For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Perhaps more democracy not less—” Sullivan began but Chhan Samkai was already beyond him inspecting the hamlet. Another soldier passed. In each hand, suspended by the threads of their hair, were two heads.

  The hamlet was vacant, lifeless. Sullivan looked into the huts. All personal belongings had been removed. The firefight had had no direct impact on civilians. Still Sullivan felt his skin crawling with ghosts. Not the ghosts of soldiers. Three dead FANK. Nine dead NVA. Somehow, odd, he thought, but the FANK squad had caught them napping. Perhaps, he thought, overconfident. He walked to the next home. All about were FANK rear-echelon personnel. They’d come from along the column, come after Colonel Chhan had ordered a company from his one decent battalion to secure, “the front,” come to see the FANK battle victory.

  Where, Sullivan thought, have the villagers gone? Are they refugees in one of the villages? Perhaps. Pa Kham or Rumlong. Or had they fled, en masse, to Phnom Penh? Or perhaps to the other side?

  At the entrance to the village a huge flame leaped, fuel oil or kerosene burning, billowing black smoke, then catching the pyre’s branches and straw, and the smoke changing, becoming thick white clouds, then turning dark again as the bodies of the FANK soldiers incinerated. At the base of the funeral pyre three women wailed and a cluster of young children cried. Sullivan too cried, cried inside for them. Without their men who would support them? Cambodia had no soldiers’ insurance, no aid to orphans or widows. Let them return, walk back, to the capital. Relief agencies might feed them. Vathana would care for them were they in her sector but they’d never get that far.

  The decapitated torsos of the NVA squad had been dragged to the village center. FANK troops propped one headless body up by a concrete cistern—a bowl not unlike a large birdbath used to catch rainwater for drinking. From the back the soldier appeared to be drinking but from the front fluids dripped the other way and amid the olive drab uniforms and under the mist-gray sky the only color Sullivan saw was the red of the cistern.

  “It’s good luck,” a voice said in English.

  Sullivan turned slowly. He barely realized the words were in his native tongue. “Hum?”

  “They think it’s good luck,” an American woman said. “Ritual decapitation. It’s supposed to ensure success.”

  Sullivan stared harshly, uncomprehending.

  “Oh come on, Captain!” the woman said briskly. “You’ve seen it before. They were shot and killed with rifles you gave these hoodlums.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Rita Donaldson. Washington News-Times.”

  Hans Mitterschmidt waited for the Khmer Viet Minh cadreman to complete his introduction. In the camp hall were a dozen North Viet Namese guards, half as many KVM guards, numerous dignitaries and two score elite Khmer sappers and masked agents.

  “Colonel Mitterschmidt,” the cadreman concluded, “is both a demolitions expert and an expert on racial harmony.” The East German and his interpreter came forward.

  “This,” the German said in French, and his Viet Namese interpreter translated into Khmer, “is our new and most sophisticated underwater mine. It can sink any vessel, any riverine craft or freighter that sails the Mekong.”

  As he waited for the interpreter to catch up he laid his hands on the large metal ovoid. A dozen probe or sensor sockets awaiting their attachments peered from the top and sides like pineapple eyes. The Khmer soldiers stretched their necks to see the weapon which they’d heard would bottle up shipping for good. “Come closer,” Mitterschmidt said, and motioned to the small dark boys as if they were pets. “These men,” the colonel said, indicating the boys and turning to his Viet Namese escort, “they’ve all been trained in land mines?”

  “Yes,” the escort answered. “All are said to be expert sappers.”

  Mitterschmidt took a deep breath and somberly began his lecture. Amongst the Khmers both factions were represented. In the far back, hair cut, oiled, combed up and back, with heavy glasses, a nose expanded by having bamboo tubes jammed into the nostrils, and a face covered with a bandana, was Ly Bellon, a.k.a. Cahuom Samnang, Little Rabbit, Met Nang and other names. He had been spirited from his company, in accordance with orders directly from Met Sar via Met Mita, disguised and sent to the mine-training class.

