The strange tale of how the Khmer Rouge saved my life

Its gruesome history is now being replayed in a Phnom Penh courtroom. But I have to say it proved warm and generous hosts to at least two journalists.

In September 1986, an Australian colleague and I trekked 100 kilometres into Vietnamese-held Cambodia to report on a shadowy war. We were escorted by guerrillas from the Khmer People’s National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF), a resistance group in loose alliance with the Khmer Rouge and the Royalists.

The previous dry season, the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) had conducted a major offensive that methodically picked off a string of resistance strongholds, driving fighters and their civilian supporters to seek refuge in Thailand. Hanoi said the war was all but done, with only some mopping-up operations to finish.

The resistance, grouped together as the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, argued otherwise. They said the VPA offensive had pushed them out of complacency to renewed guerrilla activity; that Vietnam controlled the towns but the resistance ruled the countryside and the night.

During a period when few reporters took to the field in Cambodia, perhaps due to the danger, the resistance aimed to prove their case to me and Australian journalist David Nason. But on our third day heading due south, after crossing Highway Five and easing into a flooded expanse of rice fields, the VPA hit us with a heavy and sustained crossfire. We were in water till mid-thigh and there was no shelter from the shooting, and we were saved only by serendipity and the cloaking darkness of a moonless night. Our group suffered: one killed, four wounded and one missing. Nason was among the wounded, hit in the side by an AK-47 round just as the engagement started. The missing man, we later learnt, had been wounded and captured. And from him the VPA heard that the KPNLAF was shepherding two western journalists.

For reasons of propaganda and politics, Hanoi decided we had to be captured or killed, ultimately committing some 5,000 troops to hunt us down. The same imperatives drove the resistance to ensure our safe return to Thailand.

Following the incident at Highway Five, our group melted into the jungle and settled at a secret KPNLAF camp held by another of their units. The VPA meanwhile blocked our route to the north and sent out search patrols. Villagers were enticed with a reward for information. Due to this build-up, our preferred escape option involved an alternate route to Thailand through Khmer Rouge-dominated territory to the west. However, despite the nominal resistance alliance, local forces would attack us if we lacked clearance from their top leadership.

The Khmer Rouge had never taken kindly to strangers, and it took two weeks of negotiation – with Thailand’s clandestine involvement, where the guerrilla groups were then based, and several other governments – before permission was granted. All the while, VPA patrols closed in on our hideout, with sporadic shots heard during the final days. Then an early morning coded radio message, and we were immediately off.

I never learnt if some sort of deal was done to obtain the Khmer Rouge’s help. Or whether the leadership simply concluded that a show of cooperation with its Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea partners – rarely apparent throughout this marriage of convenience – could prove politically useful.

The operations chief of the Khmer Rouge 450th Division, Bun Ni, was all smiles when we reached his forward position after slogging some hours from our camp. The remaining distance to his divisional headquarters was covered in a dugout canoe, travelling over heavily flooded terrain, and there was a warm welcome from Commander Sok Pheap.

A Chinese-trained doctor tended to Nason’s wound, and the next morning we breakfasted on roast deer before setting out with a 30-man escort. The Khmer Rouge troops were friendly and solicitous, plying us with instant noodles and sweetened condensed milk carried in from Thailand. There were also water purification tablets from China.

We had to cross another highway before approaching the border, a natural choke point controlled by the VPA. But first, the Khmer Rouge officer addressed our force. A translator told me he spoke mainly of operational issues and ended by calling on all to help fallen comrades in the event of combat.

The highway crossing did not go well. Our advance unit was spotted and attacked, with several lightly wounded, while our main party fled through a minefield. As we had by then run short of food, Sok Pheap resupplied us through 91 porters who trudged 40 kilometres to reach our position.

After a delay of three days we tried another route over tougher terrain. This ended with a mountain climb, another minefield and a 100-metre swim during a thunderstorm to reach the safety of a Khmer Rouge base in Thailand. There, standing waist-deep in flood water under cracks of lightning, the Khmer Rouge stopped to hold an informal welcome ceremony. And I felt grateful.