Life at 14...
By Mr. Aki Ra |
The following article is from a packet from the Siem Reap Landmine Museum. It describes some of the author's experience while there was civil war in Cambodia.
When I was fourteen, I had another experience that I will never forget. We were outnumbered one day by the Khmer Rouge and many of our soldiers had been killed leaving the rest of us to run for our lives. Whilst we were running, we dropped ammunition from the magazines of our guns, AK47s, onto the floor. These appeared to be loaded with ammunition. However, we had added poison to the bullets so that when the guns were consequently fired, they would give off a toxic gas. We later returned to find the Khmer Rouge choking on the poisonous fumes and we killed them all, no problem.
The Vietnamese were responsible for destroying many of the precious statues in and around The Angkor Wat area as they used to take pot shots at them when they were bored. They looted many ancient and valuable artifacts from the temples and they have never been found. They also killed many animals and birds and took vast amounts of wood from the jungles to send back to Vietnam to then sell on as a valuable commodity. Three times a day, they would chop down the wood and we have lost large amounts of our jungles as a result.
It was during 1989 that the Vietnmese finally pulled out of Cambodia and I was then conscripted into yet another army, The Cambodian army, again still fighting with the remaining factions of the Khmer Rouge.
During 1990 and 1992, I was conscripted into the Cambodian army and was finally given the option to return to school and start to study as a normal child would. However, I was called upon to fight many times against the Khmer Rouge.
I was very lucky during all my time spent with the various different armies and had many lucky escapes. On one occasion, a General of the Cambodian army was based at Banteay Meanchey and was asked to move to another area nearby. Before he left, he wanted to say good-bye to some of his friends in the villages so he requested to visit the village of Samrong. A security check was made on the roads surrounding the village to make sure that the road was safe from mines. None were found. However, the villagers forewarned the Khmer Rouge that the General would be visiting and, in exchange for cash, the Khmer Rouge gave them anti-tank mines to lay on the road to the village. It was common knowledge that, as an important man, the General would be arriving in a tank. In the morning, a convoy of 10 soldiers and a pick-up had passed without problem. The double anti-tank mine had been placed outside the perimeters of the pick-ups wheels and therefore did not detonate the mine. The larger wheels of the tank did and inside were four important men as well as the General who were crushed to death by the blast. I was sat upon the top of the tank as a look-out and the blast catapulted me into the paddy fields that flanked the road and I landed safely and softly.
On another occasion, I was in an army camp of thirty soldiers next to a village and we knew that Khmer Rouge were close by in the jungle. The Khmers would come every night to fire mortar shells at our camp killing soldiers and innocent villagers. They always moved their camp around so that they were hard to find. My army boss chose three soldiers including myself to find and destroy this band of Khmers. I took one rocket launcher and some hand grenades and my friend took rockets and AK47s. Another friend took an M16 and a different rocket. Because we had so many different weapons, we could appear to be, from a distance, a large unit. We moved towards the enemy in the dark through the rice fields changing places many times and firing the different weapons. I crept up on the Khmer unit, fired my rocket and killed all five of them. When we returned to our camp, I told my boss that no one was injured and he was very cross with me. I told him that no one was injured because they were all dead. |
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