAHOM

  The Movement, Angkar, Angka, the Khmer Krahom, the Khmer Rouge—whatever label might be used—was at this time a federation of six semiautonomous armies controlled by six semiautonomous parties, more or less directed by the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, the Center. Within each zone (north, northeast, east, southwest, northwest and special or central) the zonal central committee (ZCC) had near absolute power over its zone party cadre, army, descending committees and militias. Each ZCC had its own ideological and political slant. For example, the Army of the East was semifraternal with the Viet Cong; the Army of the Northeast was heavily influenced by the NVA and their attached Khmer Viet Minh. The Army of the North was the first to exhibit the terrible ruthlessness which became the signature of the KK. The zones were responsive only to the Center and were essentially isolated from one another; regions, districts and even lower levels of organization reported to and were directed by the ZCC, not (except in the case of regions) by the next higher level. In this way, the rule of the ZCC was absolute and that of the Center was filtered through only one descending level, no matter how far down the organizational chart. In early 1970, with the KK in a period of rapid expansion, the Center was attempting to consolidate its control over the zones.

  WORLD VIEW

  Half a world away, fissures in American public opinion, partly reconciled in the post-Tet 1968 period by the election of Richard Nixon again ruptured. On 3 November 1969 Nixon delivered to the American people his first major policy speech on Viet Nam. The President outlined a plan calling for gradual, though eventually total, withdrawal of American combat units and for an increased emphasis on Viet Namization (the Nixon doctrine, as applied to Viet Nam, of giving materiel and moral support, but no U.S. combat troops, to assist indigenous peoples in defending themselves from outside aggression). Though the immediate results showed that more than three quarters of all listeners favored the President’s policies, versus only six percent opposed, strong dormant forces in the U.S. Senate were jarred awake. J. William Fulbright promised Senate hearings to educate the “real silent majority” to the facts of the war, and Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield denounced the policy as the new administration’s adoption of Johnson’s war.

  This was followed almost immediately (12 November) by the first sketchy stories of the massacre of Viet Namese civilians by American troops at Song My village, My Lai hamlet. On 20 November, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published photographs of the massacre. Then, on the 25th, The New York Times and other newspapers confirmed the atrocity to many skeptical Americans with headlines announcing the Army’s order that Lieutenant William Calley stand trial. By the beginning of 1970, My Lai had redivided the United States.

  The effect of the Nixon doctrine announcement coupled with renewed American domestic turmoil was translated by Hanoi’s America watchers as ambiguous U.S. support. This encouraged the Communist factions to commit additional men and materiel to the battle for Cambodia.

  The covert North Viet Namese thrust into the interior of Cambodia, spearheaded by the repatriation of the KVM, sent tidal waves through the Krahom movement, as it did through the Royal Government and much of Khmer society. In a nation at war, in a culture under attack, every military setback or victory affects every individual—to the very essence of his or her being.

  It is in this context that the battle of Chenla II must be understood, for each nuance of that battle touched the lives of every Cambodian. Chenla II was a tsunami which reverberated throughout the Khmer Basin, bouncing, as waves bounce, off the surrounding mountains, sending secondary waves crashing into and washing over each other in the central area known as the Northern Corridor (see map), a tempest slowly, violently splintering an entire nation, a storm which would have two eyes, the first resulting from gusting multiple engagements leading to the worst battlefield defeat of the war.

  PART TWO

  THE REPUBLIC OF CAMBODIA RISING

  Hanoi could easily devour both Cambodia and what is left of Laos if it were not faced with US opposition. There are enough North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in Cambodia today to seize [the] country.

  —C. L. Sulzberger, paraphrasing Norodom Sihanouk, in

  The Indianapolis News,

  18 March 1970

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “ARE YOU HUNGRY?” NANG spoke slowly to the children though his inner pace was frantic. After only one week at Mount Aural he had been sent to Stung Treng to help accelerate Krahom recruitment. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We guarantee everyone will share equally in the nation’s food.” It was not the assignment he’d wanted. Every day he asked why. Why had Met Sar sent him away so quickly, away to these children, away when so much was happening elsewhere? “Here,” Nang said, “peasants work twelve hours a day. In Phnom Penh, government functionaries work two! They eat well. They pay no taxes.”

  “You see.” Met Phan smiled. “Comrade Rang has been to the front. He knows victory is inevitable. He has killed enemy soldiers. He has blown up enemy tanks. He’s not much older than you.”

  Nang bowed to the boys and girls. They sat elbow to elbow in the hot shack, sat in the posture of perfect attention as they had learned, sat in awe of Met Nang, to them Comrade Rang, a mysterious figure sent to them in their mysterious back-street hovel, sat in awe in the shadows as the January dry season sun baked the sleepy alley.

  “Comrade Rang has been sent to us to teach us courage,” Phan said. He sat with the children, sat in perfect egalitarian posture, eyes on Nang.

  “The Americans,” Nang whispered, “killed my uncle. He had been wounded in the leg and taken prisoner. While he still lived, they stabbed him in the mouth and cut out his tongue.” Nang paused. He trembled at the recollection, at the sight which he forced
himself to believe. “The imperialists have poisoned the mind of Prince Sihanouk. Royal soldiers killed my whole family. If we show fear they will kill us all, but if we have courage...”

  The youngest child, a girl of seven, watched Nang with widening eyes. He spoke with such feeling and gentleness she wanted to touch his hand, yet his words carried such horror she fought to control the undefined terror gripping her. Behind her an untrained boy of eleven stiffened. His imagination placed him in this soldier’s tale; his resolve to be courageous stiffened.

  Each child had slipped away from a parent, each having been recruited because each had had a father or mother killed in the low-level guerrilla war of the preceding years. They were the core of Phan’s Stung Treng Children’s Brigade. Phan, a covert political officer of both the Krahom and the Khmer Viet Minh, had started the clandestine unit in 1967 with one boy whose father had been shot by government soldiers during an anti-government demonstration. Phan had asked the boy if he would like assistance in gaining reparation and the boy had followed him. “Tell me three of your friends,” Phan had said at their second meeting. “Bring a friend,” he urged during the third. Each child, once lured, hooked, sworn to secrecy, was required to recruit two friends. “One becomes three,” Phan repeated the Communist axiom. “Three become nine.” From early 1967 to mid-1969 recruitment had been difficult but tactics and the situation were changing. By 1970 Phan had nineteen cells of children, three to six youngsters per cell. Nang had come to bolster that recruitment.