— Chapter Five —
The rain-forest reeked of death, a haze of cordite filled the air as Nguyen, and his troop crept onto their positions. There had been a bloody battle on the outskirts of the jungle, resulting in heavy Khmer Rouge losses. The Vietnamese had forced the Khmer Rouge to flee deeper into the rain-forest and scattered them in disarray. Nguyen and his troop of twenty soldiers had been ordered into the jungle. They knew what to do, they were proficient in this type of warfare and, armed with their Chinese 56 combat rifles’ and rubber tyre slippers, they split up and stealthily made their way though through the foliage, however this time they had been fighting an enemy who was also adept at this form of warfare.
The fighting had been fierce and as Nguyen made his way through the dense vegetation, he headed in the direction of the Mekong riverbanks, stepping over fallen decapitated corpses, some Vietnamese, but mainly dead Khmer Rouge. The stench was foul but he’d dealt with this before many years ago and now immune to it. His objective was simple, go into the rain-forest and kill or capture the fleeing Khmer Rouge stragglers, ahead of the main push through to liberate Phnom Penh.
He made his way through thick, stinging foliage, until he heard the fast flowing water. He edged his way towards the river bank and surveyed the area. He checked the bank for any signs of an ambush, but all he noticed were rotting, leach covered corpses of dead soldiers who had been wedged in the root of mangrove trees along the rivers’ edge and patches of blood in the water, swirling around like red whirlpools. He checked his bearings and turned to go back into the jungle. He suddenly came face to face with a Khmer Rouge soldier.
“Damn” he thought, “why didn’t I hear him?”
Nguyen raised his rifle and aimed at the boy’s head.
‘Why doesn’t he fire, I am an easy target?’ he thought
He looked at his foe, who stood quivering with fear. Nguyen estimated the soldier to be about 13 years-old and looked like a street urchin; looking dishevelled and his face covered in tear streaked mud. This boy reminded Nguyen of his sons, Phaol and his little scamp, Ca, but he knew the Khmer Rouge children had been brainwashed and unfeeling.
The boy had raised his rifle, but Nguyen noticed that he shook too much to take aim, his facial expressions distorted as he fought clumsily with the large, heavy bolt-action M1 carbine rifle.
Nguyen had the boys head in his sights, the youth knew he was doomed, he closed his eyes and awaited death. Nguyen saw this pitiful site and lowered his weapon.
“Put your weapon down” he shouted swiftly in Vietnamese, hoping not to attract any attention.
The boy ignored him and fired at Nguyen, but the bullet missed and went into the jungle. Nguyen got off his shot as the boy fired again. The bullet hit Nguyen on the top of his head and ricocheted off, unfortunately for the boy, Nguyen’s bullet ripped into the boy’s chest and left a small entry wound, but like any 7.62 calibre, left a gaping exit hole in the boys back, destroying his chest cavity and killing him.
Nguyen’s world went fuzzy and black as he fought consciousness. His legs gave way and he tumbled uncontrollable down the muddy embankment. He tried to grab onto anything to stop his fall, but this proved futile as he splashed into the dirty, brown, blood drenched fast flowing, Mekong River.
He became caught in the fast flowing current, which dragged him along and under. He tried to grab hold of something to stop his advance. He managed to grab hold of a mangrove root. He took a lung full of air and held on to the root, pulling himself through a mass of floating foliage and debris to the edge of the bank and wedged himself between some trees roots. He caught his breath, to regain his faculties and rest his weary, injured body. Nguyen rested for a short while, he knew that he needed to go downstream in order to get any help, so he let go of the branches and floated on his back and washed along by the current.
This wasn’t a well-planned strategy as he drifted along on his back for about forty minutes being smacked against rocks in the shallows, and pulled under in the depths.
Exhausted and feeble he decided to guide his body into the shallows and hang on to something and rest. Eventually he grabbed onto the branches of a fallen tree, but some of the branches spiked him in the side, causing more puncture wounds and lacerations to his already beaten flesh. He knew that he had lost a lot of blood from his head wound and felt that he was going to die.
He swung around in the shallow water; his foot touched a root under another fallen tree. He wedged his foot under the root and let go of the branch, pivoted around and managed to beach himself onto a shallow sandy bank. He had snapped his ankle on this manoeuvre, and the pain felt excruciating. He took a few breaths then his world went dark. Nguyen had sporadic lapses of consciousness. He remembers looking up at two shaven headed emancipated faces smiling down at him, and then blackness, his next recollection saw slight tree top canopy and he felt a sharp pain under his armpits were a hard vine had been tied, he’d felt a sensation of being lifted and dragged, and then darkness. He regained conscious again as the smell of decaying flesh filled his nostrils, he recognised the same face from before, who now mopped his brow. Although the woman had a gaunt placid face, a skull covered in skin with despair ridden eyes, Nguyen could tell she is a kind and caring woman.
