The Drowned Scars of Vietnam and Cambodia: Jon Swain’s ‘River of Time’

It is an appalling yet all-too-familiar dereliction that I studied various military histories throughout Scottish high school, including the Vietnam War, and yet emerged on the other side utterly oblivious to the magnitude of inhumanity wrought on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during that conflict.

The horrors of the Vietnam War represented one of the darkest periods in all of recorded history, during which the lives of countless millions were decimated. That such extreme suffering can even be endured is almost as shocking as the realisation that one human being could willingly inflict such violence on another. But from the heart of that incomprehensible darkness arose the most arresting acts of courage. For ultimately, the causes, nature, and consequences of this terrible war lie with the imperialist impulses, insecurities, incompetencies, and vulnerabilities inflicted by international pressures and ideological influences on three formerly colonised nations, particularly by France and the US.

River of Time is the first-hand account of the tragedies in Vietnam and Cambodia by a lone British journalist, Jon Swain, from 1970 to 1975 and is undoubtedly the most powerful book I have ever read. Swain’s journey, and the journey of several of his closest friends in the turbulent world of war journalism at that time, have even been depicted on the screen, in the Oscar-winning film The Killing Fields. Swain lived in Indo-China for five years in the 70s for the duration of the American participation in the Vietnam War, and what he witnessed and was a part of was appalling, inspiring, shattering, and devastating in equal measure. I was so staggeringly ignorant of all of it.

The horrors inflicted by the Americans, the Khmer Rouge, and Vietcong alike undoubtedly rival any and all of the most brutal, violent, and senseless wars every fought. This is not to say they should ever be compared or that such a comparison should inform our understanding of the events to any degree but more to further elucidate the gaping lacuna in my own knowledge, especially as someone who was literally taught about this conflict at school. I truly feel deeply affected by what I have read. Particular moments that burn in my mind are the family separations, the death of children and babies, Swain’s time in captivity in Ethiopia, the heinous torture carried out by the Khmer Rouge, and in particular the unimaginable sadistic cruelty of the notorious Comrade Duch, in charge of the most terrifying death camp in Cambodia. But what disturbed me the most was the account of the merciless rape and slaughter of thousands of girls as young as 10 by the pirates of the South China Sea as a beleaguered people tried to flee the Communist regime after the war. Such incidents were almost too difficult to read but I don’t know what else to do but look with both eyes and listen with both ears and attempt to understand.

Once, in the early 70s, when Swain was living in Phnom Penh, several disgruntled soldiers who had yet to be paid cast a handful of grenades into a cinema across the road from his apartment. Swain carried a small girl from the ruins, shrapnel embedded all through her body. No ambulances came, no police – nothing. He desperately put the girl in the back of his car, along with four more of the fatally wounded and frantically drove to the nearest hospital. But he wasn’t even allowed through the gates. They were civilians, and it was a military hospital. Swain was forced to hurtle back to the other side of the town to the civilian hospital, where a doctor finally grudgingly accepted them after first refusing. Swain mentions the prevalence of fatalism in Indo-China at the time, and so many doctors demanded drugs and resorted to accepting bribery. But, despite everything, the girl died anyway. The cinema was closed and the authorities vowed to find the perpetrators. But several weeks later it was open again with another Hollywood film playing. It was as if the whole incident had never happened…

Swain writes so passionately and eloquently of the natural beauty of Cambodia, which only serves to amplify the visceral impact of its utter decimation by the war. The raw vitality and dizzying charm of Phnom Penh, of Saigon, of the countryside, the people, are why he fell so in love with this corner of the world like so many of the journalists who visited it did, many of whom lost their lives in the pursuit of the truth, in the pursuit of freedom and justice for a people oppressed and hurt beyond comprehension.

I read this book while travelling in China, evoking an even greater longing within me to see and to know and to start chipping away at my vast glaciers of ignorance. I have the incredible opportunity of volunteering at a school for children with disabilities in Hanoi this July, and so I cannot wait to glimpse that beauty for myself. One fact remains certain, that Jon Swain’s River of Time will stay with me for the rest of my life as one of the most soul-cleaving books I have ever and will ever read.

“Nature spoke with nightfall. From a thousand arbours in the forest came the hum of insects. Then darkness dropped. The silence became complete. The moon rose and crept through the clouds, its shifting light forming obscure patterns on the waters. I felt the river carrying my body on a current of happiness. A host of memories passed before my eyes: strolls by moonlight through the temples of Angkor; the warmth and smile of a child’s face. Aspects of Cambodia which are true and good. I always hope that the perfect combination of time, place and love that made Indo-China unique, a Paradise for me, will come together again. I am ever hopeful, but how difficult it is to believe that it ever can.”