For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “I remember,” she answered.

  “It’s...” He stopped. “This is from Louis for food,” he said seriously, “but maybe...for a minute”—he held up the thin gold ring—“I could put it on your finger and pretend, like the wedding song, you are still jealous of my hot green chili, because...because you love me.”

  “I am jealous”—Vathana touched his thin chest—“because, like the song, I love you. I shall be jealous of you every day.”

  “If the nation is to fall,” the stocky doctor said to an orderly, “the new nation will need doctors, eh?”

  Sophan looked at their backs, looked beyond them into the ward. The hospital had been rebuilt after the 1973 American bomb had hit it, but it was much too small for a city of sixty thousand plus defense force troops during active battle. Each bed was cramped with five, seven, ten patients. Rivers of diarrhea flowed from cots of those so ill they couldn’t rise. Clouds of flies swarmed amid aisles packed with family members.

  “Then you think it’s over, Doctor?” the orderly asked.

  “I wouldn’t have returned if I didn’t think that traitor was about to lose his head,” Doctor Sarin Sam Ol answered.

  “But surely, now,” the orderly retorted, “President Ford will send in troops. As a matter of honor.”

  “Honor?” Doctor Sarin scoffed bitterly. “In Neak Luong? All the world knows America’s shame. My sons...” The doctor stopped, turned, stared at Sophan with his good eye.

  “Is it over?” she asked weakly. “We’ve no radio...”

  “Ha! It was over years ago,” Sarin Sam Ol snapped. “My eldest son is dead. By my second son’s words, FANK is ready to surrender. My peou, in the maquis, now he can come home.”

  To the Krahom, Preah Vihear was a svayat or autonomous region. In the “secret zone” south of that city Nang had prepared his team for the final victory. He was bitter. “A high-level reeducation facility,” Met Sen had told him, “to instruct ‘students’ how to live in a pure society.” Banished, he’d thought. Shunted aside just as victory is within our grasp. “Angkar Leou wishes for you to go forward and establish Site 169,” he’d been ordered. Expelled, he’d thought. Kept from the rewards of conquest. His bitterness imbued each of his a-ksae teos, his “telephone wires,” his new soldiers who would use the wire to bind students’ hands behind their backs.

  Nang stood at the edge of a small clearing. He burped and hot acid seared his throat. In February there had been a secret high-level meeting of the Kampuchean United Revolutionary Front—the Center plus zonal secretaries and delegates from the dumbon and phumpheak levels and from the svayats. Nang had not been invited. He touched his face and the bitterness sizzled in him. He’d received but a verbal briefing. All the sacrifices, he thought. The years in the swamps, the months below the bombs. My face. Every a-ksae teo knew. Every one of them had been betrayed with him, abandoned with him, isolated with him. Hate coagulated them into a demonic band.

  “We’ll need a hundred peasants,” Nang said to his aide.

  “Yes Met Nang.” The young boy’s answer snapped.

  “This is much too small. Clear it so when I stand here, I can see the Dang Rek cliff without looking through trees.”

  “Yes Met Nang.”

  “Have it done in ten days,” Nang said. He did not look at the boy-soldier. Met Sar’s words, from the messenger, were simple. “Immediately upon victory, all cities will be emptied. Prepare for many new people. Annihilation of class enemies is the highest form of class struggle.”

  Nang taught the a-ksae teos the last line. Met Sen had sent a separate message which Nang did not pass on. “Extermination,” he’d said, “is more productive than war: In your facility, you are God.”

  It was twenty minutes past noon, 1 April 1975. The battle lulls of the previous day had been broken by tremendous artillery barrages during the night. Rita Donaldson crouched with her back to a sandbagged revetment. On her knees was a steno pad. She scribbled furiously. She looked up. The Air Cambodge jet had vanished into the hot dry air. Before her stretched Phnom Penh’s Pochentong Airport. The runway was cratered from thousands of rounds of 81mm mortars and 107mm rockets which had impacted in the past two months. At one end was the skeletal wreckage of a DC-8; close by the charred remains of a C-130. Rita lowered her head. The roar and rumble of a departing airlift plane vibrated the pen in her hand. Then that craft too was gone.