The woman lifted his head and gave him a drink of foul smelling Mekong water, which he drank before losing consciousness.
****
Nguyen’s nursemaid, Darah, had been once a happy woman, but all that now seemed a lifetime ago. She and her husband had been lawyers ‘new people’, and used to live in Phnom Penh, before they being shipped out to various communes and work camps, along with other new people, who were despised by Pol Pots’, Khmer rouge regime, who worked them to death.
Two years after they’d arrived at a camp, Darah got pregnant, which made life easier as the Khmer rouge knew they would have another youth to brainwash, so the hard labour for Darah stopped. She and her husband were moved to an easier work camp closer to Phnom Pehn. Eight months later, the Vietnamese invaded to liberate Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge attitudes dramatically changed and the heavily pregnant, undernourished Darah and her husband were scheduled to be transferred to Choeung Ek death camp, and better known as the killing fields.
They, along with others were forced to tramp several miles under guard and crammed into a small river boat, driven down the river to one of the small transit camps set up to process the wretched individuals and slot into the schedule for final transfer to Choeung Ek their final destination.
They arrived at the transit camp, located within thick rain-forest and accessible from the small riverbanks. They were herded off the small vessel and taken to a patch of jungle that had been cleared from trees and vegetation. They were ordered to sit down and a young Khmer rouge soldier barked out the Pol Pots doctrine and what was expected of the new arrivals.
There was no food or water available, and told they would be leaving early the following morning for Choeung Ek and would be fed there. There were about 30 soulless Cambodians in the camp, kept prisoner in small palm leaved roofed open shelters.
Darah had felt sharp twinges on the boat and, during the evening, with the help of a woman in the next shelter, using dirty Mekong water and chewing through her umbilicus chord, she gave birth to a son. The infant tried to in vain to suckle on Darah’s shrivelled up breasts.
The sound of gunfire and shouting brought the new day to an abrupt beginning with everyone being ushered outside into the small clearing. The Khmer Rouge soldiers were shouting, screaming, and pushing the people into two rows, with men on one-side, women the other. They were forcibly knelt down and told to dig. As they all started to dig with their bare hands, they could hear the gunfire, coming closer.
The soldiers scurried around them, told them to stop digging, put their hands behind their backs and stare at the ground.
The frightened people complied and two soldiers walked behind the men and two behind the women. One Khmer Rouge bound their wrists, while the other bludgeoned the back of their heads with a hoe.
There were no sounds heard from the victims during this systematic murder, they had already suffered years of torture under the Pol Pot regime and death would be welcome relief.
A young girl soldier came over to Darah and snatched her newborn out of a small scruffy cloth holster at Darah’s side. The girl nonchalantly took the infant to a nearby large tree and swung it hard against the trunk. There was only a small thud to signal the end of the baby’s life, she then unceremoniously dumped the corpse at the base of the bloodstained trunk. She looked at Darah who remained expressionless and gave her an impish grin as if to say, “You’re next”
Darah raised her head to look at her husband opposite. He smiled at her and she noticed that his hands were about to be tied. Happy memories of them together washed through her and she hoped they would spend an eternity of peace together. A Khmer rouge soldier pushed her husband’s head down and then a loud crack sent his lifeless bloody body lurching forward, face down into a small pit of earth.
Dara felt her arms being pulled tighter behind her back as the soldier tightly bound her wrists.
A loud explosion suddenly shook the ground as a mortar hit the top of a nearby tree, sending shards of metal, wood, flame and smoke, cascading above their heads. The thunderous blast bought pandemonium to the Khmer rouge. Panicking they shouted, screamed at one another other and fired their rifles into the jungle.
Silence ensued after about ten minutes and apart from the smoke and smell of scorched timber, it became peaceful and serene for the survivors of the genocide. They remained in the same position. Darah’s ears still rang from the sound of the explosions and, expecting the Khmer rouge to return and finish the job. She thought, ‘at least these bastards will get their comeuppance’. She had heard the Khmer Rouge soldiers talking about the evil Vietnamese coming to conquer their country and they talked about being prepared to die for Pol Pot, but these evil children had run away. Darah had only hatred in her heart for them even though she was Cambodian.
