The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 43 who deserted as the fighting intensified, my wife, Le Son, and our 12-year-old daughter, Kelly, worked in the kitchen helping prepare and serve food for their fellow American citizens. They were evacuated to Vietnam with the last tranche of American citizens. During the days of July 5 and 6, the situation in the city became increasingly untenable, as marauding military units roamed about, and artillery shells struck randomly, includ- ing near the embassy, badly shaking the structure every time. Having sent all but the most essential personnel to the relative safety of the Cambodiana Hotel, we were down to a skeleton staff. I had given the order to destroy all of our classified paper records and was preparing to break up the secret codes in our communications room, the last step before abandoning the embassy completely. A Diplomat’s Job It was then that two phone calls came to me. One was about a group of Mormon missionaries who were trapped amid the fighting going on near the airport. They had no way out and were desperate for evacuation. No sooner had I hung up when another call came, from a Cambodian American who had been serving as a minister in the government but was now caught up in the internecine warfare. He was trapped in a construction project somewhere near the airport but would not disclose his exact location for fear that the phone call was being monitored, and he would be tracked down and killed. He tearfully asked me to call his wife in Bangkok and say goodbye for him. As the battery on his cell phone was run- ning down, we were suddenly disconnected. Not having any U.S. Marines or any other armed security force at the embassy, I thought there was only one thing I could do. Grabbing one embassy officer to go with me, we took my Chevrolet Impala, which served as the ambassador’s “limo” and, unfurling the American flag on the front fender, drove toward the airport where black smoke rose and the sound of automatic weapons filled the air. Driving through roadblocks and around troop formations, we arrived at the Mormon mission where the group leader rushed out and told me he had never been so glad to see the American flag in his life. With their safety assured, I contin- ued driving toward the area where I believed the Cambodian American government official was hiding. Weaving around tanks and past advancing troops with the sound of gunshots resonating, I kept calling his number on my cell phone, leaving messages urging him to run out and jump in the car. But he never answered, and I could not tell if he had even been able to hear my messages. Eventually, we gave up and turned back to the embassy. A few hours later, I went over to the hotel where hundreds of Americans were gathering. As I walked into the lobby with sev- eral of my interagency staff, many of our fellow citizens began clapping in appreciation for all that we had done to keep them safe. While I felt good that so many Americans had been able to be kept safe from the fighting, I still was despondent that I had not been able to help that one political leader. But then I looked up, and there he was—a big, burly Cambo- dian man walking down the corridor toward me. I rushed up to him expressing amazement that he was alive and safe. “I came looking for you and was afraid that you had been killed,” I said. “I know you did,” he replied. “I saw you, but I didn’t dare run out.” And then, contrary to all usual interpersonal aloofness that characterizes cultures in Southeast Asia, he stepped forward and threw his arms around me. Hugging me, he said something that I will never forget: “Now I know what it means to be an American.” Lessons Learned Eventually, we evacuated more than 1,000 Americans from Cambodia and had the satisfaction of knowing that we did not have one citizen hurt, wounded, or killed. A few months later, after the fighting had subsided and Americans could return to the country, a man who said he was from Salt Lake City came to the embassy and asked to see me. When I expressed puzzlement about why he was there, he explained that he had been sent by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to thank me for “your heroic efforts” to ensure that the Mormon missionaries in Cambodia were safe. Our perilous situation was further exacerbated by the absence of any Marine Security Guards; we were literally a Benghazi-like embassy.