This is part 2 of a 3 part story. If you want to read part 1, click here

Back in January 1975, when I was 18 years old and living in Cambodia I decided in my naive young mind that I wanted to take some photographs of bomb-damaged buildings.  Phnom Penh used to get regularly hit by small short-range rockets, but they never left very much damage other than a few cracked bricks. They were more of a terror weapon.  I guess I was so interested in taking photographs of war-damaged buildings because of photographs that I had seen from the first and second world wars. 
 
It never occurred to me that a bomb-damaged building doesn’t look that different from a building that has been demolished by conventional means. It also didn’t cross my tiny little mind that things that make a big mess out of buildings can turn clueless idiots like me into pink mist.
 
At the time, Phnom Penh was completely surrounded by the Khmer Rouge, who were only kept at bay by an almost continuous barrage of artillery fire.  I later found out at an Australian consulate party that Cambodia had become a brass exporter during the war because of all the American artillery shell casings that were left over from the months of continuous firing.  Because the countryside was in the hands of the Khmer Rouge I hadn’t been able to see very much of Cambodia, other than what I could through hitchhiking by air, which would only take me to landing strips (quite often dirt roads) in the middle of nowhere or towns.
 
I had heard from some journalists that I knew, that there were a few bomb-damaged buildings, just over the river on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.  Phnom Penh is situated on the west bank of the Tonlé Sap River where it meets the Mekong River.  To get to the other side of the Mekong River, one had to first cross the Tonlé Sap to a thin finger of land between the two rivers to then catch a small ferry to the other side.  During the war, the bridge that used to go to the other side of the Tonlé Sap River (which was only about 200 or 300 m away from where I used to live) had been blown up, which meant that ferries had to be used to cross both rivers.

The first ferry seemed fairly normal in that it mainly had people from the countryside heading into town with goods for sale at the markets but as we crossed the thin finger of land between the two rivers on foot, it became obvious that we were heading closer to a war zone.  I could hear quite clearly the shooting and explosions coming from across the river, and there was a steady stream of very worried looking people and wounded soldiers heading back towards Phnom Penh.  When I got to the second ferry on the banks of the Mekong I met an American with a Cambodian. 

While we waited for the ferry to come back to our side of the river, the Cambodian guy explained to me that he was a reporter and his job was to go out to the battlefront and speak to commanders to find out what the situation was and then bring back the information to the Military attaché at the American Embassy. 

The American guy who was tagging along with the reporter had a huge shit eating grin on his face and the demeanor of a totally spaced out acid casualty, who only seemed to have a loose grip on reality (now that I’m older and I look back on that situation, I suspect that he was high). When the ferry finally arrived it offloaded refugees and wounded soldiers, the sight of which set the American Space Cadet (SC) spinning slowly around and off on what was going to be his mantra of the day, “ Wow this is all so real!  This ain’t no movie!”
 
The only people who got on the ferry were a few soldiers and us.  The other side of the Mekong was a place that people who had a choice were leaving in droves.  When we got to the other side of the river the staccato sounds of the nearby battlefront had become much louder.  Further downstream, smoke was rising from the general direction of the shooting.

During our half a kilometer walk along a dirt road to the first army checkpoint, the Cambodian reporter explained that we should all walk about 20 m apart so that we didn’t present too tempting a grouped target for a mortar round or machine gunfire.  As we walked along the dirt road, I began to contemplate the seriousness of the situation I’d so brainlessly walked into.  There was a constant silent stream of terrified and exhausted people in a sort of half run, half walk, bolt towards the ferry that we were unwisely walking away from.  I still had not seen any battle damaged buildings. Although there was a constant backdrop of noise from machine gunfire and explosions off in the distance, everything seemed eerily quiet and nobody spoke with the exception of the SC who repeated his mantra of “ Wow this is all so real!  This ain’t no movie!” every couple of minutes. 
 
When we got to the military checkpoint, I was greeted with one of the strangest sights I’ve ever seen. Along the side of the road there was a pile of weapons (some on table and others on the ground) about 100 m long.

As we passed by the weapons the Cambodian reporter explained that they were weapons that had been captured by government forces from the Khmer Rouge.  It just blew my mind at how many weapons there were and what a variety there was. 

There were M-79 grenade launchers, M-16s, AK-47s, Chinese pistols, grenades, landmines, large calibre machine guns, rockets, mortars and box after box of ammunition. 

As I was looking at the weapons and photographing them, a smiling soldier from the checkpoint came up to me and asked me if I wanted some.  Grenades were $.50 and M-16s and Chinese pistols were $3, AK-47s were $5 (they were considered to be a better weapon than the M-16) and the M-79 grenade launchers were about $7.  It is no wonder, that there is so much piracy nowadays in the Gulf of Siam and the South China Sea with so many small arms in circulation.  A friend of mine also got busted in Japan and put in Jail for three years for trying to smuggle a bunch of guns from Cambodia for the Yakuza, but that’s a story for another time. 

The reporter also explained to me that many of the government soldiers had swapped their M-16s for AK-47s, because they felt that the M-16’s were too fragile and they used to jam too often, whereas the AK-47s would still fire even if they were covered in mud.  He then went on to say that the only drawback that he could see that the AK-47 had was that at night time, a muzzle flash could be seen when the gun was fired and that might give away your position. When I asked why there were so many American weapons in the pile, I was told that some were captured from government forces and then used against them by the Khmere Rouge, but most of them were sold by corrupt government officers to the enemy (sounds like what’s happening in Iraq at the moment). Whether any of this is true or not, I wouldn’t know.
 
After the checkpoint, we walked about another kilometre until we came to a T junction in the dirt road, where we met, two young Cambodian soldiers with a walkie-talkie, who told us that it was too dangerous to proceed any further. 

Apparently we were in the middle of a flanking manoeuvre as the stronger government forces were moving towards the south and the Khmer Rouge had melted away to the east and then headed north to come around behind them.  We were told that the intersection that we were at would likely be in Khmer Rouge hands by the end of the day.  The Cambodian reporter told the soldiers (in Khmer) whom he worked for and what he was doing out there, then he told them that the SC and I were journalists (I did have a camera after all) and we had to get to the front.  The solider with the walkie-talkie got on the mike and started talking about us to whomever was on the other end. The two soldiers then explained that they had spoken to their commander and he told them there was an ammunition truck heading our way very soon and we could get a ride to the front in it. The commander also said he had some important information for the reporter.

As we waited for the truck to arrive, the constant sound of machine-gun fire was occasionally punctuated with the sound of mortar explosions.  Every now and again, an artillery shell would whistle overhead, followed a few seconds later by a distant whoomp. The SC passed the time by turning around in slow circles as he looked up into the treetops with a blissed out rictus on his face, repeating his mantra, “ Wow this is all so real!  This ain’t no movie!”
 
Part 3