A Disaster Unfolding: That Day in Cambodia

 

Foreword:  As the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan plays out, I am cast back in memory to the final days of the United States in Cambodia.  It has been 46 years since the United States with allies evacuated Phnom Penh (above) as a hostile force advanced, an event I remember vividly. The story is one I have never before put to paper.  Now seems the time.

In December 1971 the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where I was a staff assistant, asked me and a French-speaking colleague to do fact-finding on the conflict there by going to Cambodia.  The experience clearly indicated the follies of U.S. intervention.  Our critical report, to my chagrin, was quashed by the Nixon Administration and never officially published.  From then on, however, I continued to be involved with Cambodia, including a mission there in 1974 and frequent contact with its embassy.

In 1975 the situation declined swiftly.  An indigenous radical Communist force, known as “The Khmer Rouge” had taken over virtually all of Cambodia, leaving only the capital Phnom Penh in the hands of the U.S.-installed government.  The population of the city was being reached with food and other supplies only by daily airlifts from Saigon.  Nixon recently had resigned and Gerald Ford was President.

At home one evening in February 1975, I received a telephone call from a colleague telling me that as a last-ditch effort, the White House was recruiting a delegation of Senate and House members to go to Indochina and had requested that I be among the small staff accompanying them.  My wife was furious, demanding:  “What are you, some kind of lap dog of Gerry Ford?”  Nonetheless, with a partner, Jack Brady, I went.

Our group flew into Phnom Penh in a small Air America (CIA) passenger plane that was obliged to “corkscrew” its landing because of fear of taking fire from the periphery of the airport.  The U.S. Ambassador, John Gunther Dean, shown herein a suit, was there to meet us.  As I emerged from the plane he lowered his coat and said:  “Stab me again, Sullivan.”  His reference was immediately clear. In a report to Congress a year earlier I had documented that the embassy was evading a Congressional restriction on the numbers of American officials who could be in country by sending personnel to Saigon every night and returning them in the morning. It caused a ruckus on Capitol Hill.

Ours was a one-day investigation, it being considered too dangerous for the delegation to stay overnight.   After an Embassy briefing I accompanied some of the members to the airport warehouses and defense perimeter.  Pallets of food stretched for yards, defended by adolescent boys with antiquated rifles. “Look at these soldiers,” enthused a South Carolina Republican, “I’ll bet they can put up a fierce fight!”  Astounded I replied:  “Congressmen, these are children!”

From there Brady and I went off for a private briefing by the CIA station chief and his staff. It was sobering. They described the killings and other brutality that the Khmer Rouge was inflicting on the people they controlled, even among groups allied with them.  Their victory, our briefers predicted, would be followed by a bloodbath.  We believed them and meeting the delegation for an official lunch passed on the information.  Congresswoman Bella Abzug responded:  “Why am I hearing these unacceptable things from guys I like.”  Her similar intransigence during the meal caused the Cambodian Army Chief of Staff to weep.

The post-lunch discussion broke up suddenly as the warning came of an incoming rocket.  Taking cover, we heard one explode not far from where we were gathered.  Brady and I then left the delegation for a useless U.S. military briefing.  We split and I met solo with a group of U.S. NGO representatives about their plans for getting their people out of the country.  Late in the afternoon I headed alone back to the airport in a car and armed escort provided by the Cambodian army.  As we drove, suddenly the sound of continuous rifle shots had me ducking to the floor.  It was “friendly” fire.  My escorts were discharging their weapons in the air to clear the two-lane road of a multitude of people, some with luggage, apparently hoping to leave the country.  

I was the first to arrive at the landing area where the Air America plane would pick us up.  As I stood waiting, a Cambodian soldier who spoke English approached and said:  “Sir, please get under that truck,” pointing out a military vehicle standing nearby.  “We have incoming rockets.”   By stooping low, I complied and upon looking up saw the Foreign Minister, Long Boret, crouched beside me. He had come to see us off. We exchanged greetings.  Luckily, no rockets appeared.  Soon the delegation, my partner, and the airplane arrived.  Hot, tired and tense we boarded without conversation, corkscrewed our way into the air, and headed back to Saigon.

  

Upon returning to Washington it fell to me to draft legislation desired by the Administration to salvage something out of this impending debacle.  The delegation and other members assembled to provide input.  When no consensus emerged, the final draft was rendered nothing but an accumulation of meaningless phrases.  No member could be found to introduce it. 

Within a few days Ambassador Dean with his staff, a few high-ranking Khmer officials and others were flown out of Phnom Penh by Marine helicopters.  The Khmer Rouge entered the city and began their reign of terror during which an estimated 1,000,000 Cambodians died, either murdered or from starvation.

I often look at an elaborately decorated silver box displayed on a table in our living room.  It was gift from Prince Sirik Matak, then Prime Minister of Cambodia, when I met with him during my 1974 mission.  Inside is a slip of paper with an excerpt from a letter that he wrote Ambassador Dean near the end:  ”I never believed for a moment that you have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you the Americans.”   Refusing to be evacuated, Sirik Matak was executed by the Khmer Rouge on April 21, 1975. 

