For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Kompong Cham, Kandal, Phnom Penh,” Vathana murmured. “We’re surrounded by fighting.”

  “...we warmly hail and actively support Norodom Sihanouk’s plan to build a liberation army to overthrow the Lon Nol regime...”

  “It...it will never reach us,” Teck whispered.

  “...reports reaching this station from Kompong Cham say thirty thousand patriotic Cambodian workers and peasants bravely resisted Lon Nol’s lackey army and liberated much of that city, even in the face of troops with heavy weapons raking the people with gunfire...”

  “We”—Met Sar smashed his pudgy hand down hard causing papers and maps to leap from the table—“we are the rightful benefactors of the coup.” Again he smashed the table. He leaped up. “It must be ours.” In the empty warehouse his shout sent a whiplash of spittle slashing across the floor. “The exact stinging red ants against whom the coup was staged...the crocodiles...they profit because we are not properly organized.”

  He strode left, right. He stopped before a wall map of Kompong Cham then before a poster of Mao, stopped staring like a rabid rodent into Mao’s eyes, swishing away, huffing so angrily as to choke on his words before the first syllables escaped his spit-wet lips. “Yuons!” Sar exploded. “Ingrates! Ally, humph!” He spun, crouched, as if ready to grapple with the first thing that moved. “North Viet Namese and lackey Khmer hooligans brainwashed in Hanoi! Why!?” He sat. Banged both fists on the report-strewn table. “Because they’ve got microphones. They’ve got speakers. They’ve got buttons!”

  Met Sar untied the krama from his neck, wiped beads of anger-sweat from his high forehead. “That vindictive anoupra-cheachon, that subhuman king-father, Samdech Euv, siding with the very scum that led the coup, willing to destroy the country for his own vengeful pride.” Met Sar cleaned his lips and chin of saliva, his eyes of tears, his hands of moisture he found odious. He straightened the table, his tunic, his hair. At the door he calmly said to an aide, “Fetch the agents. Keep the Chams in the bunker. This isn’t for them.”

  Thirty-five air miles from the border, Kompong Cham (City of the Chams) held Southeast Asia’s highest concentration of the ethnic remnant of the Kingdom of Champa, an Islamic-Hindu state which had flourished along the South China Sea until an expanding Viet Nam had wiped it out in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century city-by-city genocidal attacks. Throughout the late 1950s and into the sixties Kompong Cham was turbulent. A strong, if disorganized, Cham autonomy movement had been held in check by a ploy of Norodom Sihanouk and his Royal manipulators. They offered the ethnic masses meaningless local sovereignty while covertly prosecuting rising individual leaders who espoused ethnic unity. The Prince’s image amongst the Chams had been that of a benign dictator, a benevolent protector who held in check the ruthless ethnic Khmers. Yet despite that image, the Chams lived in fear. To counterbalance superior Khmer numbers, they entered into an informal alliance with the Communist Viet Namese, whose long-established encampments in the surrounding forest impeded Khmer domination. Though the best-educated Chams (and Krahom and Khmer Viet Minh proselytizers) had been aware of Sihanouk’s ploy, prior to the coup they had been unable to sustain a movement amongst the Cham people. With Sihanouk’s ousting, fear of ethnic Khmers increased. When government troops pulled down the last Sihanouk posters, the Chams, along with many local Khmers, went wild.

  Met Sar rose like a prophet before the rank of agents. The Center had ordered him to come to Kompong Cham, to take direct command of the Krahom operatives, to infuse the nationalistic movement with a sense of urgency. Over the years, the Krahom had patiently built an extensive network of spies and proselytizers, yet here, in ten days of post-coup strain—ten days in which the NVA and the Khmer Viet Minh had overtly taken control of fully forty percent of the country, contested thirty percent and threatened what remained—even his closest and most trusted agents were cracking, turning.

  Met Sar surveyed the agents with cool passion. A third, mostly older men, wore net masks to keep their identities secret; a third, mostly young men and women, stood boldly; a third, mostly boys trained on Pong Pay Mountain, stood armed.

  “The Chams,” Met Sar said in a fatherly voice, “are a river. The power of their flow is unstoppable yet the direction of the flow is controllable. Accommodate yourselves to their power while you struggle to direct the flow. Move rapidly before others establish levees. Only we have the good interests of Kampuchea in our hearts. We, not new government functionaries, not alien invaders. Do not group us with the Communists. We alone are the nationalists.”

