Um Savut is a Cambodian military and career officer, anti-communist . He gained fame after as commander of a government army in 1971 [1] . The son of the driver, the younger brother of the politician Um Samut [2] . He began his military career during the reign of Norodom Sihanouk, in 1970 he supported the coup d'etat of General Lon Nol . Along with Les Kosem, he took an active part in the formation of the FULRO rebel group. Like Kosem, Savut was implicated in a secret agreement between Sihanouk and the North Vietnamese government on the smuggling of weapons for the Viet Cong partisans through the territory of Cambodia, called the “Sihanouk Trail” (similar to the “ Ho Chi Minh Trail ”) [3] .
| Um Savut | |
|---|---|
| English Um savuth | |
| Date of death | |
| Affiliation |  Cambodia |
| Years of service | ? - 1972 |
| Rank | Brigadier General |
| Commanded | Funk |
| Battles / wars | Operation Chen I |
| Communications | Um Samut , Kosem Forest |
Soon after the coup, he received the rank of brigadier general. Despite claims by American advisers that Suvut “drinks more than the entire officer corps” [4] [5] , he was appointed commander of the Cambodian army during the offensive in 1971. The mind of Savut was killed in November 1972 [2] . A film with a record of his cremation (conducted in accordance with Buddhist custom) is currently stored at the Cambodian Documentation Center [6] .
Notes
- ↑ Shawcross, W. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the destruction of Cambodia , Simon & Schuster, 1979, ISBN 978-0-671-23070-8 , pp.202-203
- ↑ 1 2 Corfield, J. and Summers, L. Historical dictionary of Cambodia , 2003, p. 437
- ↑ Ahern, T. Good Questions, Wrong Answers Archived July 24, 2009. , declassified CSI study on arms shipments through Sihanoukville during Vietnam War
- ↑ Corfield, J. Khmers Stand Up! a history of the Cambodian government 1970-1975 , Monash University, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7326-0565-0 , p.61
- ↑ A number of other versions of the story state that the object was a tin of condensed milk, rather than a cat.
- ↑ DCCAM list of films Archived July 12, 2010 to Wayback Machine , Documentation Center of Cambodia