Report from a Captured Correspondent

On Aug. 3, TIME Correspondent Robert Anson drove out of Phnom-Penh to cover a battle at Skoun, 45 miles to the northeast. He never made it. At 3:55 in the afternoon, he was captured by anti-government forces. On Aug. 23, Anson drove back into Phnom-Penh with a release order in his pocket, unharmed and in good health. What follows is Anson's own account of his 21 days behind the lines:

I WAS looking for the buses, the gaudy red, yellow and blue buses in which the Cambodian army rides off to fight and sometimes die. When you see the empty buses parked by the side of the road, their drivers sleeping in their shade, you know that you should stop. Ahead is the battle.

I drove confidently, foolishly, toward Skoun, not looking for the other signs that were all around me. Six kilometers from Skoun, my eye caught a South Vietnamese gunship making lazy circles over what had to be the city. I watched carefully now, but saw only the plane. Then I saw them, out the left window, standing in the heavy underbrush by the side of the road.

There were two of them, both with Chinese-made AK-47s. They looked Cambodian. I waved and drove past. They waved back. Seconds later, their costumes registered: they were dressed in black, and their helmets were camouflaged with leaves and small branches. They seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see them. They might run. I turned the car and started slowly back down the road. Then, 300 yards away, the soldiers appeared again, this time out on the road itself, signaling that I stop. I pulled off the road. They came, guns at the ready. Two Vietnamese. My hands went up, and I whispered the word for journalist: "Bao-chi." Then "Hoa-binh," the Vietnamese words for peace. Then louder: "Bao-chi, bao-chi, bao-chi." One of the soldiers looked at me confusedly. With his rifle, he motioned me out of the car. I got out, hands raised, and spoke again: "Hoa-binh, hoa-binh, hoa-binh." One soldier nodded and repeated the word.

Within moments, my captors and I were trotting into the jungle. We came to a small command post, and once again I blurted out: "Bao-chi, hoa-binh." They were Viets, all 15 of them, and they understood. Now they began talking, asking me the question I feared most: "My? My? My?" (American? American? American?) I feigned ignorance, and we moved off again, deeper into the trees. The soldiers guided me into a bunker. So this is how it ends, I thought. In some rotten little hole, where no one will find me.

The soldiers approached and pointed their guns in. I tensed and closed my eyes. But they were speaking to me, telling me in Vietnamese to get out. We were leaving. There were too many mortars, too many planes. They tied my arms loosely behind my back, and two of them took up guard in front of and behind me. As we began to march off, I looked back at the others and said again, "Hoa-binh."

We walked for two hours. Then, almost suddenly, the brush country gave way to paddies, and we entered a small village. My guards motioned me to sit down, and someone brought a cup of water. In a few moments, I was directed inside a Khmer-style house sitting high off the ground on stilts. A young Vietnamese appeared and squatted down beside me. In broken French, he asked who I was. I told him that and much more: "I am a journalist. I come in peace. Once, after a massacre at Takeo, I helped some of your people." He listened stolid-faced, then broke into a grin and slapped my leg. "I know," he said. "Thank you."

The next night I left the village and, on foot and by car in the rain, was led to a small factory. Inside, the soldiers found several boards and laid them on the earthen floor as my bed. Drenched by the rain, I lay down and tried to sleep. The boards rattled beneath me as I quivered from the cold. One of the soldiers fetched a blanket from his pack and wrapped it around me. As I drifted into sleep, the ground again shook beneath me, and then again. It was the rumble of bombs from a B-52.

I awoke to find two visitors sitting quietly a few feet away from me. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I stared back at them. It was some moments before they spoke, then one of them said in broken French and English: "We understand you are a journalist. We would like to talk to you."

Talk we did about politics, my family, my views on the war. As they were preparing to go, I impulsively snatched up a journal that I had been keeping and showed it to them. Their reaction was surprise: "The soldiers permit you pen and paper?" But when I explained what it was and they had paged through it, they nodded their approval. They were especially interested in a few small poems I had written, including a verse about one of my guards, a young North Vietnamese soldier.

Ti

A boy

A boy like any other boy

A boy

Like me.

