Missing in Cambodia

That was one of the scariest moments of my life. But you know, man, we've got to come back here. I bet that if we used motorcycles, dressed casually --really low-profile--we could get off this main road and sort of glide into the villages. We might be able to rap with some of the Cambodians, and then have them take us to where we can get pictures of the action.

--TIME Photographer Sean Flynn

Flynn did go back, and he found the Viet Cong. Or rather the V.C. found him. Along with his friend, CBS Cameraman Dana Stone, the 28-year-old son of Errol Flynn was captured in the Cambodia-South Vietnam border area. Last week, in addition to the two Americans, at least six other journalists* were presumed to have fallen victim to the Viet Cong in the same vicinity. The captures dramatized how greatly Cambodia has changed since the ouster of Prince Norodom Sihanouk four weeks ago.

For three years, Cambodia's chimerical Prince veiled his relations with the Viet Cong by keeping foreign journalists out of his "neutralist" country. Many sneaked in, mainly for respite from the Viet Nam War. Unable to carry out any real reporting in Cambodia, they dined on frogs' legs, eggs en cocotte and cheese souffles beside a bikini-lined pool in Phnom-Penh, the capital city.

Beads and Bombs. When the Prince was ousted, the new government welcomed reporters --but covering Cambodia suddenly became a highly dangerous venture. As scores of U.S., British, Australian, French, German and Japanese correspondents poured in, they found a countryside torn by civil strife and infested with Viet Cong patrols. The government could not provide escorts; local drivers refused to leave the capital.

Sean Flynn arrived in Cambodia on April 2, on assignment for TIME. The next day he joined TIME Correspondent Burton Pines in a rented car headed for Parrot's Beak, a jut of Cambodia that cuts into South Viet Nam about 40 miles west of Saigon. Pines reports: "In one village, where the V.C. had burned a district office that Sean wanted to photograph, we two Americans created quite a commotion. Sean, especially, fascinated them. Six feet tall, strikingly handsome, with long blond hair almost to his shoulders, he wore only sandals, khaki shorts, a white pullover and love beads. While he was photographing the house, we saw South Vietnamese air force planes bombing just across the border. We had learned earlier in the day that both Vietnamese and American artillery and airplanes had begun regular missions on Cambodian soil. Sean wanted to come back to photograph those missions that Washington and Saigon so vehemently deny."

Moments later, Flynn and Pines also saw--and narrowly escaped--two 15-man Communist patrols armed with AK-47 rifles. After hurrying back to the capital, Flynn and Dana Stone (on assignment for CBS News) agreed that a return trip was worth the risk despite ominous reports of 10,000 Communist troops in the area. The two rented red Honda motorcycles and headed off. The next day villagers near Bavet reported seeing the Viet Cong quietly capture two Westerners on motor scooters. It was the same area where the Frenchmen and two Japanese journalists had been captured the day before.

Gentle Daredevil. Before going to Viet Nam in 1965, Sean Flynn was a game warden in Kenya, a fashion photographer in Paris, a big-game hunter in Pakistan, and had starred, uncomfortably, in a film, The Son of Captain Blood. In Viet Nam, he made infantry operations his photographic forte, slogging through jungles for weeks on end with Special Forces troops, invariably attired in a French Foreign Legion camouflage suit complete with flowing scarf. He also shot 10,000 ft. of film for a documentary on the war, shipped it to his home in Paris, and twice left to edit it between combat assignments. Recalls a friend: "He said that his documentary never would be finished until he had pictures of the other side."

During the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War --one of his sidetracks--Flynn and another reporter scavenged a Soviet recoilless rifle in the Sinai desert, hitched it to their Volkswagen and took off, with visions of donating it to a Tel Aviv discotheque. The Israeli patrol that intercepted them had other uses for it. On assignment covering Richard Nixon in Indonesia last July, Flynn rented a beach house in Bali. A remarkably gentle man, despite his daredevil reputation, he had fallen in love with the serene simplicity of the island and decided to remain there indefinitely. He returned to Saigon last month merely to wind up affairs in Viet Nam before returning to Bali, where he had already taken an option to acquire some land.

Diplomatic Efforts. Flynn's Saigon roommate, Cameraman Stone, 30, a short, sardonic Vermonter, was once a lumberjack and merchant mariner. When he went to Viet Nam in 1966, Stone took up photography as a means of seeing the war. A veteran of many hair-raising operations, he soon gained a reputation that gave him as many assignments as he could handle. "There may be other, more famous photographers with greater technical skill in Viet Nam," says TIME Correspondent David Greenway, "but there are none with more courage and initiative than Stone and Flynn."

Why the Viet Cong suddenly seemed intent on holding captured journalists remains unknown. The leading speculation is that the Communists hope to scare journalists away from reporting their activities in the border area. Intense diplomatic efforts are being made for the release of all ten captives, and North Vietnamese representatives in Paris have agreed to make inquiries.

* The known others: German-born NBC Photographer Dieter Bellendorf; French Photographers Gilles Caron, Guy Hannoteaux, Claude Arpin; Michel Visot, a Phnom-Penh professor of law acting as a guide; and two Japanese television newsmen, Reporter Akira Kusaka and Cameraman Yujiro Tagaki.

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