Cambodian’s longest night began on the morning of April 17, 1975. Gradually the Khmer rouge guns and rocket launchers, which had continued to hail death and fire onto the defenseless city of Phnom Penh through the night and into morning, fell silent. The longtime residents of the capital called their children inside and locked the doors. The majority of Phnom Penh’s people at the end of the five-year war, the countless refugees from the zones of fighting who were not favored with the luxury of fixed homes, clustered around pagodas, schools, ministries, and other public buildings. Soldiers of the government army ditched their weapons and blended into the population. The few remaining foreigners – diplomats, journalists, aid worker – gathered in the hotel Le Phnom, which they had declared a neutral safety zone under Red Cross auspices, or in the spacious grounds of the French embassy. The city waited nervously, its people trembling when an occasional burst of small-arms fire crackled nearby.