A fter several brushes with death Post photographers Franck Nolot and

Giovanni Diffidenti became the first journalists to reach the town. This

is their diary.

Monday March 21:

Four days of trying and an immense amount of frustration finally ended when

Franck and Giovanni got permission to travel along the trail hacked out by

government forces that circles around to Pailin. The track begins at Phnom Veng,

60 km west of Battambang and near Route 10.

Italian-born Giovanni,

Franck, a Frenchman, along with L'Mekong's Philippe Abdelkafi decided the best

tactics to reach the front line was to stay close to high-ranking officers, who

could expedite their passage.

After waiting around and chatting with a

major general in his office until lunch time, the three found themselves sitting

on the tank heading west in company with 150 troops and a truck.

But the

going was far from smooth with the tank constantly having to stop and pull out

the truck from cloying mud on the trail, the result of unseasonally early

rains.

That night at camp a general invited the lensmen to photograph a

130-mm artillery battery providing support fire to an infantry detachment pinned

down by Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

Giovanni said: "It made me think about

who was on the receiving end, I didn't want anybody to get hurt, but I guess

that's war." The newsmen got a reasonable night's sleep in their

hammocks.

Tuesday March 22: After breakfast at 6 am, the three

journalists climbed back on the tank for the journey onwards, with the road

getting steadily worse and stops to free bogged down trucks in their convoy more

frequent. During a break at a small camp along the trail, Franck had a couple of

puffs on a ganja water pipe at the exhorting of soldiers. They said it would

help protect him and make him strong. Later in the day Franck came to believe

there may have been something in what they said.

Around 4.30 pm there was

a muffled but powerful explosion when the tank triggered a newly-laid mine,

sending it slewing across the trail and throwing a track. Of the 20 soldiers

sitting on the tank, two died and six were wounded, two seriously.

Franck said: "We were very lucky we were not hurt. I realized straight

away what had happened and checked myself over and thought 'Great no problem.'"

Philippe was perhaps the luckiest. Just minutes before the explosion he

had been sitting on the side of the hull which took the full force of the blast.

He moved to a position beside Franck at the rear of the turret and a rice sack

they were sitting on helped cushion the blow. Giovanni was also fortunate in

earlier being directed away from the tank and onto a truck following.

Giovanni recalls: "I looked up and saw the black smoke coming out

of the tank, then someone yelled 'ambush' and shoved me down.

"When I

looked up again everybody was jumping down and taking up defensive positions.

"I got down also and crouching down I moved towards the tank. I just

didn't know what was going on.

"I got down off the truck and asked

Phillipe for a battery for my flash. He said 'yes' but didn't do anything, he

was stunned.

"A soldier kept beckoning me over to take pictures of one of

the dead, who had been blown 20 meters from the tank by the force of the blast.

"I was looking to catch the emotion of what was happening but there was

none apart from the suffering of the wounded. The other soldiers were amazingly

cool and there was no panic."

After around 45 minutes the party split in

two, with the journalists joining soldiers heading further up the trail on foot.

The others remained behind with the wounded and vehicles.

There was

little time for the horror of the explosion to set in as the squad had to move

in single file, with the ever-present danger of more mines or an

ambush.

Two hours later the men reached camp at Phnom Damrei, passed on

the way by another tank coming down to recover the damaged tank and the dead and

wounded.

By then the clouds had burst and the journalists and soldiers

were drenched in rain and sweat as well as being hungry and tired. After a meal

with the soldiers around the camp fire, the journalists quickly fell asleep in

their hammocks despite all that had happened.

Wednesday March 23:

Another 6 am start and Philippe decided to return back up the trail due to an

approaching deadline.

The bodies of the two dead soldiers were cremated

on a makeshift pyre of firewood, with 10 soldiers paying their

respects.

Franck and Giovanni continued the journey to Pailin on one of

four crammed trucks in a convoy.

Around 11 am one of the drivers saw two

KR guerrillas crossing the road ahead and realized they were laying mines. The

convoy halted and everyone jumped down and took cover, with Franck landing

knee-deep in mud. At the same instant a B-40 rocket-propelled grenade thudded

into a tree trunk 100 meters ahead.

