Cambodia

Thursday, January 29, 2009
32nd day at sea, at -7° 35.9’ / -29° 9.2’, and our speed is 8 knots on a COG of 140. The barometer remains low, as is the rule near the equator, 29.77 and steady. Phones and internet went out again moments ago, and this one may be hard to repair.

Tim McElveen, the ET, has found a ground fault in the aft-looking antenna-receiver that can not be repaired. It is redundant to the one we have on the bow (forward-looking), so we can exchange them and probably come back online, but it will require a lot of work. This stuff was all supposedly replaced and the system upgraded by the vendor before we left. Fine job, fellas. Tim’s buddy, Jamie Ziegler, points out that he quit drinking about 35 days ago. I wonder if there is merit in abstention when it can’t be had, anyway. That is one for the ministers and philosophers to worry over: if lust in the heart is a sin, is desire for drunkenness also? Actually, I prefer a nap.

War has few redeeming qualities, but some men and women caught up in it see the world and reality differently. The world view is one of idealized beauty, without the taint of ugliness, or the sting of loss or fear. Their real world contains both extremes. It should be apparent from the previous story that I was awed by the country and the history of a place where blood and gore ran amok. In the real world, of course, events among cultures is always driven by politics, and politics must function without worry of truth or morality, yet office-seekers always appeal to those points. To me, that is why all politicians are dirty, some more than others. War, of course, is but an extension of politics, which most warriors rue. The impacts made on combat soldiers are much different from those made on diplomats. In the soldier’s world there is too much of two things: minutiae and the awesome, as in awesome firepower, or very long marches, or the daily frag order, or pointless formations. The term “your country” is also perceived differently. To a soldier, “your country” is an ideal, a conglomerate of home and siblings, school, friends, mom, and Uncle Sam. (Ever wonder why depictions of Uncle Sam are so benign, righteous, and innocent?) The diplomat knows that, and he uses the term to his advantage, while he himself realizes that “your country” mostly represents “your party affiliation” and has little to do with mom and apple pie, or good Uncle Sam. With that in mind, I shall presently write of some other areas of our special operations, Phnom Penh, Angkor, and Angkor Wat in what was once the principal power in southeast Asia, Kampuchea, and known to us then as Cambodia. Later, some soldiers serving kings over five thousand years ago will be targeted.

Some societies have become great, some will someday, some will fail, and many have failed. Great culturo-social orders have five things in common—four, according to Frank Herbert—but I added another one based on observations of many countries:

1. Proper laws made, then dispensed by proper judges:
2. Diligent study by their learned, that learning disseminated:
3. The applied industry of their masses:
4. Meaningful inculcation of their young:
5. The valor of their brave.

(Number 5 is not the one I added, but I would have…)If you have not read DUNE, by Frank Herbert, you have missed good literature and a very good education. Do yourself a favor and read that series, which is actually a lesson in ecology and over-population.
It is a private, deep emotion to stand at the utterly quiet base of a great monument that was built by teems of leading cultures and has passed beyond time and place, leaving art and architecture of tales and proceedings beyond our ken. Who will stand in our own country someday and wonder that? Will mankind, in its haste to murder one another, last long enough for us to pass into history? I don’t have the answers, but I can tell you about standing in the presence of one of heaven’s preferred cities—empty, beautiful, quiet, abandoned, mysterious, and impotent: Angkor. Others are Machu Picchu, Canyon de Chelly, Les Jarres, Chaco Canyon, Kasha-Katuwe, Aztec Ruins, Mesa Verde…and many more, strong, vibrant tribes and cultures now passed into oblivion, to be heard no more.

The five guidelines above provide a value quantity. If one be diluted, the whole is diluted, but so long as any persists, it is worth fighting—even dying—for. One certain pointer of failure in a culture is when that culture at large thinks that dying for any cause is foolish. They’ll be erased, one way or another (failure of all five rules, but especially number 5). Yet there is no honor in fighting without cause. When one checks out the thesaurus for “valor” all the synonyms are heroic and honorable. There actually is a right side and a wrong side in most conflicts, but sides should have predefined laws, societal mores, and judgments to assure the proper placement of emphases. Once the society has expressed its will, those goals should be tirelessly pursued. Society, not politicians, should be the great decision-makers, because it is populated by the five elements above. Political activity should be a streamline in that activation. It is always errant for one social/religious/political order to attempt to force its dogma on another. No reasonable excuse can ever be had for tyranny. No society should be subverted to the needs of the anti-social or criminal. Society must always be ready to swing its swords, whether they are of steel or of paper, and when the time comes, search out the enemy and nullify him.