  Met Sar paused. He stepped lightly to the first file and with his pudgy hands warmly grasped the hands of a masked agent. He moved down the line squeezing each man’s or woman’s hands in a bond of fidelity to the cause, the Movement. As he embraced his followers he said, “For each of you there are buttons with the portrait of Norodom Sihanouk. Flow with the river, lead the river, do not fight its power. Denounce anyone who denounces Sihanouk!”

  “Denounce?” a young woman gasped.

  “It is essential,” Sar said so all could hear, “that everyone be conscious of the purpose of the riots. Lower the riverbed in the direction of desired flow. Let the Viets lower it where our desires are the same. They will try to move their people into key positions. They will try to conscript the young. We will use the same tools but at the last we will snatch away the prize.”

  As Sar worked the second row an armed yothea hissed, “They are pitiful snakes.”

  “Don’t underestimate the yuons,” Sar said. “Exploit their strength and we will achieve promising successes. Without us, their actions constitute a foreign invasion. They have accelerated their Campaign X, already proceeding throughout the nation.

  They invoke Sihanouk’s name while they launch attacks against national forces. In the North, in the Northwest, their aim is to occupy as much territory as possible, to expand their so-called Khmer Viet Minh revolution. In the East and Northeast their goal is to protect and further entrench their supply lines and sanctuaries. They have pulled four divisions from duty in the South for combat in our fatherland. Do not underestimate them!

  “With us, their actions become civil war. Lead them as well as the people. The regime must be destroyed. Then all enemies shall be crushed and we shall establish a true and pure nation of Khmer and Cham.”

  Met Sar’s voice was soft, fervent, as if he alone possessed truth. He continued to the last man in the last line. There he stood before Met Nang. “We are the sole authentic representatives of Cambodia’s people.” Met Sar grasped Nang’s hard hands. “Urge the people to demand their civil rights, to intensify their efforts in the name of the revolution. Whisper to them...tell them Hanoi sees the ousting as a rare opportunity to force the political collapse of Kampuchea. Tell those who are ready to hear that many NVA units, under the control of COKA—why should they have a Central Office for Kampuchean Affairs?—tell them Le Duc Anh, who heads COKA, tell them Le Duc Tho, who directs the Central Kampuchean Affairs Commission of the Viet Namese Communist Party’s Central Committee, tell them these men have ordered their military units to focus on Cambodian targets. Tell them Hanoi exploits the Prince.”

  “What should we tell them of the bombings?” Nang’s voice, like his hands, was hard.

  “The bombings?” Met Sar was caught off guard.

  “The American dogs are bombing more and more along the border. They extend the bomb line...”

  “How far?”

  “Sixteen kilometers into the interior. The yuons are using it in their propaganda. They’re telling the people Americans are invading.”

  “Float in the river, Nang.” Met Sar returned to the front of the room. “If the flow is strong, accommodate yourselves to it. It can only embarrass the Phnom Penh puppets to invite the imperialists. People will rush to join us.” In the back row Nang twinkled under Sar’s mention of him by name.

  “We must struggle to serve the people,” Sar continued. “Struggle to serve the revolution, to s
timulate the contradictions of the feudal system, to establish the peasant-worker alliance. We must gain momentum, retake the leadership of the maquis. The people, only the people, can shape the course of our future.”

  The streets of Kompong Cham were littered with debris from the riots of 27 March yet the refuse was but a pitiful precursor of what was to come.

  Nang squatted at the edge of a mob of two thousand. Quietly he snatched the pant legs of boys he felt he could influence. From outlying areas, from urban hovels, from the best homes, farmers dropped their hoes, fishermen left their nets, tradespeople abandoned their work and merchants their wares. First a thousand, then three, five, ten, pouring, again, into the streets, again, rising like the tide. Twenty thousand, thirty, Khmer and Cham, finally by midafternoon a floodtide of forty thousand people joyfully, tearfully waving placards of Norodom Sihanouk, chanting his name as they milled about the center of town. Then they broke, erupted, violently looted any home, any business without Samdech Euv’s face displayed.

  “Here, Brother, a button for you. Come with us.”

  “Eh?”

  “Join us,” Nang said. “You too, Brother. Come with me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Forget that kid. Come on. There’s a government house in the next block.”

  “Let him go,” Nang said to the first. “Come with us. Lon Nol’s brother is near.”

  “Forget him. He’s crazy.” The two ran off with the mob.

