Assignment in Cambodia

...This was a procedure that was to be continued, at its own pace, during the time I was in Cambodia, and ten days later the sidewalk was done...

...This happened in 1953, during the French-Indochinese war, he said, when the Vietminh attempted to occupy certain provinces of Cambodia...

...But he emphasized that the Khmer "rebels" are not Cambodians from Cambodia in rebellion against a regime under which they had lived, but that they are ethnic Cambodians, born in Vietnam, who had never set foot on Cambodian soil until the Americans transported them, and their explosives, to the Thai frontier...

...Chickens and ducks scattered before us, and monks and peasants on foot halted as we passed...

...You see here before this gathering French officers...

...Others, on the contrary, had accepted the premise that Prince Sihanouk's Sangkum is a royal dictatorship in which the Cambodian people have the status of slaves...

...he said...

...These men are South Vietnamese of Cambodian ancestry allegedly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency as demolition experts, and then flown into Thailand by the Americans to operate along the Thai-Cambodian frontier...

...The standing crowds, the seated monks, the guests themselves, might have been no more than murals in the static decor of the pagoda...

...These were made by the members of a terrorist force known as the "Khmer Serei...

...In the beginning, they were hesitant, but still the eagerness to speak was anxiously there...

...They are not Chinese...

...We are impressed by their respect for our independence, our sovereignty...

...A woman standing on the doorstep ladled the contents of a tin pot, held by a little girl, into the monks' begging bowls, two ladles each, which the monks then transferred to the canteens hanging from their belts...

...We were escorted through the elaborate gate, into the courtyard, and up onto the carpeted and covered platform, where the Prince stood before three microphones mounted on a pivoting stand, and we were given front row seats of honor...

...The Prince is stocky in build, and so dynamic that he seemed to be the only living person on this brilliant scene...

...One of the nine reported that he had been picked up by South Vietnamese troops at Chaudac, a town on the Bassac River not far from the Cambodian border...

...In response to Donald Duncan's patient questioning, they described the uniforms and the head-gear worn by those who had trained them (in some cases their instructors had worn green berets...

...They asked for political asylum in Cambodia...

...he turned grave as he clasped the supplicating hands of old and toothless women...

...The Chinese and the Soviet Union are sending arms, and the United States should do so if it wishes...

...He said that he had stipulated three conditions for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, but that he was now willing to discard one of those three...

...Special Forces in South Vietnam, and from Hatien they had been flown to Thailand...

...Our socialism does not stem from Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao Tse-tung," he said into the pivoting microphone, "but from the Buddha...

...With no exchange of words, and again squatting on their slender thighs, two of them hammered the rubble of separate stones into smaller pieces, and tossed them into the earthen bed the others spaded out...

...They were not prisoners, however, but members of the "Khmer Serei" who had come across the Thai frontier some months before, and asked for, and been granted, political asylum...

...The Prince then motioned to the members of our mission to rise, and, with outstretched arms, he introduced us in Khmer to the throngs standing in the brilliant and intense heat...

...As the aged monk who was to be honored was helped by younger monks from his chair and led down the steps and across the courtyard to an elevated throne, the monks seated on the platform began to chant in unison...

...But he didn't want to leave his wife behind for fear of reprisals...

...And when Floyd McKissick stopped and set his tape recorder to capture the chanting of the monks, it was to me inevitable confirmation that the singing of these monks was a hymn of praise for a civilization in which the white man had never played a part...

...In another moment, he was gone from sight, and immediately the staccato roar of his helicopter drowned out all other sounds...

...And now, as the Prince moved through the crowd of people in the courtyard, he was almost swept from his feet by the pressing tide...

...But in every case their activities were to be those of terrorists: the blowing up of bridges along the Cambodian frontier, the laying of mines in the fields on the Cambodian side, and the raiding of Cambodian militia posts...

...It is our own form of socialism—one that corresponds to our needs...

...And as he spoke his language changed from French to Khmer, from Khmer to English, and from English back to French...

...The steady honking of French, British, American, and Soviet manufactured cars is stilled, and the countless bicycle-rickshaws that jam the streets day and night, bearing at times as many as three passengers as they weave in and out of traffic, are suddenly not there...

...third, indemnification for the loss of life and damage to property caused by these border incidents...

...of children, and of dogs so thin that they were like wicker bird-cages set on four bony legs...

...They sought to touch his clothing, to kiss his hands, and many fell on their knees before him, as he, a few minutes earlier, had knelt in reverence before the monk on his elevated throne...

...In armchairs between us and the rows of monks were seated the leading dignitary of the Buddhist Order and the monk whose elevation was being celebrated...

...We were convinced that the Prince is trying desperately to keep his country out of the tragic Southeast Asian conflict, and that it would be the defeat of that purpose if he were to give sanctuary to foreign troops, or to allow Cambodian territory to be used for the passage of supplies and war materiel...