Cambodia is generally flat, forested, and wet. It has a range of mountains on the border with Thailand, north of Siem Reap. A survey map reveals very large rivers and one variable-sized lake, Tonle Sap. The season determines the size of Tonle Sap. During the rainy season, water backs up out of the Mekong at Phnom Penh and fills the lake. The Tonle Sap River joins the lake to the Mekong, and it flows in the direction dictated by the season. Because the lake ebbs and rises annually, it constantly replenishes nutrients and is populated heavily by fish—enough to feed three million people as a staple. It has a large population of crocodiles, too. Those beasts provide the raw materials for food and leather. There are pens of the things at various bergs around the lake being fed and cared for until they reach the proper size, or breed. Then they become fashionable hand bags. There is also jungle, where monkeys, birds, elephants, and jungle critters of all sorts live, or hide. Those jungles hide armies, too, and have done so since before the Kingdom of the Khmer. When I was there, three armies vied for supremacy: the People’s Army of Vietnam (NVA), the Khmer Rouge, and the Khmer Army. Two were communists, but with differing goals. Up in Laos were also three armies: NVA, Pathet Lao, and Royal Laotian, of which two were communist with differing goals. Another neighbor of Cambodia was Vietnam, fielding four armies: NVA, Viet Cong, ARVN, and the US. There was a common thread to all this, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where one terminus was at Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The other terminal was Hanoi/Haiphong. Note that there were sea ports at each end of the trail. The trail was the logistics system for North Vietnam to wage war on South Vietnam, while overrunning Laos and Cambodia to do so. The true antagonists were North Vietnam, who wanted to unify their country, and the United States, who wanted to prevent it. It embroiled four nations, discounting the USSR and China and minor allies, and eventually killed over five million souls. I doubted South Vietnam was worth it, and many felt that we fought on the wrong side. It goes back to the five elements, above, being violated—misapplied—by politicians on all fronts.

Friday, January 30, 2009
33rd day: -10° 21.2’ N and -27° 12’ E, 8.2 knots, track 144.

That is quite a preamble to a simple flying story. Sometimes I think that the war, the location, the losses, and the times scarred me, and I wonder if any combat soldier came back unscathed, and now I see the same things happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jean Larteguy (The Praetorians) wrote that an old glass-maker in Italy told Glatigny that sometimes the perfect glass in fine crystal gets a disease and, for no reason, just breaks. And we were crystal soldiers. In southeast Asia, we didn’t have post-traumatic stress syndrome yet. We were perfectly mentally healthy, without the least bit of depression. If one went to the shrink, or complained of nightmares, he was grounded or dismissed from the service, “for the good of the service”. I and people like me could not even wear name tags or rank when we fought the secret war, in order that the Government could have more “credible denial” (their term). If they claimed we didn’t belong to them, would they look after us when we were captured or shot down? No, but all its soldiers were emotionally well. That was the genre of the times, while we committed suicide, cried like girls, and muddled through jobs and marriages. That has changed now, thank God. When he comes back, your soldier will have a burden in his soul that he evermore must carry, this in addition to loss of limb or other injury. When we are young we control magic, and it glitters in our cupped hands. For each tragedy or heart-break that occurs, a glittering gem goes out. Finally, all the glitter is gone, and one is left holding empty hands in the dark, with grief and uncertainty his room mates—and the realization that life without the comforts of innocence and without your too-loved comrades is painful and empty. Combat is in no way similar to selling automobiles or insurance. War lives on flesh and blood, and whoever is close enough to combat will be devoured—maybe not eaten entirely, but at least partially so: every being—soldier, merchant, child, baby, monk, monkey, bird, tiger, tree, shrine... Combat is the most equal-opportunity vandal on earth: it cares nothing for anything.

War worries naught for shrines or holy places, either, and that is one of the great tragedies of any war. Cambodia—as did all Asia—possessed many fragile, lovely works of art and architecture, wats, museums, holy places, scenic places, ancient domains, wonderful mysteries, as you will see with the attached photos. Some of those wonderful things would catch one’s breath, inspire the mind, awe the senses, and the next week be destroyed without thought. Antoine de St-Exupěry wrote that he was astounded by the ambivalence of a 22 year-old lieutenant ordering that a stand of 400 year-old oak trees be cut down, so he would have a better field of fire against a transient enemy. Well, anyway…we were big boys when we signed on…now let’s go fly.

