Time Magazine
Silence finally fell across Cambodia's battlefields last week after five years of fratricidal fighting that claimed as many as 1 million casualties, leveled once graceful Cambodian cities and scorched the tranquil countryside. Admitting the futility of further resistance, the remaining leaders of the Khmer Republic drove to a prearranged meeting place—Kilometer 6 on Route 5—and there surrendered to officers of the Communist-dominated Khmer Rouge insurgents. Not since Seoul was overrun by North Korean attackers nearly a quarter-century ago had a national capital fallen in combat to Communist troops.
White Flags. Although government leaders had been vowing "to fight until the last drop of blood," there was no attempt at a last-ditch stand. Instead, with the city's last defenses collapsing before the rebels' relentless pounding, the government military command ordered its troops to surrender their weapons to the insurgents. As announcements blared from loudspeakers mounted on army trucks, white flags and banners sprouted everywhere—from downtown buildings and shops, from the masts of government gunboats in the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, from armored personnel carriers of the government's 2nd Infantry Division.
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