  His ability to change and to be accepted had always been one of Nang’s greatest talents, but to have slipped into this group was his greatest such feat. Only two days before, five days after Met Nu had helped him take control of the unnamed hamlet, the order had reached him. Relations between the Khmer Krahom and the NVA were, on the surface, being repaired. The class represented to the high commands the reconciliation neither believed in but to which both paid lip service. The Viet Namese had offered to train forty Khmers, twenty chosen from their long-established supporters, twenty to be recommended by Met Sar. The class would be a one-day seminar on new underwater mines and on a new shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile. Both weapons could be used by the armies attacking the FANK offensive.

  On 18 October Nang and his comrades shuffled into the small compound hidden in a plantation east of Baray. The entire forest had seemed alive with troops and machinery of the NVA 7th Division and all day Nang heard more trucks arriving. In the far distance the land shivered as B-52s searched for the advancing army.

  “Combatant Ly, disassemble it again,” Mitterschmidt said to Nang. “Yes, like that. No, you dunderhead! Each time you make the same mistake. You’ll blow yourself from here to kingdom come.”

  Nang bowed. “Oui. I will try harder, Colonel.”

  Mitterschmidt stared at the masked boy with the scarred, stiff hand. “You don’t want two hands like that, do you?”

  “No sir. I’ve got it now.”

  “Das ist gut! Hum. Now”—he walked to a side table where he had a motion picture camera—“I wish to take a film of all my students working. In Germany they’ll want to see how well you learn. Maybe how well you fight.” To the escort officer the foreign colonel said, “Soon, eh? Soon you’ll let me film a battle.”

  Met Sar’s lips pulled into a thin smile. Then his eyes squinted and his smile broadened into a toothy grin. With his staff about him in the temporary command bunker hidden below a refugee shack in Baray he studied the new reports, weighed their impact. Met Nang’s had provided immense detail on the NVA 7th Division. In the four days since Krahom sappers had received the new training, forces had converged. Sar’s smile dropped away. He puckered his lips, puffed out his cheeks. Snarled.

  By mid-October most elements were in staging areas, ready for the great battle for the Northern Corridor. Though always a dangerous road, Highway 6 to Kompong Thom was officially passable for all but four days during the third quarter of 1971. This is notable. Operation Chenla II was launched to relieve the five-month-old siege of Kompong Thom which was being supplied by air, yet the roadway, if not the surrounding countryside, remained free. Where the NVA had attacked trained FANK units they had not advanced—not because of air power, though U.S., ARVN, FANK and even Thai fighter-bombers certainly hampered Communist advances—but because those FANK infantry and artillery units had learned to concentrate their firepower effectively.

  Now FANK’s column, directed by a frantic Lon Nol, held the highway from Skoun through Baray to Kompong Thom. The NVA 5th and 7th divisions (with forward headquarters at Chup) were ready to pounce from rubber plantations to the east; the 91st, which had kept Kompong Thom terrified since April, had shifted south and west. Major NVA supply routes from the Northeast had been extensively expanded with new all-weather road networks sweeping across the high plain of Stung Treng, Preah Vihear and Kompong Thom provinces. And American and RVNAF bombing sorties had increased, first hitting NVA supply lines and then suspected troop massings. (Official U.S. bombing policy in Cambodia had changed. On 16 January 1971 the Department of Defense had announced the “potential” employment of any or all of its air assets anywhere over Khmer territory. Department of Defense officials added the qualifier [justificatio
n], “if the enemy units might ultimately threaten Americans in South Viet Nam”.) By October 1971 one hundred planes a day, approximately forty B-52s and sixty fighter-bombers, were attempting to interdict and destroy the advancing North Viet Namese.

  Sar cupped his chin in one hand. The NVA, he thought, are hard to judge. Why had they shifted, vastly increasing the delivery of supplies to the Khmer Krahom, offered yotheas the most advanced training, offering again, essentially, reconciliation? Those bastards, Sar thought. For them it’s 1968 again. That’s why. That’s it. They never act without design. We’re the sacrifice, eh? Like the VC at Tet, eh? Ah, but Khmers can see the fangs of the stinging red ants who wear the smiles of brothers.

