Survival in the Killing Fields (53 page)

With all the good food and the companionship I began to feel better.

We could eat what we wanted and when we wanted.

We could say whatever we chose.

We were free to criticize, to speak out, to show anger. We didn’t have to be silent if someone else did something stupid or committed an injustice.

The long darkness was almost over.

As we walked through the forest toward the highway, I began to sing.

We made it to National Route 5, only to find the Khmer Rouge still in control. They told us we couldn’t walk toward Battambang. Discouraged, we began walking eastward,
toward Phnom Penh. We walked slowly, with the strange sensation of asphalt pavement under our feet. The road was crowded and the soldiers didn’t bother us.

The sounds of battle came from virtually all directions, but far away.

It was early March 1979. One day passed, and then the next and the next. We stayed on the lookout for opportunities, but there were none. We were patient and careful. As an old Cambodian saying
puts it, the last wave sinks the boat. There was no sense in being careless when freedom was so near.

We walked as slowly as possible, making less than a mile a day, passed by people hurrying back to Phnom Penh. Our group was not conspicuous or in any way remarkable. We were just another ragged
bunch of refugees, the men with luggage bobbing up and down on their shoulderboards, the women carrying baskets on their heads, the children staying close for protection.

We didn’t walk at night, even to step off the road to relieve ourselves. On either side of the road were punji pits with sharpened bamboo stakes at the bottom. There were also mines, in
holes next to the road and near the bridges. The rain had washed the layer of dirt from the metal detonating buttons, which were about the size of kneecaps, so most of the mines were visible. Even
so, an ox stepped on a mine, killing several people we had known from Phum Ra and wounding others.

West of Muong we were caught in a storm, with lightning and thunder and drenching rain. Other travellers crowded into a hut near the highway, but not us. We just sat on the road, without
shelter, all night long. After four years under the Khmer Rouge, being cold and wet didn’t bother us much. We were toughened by what we had lived through.

We passed some soldiers digging trenches and creating barricades with concertina wire, and then we got to the town of Muong, where the highway and the railway met. Tens of thousands of civilians
were there ahead of us. The railway station and a row of Chinese merchants’ shophouses were still intact. Everything else was in ruins. Behind the railroad station were rusted boxcars with
their wooden sides ripped out for use as firewood. Automobiles lay in heaps, their engines removed, vines growing up through the cavities. Houses had been turned to rubble. Part of the wat was
destroyed, and there were no Buddha statues in it. The bridge over the river was a mass of twisted metal. A temporary wooden bridge had been erected beside it for foot traffic.

We wanted to stay in Muong, but the next day the Khmer Rouge pushed us on, steadily retreating. Our group was the last to leave the town, and the slowest in walking.

East of Muong, the Khmer Rouge ordered all civilians to turn off National Route 5 onto a dirt road leading toward the Cardamom Mountains. For military purposes they wanted to control the
population, but they had no interest in us except for that. They didn’t give us any food or water. There was no water anywhere. The weather was hot. A few weaker people died of dehydration.
The desperate put their lips to the ground and drank, where urine had filled up the footprints of oxen and water buffalo.

It was on this dirt road that the revenge killings began. First the Khmer Rouge called a mass meeting. They fired their mortars at the civilians who showed up for it, killing hundreds. They had
always looked down on ‘new’ people. They blamed us for the invasion, just as they blamed us for all their failings.

Then the people retaliated. We saw only the aftermath, the bodies of a Khmer Rouge and his pregnant wife and his children, lying in bloody pieces on the forest floor. And the next day another
Khmer Rouge body, and the day after that another. It was unsafe for the Khmer Rouge to travel, except in large numbers.

My family was running low on food. A man who was camping near us told me about an underground rice warehouse on the other side of National Route 5. He described how he had managed to reach the
site, find rice and return. I discussed going to the rice warehouse with Hok and Balam. They didn’t want to take the risk. I did. And at first light on April 17, 1979, I set out on another
stage of my journey.

About eighty men and women joined together to go to the warehouse. A few of the men had been there before and acted as our guides. We walked through jungle, waded across
canals, followed dirt roads and oxcart paths. Several times we passed massacre sites, where Khmer Rouge had slaughtered civilians or civilians had killed Khmer Rouge.

