Enjoy.....

To War in Style: Vignettes of Phnom Penh Life in Spring ' 73

Mark Berent

Papa Wolf

In January of 1973, we in the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) in the American Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, found ourselves in an unusual situation. President Nixon had declared his Southeast Asia policy of Vietnamization was succeeding. In Vietnam, all US forces were ordered to cease fighting and that included air assets as well as the ground troops.

In Cambodia (also known as the Khmer Republic), the situation was quite different. With the exception of the "incursion" in 1970, US ground forces never had a fighting role in Cambodia. Starting with the opening of the American Embassy, also in 1970, after the Lon Nol coup deposing Sihanouk, the only authorized US military forces in Cambodia were the DAO and the Military Equipment Delivery Team, Cambodia (MEDTC). Both units had passive functions; the DAO to observe and report on the Cambodian armed forces and MEDTC to do no more than what its title described, deliver military equipment. In no way were either entity permitted to assist the Khmer troops in their battle against the communist Khmer Rouge. No one in the DAO could advise their counterpart in tactics, no one in MEDTC, after delivering a rifle or cannon, could tell them how best to employ the weapon much less which way to point it. There were, however, out-of-country training programs that filled a tiny portion of the gap.

But, and this is a big but, unlike the Vietnam ceasefire, the Cambodians were allowed US air assets until 15 August 1973. This meant all the B-52s, the strike fighters, the FACs, and the AC-130 gunships available for the Vietnam War were suddenly available for the Khmer forces. What a cornucopia of weaponry: B-52s, singly or in cells of three dropping 108 500-pounders each, destroying all within boxes sometimes three kilometers long by one kilometer wide; AC-130 Spectre gunships nightly laying down fire from the Gatling 20mm, the 40mm, and the long gun, the 105 howitzer; day time FAC and strike fighter coverage.

What did all this mean to me, the Air Attaché (AIRA) in the Embassy? First off, it meant I was in the loop to approve all B-52 strikes and secondly it meant, along with my co-workers, a daily briefing to the Ambassador and the Country Team about how things were going on the battlefield. Theoretically, we should have had no other involvement. But war always skews things in unforeseen ways.

My office suddenly had the task of taking over where Blue Chip left off. Now, Blue Chip was the USAF 7th Air Force command post at Tan Son Nhut AB, SVN whose job those war years was to manage all air assets: approve and schedule all war-related missions. And that mission is what I found myself in charge of for a few weeks until a new CP was established at Nakhom Phanom (NKP), Thailand.

Initially, the system was rather crude. I placed a Mk-128 radio pallet on my desk, the generator and various antennas on the embassy roof, and 1:50,000 maps on a big tripod. The pallet gave me two FMs, plus UHF, VHF, and HF capability. Our base call sign was Area Control, my personal callsign was Papa Wolf. 7th Air Force sent over some additional troops to help out, most memorable and helpful was Dirty Dog, USAF Major Dave Sands. (He is the fellow who got Col. Oum and his family set up in Austin, Texas.)

So we pulled twelve-hour shifts round the clock and pressed on with the war. Many funny (and not so funny) incidents took place: my waking up the entire Phnom Penh western community at two in the morning when I accidentally opened the mike to all their alert Motorola radios while broadcasting an Arc Light warning on UHF. There are more, but space in this document is limited.

Enter "Sam the FAC," Sok San, the eternal optimist and warrior. Originally in the field with the Khmer Army, then a translating backseater in OV-10s, he wound up in Phnom Penh as my friend and mentor, battle guide and, ultimately, my life saver. Sam, tall, lanky, excellent English (I believe he was an English teacher before the war), was the ultimate Sgt. Bilko. He could arrange, supply, or fix any problem in mysterious ways known only to Buddha and himself. One example: he once purloined Sihanouk's Cadillac for a clandestine FAC-In in Phnom Penh.

About this time, I was doing little more than sitting at a radio in the Embassy, yet felt I should see what was happening out in the field. It so happened that, a year before, I became the proud possessor of not one but two Ford sedan staff cars via a C-130 from USAF BG Pete DeLonga, a wheel at 7th AF. Unlike the black Embassy cars (which I thought really dumb for sun heat and standout target reasons), I had mine painted white, and put in terry cloth seat covers and window sun shades. I don't recall to whom I gave the other. Needless to say the other attachés, the Army and Navy guys, looked at me rather askance. (I had done other things such as jump with the Khmers to earn Khmer jump wings; soloed the T-28 to earn Khmer pilot wings, and items of lesser but notable interest.)