  “President Lon Nol has left,” she wrote. “The head of state and marshal of the army, with his weeping wife and an entourage of 29, has left this war-torn nation en route to Thailand and Indonesia. Assisting the president’s wife was Madame Sisowath Thich Soen, an elegant woman who some say acted as the go-between for U.S. embassy officials and the Republic’s government—”

  Rita stopped to collect her thoughts. She would later rewrite the notes into a cohesive article. Now it was imperative to record her observations. “The president, wearing a dark gray business suit and looking somber, slowly limped from where he had been assisted from the helicopter which had brought him from the Chamcar Mon Palace to this point, to the waiting white jet. Twice he raised his cane, necessary since a stroke partially paralyzed him in 1970, to salute those troops who have been loyal to him for five years.”

  A C-130 cargo plane, a rice and ammo flight, dove in steep approach and landed. Very quickly a team of Khmer soldiers, directed by U.S. Air Force officers, unloaded the craft. Immediately it roared off.

  “For the past 30 days,” she wrote, “this city’s perimeter defenses have been continuously battered and progressively pushed back. In this atmosphere and at the urging of both American ambassador John Gunther Dean and Lon Nol’s own party and general staff, the president has stepped down. According to sources close to Prime Minister Long Boret, this will remove a critical stumbling block to opening negotiations between the Republican regime and the Communist Liberation Front. An aide to Acting President Saukham Khoy believes the new chief executive and his cabinet are acceptable, for talks, to Khmer Rouge officials. Prime Minister Long Boret had, as recently as two days ago, stated that American diplomats here ‘are not working for our surrender,’ but that the ‘provisional departure’ of Lon Nol will assist the U.S. embassy here both in convincing Congress to appropriate additional aid and in giving them ‘a margin of maneuverability’ in their attempts to negotiate a peace settlement between the warring parties. A dissenting opinion, it is rumored, will be forthcoming from ex-prime minister Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak. Further bitterness was expressed by a head government financier who asked not to be identified but who alleges that Lon Nol was given half a million dollars as an incentive to flee.”

  Another plane approached. The airport rocket warning siren erupted, its penetrating wail sending cargo crews scrambling for cover. “One...two...” Rita pressed her back harder to the revetment, pulled her knees in tighter. “...six, seven...” she counted. She forced herself not to look up, put her hands and the steno pad atop her head. By fifteen, she knew, the round would explode, somewhere, on the kilometer-long facility. Concentrating on counting was the only way to avoid terror. Then, beyond the DC-8 carcass, an explosion.

  Rita looked up. Filled her lungs with the acrid air. Exhaled. Wrote. “Statements from the Communist side have been contradictory. In February Khieu Samphan announced that every Cambodian would have an important role in the new nation ‘no matter what his past held.’ Norodom Sihanouk, later that month, stated in Peking, ‘The Khmer people have nothing to fear from a Khmer Rouge victory. There will be no bloodbath. Cambodia will be governed not even by a Communist state but by a Swedish-style kingdom.’ ” After this note Rita added a parenthesis, “(check exact wording.)” She continued, “However, the Communist hit list of supertraitors has been expanded, according to Khmer Rouge radio, from the original seven to a present figure of twenty-eight. All on the original list, now labeled the “arch-traitors,” according to KR radio, will be executed. The added twenty-one, KR radio said, will be dealt with by a peop
le’s tribunal after victory. All other ‘imperialists, lackeys, stooges, puppets and traitors’ will be granted general amnesty ‘if they cooperate with the new regime.’ Still there is here the fear of harsh reprisals. U.S. embassy officials privately seem miffed at Secretary of State Kissinger’s warning of ‘serious consequences to American credibility,’ without at least equal caution and concern expressed about serious consequences for the Cambodian people.”

  Again Rita paused. She looked out beyond the airstrip, over the paddies to the forested fields in the west. Because of all the close writing she’d done, her eyes focused slowly and the distant trees remained blurry. It made her feel as if she were aging too quickly and that, along with her fears and prayers for the many Khmers she’d come to respect, made her feel tired. Again she returned to the pad.

