For the Sake of All Living Things (72 page)

Sullivan turned from the dikehead. Again Suong shrieked his name. In flat mortar flare light he looked dwarfed by the weapon, looked like an evil weighted Christmas tree gleaming brass and hung with grenade balls. “Down here!” Sullivan called. A moment later, “I thought you’d split.”

“I go with you wherever you go, eh!?” Again the obscure smile. “Which way we going?”

“Point of attack,” Sullivan said calmly. He pointed to an area of the perimeter from which FANK-fired red tracers showered the advancing NVA 209th, at which NVA-fired green tracers impacted.

To the direct rear of the midpoint of the 209th’s assault, Lieutenant Nam Thay hugged mud below clumps of dike surface grass. From four thousand feet U.S. Army helicopters were unleashing rockets at barrel flashes seen through the ground mist. The aircraft commanders, the copilots and, in the Hueys, the door gunners had the almost impossible task of identifying targets, of separating friendly from enemy troops. Without ground forward observers, they attempted to err toward the enemy rear thus leaving a wide aerial no-fire zone between the lines. “Stupid, insane, buffalo shit,” Thay grumbled to himself. Beside him Hans Mitterschmidt’s legs churned, moving the East German in agitated spurts as the colonel, torso atop the dike, attempted to get ever-greater camera angle on the battle.

From the FANK side, Sullivan sprinted the middle distance then low-crawled the last to the dike berm. Behind him Suong struggled with his gear. About them defenders lay twisted, broken. Some moaned. Some cried. Some jerked spasmodically with each B-40 rocket or recoilless rifle explosion near their position. The dead didn’t move.

Where FANK was faltering the NVA moved to reinforce their attack points. Break through, isolate, separate, annihilate. An old tactic, tried and true.

“Are you with the relief column?” A FANK soldier hugged Suong as he lay splat on the earth.

Suong laughed. He turned to Sullivan, the obscure smile visible under a fluttering flare. “He asks ‘Are we with the relief column?’ ”

“Ha! Tell him we are the...”

As Sullivan spoke a wave of Communist soldiers which had advanced through the aerial no-fire zone of paddy muck and wriggled silently like water leeches from rice stalk to rice stalk lobbed satchel charges over the dike. The NVA soldiers dropped as the charges, almost in unison, exploded along fifty meters of FANK berm. The concussion kicked Sullivan onto his back. He stared straight up. Then Viet troops leaped to the top of the dike. Sullivan pulled the trigger. Eight rounds lifted, blew one man back. Sullivan rolled. His fire drew fire. Down the line a FANK gunner sprayed continual M-60 lead a foot over the dike, chopping rising NVA at the knees then killing them as they fell. Other FANK troops fired up from the paddy where they’d been thrown. Ten meters from Sullivan, FANK and NVA soldiers smashed wildly at each other with rifle butts and bayonets, each being killed by other FANK or NVA soldiers, men firing at every unidentified disturbance in the violent flow. The FANK troops regained their berm but from the paddy and the next dike east the attack intensified. Suong struggled with the 60. Sullivan pushed him his 16, grabbed the heavier weapon. Beside them a soldier sucking an amulet caught a round in the head. He did not jerk, did not fall, as if the round had passed through his skull with such velocity as only to make its immediate minute entry hole without jarring the package. Then wet blood gushed one immense spurt, then oozed, flowed down his face, splitting into dozens of rivulets before the soldier wobbled, then collapsed and sank beneath the paddy water.

To the FANK rear, with Chhan Samkai and his CP withdrawn, as the front berm held, FANK troops discarded their weapons, fled, sloshing into the west swamp, running, diving into the canal, attempting to swim south or float west. Some dependants and refugees joined them but most stayed put. How does a mother carry and drag her two-, three- and five-year-olds through a hostile swamp in the middle of the night? Better to sit, sit and wait, wait and weep and let fate reveal future sufferings or mercy.

Those FANK soldiers who fled, fled under conditions they had never expected. With each backstep they were met with increasing hostility by refugees and local inhabitants who no longer viewed them as an army of salvation but as the hopeless Nationals, as a detested scourge which had, by their very attempt to liberate, brought fighting which had destroyed the land, which had separated the refugees from their families, which now caused death amongst them. To them FANK had not launched an offensive against invading
thmils
from North Viet Nam but had sucked greater numbers of NVA deeper into the area.

“They’re breaking apart,” Mitterschmidt said to Nam Thay. “Let’s move forward.”