  About Nang thirty boys had gathered. “Are there riches?” one asked. He wore a white collarless shirt, like all Cham males, and a green and white checked turban. Others spoke quickly:—six, eight, ten at once. “How can we do it?” “Is he sure?” “He’s Khmer.” “He favors Sihanouk.” “I’m going to ride a Honda.” “Why not?” “He says he can give us guns. I don’t like that.” “I do!”

  “We’ll use the guns,” Nang said, “to smash the feudal apparatus and destroy the running dogs.”

  “How?” the boy with the checked turban asked. “We know nothing of fighting.”

  “One learns warfare through warfare.” Nang smiled satanically.

  “You know warfare?” a boy of sixteen challenged.

  “I can teach you how to set explosives,” Nang answered.

  His eyes gleamed. “I’ve blown up Viet Namese trucks, American tanks.”

  “Yeah, sure you have,” the older boy mocked. “Come on,” he said to the others. “We’re missing the march.”

  Another older boy demanded, “Where are these guns?”

  “He doesn’t have any,” the first said. “Come on!”

  The older boys ran off to the main demonstration leaving the youngest, the most pliable, and the boy with the checked turban. Nang ached. Easily, he thought, I could have ripped out the older one’s throat. That would show them all.

  The nine-, ten- and eleven-year-olds followed Nang. They were small, so small that when Nang brought them to his cache of clubs the sticks seemed long and unwieldy in their hands. “You said guns,” the boy with the checked turban snapped.

  Nang could not hold back. He expanded before the boys, the chameleon transforming from ratlike urchin to apelike yothea, shedding the stoic exterior he had maintained at the earlier rejection, revealing to his charges piercing resentment, ready to pulverize the next challenger. “We’re here to transform the country,” Nang seethed. He raged hysterically about CIA and NVA collusion, about rightful benefactors. He warned his recruits of Viet Namese “sophisticated lying techniques.” He told them stories of American atrocities.

  “Now,” he ordered, “follow me! We’ll join the others.”

  Seven hundred strong, a battalion formed by forty agents, they merged with the mob, pushed the mob toward the new governor’s house and set it ablaze, marched the mob to the government offices where civil servants either fled, rallied to the rebel side or were beaten to death. Students and teachers, blamed for Sihanouk’s ousting, were hunted, dragged down, executed.

  Attempting to escape, Lon Nil, brother of the new head of state, was captured and dragged by the feet behind his sedan, dragged over the rough roads as angry demonstrators kicked and stomped his broken body. Before the governor’s house Nang lunged at the body. His small platoon surrounded him, cordoned off the area. From beneath his shirt Nang pulled a bayonet. Immediately he sliced the official’s belly, then reached in, hacking at tissues and organs until he, Nang, held the liver, the seat of the human soul, high above the corpse.

  “Follow me.” Nang sprung through the cordon, his band, trailing him, a merry snake dance to a roadside cafe.

  “Cook it!” Nang ordered a quaking vendor. “Cook it!” the boys shouted. Nang leaped behind the stand, slapped the organ on the hot grill. The liver seared noisily. Nang shoved the vendor aside, slashed maniacally at the smoking meat. Then he scooped it onto a tray and darted amongst his boys distributing chunks to be eaten.

  From the mob, “To Phnom Penh. To Phnom Penh.” Wild chanting. “Long Live Samdech Euv!” Frantically, cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles were commandeered. For four hours, as the city smoldered, a manic mob fled, a ragtag convoy, a ten-mile-long column of enraged citizens parading by the city’s inert west army garrison.

  Two hours before midnight the column crossed into Koh Ky twelve miles from Phnom Penh. There the national military finally reacted. First the high screams then the explosions, 105mm howitzer shells rained down on the people. Then the horrible, loud growling T-28s strafed them. The multitudes scattered leaving sixty dead on the road. From Kompong Cham, finally with orders, west garrison soldiers caught the tail of the column. They drove into the stragglers, shooting, killing ninety, arresting hundreds. Nang gathered his shocked recruits, led them through paddies into the forest. The boy with the checked turban was dead.

  Sullivan could not sit. Nor could Huntley. Conklin was hunched by the radios with his Viet Namese counterpart, Re. He was flipping through a three-week stack of newspapers and magazines he’d received that morning from his father. Major Travis, Quay and Lieutenant Hoa sat at the small field desk in the operations bunker perusing the stack of reports. Re adjusted the tuner for reports in Khmer. Takeo City, the provincial capital of Takeo Province, only twenty miles from the border, twenty-two miles from their position, was under heavy NVA attack.

  “God damn it! Sit down, Sullivan.” Major Travis wanted to sound as if he’d risen to the occasion.

