A Letter From The Publisher, Nov. 12, 1979

Cambodia is a haunted land full of wrenching memories for Marsh Clark, chief of TIME’s Hong Kong bureau. As Saigon bureau chief from 1968 to 1970, and on numerous later assignments, Clark watched the inexorable advance of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army as it seized power in 1975 and began systematically to erase Cambodian civilization. Painfully he remembers when Sean Flynn, son of Movie Star Errol Flynn, headed for the front on a photographic assignment for TIME in 1970, where he was captured by Khmer forces and, like 21 other missing colleagues, never heard from again. It was thus with mixed feelings that Clark set out for his latest visit to the Thai-Cambodian border to report this week’s cover story.

“There is no serious question,” says Clark, “that the Khmer Rouge in attempting to establish a new Cambodia—without family ties, without mail, telephones or even money—committed a form of genocide unknown to mankind since the Holocaust. Yet, one cannot look at the condition of these people today without a sense of anguish. A starving baby minutes away from death has no responsibility or knowledge of Cambodian politics. What human cruelties and failings, one wonders, have reduced tens of thousands of people to the state of dumb, brute animals?”

With assistance from Thai officials anxious to bring world attention to the tragedy on their border, Clark found his way to the rude camps where Cambodian refugees have huddled. He watched as the tattered forces of the once mighty Khmer Rouge staggered across the border. Together with TIME Stringer John Burgess, he managed to cross into Cambodia itself.

Says Clark: “On the other side, the small, mostly teen-aged force of Khmers wore stoic, hating expressions and fingered their AK-47 assault rifles nervously. Americans are no friends of theirs, having bombed Cambodia mercilessly in the early 1970s. Only after I gave them some cigarettes did they loosen up and pose for pictures. Meanwhile, the thump of Vietnamese artillery could be heard in the distance.” One bright spot in the week’s tragic tableau was the harried efforts of international relief organizations in Thailand. “Their valiant work impressed me greatly,” says Clark. “In two days, they miraculously transformed an open field into a camp with hospitals and kitchens.” But what they can achieve seems small compared with the dimensions of the disaster. Sums up Clark, who has spent a total of twelve years in six foreign bureaus: “Never have I seen people in such despair and deprivation. Not in India, Viet Nam, the Middle East or Northern Ireland. Not even in Bangladesh.”