For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  President Nixon had infuriated antiwar people around the country by issuing a statement that included the line “When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.” This line was quoted four times in the article Sullivan was reading and related articles.

  “Can’t win,” Sullivan grumbled. “Can’t win by winning.”

  He turned back to his stack of reports. On 5 May, U.S. forces had rolled into Snuol. Other border towns—Mimot, Sre Khtum—were surrounded. In Washington the President had announced that U.S. troops would be limited to a range of twenty-one miles from the border and by a time frame of three to seven weeks. From Saigon President Thieu countered, saying the ARVN would remain if required. At Angtassom (Sullivan searched the team’s new map of Cambodia—he was not familiar with that country’s interior), FANK forces had faltered under heavy NVA assault. By the sixth, fifty thousand U.S. and ARVN troops had crossed the border from the Parrot’s Beak north to By Dop, near Phuoc Binh. Communist supplies were being found and captured so fast and in such quantities, the Allies could not evacuate all of it.

  Again Sullivan studied the map of Cambodia. In the interior, 150 miles from the closest border point, 130 miles from the nearest American or South Viet Namese troops, NVA units had attacked Kompong Chhnang. They had then opened a second battle front at Kompong Som, 120 miles from the border. And due south of Phnom Penh, national troops were reported to have retaken Koki Thom.

  Sullivan punched his left hand with his right. He spread the map of Cambodia over his pillow. He crushed his empty beer can. Then he tapped a finger on Phnom Penh. “Screw Travis,” he said to himself. “I’m going to be there. Within thirty days, I’m going to be there.”

  8 May 1970—Alone Vathana stood at the window of her fourth-floor apartment, stood by the desk at which she’d learned the rudiments of commerce from her father-in-law. The desk was cluttered with shipping ledgers, crewmen’s pay slips and unfilled orders. On the floor behind the desk, leaning, facing the wall, was the framed photo of Norodom Sihanouk.

  She put her hand on the sill to steady herself. Outside, the world seemed deserted, abandoned, gray, gray as she felt her skin to be, gray as she felt the future. Not a soul was to be seen. Communist soldiers, after again shelling the refugee camp with a few mortar rounds, enough to cause mass chaos, had withdrawn. In the two hours which followed not a refugee, not a merchant, not a construction worker had ventured out from their hovels, homes or apartments. Not a farmer rolled his oxcart toward the piers, not a single boatman or ferryman could be seen along the river. Even the riverwaters seemed still, reflecting the gray morning sky.

  The view, the emptiness, made Vathana queasy in both stomach and mind. She placed a hand over her abdomen and rubbed gently, whispering a prayer as her hand circled. Then tears flooded her eyes. “What kind of future?” she whispered to that which she imagined might be growing in her. She thought to go to the kitchenette to make tea but she felt riveted to the spot by the window, felt as though not a single gram of strength remained in her thighs or knees or ankles, nothing there to propel her. She wished the radio were on but again the inertia of standing at the window froze her.

  Vathana stood for another hour, barely moving, barely thinking, hoping to catch, sight of Sophan returning. A fleeting thought of her mother and father sped through her mind so quickly that after it had left she wondered what she’d thought. An image of her father-in-law in his new villa lasted longer, but the image was still, like a snapshot. Then a bitter resentment arose in her and she thought of her husband abandoning her, thought how un-Khmer was the man who had no loyalty to his wife, his family, his home. The bitterness strengthened her, cleared her eyes and ears. She stared through the window at that whose approach she’d not sensed. A low rhythmic shudder pulsed through the glass, an eerie beating concussion reached through, shaking her to the core. Then in the sky downriver she saw them looking like locusts, eyes bulging. Below them, steaming by the ferry crossing, was the lead riverine craft of an entire flotilla. More helicopters, flank security, appeared, darting over nearside piers and beyond the far bank over the swamps. The air jolted with their rotor beats. Flags flapped on the naval craft—the yellow with three red stripes of the Saigon regime and the starred red white and blue of the Americans.