...When these two conditions were fulfilled, the road would be cleared for a sincere and lasting friendship between America and Cambodia...

...As the soft clapping of hundreds of hands resounded from every side of the pagoda courtyard, and from the streets beyond, the Prince's arms were flung wide as if to hold us all in his embrace, and he said with emotion: "Go back and tell your government to supply arms to either side it chooses in Vietnam...

...The ceremony was already under way when our two-hour drive was done, and the flag-and-streamer-decorated streets of the village were packed with peasants from the surrounding countryside, with the military in sun-tans, and with boy and girl scouts in blue and khaki uniforms...

...door, waiting for their extended bowls to be filled with the rations that they must beg for from door to door each day...

...bombardments could be heard, and on this side, as evidence of the U.S.-South Vietnamese attacks on Cambodian villages, were the fragments of American rockets and bomb fins which we carried in our hands...

...Not five kilometers behind us, from the other side of the border, the booming of the U.S...

...Flying low, it passed over the pagoda courtyard, and from it bolts of material were tossed out, and men, women, and children, their lean brown arms raised, scrambled, laughing, to catch these gifts from heaven and from the Prince, the "high protector" of their faith...

...We were seven American citizens, sponsored by the committee of "Americans Want to Know," who had left Washington in late July for the purpose of investigating the border areas between Cambodia and her neighbors...

...As for the socialism of Cambodia's Sangkum (Sihanouk's Popular Socialist Community), the Prince said that its meaning also needed clarifying, for it was too often misunderstood in the West...

...As the Prince advanced toward the helicopter waiting outside the gates, his expression continuously changed...

...The "Khmer Serei" movement which the Prince had spoken of remained merely a name to me until the evening that we were taken to the Ministry of Information...

...And now the Prince's stressing of China's respect for Cambodia's frontiers, as established by the F'ranco-Siamese Treaty of 1907, made reasonable his rapprochement to a power which acknowledged his country's independence, its sovereignty, and its neutrality...

...Russell Johnson, of the American Friends Service Committee...

...At the apex of the triangle, where the two broad avenues and the side street met, there was a clump of trees, but even at this early moment of the day, perhaps subdued by the downfall of monsoon rains the night before, there was no sound or movement of birds in their green boughs...

...He said the pilot did not want his country to turn Communist, but neither did he want it to become American...

...In the centuries' old refusal of Vietnam and Thailand to give formal recognition to Cambodia's borders is implicit the threat to eliminate those borders, and thus efface the state of Cambodia from the map...

...No, no...

...They had been trained in different areas near Saigon as saboteurs and demolition experts, some in Ti Wa, an obsolete prison fortress, others in U.S...

...Rabbi Israel Dresner, from Springfield, N. J., and I, a writer, comprised the group...

...We questioned them through an interpreter...

...The first was: respect for Cambodia's neutrality and her integrity, and a firm and formal recognition of her existing borders...

...These were the shoppers from the early morning wholesale market of Phnom Penh, returning by bus to their villages...

...When we stood up to leave, the nine "Khmers Serei" in their shabby clothing stood up as well, and each lifted his hands and laid the heels of his palms and his fingertips together, and bowed his head before the seven strangers whose infinite wisdom would bring coherence to a world whose values they could not comprehend...

...Holding to the pivoting microphone, he continuously turned to face at one moment the assemblage of monks, at the next his guests, and at another instant the multitudes gathered in the pagoda courtyard and beyond the walls...

...He'd been a fighter pilot since 1964 with the Republic of South Vietnam Armed Forces...

...Special Forces in Vietnam is located...

...Several had received their training in Hatien, which Donald, a former "Green Beret" himself, identified as one of the headquarters of the U.S...

...We are familiar in this century with the spectacle of crowds roaring out their worship of a leader, and I thought of the potential totalitarianism of the Prince's Sangkum...

...At six, I washed and dressed in my finest white suit for the ceremonies at the monastery of Tepthidaram, to which Prince Sihanouk had invited us...

...The buses were blue, and their open windows were filled with faces, elbows, dark-skinned bare arms in lavender, or apple-green, or yellow short-sleeved shirts...

...Although we have no relations with your government, we nevertheless welcome you among us with all our heart...

...At seven-thirty, we left for the province of Khompong Chhnang, riding in government cars, with a motorcycle escort (consisting of one man) clearing the road ahead of us of bicycle rickshaws, carts drawn by oxen...

...The "Khmer Serei" could be compared, the Prince said, with the Cubans who were trained, armed, and eventually loosed against Cuba by the United States in the Bay of Pigs and other military operations...

...The Prince has remarked that, without wishing for the role, Cambodia has become the conscience of the Third World, and of the vast family of underdeveloped peoples...

