Phnom Penh is one of our oldest centres in the Far East having been inherited from the Air France network with the creation of SITA .
At this time it was located under the staircase of the Hotel Royal, Avenue du Marechal Joffre. The staff was made of a single operator who was communicating in Morse code with the Saigon centre from where the messages were forwarded to Tananarive and from there to Paris.
The radio equipment included a transmitter Marconi 1151 with a spare. It is the transmitter fitted in the “heavies”, Halifax and Lancaster of the RAF, easily recognizable with its three pairs of blue, yellow and red large tuning knobs, more visible in the darkness during a night flight. The receiver was a BC 342 from US Army supplies.
Today the Hotel Royal is operated by the Raffles Group of Luxurious Hotels and the small space under the staircase being renovated, made sound proof and air-conditioned, is being used as an Internet bureau for the guests.
The extension of the Phnom Penh centre started soon after the independence of Cambodia, the creation of Royal Air Cambodge operating a Dakota and a Caravelle, the coming of new airlines such as Air Vietnam and CSA from Czechoslovaquia, and the opening of off-line offices. It was also the time when SITA was attempting to take over the Civil Aviation network and a European Chief of Centre, Mr Pradines, was posted there for two years. From there on the centre was opened 12 hours a day with 3 operators. To accommodate such staff SITA rented a room in the right wing of the hotel and renovated it as its main office.
Siem Reap began to develop with the tourism for Angkor – a daily Dakota flight from Phnom Penh, meaning around twenty passengers. China was building, as a gift to Cambodia, a concrete runway suitable for the new long haul jets. On the request of Royal Air Cambodge I installed a radio-Morse centre at the Grand Hotel d’Angkor. The staff was made of a single operator, Mr Bouth Bin.
The take over of the Civil Aviation network did not materialise and Mr Pradines’ contract was not renewed. However the traffic was increasing steadily and a radio-teletype circuit was implemented between Phnom Penh and Saigon. Actually there was none RTTY experts in town and the PTT supplied us with all the equipment, up to us to implement and operate it. I installed that equipment, our operators learnt quickly how to tune it and the circuit was running perfectly. To accommodate all the new hardware SITA had to rent part of the hotel cellar, a sometime flooded area, but the wiring had been made high enough to avoid any problem except for the staff who in such occasions had been walking in the water.
Meanwhile Mr Ruelle, my boss then, had taken a new post in Africa and myself was appointed SITA Representative in Thailand. Based in Bangkok I implemented SITA in Sri Lanka and New Zealand and took control of Tahiti and New Caledonia, the latter place I had already built up technically.
The lack of technician in Cambodia was a real problem especially that we had to do everything by ourselves and could not rely on any support from the PTT. I was visiting Phnom Penh on a monthly basis. I owned a Citroen 2CV which while I was not in Cambodia was stored in an Air France hangar at Pochentong airport. That set-up was giving me the mobility required to maintain the teletypes in town and airport, to visit airline offices and occasionally to carry some equipment to Siem Reap. As for the maintenance of the PNH centre I was doing it at night when the circuits were closed. I do not know how many nights I spent in the Royal’s cellar. The Far East is full of ghosts, at least in people’s mind. A hotel night-watcher surprised to see me so often at night in such place told me: “ Monsieur, if one day in future there is a ghost in that cellar I know it will be yourself!” At least I know what will be my residence… one day, in the future !!!
A local, Mr Ung Pokeng, replaced Mr Ferlicot leaving for Paris.
Then started the Khmers Rouges episode. The last message from Ung Pokeng was: “Giant copters are landing at the American Embassy, the situation will fizzle out”.
Pol Pot and his colleagues, mostly former students coming back from France, had decided to implement their own conception of a Socialist State. All cities were emptied with their inhabitants sent to the fields and forests since townsmen were looked at as capitalists. About two millions men perished during the Khmers Rouges period for a country of six millions people.
Exasperated by the raids on its own territory, especially in the Ha Tien province, the Vietnamese army entered the country to install a new Cambodian government. The Khmers Rouges retreated to the west near the Thai border and the city of Phnom Penh was liberated. However the Khmers Rouges government was still recognized by France, China and the USA whereas Russia supported the new government and was opening air routes to Cambodia. As a consequence I was approached by Aeroflot to re-establish a valid airline communication network in that country.
With J Bosc, my assistant for most of the Asian socialist countries, we went to Phnom Penh where some Russian and Cambodian officials greeted us. The first thing we noticed was that all our previous equipment had disappeared, but the saddest part was to learn that all our staff were dead. We visited a school, which had been used as a jail not far from our former centre. There were still dry blood all around, chains by which senior prisoners were attached to their iron beds were still there, and skulls and bones were lying on the floor. In a classroom, members of a family were crying and praying over the rests of a member of the government who had probably fallen in disgrace and been executed.
Later we learnt that Bouth Bin, the Siem Reap operator had been shot dead in front of his centre, but we found his son and we help him financially to start a new life.
I had in mind to find out how our Phnom Penh staff, Ung Pokeng, Chhieng, Ath Loun, Thanh and the office boy, had ended. During another visit I returned to the former school. The prisoners, at least some of them, were requested to writes a confession of their crimes. I read a quantity of such documents and I still remember the one written by a Eurasian: ”I was born in France but I wanted to see the country of my Cambodian mother. I found a job and I stayed here because I love the place” He was executed all the same. After some hours spent standing up in that ossuary near a heap of skulls I decided to give up a search which in any case could not give me more than a bit of knowledge about how the staff died.
Moving to a happier note, here is a brief anecdote. Each country has its own culinary customs, which may look strange to those not initiated to them. J Boss and self were having lunch in a quite informal place with some staff of the Russian Embassy where these people used to order Chinese noodle soups. As soon as having been provided with the soup my neighbour said: “Where are the baguettes (meaning chopsticks in French)!” I told him:” Just here beside your bowl”, he said:” no, the French baguettes”. The servant who was familiar with his customers’ habits came back with a bunch of French bread baguettes and each of our friends took half a baguette, cut it into pieces and smashed them into his own bowl of noodle soup, which started overflowing. I think one needs a very solid appetite to absorb such thick mixture. When leaving the place the servant told me: “That is what they are ordering every time they come here!”
Technical progress allowed us a relatively fast recovery of the Phnom Penh centre. It was no more necessary to install HF transmitters and receivers, to find enough space to implement long wire antennas. One small VSAT station at the airport, another one in town and Cambodia was again connected to the air transportation world. J Boss found a small villa in town to replace the former centre at the Royal Hotel and SITA was reborn in Phnom Penh.
However I still hold in memory the souvenir of our former staff that I had known for more than 20 years. While being on their own most of the time these operators provided a service always qualified as steady and excellent by all local users.
https://wikisita.com/gallery/far-east/nggallery/far-east/Phnom-Penh
Bernard Leroy
