Here followed is unofficial translation of a message from Facebook, posted on 10 April 2016, recalling the time when Samdech Techo lost his eye in the last battle to liberate the country from the Lon Nol regime.
I used to say that in time of war, people, especially youth, were hostages of the war and there was no option three for them. I made a decision to follow Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk to fight against the illegal coup conducted by Lon Nol and the aggression by the US and South Vietnamese forces.
After 6 am of 16 April 1975, I was wounded for the fifth time and the last one of 105 battles of the war I fought for five years from 1970 through to 1975. I was in coma from 16 April through to 21 April. I had to endure so much pain. I could not say anymore that one has to defend something as one do to their eyes.
In time of operation, surgeons decided to remove my eyeball with limited anesthesia and sedation. It was a great pain to my body. I also had a pain in my heart when I was misinformed that nurse Rany already married with someone else. I could not control myself.
After I had the truth that Rany did not get married yet and was still in love with me though I became a wounded man, I was happy again. Then, news came that parents had been evacuated from our native place to a new zone to undergo hard labor because my father was a militia head under the Sangkum Reastniyum (Popular Socialist) before 1970. The news shook my mind and planned a resistance against Pol Pot since when I was in hospital./.