Around 8.00 a.m. we got to National Route 5. It was deserted, a long stretch of paved road with no one in sight. The rumble of artillery fire came from far away, like distant thunder. We crossed
the highway and re-entered the jungle.

I carried only essentials: a bamboo shoulderboard with two empty rice bags lashed to it; my metal field cooking pot, filled with rice, hanging from my belt; and my hatchet, which fit snugly
against my waist, secured by my krama. I was barefoot, in torn trousers and a torn shirt. Hidden from sight in my waistband were my Zippo lighter, my Swiss calendar watch and a few pieces of
gold.

We came to a large rice field that cut into the jungle like a bay. The far end of the rice field opened up onto an even larger area of rice fields the likes of which I had seldom seen: utterly
flat, stretching out for mile after mile, almost without hillocks. I sensed we were near the rice warehouse. Somewhere beyond, perhaps ten or fifteen miles, lay the great inland lake Tonle Sap.

The bottoms of the paddies were covered with water. We left the forest and began walking on top of the dykes. We were about a hundred yards from the trees when the firing broke out, from the
jungle to our right. A few were hit and crumpled to the ground before they could react. The rest of us dove for the shelter of the earthen dykes, which were about two feet high and a foot or more
thick – thick enough, I hoped, to stop bullets from AK-47s. Goddamn Khmer Rouge! Opening fire on unarmed civilians who had just gone out to find food.

Then, from the jungle on the left side, came voices. ‘Yo dee! Yo dee! Yo dee!’

I didn’t know what ‘yo dee’ meant. I had never heard the words before.

I lifted my head for a second and looked where the voices were coming from. Uniformed men were running toward us into the rice field, pausing to crouch and fire when they reached the safety of a
dyke. They waved their arms, signalling us to come toward them. They fired at the Khmer Rouge, but not at us.

‘Yo! Yo dee! Yo dee!’

Bullets whizzed by, making little fountains of mud and water when they struck the paddies. I stayed alongside a dyke and dragged myself forward with my forearms, pulling my shoulder-board
alongside. My body was half underwater. In front, all I could see was water and mud and the feet of the next person worming his way ahead.

The liberators were ahead of us and to the left. The dykes between lay on the diagonal, high enough to provide cover most of the distance except when crossing their tops, which were exposed to
fire. A man ahead of me crawled up one side of a dyke and was hit. He stayed where he was, moaning, blood spurting from his legs. I scrambled up one side of the dyke, rolled down the other, unhurt,
and kept on going. No one helped the wounded man.

‘Yo dee!’

The freedom fighter was just ahead at the corner of two dykes, alternately firing his rifle and beckoning for us to come. Between him and me was the length of one rice paddy. I pulled myself
along in the shadow of the dyke; an eel couldn’t have gotten any lower in the mud. Then it was up and over the dyke next to him.

I lay directly behind him in the mud and water, as close to the dyke as possible, panting from the exertion.

Gradually, my breathing eased.

I was safe.

A little piece of rice straw floated on the water, a few inches in front of me.

I turned to look at the soldier. He was crouching at the intersection of the dykes in classic military posture, his left arm supporting the rifle, firing and waving people on with his right. He
wore a light green uniform and a green plantation-style helmet. He turned toward me for a moment. He was a young man with a light bone structure and pale yellow skin and slanting eyes. There was a
red star on the front of his helmet.

He was Vietnamese.

What were the Vietnamese doing here?

Everybody knew the Khmer Serei were coming. We knew all about the Khmer Serei. In Tam, an honest general who had lost a crooked election to Lon Nol in the early 1970s, was their leader. Nobody
said anything about the Vietnamese.

Even the Khmer Rouge hadn’t mentioned the Vietnamese. They only talked about the ‘enemy.’

Why were Vietnamese communists shooting at their fellow communists, the Khmer Rouge?

Why weren’t they shooting at me?

‘Yo dee!’ the young soldier yelled again. ‘Yo. Yo dee!’ He removed the banana-shaped ammunition clip in his AK-47, changed it for a new one, aimed, squeezed out a burst.
The bullet casings ejected to the right and splattered into the water.

