Re: Digest for vietnam-old-hacks@googlegroups.com - 1 update in 1 topic

[Dawson]

Wow yes, Fernandez, In Tam and Long Boret -- surely the world's most approachable cabinet members and generals. There was a lady of the Agriculture Ministry but maybe that was later? She even changed her name to Kaset. 

I'm pretty sure the "mayor" nickname was Rockoff. Anyways, so far as I remember, he was in the first wave of  that "American invasion" in 1970 and had fairly quickly decided to stick around. 

I think the "mayor" title came after Lon Nol's speech to the nation that he was placing rabbits around the entire  capital in order to make  it safe from any of those invading North Vietnamese bastids.

I spent most of 1971 and first part of '72 in PP because of Kate Webb's  addventure, and Rockoff most  definitely had been killed once and saved by a good-lookin'  Scandihoovian nurse with some NGO or other by then. He  woke  up in the  hospital at Clark, found out it was charging $65 a day, ripped out all his needles and such and hitched a ride back to PP, claiming to be not much worse off than before he was killed.

My twins were one and a  half in '71 and learnt to swim in the Royal swimming pool. 55 years ago and life didn't get much better than L'Hotel Royal with huge rooms with a clanking air-con each, really good kitchen and lovely  grounds including a nice parking lot for your driver's Mercedes. Jim Gerrand of Oztrailya, Am Rong and Chhang Son -- pretty good life for a war correspondent, eh? My now late and sainted ex-wife was with us most of the time; she loved Phnom Penh.

We spent last week  of March, first week of April 1975 vacationing in Cambodia. By then, choppers were hovering above the hotel firing across the river -- my kids loved that and still remember it from  when they were just 5 years old. We didn't run into any other vacationers, heh.

The Stringer finally got on Netflix. I've seen one review that was kind of not all kind.

Summary here.

Full original here.

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Digest for vietnam-...@googlegroups.com - 4 updates in 2 topics

Donald Kirk <kirkd...@gmail.com>: Nov 26 05:14AM -0500 The NYT Magazine put the head, “Why They Call Lon Nol ‘The Mayor of Phnom Penh'" over a lengthy piece by me in mid-1971 about the fighting around the country. Included interviews with Sosthene Fernandez and In Tam, whose names may be remembered by those of us who were there. I don't recall seeing Rockoff then, had no idea he was the source of that title.

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[Donald Kirk]

Rockoff could well have originated the phrase, "Lon Nol, Mayor of PP" -- It wasn't in my story, just in the hed over my NYT Mag piece.  No idea where they got it.

By the way, that's an interesting review of "Stringer." I was there that day, did a piece that ran on p. 1 of ChiTrib. Someone working on "Stringer" called me as did someone from AP. I told them both I didn;t know who had taken the photo, didn't know Nick Ut at the time except as another face in the crowd. The good news about this debate is that it focuses attention again on the photo -- and the tragedy of war, that war and any other war. Doesn't matter who took the shot.

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