A poem? the older man asked. An attempt at a poem, I answered. Then I added: "Ho Chi Minh was a poet, was he not?" "Yes," said the man. "Yes, Ho Chi Minh was a poet."

That evening we moved once again, not far this time, to a small village schoolhouse that would serve as my home for the next ten days. Slowly my life was settling into the semblance of a routine. Morning would be announced by the crowing of the village cocks. Rising from the tabletop that served as my bed, I would strip off my clothes and don a red-and-white checkered sarong for the first of three daily baths, accomplished by the simple expedient of pouring three pails of ice-cold water over my head.

I had four windows, but they were seldom opened. I was told that the danger from planes and spies was too great. In the afternoon, when the air was still and oppressive, I retreated to my tabletop and tried to sleep till the cool of the evening. Invariably, I lay wide awake, watching the rats scurry across the ceiling rafters or marveling at the industry of the hornets building their nests.

My guard was now permanently established: six North Vietnamese and nine Khmers. None of us spoke the other's language, but we talked just the same and in a short time became remarkably close. When I asked for water, I said "nuoc," or "bat lua" when I wanted a light for my cigarette, or "cam on" when the light was provided. For every Vietnamese or Khmer word I learned, they demanded to know the equivalent in "Washington." I found out that the small oil lamp every soldier carries with him is called a caiden. After I used the word the first time, one of the soldiers held up the lamp and asked, "Washington? Washington?" "Torch," I replied. "Tors, tors," they all repeated, unable to form the difficult English ch sound with their mouths. I laughed and shook my head. "Not tors. Call it lamp. L-a-m-p." I depended on them for my every need: food, water, cigarettes, paper and pen. These they provided in abundant supply --almost too abundant. The meals originally came at a rate of five a day: two in the morning, then lunch, a hefty afternoon snack, and finally dinner. "Tumtum one of the Khmers said, slapping my fat stomach. Then, slapping his own rock-hard middle, he boasted, "Kampuchea, tut-tut." Kampuchea means Cambodia in Khmer.

A bond was forming between us. I could almost watch it growing stronger daily. Earlier, when they clicked their weapons in the darkness, I would instinctively catch my breath, never quite sure what would happen next. After a week, the windows came open a tiny crack, and finally they were flung open altogether. Increasingly, I was left alone for long periods. After ten days, the soldiers gave me a pair of sandals--or gap, as I learned to call them--cut from an old automobile tire. The North Vietnamese soldier who presented them to me told me they were "sandals of the Resistance." Then, with a grin, he whispered, "Gap Ho Chi Minh." They even began leaving their weapons around my room while they went on their errands--knives, carbines, AK-47s, Chinese-made grenades. I was astonished. -

On Sunday, the seventh day after my capture, three North Vietnamese officers, including the older man who had questioned me before, appeared at the door. This time the interrogation was far more detailed. For the next several hours, we talked politics and personalities. They were especially interested in what I thought of the war. The questioning climaxed with a single query. "Do you believe," said one of the officers, leaning forward until his face was only a few inches from mine, "in the inevitable victory of the Indochinese peoples?" I pulled back and thought for a moment. "I believe," I said at last, "in self-determination of all peoples."

Two days later the older man walked into my room and told me in French that on Aug. 121 would be released.

Aug. 12 came and went. I was still their prisoner. Mentally, I had prepared myself for the disappointment. Days went by. I was slipping into depression. But my spirits rose on the night of Aug. 16, when we moved from the schoolhouse to a large Khmer-style house across the village. I learned that the peasants, after being told that I was an American journalist and had not come to hurt them, had insisted that I be moved to better quarters.

Evenings were my favorite time of day. One night after the village was asleep, the soldiers took me outside for exercise and let me bask in the cool evening air. Sitting on a chair they had provided, I watched as some of the Vietnamese taught the Khmers how to crawl quietly through the grass, dragging their rifles behind them. Then the soldiers invited me to show them how Americans crawl. I got down on all fours and promptly split the seat of my pants, and the evening solitude dissolved in laughter. But the humor was short-lived. In the southern sky, a blinking red light told of a gunship's approach. The light from our cai-dens and our laughter died at the same time. Silently we watched the plane pass and then went into our house.

