Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [43]
On 12 March, Lon Noi issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to remove North Vietnamese troops from Cambodia within seventy-two hours. He had received no assurances of support from the White House but believed Nixon would back him.
On 13 March, an enraged but wary Sihanouk flew from Paris not to Phnom Penh but to Moscow to enlist Soviet support in peacefully removing the NVA/VC from Cambodia to defuse the crisis.
On 18 March, Lon Noi asked the National Assembly to vote on Siha-nouk's continued rule. Lon Nol's coup was thus made legal.
Sihanouk was informed of Lon Nol's succession to power by Soviet Premier Kosygin during the drive to the airport. Moscow wanted no more entanglements with this man whom they considered a blundering fool. Sihanouk immediately jetted for Peking. There he formally aligned himself with the enemy, becoming the symbolic leader of a coalition of the NVA/VC with the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists) and the Pathet Lao (Laotian communists), whose purpose was to “liberate” Cambodia from Lon Noi. Sihanouk had just become a puppet,1 and his pronouncements sparked limited peasant uprisings, which were aided by the NVA and quelled with bullets by the Cambodian army. The majority of the villagers, however, wanted no part of the conflict. The middle and upper classes, disgusted with Sihanouk's failed economic policies, and the military, disgusted with his appeasement of the communists, stood beside Lon Noi. The change was convulsive. Communist troops spread propaganda in behalf of Sihanouk, who shrieked loudly and falsely about CIA involvement in his downfall. One mob of peasants managed to kill the brother of Lon Noi, whose liver they then tore out, cooked, and ate in some primeval celebration. Similar mobs were gunned down by the army. Although the prevailing anarchy included violence among rival political groups, most of Cambodia's anger was directed at the Vietnamese on their soil, both military and civilian. Lon Noi ordered the internment of the country's 400,000 ethnic Vietnamese, hoping to use them as hostages of sorts to check NVA attacks. The NVA and VC, meanwhile, ambushed Cambodian patrols that ventured too near their sanctuaries. Then, Lon Noi having choked their supply line by closing Sihanoukville to communist ships, the NVA began a campaign of expansion toward Phnom Penh. The unseasoned Royal Cambodian Army, indifferently trained and equipped, its troops in cloth berets, plastic helmet liners, and tennis shoes, toting a mix of American and East Bloc weapons–they matched the enemy with about 40,000 men– was pummeled by the hardened, well-supplied NVA/VC veterans. Cambodia was coming apart, was being overrun.
On 27 March, President Thieu of South Vietnam covertly sent an ARVN ranger battalion three kilometers into Cambodia to overrun an NVA base camp. This was a first, a practice run of sorts for what Thieu hoped would be bigger things: The ARVN had always been re-strained from hitting the NVA in Cambodia by Nixon, not Thieu.
On 10 April, a Cambodian unit, bitter about the recent NVA victories and panicked by nearby enemy units, massacred ninety Vietnamese civilians.
On 11 April, a hundred more were massacred.
On 14 April, Lon Noi appealed for military assistance from the United States. Since Nixon had already authorized ARVN forays into Cambodia–testing the political reaction at home–it was coincidental that that very morning ARVN III Corps troops crossed into Cambodia.