zero three eleven

By Manuel Chi

About 1.5 to 3 million Cambodians were massacred. Countless men, women, and children were murdered, executed, diseased, and starved to death within the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

That's a quarter of the entire Khmi population or 15% to 30% of human life within the borders of Cambodia eradicated off this Earth by the communist forces of Pol Pot, according to studies conducted by the University of Minnesota.

Back then, I was blind to the reality that I had been cursed with. There were no questions to ask, and there were no questions to answer for my parents. I knew nothing but what I was born with, with what encircled me in my home of false fantasy.

I ventured with ever-changing friends that provided me with temporary happiness and tranquility. Me and other children sought out activities from which we valued triumph. I savored the scent of breathing trees. There was no such thing as shame in simply existing or expressing what I felt. Nothing could have ever broken the illusion cast over my perceived world. My minuscule self couldn’t have compared to what seemed like a monumental Earth.

Of course, nothing ever lasts eternally.

As I grew older, I grew an immense sense of thought. As time progressed, I figured out what it meant to be human, and I knew what truly mattered. There was no more fun, nor was there any cheer left in my desolate mindscape. Everything sank into a plane of deceiving delusion. We live to die, as there was never a meaning to life aside from the cold entropy of natural survival.

It was just so incredible to see the lustrous lines of my playful childhood become shaded in unforgiving darkness by opaque blinds. And the truth, too, was unforgiving in its long awaited reveal: the history of consequences, absolute misery, despair, and the coincidences that led to my creation.

Vanny Lonh: “I remember, I just was a young girl. My parents tell us they had a very good life before Khmer Rouge take over the country. Family live happy, financial is good, but when the Khmer Rouge come to take over, they took everything we have. We lost everything. It is very hardship for us to live everything in Cambodia lot of Cambodian families leave the country. We are just so lucky… we have chance to go to the border of Thailand and live in refugee camp in border of Thailand ''.

I speculated on where my parents came from, but my conclusions were never firm. When I was curious enough to snuff out a response, I acted upon it. At no time did I ever think that what I was looking for was residing within the walls of my own home, the calamitous lineage of my predecessors.

Vanny Lonh: “In 1974 after Cambodia in war with Khmer Rouge, the country become very poor. Every family lost everything is was hard for my family. We could not find food to eat. My family decide to leave Cambodia. We cross the border Cambodia to Thailand border. The time that we cross the border, we go by mountain to mountain. In the middle of the night, we meet some army that live in the mountain. Then we get to Thailand border, my family stay in refugee camp until we come to United States. I remember my Uncle was forced to join in the Khmer Rouge Army. He left the family from that time. We never see him again or heard anything from him. Until now, we still don’t know if he still alive or die. I was small. I remember that Khmer Rouge separate me from my family. I live in the shelter with a lot of kids the same age. They let us work every day. They don’t let us eat, they don’t give us enough food to eat. I remember my family was on the list to kill. My parents took us and escaped to the other city. We hide so they can not find us”.

It turns out my mother and her family were one of the casualties of a horrifying civil war in Cambodia. They only survived because of the sacrifices made by the brave during their dash to the Thai-Cambodian border under a cloak of nighttime darkness.

My mother told me about the people who sacrificed themselves for the survival of the weak. One was a man, a young man, who had his leg blown apart and left shredded by shrapnel from a landmine while attempting to find food from a farm. Another was an old woman, my great grandmother in fact, who starved to death just so my mother's family could eat the undesirable grains of rice that were usually thrown out.

My childish dreams of personal satisfaction soon began to fade away. My previous galvanized ambitions shifted into something different, something that would grant me worthwhile fulfillment. I understood the folly of our kind, the upending of entire civilizations, the mindless chattel for evil’s chaos.

My mother was not alone in her stories about endeavors for escape, as my father would have some stories to tell me as well.

Manuel Chi: “Joining the military academy, that was something that I wanted to do. What I completed was my military service. In Mexico, it’s called Servicio Militar Nacional, which I started when I turned 18 years old, and finished a year later. At the end of the year, I obtained my national military service card, its called La Cartilla de Identidad del Servicio Militar Nacional, which in Mexico, is issued by the Ministry of National Defense, or Secretaria De La Defensa Nacional. And for those who are at least 18 year old and have completed their national military service obligations”.

I wasn’t aware before, but now I know that my father participated in his national military service for the Mexican Army. If he were to ever deploy, he would be pulled from reserves and be embedded within the Mexican Army.

With an interest in discovering relics of the past, I found the line of the Garma family name. In my research, I found an individual of great achievement, someone of a higher calling, an exalted ranking officer in the Mexican Military. Colonel Garma, the grand commander leading the defense of Huhi from reckless revolting rebels during The Caste War of Yucatán.

Huhi was where my father's family had always settled, but it was never where the original village of Huhi stood. The previous settlers of Huhi were forced to abandon their home after the Native Mayan population indiscriminately began to kill their own people during their revolt against wealthy Spanish rulers. The old Huhi was scorched and torn to rubble. Still, when they hunted down those who fled, they were met by the unrelenting fury of the military forces who guarded what is Huhi today, commanded by Colonel Garma, my forefather. Although my forefather saved many innocent lives from the palms of death, the fact that 250,000 people perished during the long-lasting war still remains true.

In all of these recollections of the past, the epitaphs of glorious warriors and the tarnished subjects of suffering have been made known. There was no meaning in their fatuous deaths. The stench of their rotting lifeless corpses resulted from hollow lies and sinful greed. Nothing could ever prove the tremendous amount of life lost due to human conflict as right.

Was what I was doing really fate for me? Were my dreams of being some irrelevant guitarist realistic?

I may not have witnessed my mother's suffering, but I felt her trauma. As a matter of fact, she told me she was suicidal for a long, long time because her first husband abandoned her with my three half-siblings.

My father and his family history as well; how could I ever forget that legacy? How could I forget where I came from? I don't think I forgot though. I know where I came from, and it was from the grasp of avarice, as I was born from war.

I was lost, but even for a long time, I knew what I could have always been. A guardian, a protector of my nation. I knew that being a patriot for my country was an act of honor and self-sacrifice. It began infinitesimally, but grew to reach my absolute finality.

I will become a Marine, serving my country wherever I’m needed in the United States Marine Corps. The road will be rough, but there is no other path, as this was the trail that was paved for me. I will devote my heart to guarding what is important to me and make sure that what happened to my mother and the forgotten in Cambodia will never occur again.

For The Warrior Times, I’m Manuel Chi

Music Credits

Price of Freedom

ZakharValaha

https://pixabay.com/music/beautiful-plays-price-of-freedom-33106/

WAR

Lesfm

https://pixabay.com/music/main-title-war-99133/