A firefight ensued for the next 10-15

minutes with the two sides exchanging B-40 and AK-47 fire. No one was wounded on

the government side and no casualties were left behind by the guerrillas.

Satisfied the KR had melted back into the jungle, the party moved forward on

foot for a while before the trucks caught up with them.

Now pits could be

seen dotting either side of the trail as the convoy entered a gem-mining area.

The track was littered with empty mine cases, as much a psychological tactic

against the government side to make them think it was very unsafe.

Opened

medicine bottles were left beside streams for a similar reason, with soldiers

aware of KR efforts to poison water supplies.

The convoy pulled into Sala

Krau at 4 pm. The gem-mining village was abandoned by KR guerrillas and their

families ahead of the government offensive.

The mood in the camp was

lifted by the breaking out of a beer ration. One commander was particularly

pleased, saying he hadn't had chance to get a drink for over one

month.

Franck and Giovanni spurned an offer by the commander to sleep in

a relatively comfortable room upstairs in favor of bedding down on the floor

downstairs due to the more solid protection offered by brick walls. Again they

were thanking their lucky stars later.

Thursday March 24: The camp

is rudely awoken by an attack by around 50 guerrillas backed up by a barrage of

B-40 rockets and 62-mm mortars, lobbed over from an overlooking hill two km

away.

The attack is repelled but not before five more soldiers were

injured. Franck and Giovanni kept their heads down inside the house where they

had been sleeping. A mortar landed just outside spraying shrapnel over men

hiding under a metal awning, wounding three. One of the injured had a jagged

hole torn in his shoulder.

The soldiers recovered three bodies of KR

fighters. Among the dead was a man with a leg wound who shot himself through the

neck.

Giovanni said: "They told us they thought he was an officer

because he was carrying a pistol and did not want to be captured and

interrogated."

Another exhausting day on the trail began, this time on

mostly foot with the men covering 16 km through increasingly dense jungle, with

mines and ambushes ever-present dangers.

During a hasty lunch someone

yelled to dive for cover seconds before the air was filled with the sounds of

shelling and gunfire and more B-40s. Franck managed to find an old foxhole to

dive into during the 20-minute onslaught, while Giovanni hid in some bamboo

trees.

As soon as there was a break in the gunfire the squad commander

ordered everybody back on the trail, almost as if nothing had

happened.

Giovanni recalls: "I said 'We're going now?' But in the end you

had to trust their judgment."

Further along the trail they stopped at

another captured KR village where a commander proudly displayed a captured

anti-aircraft gun and a tank.

There the two newsmen climbed on board

another tank for the final leg of their journey. From a distance they caught

sight of the imposing temple at the gateway to the town.

Giovanni said:

"All the way along I kept telling Franck we had to stay cool and not to get

excited. I felt relieved and we then began planning how we were going to

photograph the town."

At 1.30 pm they became the first Western newsmen in

the town after it had been captured by the government.

Franck said his

first impression was how well the town had been kept with carefully-tended

flower beds dotting the landscape.

Giovanni said: "It seemed like any

other Cambodian town, except that the advertisements were mainly in

Thai."

In the streets, soldiers were busy searching for the spoils of

war. There was little in the way of valuables to be found though with the KR

evidently conducting an orderly retreat well in advance of the government

offensive. Some soldiers merely contented themselves with finding a mattress to

get a good night's sleep.

Friday March 25: After breakfast and

some final photos in the town, Franck and Giovanni joined a furious scramble to

get on an Mi-8 helicopter which had landed near the town center. Khmers working

for a Japanese film crew did their best to shove everybody else off so their men

could get on board.

Many soldiers, foreign military observers and other

journalists were left behind in the melee but Giovanni dragged Franck

aboard.

Giovanni said: "There was no way we wanted to go back the same

way we came in."

Franck said: "It looked like a scene from the American

evacuation from the embassy rooftop in Saigon in 1975."

Finally after a

nerve-jangling treetop-level flight the pair were back in the relative safety of

Battambang.