  Vathana watched, motionless, as the flotilla steamed in, the South Viet Namese vessels continuing past, the American docking or mooring just out of the channel. Upon the closest vessel she saw three soldiers, one half hidden, two plainly—a large white man with an enormous protruding nose and a man blacker than she imagined skin could be. As she watched, enthralled, a streak of sun broke through the overcast. Vathana subdued a chuckle. People flooded the streets. Americans, she thought. For Americans the monsoons delay. “Ah,” she sighed, and turned into the apartment to concentrate, “ah”!...but the monsoons always come.”

  Before the battle of Kompong Thom commenced on 3 June 1970 invading armies captured or traded Cambodian territory without thought or respect for indigenous populations. Three weeks earlier, South Viet Namese President Thieu had issued a statement declaring he and Lon Nol had arrived at an “agreement in principle” for the continued use of ARVN forces in Cambodia.

  In the United States the storm of protest had become a full-fledged hurricane. Hundreds of universities had closed. On 11 May the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the Cooper-Church amendment to the Military Sales Act, outlawing the use of U.S. troops in Cambodia after 30 June 1970. This amendment also forbid American advisors to work with Cambodian forces and prohibited direct U.S. air support to FANK.

  Through May battle actions had flared. The South Viet Namese navy blockaded Cambodia’s Gulf of Thailand coast to curtail the influx of supplies as U.S. units evacuated or destroyed thousands of tons of supplies from areas nicknamed “Rock Island East” and “The City” and from fighting, training and supply complexes too numerous to nickname. Major battles had flashed in the interiors of both South Viet Nam and Cambodia. On the seventeenth a ten-thousand-soldier ARVN task force with two hundred U.S. advisors had reached the large southeastern city of Takeo where 211 NVA troops were killed. On the nineteenth, attempting to relieve the pressure against the sanctuaries, and in honor of Ho Chi Minh’s birthdate, VC/NVA units shelled sixty Allied posts within South Viet Nam. The next day 2,500 ARVN soldiers retaliated with an unsuccessful raid against the mountain base at Bu Ntoll. North of Takeo ARVN and FANK forces linked up, driving a reported four hundred NVA soldiers into a killing field.

  On the 23rd, ARVN forces answering the direct request of Lon Nol made their deepest Cambodian plunge to date with 10,000 regulars plus 1,500 Khmer Krahom attacking NVA positions in the giant Chup Rubber Plantation south of Kompong Cham. Much of the seventy-square-mile plantation was ruined by initial “softening up” air strikes. In standard operating procedure the NVA withdrew, avoiding decisive battle with the strong ARVN force. ARVN units rolled into Chup and looted and pillaged the plantation they’d come to free. The units then turned north, driving off Communist forces who had laid siege to Kompong Cham a month earlier.

  In Hanoi, Norodom Sihanouk broadcast a lengthy appeal to all Khmers to fight the foreign interventionists. On the twenty-seventh, Cambodia and South Viet Nam established formal diplomatic relations.

  The immense loss of materiel, as seen by the Hanoi Politburo, was appalling. Indeed, the Communist leaders estimated that their war effort had been set back at least a year. The Politburo sent orders to the NVA command center for the north third of South Viet Nam (this headquarters was separate from COSVN) to launch as many diversionary attacks as possible against local targets—anything to take the heat off the sanctuaries. Some of the heaviest fighting of the war in the I Corps region of South Viet Nam ensued. Even this fighting went poorly for the Communists. The gloom in Hanoi was lightened by two items—Hanoi’s America watchers reported that U.S. domestic turmoil would probably set back Allied war efforts at least a year, and on 3 June, President Nixon delivered his second t
elevised “Cambodia” speech.

  The President, claiming the operation the “most successful of this long and difficult war,” affirmed the resumption of U.S. troop withdrawals from Southeast Asia and reaffirmed the 30 June limit on America’s Cambodian incursion, including “all American air support” for Allied ground units.

  On that same day, NVA units laid siege to the northwestern city of Siem Reap (more than two hundred air miles from the nearest border point) and heavily shelled the major crossroads and market city of north-central Cambodia, Kompong Thom.

  The battlefield was prepared. It was time for the nationalist Communists to make their move. Nang squatted, rooted like a tree. The land to the south was intermittent forested swamps. Rice paddies stretched north and west in the Sen Valley and southwest to the Chinit. To the east, in a jungled plain, the main body of the NVA 91st Division and attached Khmer Viet Minh and Khmer Krahom units massed preparing to attack.

