Year Zero

 In our long running series of various polmil games about the 1970s, John B rather bravely put a game about goings on in Cambodia in the years 1970-79. Now this sort of thing isn't to everyones taste, but we usually try and keep the treatment of the subject matter respectful.

The time period was deliberately chosen to span both the latter stages of the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia itself in the late 1970s, as it put the Cambodian Civil War into a greater strategic context.

As is usual in committee type games, we had various maps and things. This one was quite useful as it showed the major communications routes. A key communication route is that most of the trade and supplies for Phnom Pen go up and down the Mekong, rather than inland from the coast. Fine as long as Saigon is in US/ARVN hands, but otherwise...

For player roles, we had:

Prince Sihanouk, John A

General Lon Nol, Tim G

Pol Pot, Jim R

Le Duan, Micheal

The PRC, Pete

and finally the good guys, those loveable spooks of the CIA, me

My job was threefold: 

1. to save Southeast Asia from being overrun by Communists and bring Cambodia into the western fold 2. disrupt and and ideally halt the transit of supplies from North Vietnam

3. avoid the use of significant US conventional forces and instead rely on mercenaries and SF

The game was run using the modern version of Matrix Games, so a structured committee game where each participant could basically try and do one 'big' thing per game phase, in this case, once per year.

They don't tend to be terribly photogenic, this is mainly what we were looking at for two evenings:

At least Tim and I hade an effort on the hats. I've got my 'The Quiet Man' CIA hat on and Tim has a French para cap with Cambodian badges - the Cambodian Army, such as it was, was very heavily influenced by the French.

The game then proceeded as what, quite frankly, was a monumental shitshow due to the conflicting objectives of all the participants.

This 1970 dated map of the provincial divisions of Cambodia was very handy.

My 'forces' were two brigades of Cambodia mercenaries, who were actually pretty good, plus a Cambodian Special Forces team, who were also pretty good. These units had all been recruited from Cambodians living in Vietnam and were excellent at blending in.

Pol Pot and his gang of thugs were up in Districts V and VI, while Sihanouk had a couple of loyal Militia Regiments and the National Police, and Lon Nol had all the better Army units, of which there weren't many - Armoured Brigade, Paras and Marines plus a Riverene unit holding the Mekong LOC open.

1970 opened with my mercs heading into districts V and VI to set up bases to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was partially successful but needed more direct support. I had one battalion detached keeping an eye on VC interdiction of the Mekong route to Phnom Pen. Meanwhile the PRC was piling supplies into the Khmer Rouge and Le Duan was busily pushing stuff down the trail into Vietnam. Lon Nol received some US military aid to beef up the Cambodian Army.

1971 saw a much more determined effort on the trail, my mercs started calling in air strikes flown from Vietnam, which worked really well and caused significant disruption. This coincided with a major US ground operation from Vietnam into Cambodia, which went down a real storm back in the US and Congress reined back heavily on direct military interventions. Meanwhile in Cambodia, all hell broke loose as Sihanouk tried to arrest Lon Nol on charges of corruption, supported by Pol Pot! The arrest attempt failed. 

1972 presented a real problem, Lon Nol was hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and it seemed Sihanouk was some sort of communist sympathiser. I had to switch CIA resources to support Lon Nol, who duly conducted a coup, siezed Phnom Pen and became President for Life. In the chaos, Pol Pots reinforced Khmer Rouge fanatics began to march southwest towards the capital.

1973 saw the Khmer Rouge on the outskirts of Phnom Pen, conducting uncoordinated attacks alongside Sihanouk, who was trying to retake the capital. These attacks failed and Pol Pot resorted to a blockade of Phnom Pen, running a campaign of terror against ship captains and their families to block river traffic on the Mekong.

By 1974, it was clear that South Vietnam was lost and I had to focus on saving Cambodia instead. I pondered assassinating Sihanouk to unify the Cambodian leadership, and even wrote the mission brief, but in the end opted to put all my forces into breaking the blockade of Phnom Pen, which was close to starving. Fortunately this succeeded.

In 1975, Lon Nol felt strong enough to mount a counter offensive against Pol Pots blockade, and suceeded in defeating the Khmer Rouge, thanks to the surprise intervention of Sihanouk on Lon Nols side. Taking advantage the chaos of defeat, I hastily rewrote the SF mission and they tried to assassinate Pol Pot instead. They nearly got him, but he escaped wounded. Damn! Meanhwhile Le Duans final offensive overran South Vietnam and Saigon fell. The river route down the Mekong wasn't much use now.

In 1976 Lon Nol and Sihanouk came to agreement that the Prince would be crowned King and take over as head of state, while Lon Nol became Prime Minister. This was eminently satisfactory and I did what I could support the new regime. Pol Pots forces fell back to their stronghold to regroup and try again later. I headed back to Langley for Medals and Champagne, having saved Cambodia, for now, at least.

We called it a day there as it would obviously be a few turns before the Khmer Rouge tried again, and John wanted to have  a washup/feedback session instead.

That was a fascinating slice of history of which I was very aware of some of the major events, but only dimly aware of others. I'd never realised that Sihanouk and Pol Pot were allies for quite some time. I've been to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but the game actually put a lot of what happened in the region in the 1970s into perspective. It is a tough subject to make a wargame out of, but I think John had succeeded admirably. We suggested a couple of minor tweaks, but for a development session it went swimmingly well.