Word: cham
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nearly two weeks, Kompong Cham−Cambodia's third largest city−has been besieged by Khmer insurgents. During the initial onslaught, government forces were split in two and Communist-backed troops invested more than half of the T-shaped Mekong River town. Late last week the tide of battle turned. The besiegers began to drift away, and the Phnom-Penh government claimed a significant victory. TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand rode a Cambodian helicopter into Kompong Cham, left the scene two days later with a convoy of wounded for the 75-mile voyage downriver to Phnom-Penh. His report...
...years, first for the French, then for U.S. Special Forces in Viet Nam, now with the Cambodian army. He speaks loud, brash G.I. English sprinkled with obscenities, leads his team on special missions and helps direct the local forces. He is one of the heroes of Kompong Cham's defense...
Getting into Kompong Cham was a matter of a 35-minute chopper ride; getting out was not so simple. Deterred by ground fire, the choppers had stopped landing. I decided to ride out with the night convoy. The trip upriver takes 24 to 30 hours, because the boats are heavily loaded, but the return trip to Phnom-Penh is only five or six hours...
Last week more than 5,000 insurgents laid siege to a comparable force of government soldiers defending Kompong Cham, Cambodia's third largest city (peacetime pop. 125,000, now about 65,000), approximately 50 miles northeast of Phnom-Penh. Lon Nol vowed that he would not let Kompong Cham fall and dispatched Major General Sar Hor, the highly regarded Minister of Veteran Affairs, to take charge of its defenses. Nonetheless, the insurgents steadily advanced. Using American 105-mm. howitzers captured last month from fleeing government troops, they massively shelled the city, rendering Kompong Cham's airport useless. Government...
Four days after the battle ended, Cambodian and South Vietnamese columns finally succeeded in reopening Route Seven between Kompong Cham and Skoun, which had been cut by enemy activity for six weeks. But the Cambodians expected the fighting to continue in the area for the duration of the dry season. In the case of Prey Totung itself, however, there was not much left to fight for. "The Cambodians once again had demonstrated great courage," sadly concludes Correspondent Cloud, "but the town had been destroyed. One wondered: Who wins in the long...