“Sir, there are still the aircraft. You can’t be injured here.”

“I won’t be. We must press forward.”

“Then please, along the canal levee. There, I think, the bombers have been ordered not to hit.”

“You say that. My film shows otherwise. Okay. Either way we’ll be there for the greatest rout of the war.”

“We can’t let the yuon drive succeed,” Eng whispered to Nang. “Those were our orders.”

“Let them rest,” Nang whispered. His tone was soothing, smooth, masking great agitation. The two had pushed the battalion of yotheas to the limit of human endurance. Throughout the night they had attacked and destroyed small rear elements of their ally. The NVA 209th’s rear transfer station for wounded had been first, along with a reserve security squad. Then a mortar team moving independently to a new firing site, then a supply platoon. Each time they’d moved in close, then, counting on their ally status, infiltrated a few, then more, then many amongst the Viets or, as with the supply team, Khmers supporting Viets. Each time they’d killed without shots or grenades, killed by stabbing, slashing and bashing heads. The noise was localized. Their mission remained covert.

“We must move.
Now
!” Eng was emphatic.

“No!”
Nang was more so.

“To knock off a few yuons behind their attackers won’t stop their drive.”

“To rush head-on into the attack won’t stop it either. Move them to the canal.”

“That’ll put our backs to the water. We won’t be able to move.”

“Exactly, Eng,” Nang whispered, soothing, smooth, insane. “Exactly. On desperate ground their only hope to live will be to fight more savagely than you and I ever conceived.”

The fighting was now very close. Viet Namese and Khmer riflemen exchanged shots point-blank. On the canal levee two dozen men were battling hand to hand. Still, two hundred meters north of the canal, Sullivan, Suong and a small, hardened, tired core covered their section, increasing their deliberate rifle fire, shooting only on semiautomatic to conserve their nearly exhausted ammunition. Despite constant attempts Sullivan had been unable to make radio contact with the ever-changing aircraft and he’d given up. Perhaps, he thought in a momentary lull, it’s the battery.

“You are a brave man,” Suong said to Sullivan as the Khmer reloaded. He smiled, too emotionally spent to hide the warmth.

“You too, my friend.” Sullivan grabbed Suong’s arm and squeezed, then let go and raised his head back above the dike.

“But you, Captain. You are braver. After all, this
is
my country. Only you few Americans who are here and fight for Cambodia understand. Only you care. Where’s the rest of the free world?”

“Whoa! Look! Another!”

Suong poked up. The murk of the dark paddy below was broken by a dozen floating corpses. “Where?”

“South. There. We’ve got a hole.”

“Eh!” Suong undipped a grenade from his belt. He and Sullivan crept-sprinted below the berm. Suong pulled the pin, cocked his arm. An NVA rifleman fired a burst. Suong threw. Rounds tinked at Suong’s waist. Sullivan fired at the flash. Suong dropped, collapsed beside him. The thrown grenade exploded. “You hit?” Sullivan spit the words.

“No.” Then Suong jerked, grasped at his belt. His last grenade had been armed by the rifle bullet. He ripped frantically. Sullivan fired on more enemy. Suong leaped over the dike. He crashed, sloshed screaming toward the NVA. The grenade stuck on his belt blew. The cell of NVA attackers stood, stunned. Sullivan fired a long burst, swept back and forth. The last mortar flare died. There was no more fire from the FANK position.

In the first predawn lightening of sky the NVA 209th began its mop-up operation. Hash skirmishes erupted along the roadway. Hans Mitterschmidt, securely surrounded by a full squad of NVA reserves plus his porter and two escort officers, proceeded methodically toward the twisted carriage of the bridge. Behind him; emerging from the 209th’s rear like dark pincers, two companies of armed black-clad boys advanced, enveloping the slower-moving Viets with their white foreign observer, advisor, strategist.

“Who are they?” Mitterschmidt demanded.

“Khmers, eh?” Lieutenant Thay shrugged.

“Didn’t they attack?”

“These browns”—Nam Thay spat disgustedly—“are cowards. You saw that.”

“It’s on film.”

Under the oil-slicked water of the last paddy before the wrecked bridge, John L. Sullivan sucked air through a reed, testing his ability to stay submerged. The water/rice surface was dark. The sky grayed from charcoal to ash. All about him he could hear the NVA mop-up, Viet Namese voices, light chatter. Soon, he thought, They’ll bomb this place to hell and back and blow these cocksuckers to shit. Me too. If the bastards don’t get me first.