Only one person to go out in the field with: Sam. So, we set up a schedule and several times a week I would stop by Sam's hooch and pick him up for our daily adventure of playing guns. Understand that I had a driver up front and a Styrofoam cooler plus battle gear in the trunk.

So, we would pull up to Sam's, the driver would leap out and open the rear door for Sam to sit next to me in back. We would enjoy a hot cup of coffee from my flask and a cigarette while we would be taken to wherever Sam felt we were needed.

I'm not sure "needed" is quite the right word. Well, maybe it is, but this is a delicate point. We, I anyhow, were really not supposed to be out there. Perhaps as an observer, but from way back in the rear, well out of the dangerous fighting zones.

At any rate, we would drive out as far as the plush sedan could take us to meet up with a jeep and driver pre-positioned by Sam to transport us to the front lines. The scene was this; our driver would stop, open the door for Sam and me, then open the trunk lid. From inside he would hand us our web belts with canteens and holsters, then as neatly as any valet, help us into our flak vests, and finally hand each of us our helmets. Once in a while, Sam would carry an M-16. Sometimes we didn't take our flak vests if we felt the area safe. We would then leap into the jeep and be off to Sam's battle du jour.

Sometimes we would meet up with commanders such as Gen. Tep Ben up north, other times just show up at forward points to see what was happening. I admit, I was on the PRC-25 FM once in a while talking to. well, you know. I'll let that one just hang there.

I had a camera around my neck and snapped many a picture. A few stand out in my mind. Sam and I were in a forward area when we began to be mortared. Now I'm just a run-of-the-mill fighter jock who really had no infantry training. We were at the edge of an open field near a tumble-down hooch on stilts. At the base of one of the poles was, I thought, excellent cover. a giant water vat maybe four feet high and two or three feet in diameter. I ducked down behind it and immediately felt as if someone had very forcefully thrown dirt against my back. A mortar, probably 40mm or so, had impacted behind me and what I thought was dirt was really light chunks of shrapnel. Another guy, an officer, received quite a slice along his cheek. Turned out the water vat was empty and as dried out as a cookie.

I looked across the field expecting any second the Khmer Rouge to emerge from the tree line and charge our position.

I got on the Khmer RTO's PRC-25 and, in a somewhat high-pitched voice, asked any FAC in the area to check in. One did, said he was not too far from our location, and just what was it I needed.

"Air," I said, eyeballing the enemy tree line.

"Gee, sorry, Papa Wolf, I'm at Bingo fuel and RTB-ing."

"Anyone else in the area?" I pleaded.

"Nope, sorry," the FAC responded.

Boy, did I suddenly know what it was like for ground troops under fire with no arty or air available. Not good.

I needn't have worried. The Khmer commander had called for a M113 track to come get us. God, that ugly thing looked beautiful, big gaping ramp open for us to pile in and haul ass. Sam and I, with the other troops, piled in and the driver dug out, the sounds of mortars faint in our ears over the roar of the two big diesel engines.

I took a picture in there, a 35mm color slide. It shows Sam sitting across from me, helmet tipped back on his head, hands holding his M-16 standing between his knees, and an exasperated expression on his face best described as,

"Berent, you dumb shit, just what in hell are you doing out here?"

Another picture of Sam comes to mind. We were pinned down in a cemetery and AK rounds were zipping by. Sam was behind one tombstone, I behind another. Without exposing myself I got a great shot, ahh, wrong word choice, a great picture of him crouching there, seemingly unconcerned. Those 35mm color slides I gave to Sam years ago when he was in Houston.

We made it back to the forward Op post and first aid station, where a medic dug the tiny pieces of metal from my back, painted it with mercurochrome, and taped on an outsized gauze bandage no way appropriate for the tiny punctures. I looked over to the officer with the face wound. He had a big grin and an even bigger bandage on his face. He spoke to me in Khmer, which Sam translated: "See, I'm wounded too."

I found out later he was a staff guy not a real combatant. We were the only two dumbshits who got hit.

Our jeep was there so we were taken the few klicks back to my white Ford. The driver swiftly opened the trunk, helped us out of gear and opened the cooler. He first handed us each a frozen face cloth to wipe down with, then a cold beer. That was the routine each time we went out. War can run from hell to high life luxury in seconds.sometimes.

Before I dropped Sam off, I had him rip off my ridiculous bandage and replace it with some band aids from a kit we had in the trunk. I then went home, cleaned up, changed clothes, and went to the Embassy where I was in trouble, again.