  At twelve minutes past midnight an ear-splitting roar, freight trains rushing in the night sky, signaled Communist units—move! Sixteen 122mm rockets slammed into FANK garrison positions. Defenders scattered, regrouped.

  “It’s time,” Met Taun, the Krahom platoon leader, whispered to Met Nang. Nang did not respond. “It’s time.” Taun leaned forward in his squat, ready to stand.

  A second fusillade of rocket artillery ripped the night sky, erupting at the two FANK garrisons straddling Highway 6, one north and one south of the city. A Viet Namese trail guide found Met Taun in his squat. Without words the soldier signaled the Khmer unit commander that he should follow.

  “In a short while,” Nang interrupted. He pulled the guide into the thicket.

  The jungle to the east came alive with the muffled sounds of trucks and troops moving south. The main force was moving, circling south from where it would drive north, headlong into the FANK defenders. Again the shriek of rockets, the flashes, the explosions. Now not at garrisons but in the city’s heart.

  “It’s time.” The guide’s voice was low, forceful. Nang held Taun’s arm tightly but said nothing. “Get up!” The guide stood, grabbed Nang and tugged. “Get up!” He grabbed Taun. Both sat, passive as sacks of rice. “Do you understand?” The guide became hysterical trying to lift Taun. In the blackness Nang squeezed Taun’s arm more tightly. “These browns are insane!”

  The guide snapped his head up as if he were explaining to his own superior the exasperating futility of directing Khmers. Then he fled.

  Fools, Nang thought. Troop footfalls beat quick cadence on the jungle roads about him. He felt calm, centered. There is nothing in this plan, he thought. The yuons have numerical superiority and they waste it. They will not waste us.

  “Met Nang,” Taun whispered very quietly. “Why do we sit?”

  “Do you wish to be the first to die?”

  “Our place is at the front,” Taun said. He had turned, still in his squat, and seized Nang’s shoulder.

  “What end will it serve to commit your yotheas to the yuon attack?” Nang sat as passive under Taun’s pressure as he had under the trail guide’s.

  “Without fire one cannot blossom into a soldier,” Taun retorted with a slogan from his leadership class.

  Nang grunted. “This is not a battle. This is two villainous lizards crashing against each other, gouging each other’s eyes as they fight for carrion.”

  “I have heard much of the great Met Nang,” Taun began flatly. Along the trail spur the yotheas fidgeted in tiny concealments, waiting for the signal, itching to escape into the flow. “I have heard tales of courage, stories of strength...”

  “Stories of patience, Met Taun?”

  “To me, the great Nang appears to shirk from battle.”

  The Great Nang, Nang thought, and smiled inwardly. Do they call me that? The thought pleased him. Stories of the Great Nang....

  Taun clicked his flashlight, three quick, one slow. Noiselessly the boys rose—two with old SKS rifles, two with M-2 carbines, Met Soth, the platoon executive officer, with an American army .45 caliber pistol, the remainder armed with hardwood clubs and curved-blade rice knives. A new Viet Namese guide approached, announced himself. FANK answering artillery exploded in rice fields to their west. The whistled signals of NVA sergeants ricocheted in the woods. “Patience,” Nang whispered to Taun. “Swallow your pride.”

  All night the NVA and FANK exchanged rocket and cannon fire. All night the infantry and armor moved to the final staging point, all night Nang slowed Met Taun, the platoon and thus the assault.

  “What is it now?” a Viet Namese captain demanded of Met Taun.

  “One of my units has broken contact...ah...somewhere, sir.”

  “Leave them. Your high command wishes the glory of the first penetration to be yours...for your people.”

  “Order Met Nang here at once,” Taun snapped to Met Soth. “What’s his excuse this time?” he muttered beneath his breath. “Sir”—Taun saluted the NVA officer—“I will take care of this. We will not delay.”

  An entire primary thrust coiled in the hedgerows and treelines between the paddies just south of Kompong Thom. “Kill him on sight,” Taun snarled to Soth. Both officers searched the passage to their rear praying that Nang and the boys he’d misdirected would suddenly appear, join them and advance through the crouched NVA troops to the vanguard.