Phnom Penh is built around the site of five budas erected on a man-made mound that belonged to a wealthy widow, a grandmother. The mound was originally about 75 feet high and grassy. The Widow Penh invited certain monks and their followers to take up abode on her land, and thus the city began. It now has wide boulevards and a smattering of French colonial makeup, but much indigenous Asian archetecture and coloring. Flowers and trees grow lushly. The atmosphere feels of tropical coast, but it is not coast. It is two great rivers, the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. At Phnom Penh, the Mekong is perhaps two miles wide and 150 feet deep during the rainy season. It rises and causes the Tonle Sap River to back up, flowing in the opposite direction to fill up Lake Tonle Sap.

The Mekong comes down out of China from half-way up the Himalayas. Its head waters originate within a few miles, say a hundred, of four other major rivers of the world: the Yangtze, Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Irrawaddy. A bit further on begins the Salween, and further east, the Yellow. A lot of water comes out of those mountains.

By the time it passes on the east side of Phnom Penh, the Mekong is huge and lazy. The Tonle Sap joins it on the north side of the city, which thus lies in the elbow of two very large rivers. It is this that gives the atmosphere its sea-like quality. A hundred miles away, the south end of the lake begins and runs northwest for another hundred miles.

It was a beautiful city made up of people of small stature and friendly demeanor. They were industrious and arty, lots of French influence. French was still spoken there, with more and more speaking some English (American, actually). They were great admirers of Jacqueline Kennedy, and they prayed with their monks for a peaceful solution to the rebellion, and to be free. They loved Prince Sihanouk, as well as Elvis. There was, of course, a vibrant black market. Another industry was the making and selling of temple rubbings from Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom, perhaps other temples. I brought many of those home, and some of you have them. They are valuable now, so hang on to them. Always, there was the influence of great water, those two mighty streams that provided some security from the north and east, taxi, food, mercantile, shipping, and a hundred things. Otherwise, the city was surrounded by forests, and they were not secure. There came to be war brought to their doorsteps, great columns of black, sooty smoke rising up from the forest over there where a battle raged. Then, over there, was a pall of gray smoke—the burning oil of tanks and trucks, and over there was two columns of white smoke, victims being cremated, to meet sanitation requirements.

The US had no troops stationed in Cambodia that I am aware of, but we should have had, both there and in Laos, if we honestly wanted to make war on Hanoi. It was a poorly planned and executed war on our part, but this is for later. Our point in being in Phnom Penh was to plan an extraction of American diplomats in the event of sudden successful invasion of the city. That plan was built and titled Project Eagle Pull. We would fly into the soccer stadium with air support, etc, etc, and pick up all the dignitaries and VIP others, then fly out and abandon the city to its fate, which—as we know now—became one of absolute genocide: four million out of twelve million people were murdered by Pol Pot and his communist-backed regime. Pol Pot wanted to return to a totally agrarian nation, and his means were to eliminate scholars, builders, teachers, business people—anyone who had insufficient dealings with tilling the earth. His backers were the North Vietnamese. Pol Pot was a Khmer Rouge, a thuggish mass of poor-quality, but brutal, communist soldiers that required being propped up. It was also necessary, in keeping with communist dogma, for Pol Pot to “re-educate” the masses. Genocide was the solution. It was so bad, that in 1975, the NVA pulled the plug on Pol Pot and withdrew their support. His regime fell, but the damage was done. The Killing Fields really happened. Read The Killing Fields, by Christopher Hudson and look it up on the internet. Gruesome. (Jimmy Carter expected to PULL the Americans out of Tehran in a similar fashion, but that is a whole other book, too.)
As a special operations outfit, our chain of command was different. We frequently worked for/reported to the US Ambassador to whatever country we were working. We did, on occasion, support combat operations in Cambodia. We helped in a fight at Siem Reap, and again nearer Angkor Wat. I picked up the pilot of an A7 shot down between the combatants, but he’d been gut-shot and died quickly. I got into trouble for that one, since I was not on orders to recover that young captain. His boss, a brigadier general put a letter of commendation in my files, and my bosses backed off. We also recovered the cannon from his airplane. Later 1Lt Rocky Rovito, of the 40th ARRS, had an AFCS hydraulic seizure and failure on his HH-53. He and the crew rode it into Lake Tonle Sap, and none survived. We took divers (gutty fellows) to recover the bodies. They worked the wreckage while two or three choppers hovered overhead with guns ready to deal with crocodiles. None came, however, and we sent the bodies of those men to Graves and Registration, who sent them back home, where their service meant nothing and their deaths meant little, nor their lives, except to we few and mom and dad.

After the war, Jack Piroutek and Cliff Merrill both were killed in similar fashion in separate mishaps.