  “Sar,” Met Phan interrupted his thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  “The latest meteorological reports have arrived.”

  “And...”

  “The winds have begun the shift to bring the seasonal change.”

  “And the waters?”

  “They’ve peaked. Last week every day they rose a centimeter. This week, no rise at all.”

  “When will they recede enough for the tanks?”

  “Another month, maybe.” Met Phan returned to his plotting of FANK and NVA units on a large acetate-covered map of the entire North.

  Met Dy approached. “Sar.”

  “Yes?”

  “The arrival of four battalions from Kompong Chhnang brings our troop strength about the corridor to 5,440.”

  “Forty-four companies?”

  “Forty-eight...formed into sixteen battalions.”

  “Have we been able to get radios to them all?”

  “Two of Met Mita’s companies are still without, but porters are bringing them the ones captured with the Kompong Thom garrison.”

  “Mita’s companies came from Kompong Thom. Why didn’t they receive them before?”

  “Captured materiel is brought to the Center for equitable redistribution.”

  “Uh.” Sar paused. He was angry but he did not want his anger to show. “Do you have the overlay of their locations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Command and control”—Sar shook his hand at Met Dy’s face—“is predicated upon effective communications, isn’t it?”

  “I understand,” Dy said defensively.

  “Phan! Let’s...” Sar stood. The men arranged the overlay on Phan’s plotted map and quietly studied the patterns. Clearly, in blue, along the line of Highway 6, the FANK units looked like a dashed serpent winding from Skoun to Kompong Thom. Surrounding the serpent in the paddies and low forest were evenly scattered black dots, Krahom companies, like ants searching for food. Then clustered in three groups, NVA units made up an outer pattern which looked like phantom arrowheads: one in the west aiming just south of Santuk; two in the east, one pointed at Baray, one pointed south, possibly an attempt to skirt the battle and head toward Phnom Penh. Sar stuck a pudgy index finger on the map, traced the arrowheads and their possible trajectories. The men spoke with controlled passion, suggesting moves to each other. FANK was so predictable that their discussion of the national army’s movement lasted less than a minute. It was the NVA that concerned them. How could the Krahom appear to help them and simultaneously ensure their defeat? How could Angkar escape the fate of the Viet Cong, which lost half its troops and all its political clout at Tet 1968 and was usurped by the very same devils who now asked for reconciliation and joint operations in this attack to destroy FANK forever? Yes, they, the Krahom, could help their fellow internationalists, but it was supposed to be the other way around. The NVA, in Sar’s mind, was supposed to help him!

  “Reth!”

  “Yes sir.” Sar’s bodyguard came from the adjoining bunker room.

  “Send Nim here.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Met Nim carried another overlay. Here plotted were the bombing raids of the last six weeks as compiled by Krahom sources across the northern sector. The four men studied the composite picture. Again a pattern emerged—both in color and concentration. The shift of NVA units was clearly matched, if somewhat lagged, by the bombing runs. In the past week the area about Krek, the area of heaviest concentration of the two previous weeks, had received only a smattering of purple splotches. But back roads from Stung Treng across the Siambok River to Rovieng and Kompong Trabek were solid lines, and the plantation areas east of Kratie and north of Kompong Cham were under a growing purple mist. The corridor along Highway 6 was all but untouched and neither Krahom nor NVA encampments had been hit.

  “Have KCh-110 move to the Chinit River, here.” Sar indicated an area on the map to Met Phan. “And have the 104th come south toward Rumlong. Here.”

  “Why not leave the 104th where it is? They’ll be able to...”

  “I don’t want them to,” Sar snapped.

  Alone again, Sar sat back. He planted his elbows on the field table, grasped his hair, and hung his head from his hands. A flaw, he thought. He closed his eyes trying to see the flaw. They make tremendous advances but in them there are flaws. It is only a matter of exploiting them. Oh to see them drop. To see them drop their guard, to see...

  Met Meas broke into Sar’s thoughts. “Sar. There’s news from Phnom Penh.”

  “Yes! What?”

  “Lon Nol has declared a state of emergency and abolished the constitution!”

  “He’s done what?!”

