Homeward bound – at whatever the cost. In 1976

Around 1am on August 18, 1976, Soem Sei Lena and Nhek Veng Huor crept through a banana plantation towards the Mekong River. The former soldiers wore dark clothes and carried malaria tablets, vitamin pills, a homemade hatchet and a machete. They headed east from Prek Pra commune on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, sticking to wooded areas. Earlier, Lena had scaled a coconut tree and scoped out a route that avoided any villages.

It was dawn by the time the pair reached the river at Chroy Ampil, so they hid out in a forest until dark. When night came, each man chopped down a banana tree and pushed the buoyant trunks into the water, using them to float down the river towards Vietnam. They hoped for good luck. When the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975 and toppled the anti-communist Lon Nol regime, hundreds of Cambodian servicemen remained in the US receiving military training. Suddenly stateless, these men were given a difficult choice: stay on in the US as refugees or repatriate to Democratic Kampuchea (DK). While most chose the former, 81 opted to return.

EXCELLENT LONG ARTICLE TO BE READ HERE/ http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/homeward-bound-whatever-cost