  “America has had many good people stationed here,” she wrote. “Perhaps its best team, including Ambassador Dean and General William Palmer, are here now. (Or is it me?),” she wrote. “(Have I changed? Maybe matured or become wiser or hardened from my years here? Once I had a simple desire to see peace return to this gentle land. Now I suspect peace will be as violent as war. At once I feel there is a moral obligation to push for surrender and let the killings cease...and I fear they won’t. When I arrived here earlier today I spoke with an airport guard. I asked him how he felt about the president’s abandonment. He would not answer. I said, ‘There is so much hate now. If the war stops, can the hate be forgotten?’ He looked straight at me like I was crazy. ‘Western Lady,’ he said, ‘hate, you know, it lasts thirty generations.’)”

  Rita clasped her hands over the pad. In the heat she shivered. “America,” she wrote, “has had good people in Cambodia, has had decent advisors with the best intentions. Why were all their best plans and policies blocked by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger?”

  Chhuon could just barely hear the words, and not all of them. They had been given the afternoon off—the first break from the kara than, the official worksite, in thirty days. Quietly he weaved palm leaves into the deteriorating fabric of his sleeping cocoon. His knuckles ached as he laced the strands delicately into the pattern, yet he worked steadily. One’s body, he’d been thinking, deteriorates exactly like old leaves in the sun. Then he’d seen the three men approaching.

  “You are responsible for your own safety.” Chhuon overheard the shortest one say. The others did not answer. They drew closer. Chhuon ducked behind his cocoon. He recognized the speaker, Met Soth, chief of Khum 4, and with him Met Vong, enforcer of Phum 117. The third, too, looked familiar. “You understand,” Soth said. “Vong and I have secured for you a chance to redeem yourself.”

  “I will serve and honor Angkar Leou,” the third man responded. Chhuon squatted behind his hut. He knew this young man.

  “If ever it is reported,” Soth warned him, “you have been with a neary, without Angkar’s approval...”

  Chhuon pretended to concentrate on the lashings which held the platform of the cocoon to the corner posts about a meter above the earth. That, Chhuon thought, that is Khieng. At first he, Chhuon, felt a surge of joy at recognizing the boy from his home village. But quickly the joy died. That, he thought, that is Khieng who stripped my Kdeb. That is Khieng who was a yuon militiaman and who humiliated me, my family, the entire village. That hen shit, he thought, brought the yuons, brought the Khmer Rouge, uprooted us. Ha, Chhuon thought. He crept to the other side of the cocoon, stood and watched the yotheas’ backs as they strode between the line of huts. Ha, once again we encounter each other, Met Khieng. Now it is my turn to prevail.

  Teck crouched in his foxhole. The shelling had begun, not along the southern perimeter but to the north along Highway 15, which led to Prey Veng. All night shells had landed at the far garrisons. They’d thought little of the explosions except perhaps that they meant a new assault would begin or—thank the Lord Buddha—that it’s up there this time and not on us again.

  During the night Louis had chided him, “A clean shirt! For what? She thinks the war is over? Or are you going to celebrate the New Year before the city falls?”

  “Just eat your roll,” Teck had answered lightly. “Tomorrow she’ll sell the ring and we’ll celebrate whatever comes.”

  “Next is the Hare, eh? I’ve had enough of the Year of the Tiger.”

  “It’s not been all bad,” Teck said. “No matter what they say in the papers, we’ve fought well, eh?”

  “Ha! Tigers fight, Hares flee. I’m going to run away.”

  Teck laughed. “Maybe so, Louis. But not for another twelve days, eh?”

  The shelling of the northern berm and garrisons increased. By morning the rumbling of explosions rolling across the city was nearly continuous. Before them, beyond the FANK outposts, there was no sign of life. Teck had eaten his rice ball but not his roll. Now he gnawed the hard crust, rasping a hole into its side, savoring each crumb, forcing the roll, the fragrance and taste, to last as long as possible. There were new sounds, explosions to the northwest. An attack was coming down the river road from Banam. Rumors spread beneath the second barrage. Still the southern front was quiet.

  Louis was restless. “How can you eat that fucking thing so slow?”

  “Like this,” Teck teased. He continued his gnawing. Out to his right he heard a faint chir-rick-chirk. He jerked his head. There was nothing to be seen. He closed his eyes and he saw an image of his eldest son and he thought how beautiful the little boy had become. He decided he would work with him until he could say “mama” and “papa.” When Teck opened his eyes he was smiling. He’d slept for hours. The sun was high. He still clutched his roll. Then, on the southern berm, down the line, a round exploded. Then again and again. He dropped. Louis leaped from the lean-to, slammed down atop him. Artillery rounds burst only meters away. The air filled with smoke, dust. Gravel rained on them. The storm swirled violently above their heads then moved up the line. There were long screams. Loud cries. Soft pleas.