  “Abolished the...”

  Before Meas could repeat the news, Sar broke into a loud guffaw. “Ha! Ha! Haw! Oh what a wonderful buffoon,” he shrieked. “He’s such a fool. Such a fool....Such a fool.” Sar gasped for breath. Staff men laughed with him, at him. “From him,” Sar boomed, “it’s like plucking candy from a baby. Ha! Now, get back to work! We’re closer to victory than ever.” Sar’s smile wrinkled his whole face. “Meas,” he said quietly. He motioned him over. “Make a copy of Met Phan’s plottings of the yuons. Be sure it reaches the right people.”

  Again Sar leaned forward and hung his head from his hands. This time he did not close his eyes. To see their concentration break, he thought. To see Afigkar annihilate them, annihilate their thralls and drive the yuon army from Kampuchea. Then Angkar will inherit the revolution and all powers will pass to Khmer Patriots who will be led by the Brotherhood of the Pure.

  “You know how your transistor works, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the same,” Nang said. “Met Duch, you must struggle to overcome your fear of learning.”

  “It’s so heavy.”

  “Ah, but you are a proven fighter and very strong. I wouldn’t entrust the radio to just anyone.” Duch glanced up at Nang. His face showed suspicion and dread. “Also,” Nang added, “because you’ll be doing extra work, your ration shall be doubled. Two rice tubes each day.” Immediately Nang saw Duch’s reluctance fade.

  “You know the American radio?” Duch said matter-of-factly, hiding his easy acquiescence.

  “When I was trained in the far north we learned all radios.” Nang was delighted. For an hour he and Duch practiced calling Met Mita’s command post, practiced coordinating the squeeze-to-transmit, release-to-receive lever. “You learn so fast,” Nang encouraged the boy. “When I first tried, it took me days.”

  “Perhaps,” Duch answered his commander, “I Have a better teacher.”

  Nang put his hand on Duch’s back and rubbed. “Angkar is very proud of you.”

  Before dawn, 25 October 1971, Nang’s Krahom infantry company 2/KT 104 received its first radio order. They were to send, immediately, a runner to the battalion command post for orders. The mechanics of communication were easier to assimilate than the principles and practice of passing commands over the air.

  The farmers were slow that day leaving the hamlet for the paddies. Their work was far ahead of schedule with the assistance of the black-clad boys. The women, too, seemed to drag out the morning chores. Everyone had learned of the radio. Now they wished to hear the news the runner would bring.

  The rains had
abated but not stopped and the morning broke gray, as it had for weeks. Children sprinted from peasant house doorways to the village edge where the land fell away into the paddies. They stood there, watching, shrieking, jumping about, happy. Then they ran back home, wet, excited. During the night the earth to the east had quaked and the elders had grumbled and repeated slogan-thoughts taught by Nang and other yotheas, repeated fears and hates about bombs they’d never experienced. The quaking had been far off. Some had not felt it at all and these grumbled about the platoon of neary who’d come, caught the other outsiders, assassinated them and their two village assistants, then left, vanished, leaving only the unburied bodies in the near paddy.

  Yotheas joined the children, enjoying the morning leisure, enjoying the company of the villagers as if they were family they had not seen in an age, and enjoying the company of one another, free, for the moment, of struggle. The congealing of an infantry unit is strange chemistry and the 2d of the KT 104th was, as a unit, new. Less than a month earlier they had been six separate squads whose only common bond was a loose or strong tie to Met Nang. In short order they’d been increased, filled out so each squad had four three-man cells, then formed, been formed, into three platoons: Tiger, Monkey and Rabbit. The platoons were given leaders, joined to form the company. The idea of each yothea being responsible to a battalion called the 104th was awkward in their minds. Responsibility to Angkar was easier, for Angkar was, to them, Kampuchea—was Kampucheans for Kampuchea, was the very soul of the revolution.

  But the bonding to middle echelons of organization was weak. And the bonding to one another, in the absence of combat, also was pale. At times they fought not for one another, that would come later, but for an ideology built on slogans and catchphrases and a mixture of love, respect and fear of Met Nang.

  “He’s coming!”