  “I can’t,” Sullivan snapped.

  “Sit down,” Travis snapped back. “We’re all antsy. That damn pacing only makes it worse.”

  “How many have come in?” Sullivan stood between Lieutenant Hoa and Sergeant Quay. There were no more chairs.

  “Many,” Quay said. His voice was high-pitched. “A forty t’ousand.”

  “We must have ten thousand in our own compound,” Travis said. “It’s like a goddamned pipe burst. We’re being absolutely inundated.”

  “Boy, those bastards are good,” Sullivan said. He wiped a hand over his face, then through his hair. “Those Commie bastards’re rolling that country up like...” He snapped his fingers three times.

  Huntley laughed. He lumbered toward the table. “Not accordin’ ta them, L-T,” he said. “I seen the news. They still say they ain’t got no units in ol’ Cambo. No designs on the country.”

  “I knew it.” Sullivan smacked his right fist into his left palm. “I told Conklin a month ago. A mess. They’d make a mess.”

  “And you wanted me ta go,” Conklin piped up. “Me, thirty-three and a wake-up, with a fine young woman waitin’. Hey, listen to this. ‘The Vietnam Moratorium Committee, a leading antiwar organization, citing President Nixon’s April 21 announcement that 150,000 more U.S. troops will be withdrawn by April 1971, has disbanded and closed its doors.’ ”

  “They need our help,” Sullivan said.

  “Who?” Conklin looked up from his papers.

  “The Cambodians,” Sullivan said as if Conklin had gone off his track. “They’re the key to the
war, but without us...Damn! They’re attacking Viet civilians, running from the NVA. They’ve got to be turned around. They need advisors.”

  “That’s exactly what this report says.” Major Travis flipped a few pages. “ ‘...in the event negotiations...’ ”

  “Na-go-tiations,” Quay injected. “Humph!” “ ‘...fail, the NVA/VC will support the Khmer Rouge in guerrilla attacks against Lon Nol’s...’ No, that’s not it. Wait one.” Travis paged through the document. “Here it is. ‘The NVA is in a position to collapse Phnom Penh and turn all Cambodia into enemy territory. Communist forces have taken or threaten sixteen of nineteen provincial capitals. They have cut, permanently or temporarily, every major road, rail line and waterway to Phnom Penh. If the President does not respond immediately, the Cambodian domino will fall.’ ”

  “Back to square one,” Sullivan said. “November ’65. Back to the first battle of the la Drang. Shit!”

  For an hour the men reviewed reports of Cambodian riots and battles. Antigovernment riots on 19 and 23 March, Prey Veng and Takeo provinces. Suspected VC instigation. Anti-Viet Namese riots in every major city. How would this affect South Viet Nam? Racial animosity was already high. This added a new, tangential dimension to the anti-Communist war. On 27 March three thousand NVA regulars attacked the Cambodian town and garrison of Svay An Dong in Prey Veng Province; other NVA units hit Prek Chrou in Kratie Province; and South Viet Namese Rangers, on their first cross-border assault (1.8 miles) raided a 300-man NVA camp at Vinh Xuong in Kandal Province, killing fifty-three enemy. On 29 March, NVA units again assaulted Cambodian army outposts along the southeastern border. The next three days, in conjunction with Cambodian national forces and with American tactical air support, ARVN units engaged major elements of the NVA 5th and 7th divisions near Mimot and Snuol and the VC 9th Division (consisting of ninety-five percent Northern replacements) along Cambodian Highway 7. More ARVN forays occurred on 4 and 5 April. More NVA attacks hit Cambodian towns: on the sixth, Chipou in the Parrot’s Beak; on the ninth, FANK (the French acronym for Forces Armée Nationale Kampuchea, the government’s forced) totally abandoned Svay Rieng Province to the NVA; on the nineteenth, Cambodian forces relinquished Saang in the heartland, closer to Phnom Penh than to the border; on the twenty-first Snuol fell as did several towns in Siem Reap Province in the far west, more than two hundred miles from Viet Nam. The North Viet Namese consolidated their total hold on Svay Rieng Province and their partial hold on Kampot, Takeo, Kandal, Prey Veng, Kompong Cham and Kratie provinces—adding those areas to the provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondolkiri and most of Stung Treng. In all areas where NVA units were reported to have seized district towns, they had allegedly expelled Khmer peasants and taken control of roads and waterways. In addition, manpower and materiel buildup estimates showed “the largest manpower move thus far of the Indochina war.”