I seldom moved from my bed the next day. I lay on my back, smoking cigarette after cigarette, thinking about what I had seen. Weeks before in Phnom-Penh, around the swimming pool at the Hotel Royal, we correspondents had told each other that Premier Lon Nol's regime was in trouble. But we had never guessed how deeply the trouble ran. Now I had seen the beginnings of a Khmer liberation army, and it seemed to be growing stronger, fed both by volunteers and prisoners. In less than three weeks, I had seen scores of Khmer soldiers with Sihanouk badges pinned to their chests. Wherever I had gone, there had been Khmers guiding the Vietnamese and in turn being trained by them. This was no phantom army. A civil war was building.

Aug. 21 was the most memorable day I spent in the village. On that day the soldiers dug a large bomb shelter outside my house and reinforced it with logs cut from the nearby forest. I stood in the door of my house watching, and the people from the village gathered to watch too. The young children squealed and scrambled over the rising mounds of dirt, while several old men looked on silently. One of the soldiers pointed to the hole and said to me: "Bedum hai [B-52]." I turned my back and went to my journal.

Early that afternoon, the English-speaking North Vietnamese officer appeared with a small group of other officers, both Vietnamese and Khmer. He said what he had to say quickly: "You are going home. There will be a ceremony tomorrow, and you will be released as soon after that as possible. We will talk later."

Later, when we did talk, he outlined the release procedures, told me my possessions would be returned to me, including my car, and concluded with a surprise. "There will be a gathering of the peasants, and we would like you to make a statement. We want you to tell us your impressions of your stay here." I nodded, and he gave me a pencil and paper. I thought for a few long moments and then began to write. In minutes, I had finished what I wanted to say. He took my copy and walked over to read it by the light of the window. His face creased into a frown. "Some of this is good," he said, in the tone of a schoolmaster, "but there is some you left out, don't you think? You should begin by confessing your mistake. Write again. This time think more carefully. I will help you."

He certainly did. In an hour, the statement was finished. He nodded with satisfaction, then added, "But you must sign it." Then another surprise: "We would like to tape-record your voice so all the people of Kampuchea can hear you."

For the rest of the day, I received visitors, the people of the village. Almost all of them brought some gift--a few bananas, a rice cake, a package of cigarettes. In Buddhist fashion. I would fold my hands and bow my head, whispering in Khmer "Thank you" and "Long life." Then we would sit cross-legged on the floor facing one another, not saying a word, drinking tea, smiling and, with the children, laughing. In a few minutes they would go, and I would bow again. They would bow in return.

Next morning, I went through the promised ceremony and received my release order from the Khmer representatives of the Skoun front. Two photographers recorded the event after carefully removing a North Vietnamese helmet from the picture. A Vietnamese officer asked me, "How does it feel to be a free man?" I answered with a smile: "I've always felt I was a free man."

Toward 6 in the evening, I gathered my things and made my final goodbyes to the soldiers. They had brought my Hertz car to the schoolhouse. As I walked to the auto, people came out of their houses. First dozens of them, then several hundred. They came to applaud and say goodbye. Children tagged along after me, yelling and laughing, sometimes darting up to touch my arm. I got into the back seat of the car, and the driver started off. After a few moments I looked back. The people were still waving.

Gingerly, we picked our way through the darkness, heading for a point close to the main road, where we would spend the night. At 4:30 the next morning, we rose and slowly drove to the release point. Suddenly, the car was braking to a halt. Three miles ahead, my escorts told me, government forces waited. "You must be careful that they don't harm you," an officer warned. I half laughed at his remark, and he looked at me questioningly. I didn't bother to explain.

Thirty minutes dragged by. Finally, the English-speaking Vietnamese officer said, "It is time for the separation." We shook hands. "You are a man of the people," he said. "Remember them." "The people have been good to me," I replied. "I won't forget them." I slid into the front seat, started the engine and then sat there a long moment. At last, I began moving forward, away from the past three weeks. In a few minutes, I looked into the rear-view mirror. The soldiers had gone. Ahead, the sun was beginning to come up.

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