Minutes passed by in silence. A man knelt opposite Darah broke the silence as the gunfire sounded to be getting further away.
“They’ve gone,” he mumbled
They looked up and saw no sign of the Khmer rouge.
They gingerly stood up and for the next few hours milled around looking for a sense of guidance and direction.
The survivors dragged their dead into the nearby jungle, and because they were too weak to dig, they covered the bodies with lime from a large brown sack, which the Khmer rouge, used to turn humans to fertiliser. They then went to their small shelters and rested, awaiting their call of death.
Over the next few days of aimlessly wondering around and realising, the slaughterers would not return. Darah and a few others reconsidered their situation and knew that they had a water supply from the Mekong and could hunt, pick or scavenge food. She was determined to survive, or at least try.
Dara and another female survivor went to survey their surrounds. They saw the bedraggled, almost dead Nguyen getting dragged around by the current and wash up onto the shallow riverbed. She saw that he’d lost a lot of blood and shouted back at the nearby camp for help as she and the other woman slid down the embankment.
Nguyen drifted in and out of consciousness over several days and, with no medical aid, he would be lucky to survive. The sixteen who now lived at the camp started to get a new sense of survival and hope. They formed into a little community, caught fish from the Mekong, and cooked on the fires, lit using basic methods. They gathered fruits and fauna from the nearby abundant rain-forest, which had been slow arduous work. They took turns in attending to Nguyen, who they’d nicknamed ‘The liberator’ even though in the past there was never any love between the Cambodian and Vietnamese people, however they all knew that, this time the Vietnamese had come to help rid their land of their Cambodian nightmare, the Khmer Rouge.
Several months passed and Nguyen made a slow and painful recovery. The camp remained unchanged but had a lot more activity and purpose. Flotsam had drifted down the small tributary, pieces of clothing, weapons, ammunitions and a large supply of corpses, which they had managed to drag on-shore and took anything useful and then push the naked body back, to carry on its journey. They struggled at first, but quickly became knowledgeable and resourceful and the longer they held out, the stronger they became. Because the Khmer rouge never kept these transit camps on record, no one knew the camp existed.
As Nguyen's strength returned he helped with building huts using lumber from the jungle. The stench from the previously buried corpses of Darah’s, and the other survivor’s families had dissipated and a pleasant floral aroma drifted through the camp, which lifted their spirits, they felt their loved ones presence.
The corpses and useful debris stopped drifting by, which made Nguyen, assume that the battle had moved on, but neither he, nor the rest of the survivors, knew where they were.
Wary of the Vietnamese, but because they had been ‘new people’, educated people, before the regime, they looked to Nguyen for leadership and guidance, which he provided by using his expertise in jungle survival, hunting, scavenging and taught them the natural recourses of their jungle surrounds.
Nguyen’s head wound had taken a long time to heal and, although he could remember his name and a few sketchy details from his short term memory, however his past life remained a mystery; although he felt that he had a family somewhere.
****
Eighteen years passed and the camp had grown into a small self-sufficient community. They had used the rain-forest’s resources’ to make clothing and basic homemade implements to survive and were happy, despite being cut off from the outside and, unbeknownst to them, a conflict that had been over for seventeen years
There were now thirty-eight inhabitants, some of the men and women paired off and had children. The camp resembled a native village. Their small tributary of the Mekong had no water traffic, due to it not being on any maps. They received their water supply from the many Klongs, small lakes, surrounding the camp. Nguyen and Darah had a child, two years after they first met. Nguyen still couldn’t remember his past life, but when Darah gave birth to their son, for some strange reason Nguyen insisted they call him, Ca, even though he couldn’t figure out why and. as ‘fish’ in Cambodian is Threy nobody knew what the name meant.
They developed their own language, a hybrid Vietnamese /Cambodian.
They still feared the return of the Khmer rouge, so with the rifles and ammunitions that had been washed up years before and kept in good condition, with oils from tree saps, remained on constant vigil. .
They had been trained by Nguyen to shoot, and mastered the homemade bamboo, cobra venom covered blow darts, an accurate and lethal weapon at close range. Nguyen also taught them how to rig booby traps, from the simple punji and bamboo stake pits to the lethal Malay whip log, two large logs suspended from two opposite facing trees, when the trap on the ground was tripped the logs came together crushing the unfortunate victims, messy but very effective. The community had been taught these skills and were formidable hunters especially the children. They felt safe and secure and thought that nothing or nobody could come into their world uninvited. Until the strangers arrived.