For the Sake of All Living Things (30 page)

Nang beamed as if a religious truth had been revealed to him, but inside he thought, Bok Roh, you believe your own stupid propaganda. “Do you welcome,” Nang asked sheepishly, knowing he was baiting his mentor, “the North’s annexation of the South?”

Bok slammed his fist into his open palm. His nares flared, his mouth curled. “Premier Pham Van Dong calls that a ‘stupid and criminal idea.’ He has stated, ‘The South will have its own policy.’ And there will be a policy for Mountaineers.”

“Do you welcome violence against villages which do not support either North or South?”

“There are times when violence is necessary. Violence which advances our political cause is imperative.”

“Then, when we attack a village, it is imperative, yes? For political reasons?”

“There’s a
ruup areak
in Phuiri Sath Nan,” Sam said.

Chhuon nodded. The two men were in the treeline at the village edge overlooking the paddies. The rice harvest had just begun, and their stores were already a quarter full. In the moonlight the dry paddy stubble gleamed like gold. “I had a dream the night before...”

“You’ve told me,” Sam said sadly.

“Is he competent?” Chhuon asked.

“The medium?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“I wish to know if my son’s spirit is at peace. If this medium can contact him, I’ll be ready to sit in the corner with the ancestors.”

“Ssshh!” Sam put his hand on Chhuon’s arm. He motioned into the paddies.

Chhuon stared. An entire armed platoon was moving noiselessly toward them, “quick.”

The men, staying in their squats, spun, slithered into the shadows, then ran through alleys and streets rapping out the alert on doors and walls.

For months, ever since Norodom Sihanouk had seriously ordered his army to engage the NVA and halt the border erosion, military units had circled or passed through Phum Sath Din. At First they had been Royal forces on their way east—ragtag outfits dragging cannons and their families, camping on the road, twice passing through the middle of Phum Sath Din, twice shelling areas northeast of the village with antiquated howitzers set up in Chhuon’s paddies. Then units and direction changed, NVA heading west—crack infantry units carried by truck and escorted by armor giving the village wide berth on their way to reinforce a buildup farther south—or Khmer Viet Minh units of Hanoi-trained hardcore Khmer cadres and a growing mix of volunteers and conscripts, Khmers, Mountaineers and Chams.

“wake!” Chhuon ordered his family. His breath came hard and fast, “wake,” he hissed, shook his wife, Sok, then his mother and finally Peou, his last born, “quickly, to the shelter.”

“I’ll sleep on my mat,” Chhuon’s mother said calmly, with the dignity of age when death is not feared.

Chhuon looked briefly at the old woman, “they’re coming. this time...they won’t go by...they’re entering now.”

“And what would they want with this old woman?” As she spoke Sok and Peou rolled up their sleeping mats. “Better I stay and greet them,” the old woman said. “Better they find a house with someone than with no one.”

Chhuon kissed his mother. He turned to the altar. Already many of the ancestral mementos had been removed, hidden, buried in the orchard. He grabbed the bowl of rice he still filled daily for Samnang. He raced to the door, knees, pains unheeded, jumped down the steps and joined Sok and Peou as they skittered like mice through a hole behind the oven, then down into the tight, newly dug family bunker.

Peou slept on Sok’s lap. Sok dozed sporadically, leaning against the cool hard earth, afraid to change positions, to set a mat behind her, afraid to wake Peou. Chhuon sat on his hams for hours, facing the covered hole, listening intently, staring like a raccoon trapped in a tree hollow by barking dogs. Yet there was no barking. Only silent darkness. Silence for hours.

In the morning Sam’s wife, Ry, sat in the central room crying. “They took them,” she wailed. “Took them both. They’ve taken six.”

Chhuon’s hands squeezed tight but hung by his side—meaty, ineffective mallets.

“All young.” Ry rocked back and forth. “Except Sam. But he’s strong. And Mama! Why would they take an old woman?”

Chhuon paced in sorrow, in grief, in anger. “Why?!” he growled through gritted teeth. “Why Sam? Why Moeun? And who? Who are they?” He brushed a hand through his hair. His body tensed, quaked in anger, in grief, in guilt for again not having fought but for having hidden, in guilt for not being taken, for not even knowing who did the taking, for being left to survive, again, survive now without his last consolation.