...Others told us that they had been taken by ship from Saigon to Bangkok, and proceeded in trucks to the Cambodian border areas for further training...

...The Americans do not, nor do the Chinese...

...We were accompanied by Marc Stone, our public relations officer, and Norman Eisner, our business administrator...

...It was on one of our several field trips along the South Vietnam and Laos borders, coming back on foot in the rain through the tall jungle grass, that I knew even more sharply, more bitterly than before, that we, as Americans, could never be exonerated from what was taking place...

...and his face had a reckless, boyish look as he clapped the shoulders of the young officers who sought as eagerly as the others to touch him as he passed...

...These are the instructors in our army...

...But do not send your young Herblock in The Washington Post "I'm What You Might Call the High-Price Spread" men to die in a foreign country in a civil war between Vietnamese...

...Western style democracy, of which they could have no glimmer of understanding, inasmuch as they had never caught even a passing glimpse of it, had been sold to them by the Americans at the rate of $200 a month...

...But at five, in the early morning twilight, little by little the city begins to come to life again...

...But in this demonstration we witnessed no maniacal screaming of voices, no raising of thousands of hands in unison, either in the clenched fist or open palm salute...

...We intended to seek out the alleged Sihanouk and Ho Chi Minh trails, and this we would do primarily by investigations in the field...

...The Prince then turned to the question of the war in Vietnam, saying that Cambodia is against foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Vietnam because Cambodia does not wish Vietnam to interfere in Cambodian affairs...

...Donald Duncan, a former member of the U.S...

...Picked up" implied "shanghaied," if not actually kidnapped, and from there he was taken to Nha Trang (a seacoast town northeast of Saigon where, Donald told us later, the main headquarters of all U.S...

...We were in Cambodia to find out what portion of the truth we could, in the face of persistent reports from Saigon, the Pentagon, and the State Department, that Cambodia is being used as a sanctuary for the "Vietcong," as well as a supply route for the passage of arms and supplies into Vietnam...

...They looked out on a triangular converging of three streets...

...Here, another kind of homage was being offered, and the old people smiled as they offered it on bended knees, and the young expressed their love not with intensity but with laughter...

...Whenever the Prince spoke in English to us, he would turn at brief intervals and translate his sentences back to the crowd in Khmer, his voice somewhat lower in key when he spoke French or English than when he spoke his native tongue...

...The reasons they had joined the "Free Cambodia" movement also varied...

...Independence, neutrality, he was seeking to make clear to us, meant that Cambodia was independent from the "socialist camp" as well as from the "free world...

...We are said to be a satellite of China," he said, "but it is not Communist China with its 700,000,000 people that impresses us...

...This rhythmic chanting, which echoed from the bottomless cavern of thousands of years of unshaken belief, excluded me and the five white men who stood there with me from any participation in what was taking place...

...He wants Vietnam to be free of any foreign domination the way Cambodia is free...

...This much I knew...

...We had known of the continuous U.S.-South Vietnamese attacks on Cambodian border villages and militia outposts (a conservative estimate is three or four times a month since 1961), and of the death of Cambodian peasants and the destruction of their livestock and property caused by these apparently unprovoked attacks...

...Every human being in Cambodia seems to have a bicycle, and the glitter of bicycle metal is the first thing that catches the light of the rising sun...

...In the intervening hours, its broad avenues are almost entirely deserted, and its 450,000 inhabitants (including the Chinese and the Vietnamese in their densely populated quarters) are silent...

...Here he gestured toward the military just inside the courtyard gate...

...They did not stand, but squatted with singular ease, their bare feet dark and delicate as birds' feet on the earth that, despite the deluge of the monsoon rains the evening before, was already turning to dust...

...He laughed down into the children's faces...

...Buses tore by, their roofs piled high with garden produce, with canvas-covered bundles, rope-tied, and with countless bicycles...

...Once the brief ritual of the elevation of the monk had been completed, attendant monks sprinkled with "the water of growth" the doves and pigeons enclosed in a large cage at the bottom of the steps, and then Prince Sihanouk opened the cage door, and the captive birds fluttered out...

...His wife was with him," he said...

...He had been with the National Liberation Front...

...the young man cried out in quick impatience...

...Their voices, intoning now in celebration of a faith and a past completely unknown to me, filled me with a sudden loneliness, and even with a sense of fear...

...The latter was eighty-two years old, and seventy-two of those years had been spent as a monk in the monastery of Tepthidaram...

...I came to look upon this one accomplished task as a microcosm of the enormous economic task that still faces Cambodia, and of the way it is being met under the Prince's tireless leadership...

...To our right, heads shorn, sat 200 monks in their fabulous orange-colored robes...

...Special Forces, known as the "Green Berets...

...But the Prince now spoke of other incursions that were less familiar to us...