  False dawn showed clear sky. Taun clenched his teeth. The ground remained dark. Heavy small arms fire erupted from other attack points. AKs barked, NVA soldiers shrieked, mortar rounds exploded. From an attack point on the west side of the highway a wave of firing soldiers sprinted toward the garrison’s berm. Rocket-propelled grenades fired from shoulder tubes flashed across open ground as another wave broke from the treeline.

  Behind Met Taun, a wild scream. “Yaaaaah!” A figure flew. Taun twisted. A shrieking jabbing madman kicked his rifle away. Then, bounding, he punched Soth with the force of every cell in his body aligned, cursing madly. “Where have you been?!” It was Nang. He seized the XO’s pistol, cocked it, aimed at Met Taun’s head. “We’ve waited at the front for an hour. This is disgrace.” Behind Nang one Krahom squad stood poised with their clubs. Behind Soth and the prone Taun the second milled in stunned disarray. Farther back a dozen NVA soldiers watched.

  “The attack falters on one weak link,” Nang shouted. Suddenly, overhead, the rumbling blast of three unmuffled T-28 fighters shook the ground. Then strafing runs began, began beyond Nang, the Cambodian National Air Force pilots sweeping in at such low level no ground troops saw or heard them until the planes were overhead. The first fighter swooped up, left, to set up a second run. From the forest swamp antiaircraft fire like giant jackhammer punches made the ground tremble under a graying sky dotted with black flak clouds. A tremendous cacophony of blasts and counterfire hid the single shot of Nang blowing Taun’s head apart.

  For an hour the platoon retreated, confiscating first three automatic rifles, then another pistol, then an entire case of American grenades which had found its way into the NVA stores after being purchased a year earlier from a disgruntled troop of the ARVN 18th Division.

  The early morning barrage and assault gave way to an uneasy daylight lull. Attackers dispersed to preestablished holding sites while defenders restocked their perimeter lines and prayed their air force T-28s would sniff out and destroy the enemy. In the almost impenetrable swamp to the south Nang lied to an NVA major about the predawn screwup, lied shrewdly, criticizing himself for allowing platoon leader Taun’s nervous fear of battle to split his platoon. Then, like moles, the yotheas on Nang’s order dug individually into the swamp floor and buried themselves. Only three remained above ground, Nang, Soth and a large, heavy-featured child named Horl.

  “You know Met Sar?” Nang whispered to Soth as he led the two along a low-roofed animal corridor in the vegetation. Soth indicated he’d once seen the older man. “This battle is not our battle,” Nang whispered as if he were talking, for Met Sar. “Swallow your pride.” He did not comment furth
er.

  Nang led his short file deeper and deeper into the swamp. At a break, as he scouted forward and disappeared, Horl asked Soth, afraid to ask Nang, “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” Soth whispered.

  “Is it true, Comrade Nang killed Taun?”

  “Taun wasn’t pure.”

  A sudden slap stung Horl’s ear. Both boys cringed. Nang was inches from their backs, embedded in a tangle of vines and briers as if he’d grown there. Without words, with rapid flicks of his hand, Nang signaled: Silence! Troops to the east. Stay put! Quiet! Then he disappeared. Soth froze. Horl, sensing danger, breathed shallow. His breath seemed to suffocate him. He shivered, afraid to gulp more air. Noise came from fifteen meters forward. Then a tug on his pant leg. He startled, whipped his face left into Nang’s beaming grin only an inch away.

  “bury these,” Nang whispered. Again he disappeared. Horl looked at the weapons leaning against his knee. He turned to Soth, gestured, How-did-he-do-that? then chuckled, silent, relieved. Minutes later Nang again arrived unheard, unseen. He handed the boys a satchel with two claymore mines, blasting caps, wire, a ChiCom gas mask and a tin of AK ammo.

  For three hours Nang crept silently from Soth and Horl’s growing cache site to a location the boys could not see. At times the trip took only eight or ten minutes, at times half an hour. With each trip Nang produced another weapon or field gear or food. On his last trip he brought an entire field hospital medical kit. “bury it. camouflage it. remember the site.”

  The second assault on Kompong Thom began at 0200 on 4 June. Again Nang delayed his platoon’s advance until after the first Viet Namese soldiers had been shot. Now he directed the Krahom boys to help evacuate the wounded and dead and to furnish themselves with the one best weapon they found. By the dawn withdrawal the platoon was fully armed.