  Teck coughed. Rubbed his eyes. Pushed Louis off him. Blood trickled down his face. He touched it. There was no pain. He raised higher and saw the swarm approaching.

  “Ooouw,” Louis cried. Teck’s head snapped to him. His pant hip was bloodsoaked, a ragged flap of flesh opened as he righted himself.

  “Here they come!” a sergeant yelled.

  They had never been so plain, so open, so clear. FANK rifles cracked. Teck focused on three black-clad soldiers sprinting toward him. He was aware of hundreds beside and behind them. He set his left arm firmly on the berm, lowered his head to the M-16 stock, aimed, fired. A soldier collapsed. Teck adjusted, aimed, fired. A second boy dropped. A third disintegrated in a volley by Teck, Louis and Sahn in the position next to them. Hundreds of bodies lay crumpled. The charge disappeared. The artillery barrages to the north could again be heard.

  Teck checked his face. He looked at his shirt. It was blood splattered. Again he felt his face. “Cock shit,” Louis growled. “It’s mine you idiot.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “That blood on you. Look at my hip. Patch me up. I quit.”

  Teck pushed Louis down flat at the edge of the foxhole. The earth was better than table height but Teck remained in the hole as he scrutinized the wound. Then he laughed. “It isn’t so bad. Ha! Now I’ll call you Half-Ass.”

  “You wouldn’t laugh if it were you, Brother!” Methodically Teck surface-cleaned and bandaged the wound. “They fight well, too,” Louis snarled. “Damn them.”

  “How are they so accurate with those shells?” Teck said. “Right down the line. They plan, they prepare and they execute. But they are stupid, too. Had they shelled us a little longer...” Teck paused. He looked down the line. A dozen teams were carrying bodies toward the crematory; a score were evacuating wounded. Up the line the numbers were higher. “...we’d never have been...”

  Again there was that sound. Now the second bombardment began. Both men huddled at the hole bottom. Shells roared over, burst behind them—without roars burst
before them. The earth heaved. Black clods smashed them. Teck watched as Louis rose. He seized his pant leg to pull him down. The air was thick with smoke and dust and sand. Smoke burns Teck’s eyes. Louis shakes his leg, pulls fiercely. He is gone. The barrage does not let up. There are screams to the front. Teck inches up. There are thousands of attackers. No defenders are firing. Rounds land behind them. Teck takes his position, aims, fires. A person drops, dies. He fires on semiautomatic, one round per...per...the shrill screams are not boys, men. They fire on him. Rifle rounds kick in the dirt by his face. He fires. A girl dies. Girls, women, neary continue to charge, to die to his bullets. They have no cover, no concealment. Teck’s arms twitch yet his aim is accurate. His chest is tight. Before him there is a leg, an entire leg with a boot, tossed by artillery. The shelling is farther back, now. Corpses are strewn before beside behind him. Rockets roar over on their trajectory to Neak Luong’s heart. Immediately Teck knows the enemy artillery has moved up, in for the kill.

  The Krahom has committed two entire divisions plus a separate brigade, over ten thousand troops, plus three thousand of Met Nu’s ten thousand neary, to the annihilation of Neak Luong’s defenses.

  “Fall back! Fall back!” Sergeants and officers are manic yet orderly. “Back to the last trenches! Keep firing!”

  Teck reloads. He does not move from the foxhole. Twenty rounds, he thinks. Twenty kills. “Back to the 105 battery! We’ll target the line!” Target the line, Teck thinks. Target the line. Observe the line. In the maelstrom he pauses to look to his right, down the pickets of palm trees. Chir-rick-chirk, he thinks. Observers...

  From behind and to his left there is an incredible bang. FANK cannoncockers have lowered the tubes for point-blank fire. Teck slithers out of the hole, scampers like a rat. He steps on a chunk of flesh and falls. He rises, runs on.

  Beyond the howitzers Louis has stripped off his uniform and thrown it away. He is sprint-hobbling for town, for a hovel in which to hide.