Sullivan periscoped his head up for a look then ducked back under. The twenty-three-pound M-60 was an adequate anchor, yet again he popped up. In the several days he’d been in and out of the paddies the water had dropped six inches, to three and a half feet. How long could he hide? More voices. French! He dove, tried to raise only an ear, but it filled with water and he couldn’t hear.

“Now!”
The scream was hysterical, incoherent Khmer. Every yothea fired. In the midst of 400 NVA riflemen and porters the surprise fire by 180 Krahom soldiers was devastating. Each yothea had prepicked targets. Before any Viet could react, a hundred died. Then rifle fire enmeshed all, all firing at all, all ducking, diving for cover, dying, suicide attack by black-clad boys storming up from the bridgehead and canal, down from paddies two hundred meters north, killing everything in their path, being killed by NVA troops on the highway firing from old, FANK-prepared positions.

Sullivan popped up. The fighting, to him, meant FANK reinforcements, FANK counterattack. What else could it be? He tried to determine the lines but sensed he was in the middle. He ducked under, excited, sucking air through the reed. He duck-walked underwater, under cover of thin mist, shattered stalks and shadowy earth.

Nam Thay dropped to his knees. The pain in his abdomen was horrible, odd, not severe but horrible in its fearsomeness. Things had crunched, blown in, out. He dared not look. His head fell forward. His eyes saw red, saw slick whitish tubes, split, spewing shit. He looked up. The was no sound. No pain. Nam Thay saw Mitterschmidt’s ankle protruding from the German’s boot, but saw no more of him. Nam Thay fell to his side. His knees drew up. Five meters away Mitterschmidt knelt on the leg without a foot. He screamed unintelligible, orders, then collapsed into the paddy.

Sullivan poked up. Twenty meters from him a man crashed into the water. Sullivan ducked. In his mind he shook his head. He’d seen a Caucasian with a camera. Fucking reporter, he thought. Fucking reporter. Have to stay under. He poked up. A boy dressed in a black uniform had the reporter by the hair. With a bayonet held in a bloody hand with but two fingers the boy stabbed the Caucasian’s throat then ripped out. Sullivan swallowed. He sank till his eyes were half below water. Names flashed. Sean Flynn. Dana Stone. The deserter McKinley Nolan. Who? Other black-uniformed children severed the head. Then with it they ran for the canal.

HISTORICAL SUMMATION

Part 3 (1972-1974)

Prepared for

The Washington News-Times

J. L. Sullivan

April 1985

H
OW DID THE REPUBLIC
of Cambodia fall? What changes, what political events and tactical decisions, brought the rise of the Khmer Krahom?

The Battle of Chenla II was the Antietam, Gettysburg and Shenandoah of the Cambodian “civil” war. It marked the end of Lon Nol’s “Popular Crusade,” which had seen over 80,000 Khmer youths volunteer, in just the first months, to fight the Viet Namese Communists. Never again did FANK seriously attempt to dislodge any major opposing force. Nor did FANK ever mount a sustained counter-offensive, even though intelligence reports indicated dramatic tactical changes, changes which meant the national military could have retaken vast tracts of land virtually unopposed. Still, like the Confederate States in America 109 years earlier, the Khmer Republic held on, sometimes via the most heroic military actions, for three more torturous years.

The Battle of Chenla II—the military ramification of the storm set off by Hanoi’s early 1970 decision to accelerate its Campaign X to conquer Cambodia—raged until late December 1971. Then the fighting abruptly stopped, gave way to an unexpected lull, an eye in the storm, because North Viet Nam’s Communist leadership suddenly shifted its short-term political aims and thus its tactical disposition. With Free World public attention concentrating on Phnom Penh as if the city were all of Cambodia, Hanoi decided to temporarily drain its military forces from the Khmer countryside. Why, when the North Viet Namese Army was on the verge of toppling Phnom Penh, did Hanoi’s Politburo order this sudden abort? What did the ensuing drain-off of NVA troops, and the subsequent NVA disaster of the Easter offensive in South Viet Nam, mean for Cambodia and the Krahom movement? What effect did the Paris peace talks and the signed agreement have on the Cambodian nation?

And what events and pressures in the United States, France, South Viet Nam and China influenced all the Khmer factions?

The behavior of the Khmer Krahom in the late months of 1971 deserves special attention. Its actions were omens foreshadowing not only the immediate future but a future beyond the second eye of the storm.