A former U.S. military adviser in Cambodia has said it well: "The downfall of the Khmer Republic not only resulted in the deaths of countless Cambodians, it has also crept into our souls.”

Note:  Because of the nature of the trip I took few photos.  Those of our arrival and departure are mine.  The others are stock photos.

Family Stories: Jeremiah Sullivan — America (Part. 2)

After arriving by ship in America at New York,  Jeremiah is known to have left there for work in Chester and Lancaster Counties,  Pennsylvania.  One account says that “He spent five years there in the management of a public highway and in assisting farmers during the harvesting of their crops.”   A skeptical interpretation of those occupations might be that Jeremiah was toiling as a road construction worker and a farm hand.  We can assume that he had very little if any education.  On a 1837 legal document he signed his name with an “X” indicating that he was illiterate.  But he was saving his money.

About 1830 Jeremiah,  who even on legal papers gave his name as “Jerry,” moved west to Sandusky County, Ohio.  He bought 219 acres of government land in Ballville Township,  near present day Fremont, Ohio.  The selling price was $1.25 an acre.   By the time he arrived,  Ohio had been a state for 27 years. The opening of the Great Lakes to the markets of the East by the completion of the Erie Canal was sparking  economic development. Farm products now could be shipped from Ohio to the East Coast and even overseas. 

Nonetheless,  the countryside at the time of Jeremiah’s arrival was still largely a wilderness. His acreage was covered in trees.  The Irish immigrant worked for months to clear the forest, felling the trees by ax and removing the stumps by shovel and horse-power.  The heavy tasks discouraged many of his compatriots and they returned to Ireland.   A true pioneer, Jeremiah persevered and eventually cleared his land for farming, keeping a smaller plot for his log house.

Jeremiah’s obituary in the Fremont Journal of October 8, 1875, accounts him as “a noble, good hearted-fellow, and by all who knew him was respected....”  This picture fits family legend of his character.  One story reveals his strong Catholicism.   Because there was no priest in the settlement at Fremont, the town closest to his farm, Jeremiah was obliged to go to Tiffin,  15 miles away to hear Mass.  As the story goes,  there was no real road at the time and he had to make the trip on foot through the untracked forest.  As a result he could attend Mass only very occasionally.  But on Christmas, Easter and several Sundays through the year,  Jeremiah would make the trip.  He would set out at midnight with a pine torch and a hatchet,  marking his way through the woods on trees that served as guideposts for his return.   He would arrive in Tiffin in the morning in time for Mass,  socialize with fellow parishioners into the afternoon,  and then begin the long trek home, arriving after dark.

Another Jeremiah story is set some years later.    A man sentenced to be hanged as a horse thief the next day in Fremont asked for a priest to hear his confession.   The nearest priest was in Tiffin and it did not seem possible to meet the doomed man’s request.   But -- according to family legend -- Jeremiah undertook the journey on horseback,  leading a second horse over the trail he had helped blaze to Tiffin.   He woke the priest in the middle of the night and together they returned to Fremont in time for the prisoner to receive the sacraments. 

Jeremiah worked as a bachelor farmer on his homestead for almost a decade before marrying.   Somewhere along the line he acquired the nickname, “Irish Jerry.”  Family legend says that he was approached one day by his friend Edward King who suggested that he bring to America for the purpose of matrimony, Johanna, King’s sister in Ireland.  Jeremiah is said to have retorted that Johanna was just a little girl.   King reminded him that it had been 15 years since he had seen her and that Johanna had done some growing in the meantime.  That not withstanding, however, there still was a substantial difference in their ages  -- perhaps as much as 20 years.

Johanna’s Story

We cannot know the feelings experienced by our Great-great Grandmother Johanna King upon being told that she was to leave her family to travel to America and marry a much older man she could hardly remember.   Of her background we know only a little.   She was born in County Kerry in 1817 but apparently her parents relocated in the Parish of Iveleary when she was a child.   Was she a early version of the beautiful Inchigeela lass?   Upon her death years later a flowery obituary “one of Erin’s dark eyed daughters.”  

Johanna was in her early twenties when she emigrated, possibly accompanied by one or two other family members.   We can assume she disembarked from her ocean voyage at the port of New York.   She then proceeded west via the Erie Canal and then to Lake Erie.  She was met at the dock at Sandusky, Ohio, by her brother Edward King and her future husband who had come there by horse and wagon.   Loading her effects into the wagon,  they headed back to King’s homestead.  There Johanna stayed until, not long after, she and Jeremiah were married in the Catholic Church in Tiffin.  Then she joined her new husband on his farm.

Despite the arranged nature of their marriage and a considerable difference in age, their union appears to have been a loving one,  attested to by her bearing 13 children,  of whom several died in infancy.  One of those who survived was grandfather,  Florence Sullivan, born in 1845. 

Jeremiah died in 1875.  As noted, his exact age was in some doubt. Johanna would live 12 years beyond his passing to be 78 years old and accounted upon her death in 1897 as one of the oldest residents of Sandusky County.  The headline on her obituary read:  “Was a Pioneer Woman.” “That section of the country was at the time a vast wilderness,”  said the Fremont News, “and Mrs. Sullivan experienced all the hardships, trials and tribulations of early pioneer life.”  [End of Part 2]