Word: phnom-penh
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...HEAVY guard of Cambodian soldiers crouched silently by their guns behind half-built sandbag fortifications at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport. Army Jeeps revved noisily through the night, pausing at military checkpoints throughout the city's deserted streets. Then, at the first sign of light, the soldiers picked up work where they had left off the afternoon before: at the airport, around banks and government buildings, and on major street corners, they unrolled coils of American-made barbed wire and stacked up new walls of sandbags. Cambodia's capital was girding for attack...
...fight of its life. Daily strikes by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops throughout the country could no longer be considered just random harassment designed to wear out Cambodia's army. Instead, the Communists seemed to have embarked upon a new all-out strategy designed to strangle Phnom-Penh. Diplomats in Cambodia speculated that the Communists had decided to try to overthrow the Lon Nol government as quickly as possible -probably within six months...
...buried Communist supplies in the sanctuary areas. But the U.S. sweep seemed only to push the Communist forces deeper into Cambodia. Roving forces of Communist troops kept pressure on three provincial capitals, including Siem Reap. the gateway to Angkor, and Kompong Speu, only 24 miles southwest of the capital, Phnom-Penh. The widening Communist attacks spread Premier Lon Nol's forces so thin that his strategists were seriously discussing a kind of grand enclave plan for the country. The Cambodian army would pull back to a corridor stretching from the seaport of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanouk-ville) to Phnom...
...admission that Phnom-Penh does not control much of the rest of the country would be a severe psychological blow to Lon Nol's government but would probably constitute a wise military move. As it is, says one Western military analyst, the Cambodian army's desperate holding action resembles "a skater gliding over a lake of rotten ice. No matter how fast he tries, the ice keeps breaking up, and pretty soon there is nowhere left to skate...
Died. Gerald Miller, 42, TV news reporter, whose body was found and identified last week; when the Jeep in which he was riding was bushwhacked May 31 by Viet Cong rocket fire, killing the Cambodian driver, an Indian cameraman and Reporter George Syvertsen 33 miles southwest of Phnom-Penh...