For months Phum Sath Din had been filling with known and unknown families and workers, each claiming to be, most being, peasants from outlying isolated farms seeking the security of the village, pushed and prodded from behind by military forces, for tactical military and political reasons they neither knew nor understood. Within days of Sam’s disappearance the influx blossomed, swelling the village to over a thousand inhabitants. Some families found vacant homes left by residents who had fled south or west months earlier. When all the houses were filled, the new families built makeshift abodes of bamboo, branches, thatch, built them without order about the old symmetrical quadrants of Phum Sath Din, built them touching one to the next, indeed the poorest built being lean-tos against the walls of the willing neighbor.

In the market Chhuon heard the voices of the new-people but he did not talk with them. Their words confused him, sapped him further of resolve. “When we’re finally liberated,” the voices repeated again and again, “everything will be better.”

Or, “The Royal troops attacked us, shelled our farm because we sell to the Viets. I hope they don’t attack here.” “Why should they attack here, Brother? We’re all Khmers.” “Why should they have attacked my farm?” “Don’t they attack only when the NVA is there? Attack to keep the yuons from destroying villages?” “It’s Royal troops that destroyed my village.” “The monk here, he says we should assist the Royals to save the country. I don’t trust him.” “Maha Nyanananda is a very holy man, but...he’s old. He’s not a military man.” “I’ll tell you this, I’m against the NVA and the Royals.”

Three weeks after Sam disappeared, Chhuon found an ally amongst the newcomers.

“Honored Professor Mister Cahuom,” a young man addressed Chhuon in the most formal fashion. “Maybe you remember me, Uncle. You assisted my father many times with seed and advice. Our farm’s been ruined and my mother killed.”

Chhuon looked into the young man’s face. He did not recognize him.

“Hang Tung.” The young man bowed. “We lived beyond Phum Sath Nan.”

“Your father then is Hang Hak?”

“Yes. He’s a year with the ancestors.”

“Why didn’t you seek shelter in Sath Nan? You’ve relatives there.”

“They’ve all gone. It’s a hard village now. Here the people are more compassionate.”

For a week Hang Tung cultivated Chhuon’s friendship. For a week he lamented to Chhuon about the rumors of pending Royal troop attack on Phum Sath Din. And for a week Chhuon assisted, advised and consoled his new friend who spoke about awakening the people to all threats. One evening Hang Tung said to Chhuon, “Tonight I’m going to set a trip wire and flare on the west approach to town. We’ll know by the light if Royal troops are going to storm through. Will you come with me?”

“I’ll come,” Chhuon answered. “But I place no value in this forecast.”

“Uncle.” Tung changed his tone.

“Um.”

“May I put my sleeping mat in your courtyard? I’m with a family of eleven. There’s so little room.”

“Of course, Tung. Stay in my house.”

That evening the young man and the old set out on the trail which led west from town to Phum Bung and then north to Phum Sath Nan. Hang Tung carried a dilapidated haversack over one shoulder. To Chhuon he seemed tense, nervous, his smile and talk forced. They walked slowly, carefully into the jungle. The path surface, hidden from the sun by the canopy, was damp here, wet there. “For all the troubles that have befallen us,” Chhuon explained quietly as he followed Tung, “this year’s rice looks to be the best ever.”

“Really Uncle? The newcomers have so little.”

“There’s so much to harvest and so few old families, my cousin and I had full granaries before half the paddies were cut.” Chhuon paused. It was becoming easier to mention Sam though the thought was still painful. “We’ll fill the vacant granaries with the surplus. And the pagoda’s small room. We can’t ship and sell as we used to.” Again he paused. “Perhaps we can share with the newcomers, eh?”

“You’re a good man, Uncle. Here, this is the spot.” Tung opened the haversack. From it he pulled not just tripwire and flares but two Chicom grenades.

“That’s not necessary,” Chhuon protested.

“No one’s supposed to be here at night, Uncle.”

“But what if a farmer is fleeing to our village?”

“No more farmers,” Hang Tung said curtly. “All the farms are ruined. Only Royal soldiers or Viets will come this way.”

“Tung! You said a flare. You...”

“Uncle Chhuon, when we return to your house I’ll tell you what I know about their plans. They destroyed my farm. Killed my mother. Surely you understand.”

At Chhuon’s house seven old family elders sat in the central room awaiting his return. Sok had served the men tea and rice cakes as they grumbled bitterly. Chhuon’s mother knelt before the family altar. She was crying loudly. Ry, Sam’s wife, knelt beside her, repeating the prayer for the dead. Peou waited on the steps. He wanted to be first to tell his father the important news.

