Weeping in Fear at the River

With Aug. 15 the deadline on U.S. bombing of insurgent forces circling Phnom-Penh, TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand traveled to Cambodia last week to assess the country's mood. His report:

Not much of Thnai Toteong still stands. A few concrete-block walls, a post here and there, enormous 150-liter water jars remain curiously intact. Mostly, the little village 20 miles from Phnom-Penh is rubble and charcoal. Seven weeks before, I had driven through Thnai Toteong and stopped off to buy 4 Ibs. of a rich Chinese sausage so exquisitely prepared that travelers carry it back to Hong Kong as gifts for friends. It was a calm, bucolic village untouched by war. Now the sausage shop is gone, a few gun emplacements and foxholes testifying to its brief, final existence as a strongpoint. In the rear of the shop are charred remains of sausage meat, roasted black by fire. Soldiers and townspeople report a fierce battle, with bombing and plenty of mortar and artillery fire. The untidy debris of war is everywhere: mortar fragments, rifle clips, hand-grenade cartons, an entrenching tool.

Cambodia sinks ever deeper into crisis. For a time, in late May, the Khmer insurgent offensive slowed, but in June the attacks began again, this time concentrating on the area to the south and southwest of the capital. Village after village was held briefly, then abandoned after air strikes and artillery duels. For the government forces, disaster follows disaster. When Kompong Kantuot near Phnom-Penh was abandoned, the government troops were forced to swim the Thnot River because insurgents had blown the bridges. Some of the soldiers--boys aged twelve to 15--drowned. Those who escaped heard others, left behind and afraid to swim, weeping in fear and despair.

Despite the Aug. 15 schedule for halting U.S. bombing, government forces remain optimistic that the U.S. will save them. Commander in Chief Sosthene Fernandez pledges: "We will continue the fight until the North Vietnamese Communists leave our territory." Asked what will happen after the U.S. bombing is stopped, he says: "If the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong are still here, I will ask the U.S. to continue the air support." How is the war going? "It gets worse and worse," a colonel replies. "Some units are not fighting. It's not just the soldiers; it's the officers too." He still believes in the Americans. "If things slowly and slowly get worse, the U.S. Congress will not close its eyes. The Americans will help us. If Cambodia falls, the Americans will lose face, not the Cambodians."

So deep is the conviction that American planes will continue bombing, according to one foreign diplomat, that the Cambodian chiefs of staff have done little to plan their strategy for the time after the bombing stops. In the diplomatic community, there was a widely heard, half-serious judgment: "The question now is not what will happen after the Americans stop bombing Aug. 15. The question is whether the Cambodians can hold out until then."

Still, it is a mistake to talk about an iron ring around Phnom-Penh. Convoys with food and fuel continue to make it into the city. Shops have fewer wares, but the market in gold and jewelry is vigorous because Cambodians are hoarding against disaster. The U.S. dollar, shaky elsewhere, is stronger here than ever before also because of hoarding. Phnom-Penh is calm and placid, though the constant U.S. bombing regularly shakes the city. "We don't have a word for crisis in our language," says a Khmer businessman. "We just take things easy. It will work out, I'm sure."

Is an all-out attack on Phnom-Penh expected? It is possible, but unlikely. Insurgent troops are more likely to continue grinding down Lon Nol's forces bit by bit. Nor do negotiations seem a likely prospect to bring a quick ceasefire. If the insurgents continue to push ahead at the present rate, they scarcely need to negotiate. It makes more sense for them to wait it out; some things can only get better for the insurgents after the bombing ends.

As I leave, a friend's words stay with me. "It's a war they didn't want in the first place. It's not Biafra yet, but it's nearly that sad. It's so sad, really so sad."

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