As he finished the burst, a Cambodian civilian in rags came rolling over the dyke behind him, his legs a bloody red. He fell on top of me, wiggled to an empty spot farther down the dyke and lay
there, groaning.

I hugged the dyke.

Slowly, gradually, the firing tapered off. In the paddy next to ours another Vietnamese soldier advanced cautiously, ducked behind a dyke, advanced again.

The shooting had stopped.

‘Dee,’ said the soldier next to me, motioning to the dozen of us Cambodians in the paddy. He crawled off toward the forest and we crawled after him, except for the man with the leg
wounds, who had died. The soldier rolled over a dyke and we followed his example, except for the women among us, who climbed over awkwardly on their hands and knees.

After crawling and rolling the length of several more dykes we were out of the line of fire. We stood up and walked rapidly behind the far side of a hillock. There, safe from bullets, a man with
dark skin and wide features – a Cambodian – waited for us. He was holding an AK-47 but wore ordinary civilian clothes.

He told us in Khmer, ‘We have come to liberate you. Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid.’

More survivors from my foraging group, forty to fifty in all, arrived behind the hillock, escorted by Vietnamese. Some of them asked if we could go back into the field to help wounded relatives,
but the Cambodian liberation soldier said no. ‘The Khmer Rouge are still in the forest beyond. Leave it to our Vietnamese friends to get your relatives.’

More Cambodian liberation soldiers appeared from the safety of the jungle nearby. They had not engaged in any fighting. More Vietnamese returned wet and muddy from the battle in the rice field.
The Vietnamese were tense and angry. They waved pistols in our faces, motioning us to raise our hands. They asked, ‘Pol Pot? Pol Pot?’

I didn’t know what ‘Pol Pot’ meant, but I quickly told the Cambodian soldier that we were civilians and were just looking for something to eat. A few of us who could speak
Vietnamese told the Vietnamese soldiers the same thing. We all had our hands raised and everyone was talking at once. It was obvious that the Cambodian soldiers and the Vietnamese soldiers were not
on good terms. The Cambodian soldiers were outnumbered and were submissive but resented it. The Vietnamese looked down on them and on us. After translating, the Cambodian soldiers said we could put
our hands down, but the Vietnamese went from one of us to the next, pointing their weapons and asking through interpreters whether we were Khmer Rouge.

The Vietnamese took our kramas and used them to tie our elbows behind our backs. Then they searched us, confiscating knives and hatchets and pouches of tobacco. They marched us off into the
jungle and along a path.

I thought: Well, it’s happening again. They say they are liberating us but they have tied us up. Just like the Khmer Rouge.

They brought us to a Vietnamese military camp with tents in straight rows. The commanding officer emerged from his tent wearing a white T-shirt and holding a pistol in his hand. Through an
interpreter he asked who of us spoke Vietnamese. One man volunteered and was taken a short distance away for questioning. Then the commander asked the rest of us through the interpreter where the
Khmer Rouge were based, how many of them there were and what kinds of weapons they had. None of us knew, and we were too afraid to say anything. Nearby, the interrogators were using their fists to
beat the man who had volunteered.

They tied us back to back in groups of three, using our kramas as rope. The man who had volunteered was brought back and tied behind me. Lower-ranking Vietnamese went around to the groups of
three, asking the same questions about the Khmer Rouge through interpreters. When they came to me I said I didn’t know, I was only looking for food, and they punched me in the stomach,
knocking the wind out of me. They punched the man behind me, the one who had already been beaten, and the Cambodian soldiers who had been doing the interpreting did nothing to stop it. I noticed
that the Vietnamese did not hit everyone, just those of us who were light-skinned, which is to say those of us whose ancestry was partly or wholly Chinese. But I do not know whether the Vietnamese
hated Chinese-Cambodians and wanted to punish us, or whether they thought we more observant, more likely to be good sources of information than the dark-skinned ethnic Khmer.

In the midafternoon they untied the groups of three but left each person with his elbows tied behind his back. They led us across a rice field and through the jungle to National Route 5. We
walked westward, our bare feet on the hot asphalt, and across a fallen-down bridge, where they let us take a break. They untied the dark-skinned ones, but the light-skinned ones like me they kept
tied up, and I thought they were marking me for special treatment.