ABSTRACT
Rank-and-file soldiers were shrouded in myths. Most of the rank-and-file soldiers experienced an increase in their social and political status during the Khmer Rouge regime. Khmer Rouge rank-and-file soldiers exhibited the same ethical guidance pattern of increasing the value placed on their acts as soldiers as did the rank and file within the non-Communist factions. Most of the rank-and-file soldiers came from the north-eastern part of Cambodia, where famines were the worst after 1979, fights with the Vietnamese military were fierce, and aid distributions in close proximity: "We heard that we would have nothing to eat if we stayed in the interior and we also heard that there was a humanitarian organization over there, so we decided to go". Thus, within the rank-and-file soldiers, the main difference between habitus groups lay in the age of the soldiers and whether they had experienced something other than a society at war.