Horizontal light from the rising moon filtered through the low branches of the orchard as Chhuon and Tung entered the courtyard. “Father! Father!” Peou jumped up, ran to Chhuon, hugged his leg. “Father, Mafia Nyanananda has been assassinated!”

The words hit Chhuon like a cloud of poison gas, surrounded him, enveloped him in a fog of disbelief. Peou repeated the words and others but Chhuon did not hear. Tung expressed appropriate grief for the community’s spiritual leader though his voice splashed on the viscous cloud about Chhuon without penetrating. Inside the elders addressed him, bombarded him with theories, badgered him with suggestions. For an hour nothing penetrated. A burning sensation steamed from his stomach to his chest and mouth. His knees grew sore. His back ached. Then he heard Hang Tung say, “Yes, my uncle will organize the village guards. Tonight he himself led me out the Phum Bung trail where he set both warning flares and booby traps. If every quadrant of the village blocked and monitored the incoming trails in their sections, no one could come without all knowing.”

“Cahuom Chhuon”—one old man smiled ironically—“you are an explosives expert now, eh?!”

“Not I...”

“Don’t be so humble, Uncle,” Tung interrupted. “Now’s not the time for modesty. Now we need a strong leader.”

“Then it is settled,” a second old gentleman said. “Mr. Chhuon will be chairman of the new guard.”

To the west, on the trail to Phum Bung and Phum Sath Nan, two blasts erupted. The sound rolled over the Cahuom household like the first thunder of an approaching monsoon season.

4 November—Nang sat atop Hill 982 with the NVA command post looking down upon the Special Forces camp at Bu Prang. For Nang, for the defenders of Bu Ntoll, for the remanned NVA 272d Regiment, revenge was near. For twelve days skirmishes and minor assaults had bloodied the hilltop defenders yet yielded nothing for either side except body counts. At midnight the final attack would begin.

From the peak of 982, Nang, Bok Roh, and a contingent of political cadre and artillery forward observers scanned the base through scopes and binoculars. They checked the scale maps produced earlier by reconnaissance teams. Every building, every radio antenna, every machine gun emplacement, the commo and headquarters bunkers, supply points for ammo and POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants), and the tiny airstrip were noted, targeted, preregistered on the big guns at Bu Ntoll and with the mortar and rocket units infiltrating to points closer to the base.

Earlier, at Ban Me Thuot, ARVN and U.S. intelligence reported four new NVA regiments, upwards of seven thousand troops, descending onto the Dar Lac and Mnong plateaus from Cambodian sanctuaries. Yet even with knowledge of the impending attack, U.S. and ARVN efforts to thwart it had been miserable. For months the NVA meticulously planned and prepared the attack. Within the deepest caves at Bu Ntoll sand-table models of the entire area had been constructed in minute detail. Units rehearsed their roles. The battlefield itself was methodically eight kilometers south of the base and to trails and groves seven and ten kilometers west and east. Covertly, bridges had been constructed four inches below water surfaces in order to conceal them from aerial reconnaissance, across rivers that were along advance, primary and alternate withdrawal routes. Caches of food, water, ammunition, weapons and medical supplies had been hidden at strategic points. Ambush sites had been prepared, deep bunkers constructed, camouflaged and interconnected by trenches, fields of fire cut, guides, trail watchers and “custodians” planted. Even the steep hillside approaches to the Special Forces camp at Bu Prang had had stairs dug into the narrow covered trails.

On 30 October the buried NVA guns of Bu Ntoll struck Bu Prang, Duc Lap and Firebases Kate, Annie and Susan which could offer the Special Forces base supporting fire. On the 31st, thirty B-52s bombed the forested valleys northeast of Bu Prang. The American contingent on the hilltop consisted of only twelve advisors and a four-man Studies and Observation Group (SOG). Indigenous Mountaineers made up the bulk of personnel, four hundred Mnong with the advisors and 150 Stieng tribesmen with the SOG. SOG teams had reported the new enemy regiments and the construction of ambush sites and rocket launch pads; indeed, Allied intelligence knew essentially the entire NVA battle plan. Yet both ARVN and U.S. commands responded minimally. The ARVN 23d Infantry Division moved only a two-company potential relief force to Nhon Co, twenty-four kilometers south of Bu Prang. The U.S. command reinforced the Mountaineer howitzer battery with six cannons from the U.S. 1st Battalion, 92d Artillery. As proof of the success of Viet Namization, no American infantry or armored units were brought up.