...The young officer was saying in French to me that the pilot had flown into Cambodia a few weeks previously, and had landed his H-34 helicopter at a military post in the province of Mon-dolkiri, just south of where we were...

...The constant harassment of Cambodia's border regions comes not only from South Vietnam but also from Thailand, the Prince said, reminding us that the Thais, like the Vietnamese, are Cambodia's traditional enemies...

...I could watch this through the Venetian blinds at the windows of my hotel room...

...And then, one at a time, as the Acting Minister of Information gestured to them, they got up awkwardly from their chairs, and stood in the blaze of artificial light, and answered the questions that we asked...

...Even this makes us different from others...

...Army camps, their instructors both American and South Vietnamese...

...At that moment, he spun around, and with one hand tugged at the long black sash which went from his waist, and passed between his legs, dividing his sampah into trouser legs, the end of the sash then being secured beneath his white jacket to his belt...

...She is a professor in the English department of San Francisco State College and is now completing a history of Germany for the Doubleday "Mainstream of European History" series...

...Some among them had been indoctrinated in the belief that Cambodia had been handed over to Communist China by Prince Sihanouk...

...Prince Sihanouk, in white linen jacket and what appeared to be full black satin knickerbockers, spoke animatedly and with occasional humorous asides...

...This done, they moved, tall, elegant, ascetic, into the swarming traffic of the streets...

...The Prince's socialism, imbued as it is with the humility and the serenity of the Buddha, gave this scene of acclaim a totally non-political character...

...After a moment of hesitancy, they circled, one by one, high into the air...

...And as for us, what had we understood, what had we learned in our twelve days in Cambodia, and what portion of the truth as we saw it would we take back with us...

...Only the Cambodians dress like this...

...Our procession of five cars sped up the route nationale, and villagers came out of their thatch-roofed houses and laid their raised hands together in prayer or supplication, kneeling before the sight of the government cortege by the roadside in the sun...

...Turning to us, he spoke of the accusations that had been made by the United States concerning the "false neutrality" of Cambodia...

...I asked...

...He wants it to be Vietnam," the young officer was saying almost without the hope of making me understand...

...Having waived the third condition, he said there now remained only two: the recognition of Cambodia's frontiers, and the assurance that there would be no more aggression upon Cambodian territory...

...We were agreed that there could be no question of the anti-Communist stand of the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people...

...At six-thirty on that second morning in Cambodia, I watched from my window a group of Buddhist monks in their saffron robes, draped to leave one shoulder bare, enter the courtyard of the gendarmerie across the street and stand in single file before a side KAY BOYLE, the noted novelist and prize-winning short-story writer, served as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker magazine for seven years...

...And, indeed, it is history that the Cambodians drove the Vietminh back across the frontier at that time...

...In terminating his three-hour address, made entirely without notes, the Prince again brought up Cambodia's diplomatic relations with the United States...

...But there was surprisingly little movement and scarcely a sound, except for the voice of the Prince, speaking in Khmer, ringing out through amplifiers from the four corners of the packed courtyard of the pagoda...

...and that Prince Sihanouk's concern is now, and has been since Cambodia achieved independence from France in November, 1953, the strengthening of his country's position as a neutral and non-aligned state...

...Just before seven, a few workmen gathered under the clump of silent trees...

...At seven these men began their work of preparing the sidewalk this side of the gendarmerie wall...

...You may go in complete liberty throughout our country, and try to find the Chinese that your government thinks we hide in our administration and in our army...

...Immediately opposite, beyond an expanse of dirt and weeds and a rubble of broken stones, where a sidewalk was intended to be, was the two-story building of the gendarmerie, its partially paved court enclosed by a low wall...

...It meant no foreign troops or bases on Cambodian territory, and no logistical aid or military complicity with either of the belligerents in Vietnam...

...There, in a conference room, seated on a row of chairs against the far wall, were nine young men, nine fugitives, one would have said, because of their nondescript clothing, and their eyes like those of men wanted by the law that look at one in a confusion of hope and hopelessness from the photographs on view in post offices at home...

...Whatever the purpose of our mission, we were citizens of a country whose government had pledged itself to drop a record tonnage of bombs on Vietnam in 1966...

...He'd been thinking a long time about getting out, because Vietnam doesn't belong to the Vietnamese any more...

...There was a moment of general laughter when the Prince cried out for all the world to hear, "We Cambodians are not like other people...

...the second, the cessation of aggression by South Vietnamese-American military elements, and Thai incursions, on these frontiers...

...A young Cambodian non-commissioned officer walked beside me, and as we made our way through the sucking mud of the old logging road of the alleged Ho Chi Minh trail, he spoke to me about a pilot...

...And now he was welcoming to Cambodian soil, and bidding all those gathered there to welcome as well, "a delegation of American citizens who have been invited by our government to investigate in any way they wish the realities of our country...

...Floyd McKissick, national director of CORE...