Seems the wounded Khmer staffer had gone to FANK HQ and bragged all over the place how he and the American were wounded in battle. In battle, jeez. At any rate, word got back to my boss at the Embassy, an Army colonel, and worse yet, some newsies had heard of it as well.

Well, my boss, Col. Pete Burnell, was a really nice guy and didn't make much of it. One of his Army assistant attachés, however, tried to. He and I had never gotten along too well and he loudly proclaimed I could not put in for a Purple Heart. Well, shit, the thought had not occurred to me and if it had, I would have dismissed it instantly. First off, it was as piddly as the Plexiglas in my eyes from an F-100 mission and not worthy of mention, especially when compared to my SF buddies who suffered real wounds. Secondly, I wasn't supposed to be out there in the first place and would not want to call attention to that fact. None-the-less, trouble was brewing; the newsies were on to it and would have a field day blasting out that, contrary to the Cooper-Church Amendment, Americans, one in particular anyhow, were engaging in combat. And they had my name and position.

The newsies in Phnom Penh were, by and large, a scruffy lot. Most were third rate pot-smoking stringers always trying to dig up dirt on we Embassy types. They were always sneaking around with notebooks, cameras, and some even had small VHF receivers. Not one had FM or UHF, thank God. There were, however, a few good ones, both print journalists and some combat photographers

So it was that one of the good ones, Kate Webb, the UPI Bureau Chief, saved my ass. Kate wrote good stuff, favorable to us and our mission. If it got hacked up, it was because of her editor, who slash and cut to change her story line. Kate was a true war correspondent, always in the field, not at the pool bar at the Hotel Royale pumping other journalists for info.

Kate, who had been captured in the field by the Khmer Rouge and held a POW for 23 days, carried a lot of prestige and weight in the newsie community. Somehow, she quashed the story. To this day, I do not know how she pulled it off.

During the air support phase that spring, we were allowed to turn around the Rustic FAC OV-10s at Pochentong, the military/civilian air base outside of Phnom Penh. The Khmer Air Force could refuel but not rearm the birds with smoke rockets or 7.62mm for their guns. And they didn't. However, the ever-resourceful Rustics did. And that led to some humorous moments when FACs loaded High Explosive (HE) rockets instead of White Phosphorous (WP) rockets which, of course, were useless as marking rockets. Later, the Rustics stared loading HE intentionally for obvious reasons. It was not at all uncommon to see Rustic FACs walking across the ramp with a 2.75 in rocket under each arm heading for his OV-10.

Late one afternoon, I had Kate with Sam and me to observe the operation. She met Rick Scaling, Rustic 09, who was on a turn around. I took a nice black and white of Sam and Rick in front of his bird. We followed him in my car (no chauffeur this time) out to the runway to watch him take off. We stood outside the car by the side of the runway and watched him run up and start his takeoff roll. After he was several hundred feet down the runway, we turned back for the car. Suddenly I heard a loud whooshing sound behind us.

"Shit, rockets," I said, turning to face the noise.

We did take our share of Russian Katusha 122mm rockets in and around Phnom Penh, many on the airfield, though mostly at night to disguise the source.

But.it wasn't a rocket, at least not a Katusha.

"Shit, Rick."

I looked back in time to see Rick's airplane running off the runway, left main shedding rubber, and his rocket-propelled ejection seat zooming into the air. The system worked perfectly. He got good seat separation, a good chute, and landed right in front of us just off the runway in the weeds. We ran over and helped him out of chute and harness, rolled it all up and put it in the trunk of my car.

He then walked over to his bird, which was in a slight ditch and against a barbed wire fence. Both engines were running. Rick reached in (the canopy had blown out in the ejection sequence) and casually switched them off. He seemed absolutely cool and unfazed by his ordeal.

We went to Khmer Ops and arranged for the airplane to be towed to the ramp and Rick checked in with Rustic Ops who said they'd send someone around next morning to pick him up. We had a couple of cold beers from the cooler and Rick took Sam up on his offer to spend the night at his hooch and meet his family. The next day I picked him up to meet the OV sent to take him home.

All in a day's work for a valiant FAC!

In retrospect, I don't think I personally added anything to the Khmer war effort except maybe just my presence as a symbol of American interest and support. It certainly was the most challenging assignment I ever had and left me worthless to the USAF when I returned stateside after investing four years and one day between December 1965 and August 1973 in SEA. I heard bombs and rockets in my head for months afterward. 

When it was time for me to rotate, in farewell, Sam said to me the most poignant words I had ever heard

"Too soon to know, too soon you go."

From the FAC CD