Saloth Sar’s value to the Vietnamese sprang largely from the fact that he had links with the urban Cambodian elite, the Democrats, and the Communists in France. His unpretentious manner, his time in Europe, and his willingness to learn made up for his unimpressive academic record, his elite family connections, and his brief exposure to Marxism-Leninism. By walking to the Vietnamese frontier and offering his services he stole the march on better qualified colleagues in France like Ieng Sary, Hou Youn, and Thiounn Mumm and on radicals in Phnom Penh who were still uncertain about communism or unwilling to take risks.

Sar’s reaction to his months in the resistance is not recorded. He may have seen the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the headquarters unit as an extension of his militancy in Paris and a welcome immersion among workers and peasants reminiscent of his time in Yugoslavia. He was flattered at being singled out by Pham Van Ba and his Cambodian assistant, Tou Samouth. Perhaps he felt that his life was beginning to gather speed.

He was in little physical danger. By mid-1953 the First Indochina War, at least in the southern parts of Indochina, was dying down. The French were prepared to grant noncommunist components of the federation their independence, while pursuing their anticommunist war, primarily in northern Vietnam. In November 1953 France, pressured by Sihanouk, granted Cambodia its independence. This led Sihanouk to claim that his “royal crusade,” set in motion the year before, had been successful. Soon after, fighting between the French and resistance forces died down. Over the next few months, many noncommunist resistance units rallied to Sihanouk’s government. Those commanded by the Vietnamese waited on developments.

On the frontier, Saloth Sar continued his political education. His mentor was Tou Samouth, “a wealthy Khmer from Cochinchina” who was less than ten years older than Sar. Samouth had been affiliated with the Buddhist Institute as a monk during World War II. In 1945 he left the monkhood to become a propagandist for the Viet Minh in eastern Cambodia and among the Khmer minority in Vietnam. He joined the Indochina Communist party in 1946. Samouth was a skillful and inspiring orator. One of his former students later said that for “courtesy, modesty and easy-goingness, he was comparable to Ho Chi Minh.”5