Bedizened with flags and bunting, the dredge Manhattan, a $600,000 gift to Siam from the ECA, last week lay alongside a Bangkok wharf. After yellow-robed Buddhist priests chanted prayers, Siam's Premier Phibun Songgram, clad in gleaming white, made a formal speech accepting the dredge from the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires. Grouped around Phibun were the fashionably dressed ladies & gentlemen of Bangkok's diplomatic corps. The first inkling of trouble came when a fluttery British lady in long gloves and a floppy picture hat was approached by a smooth-shaven young Siamese marine, who said quietly: "Please step to one side, Madam. We are about to arrest the Premier."
The lady stepped nimbly aside as a squad of ten heavily armed marines followed the first one up the gangplank. An ECA official who also got in the way was peremptorily brushed aside. A moment later, before anybody fully realized what had happened, Siam's Premier, waving a cordial farewell to his erstwhile guests, was whisked away upriver in a navy landing craft. A fusillade of gunfire splattered over the heads of the crowd, and the elegantly garbed guests on the dredge dived for the deck like well-trained rangers.
Thus began another of the coups d'état characteristic of Siamese politics.
Army v. Navy. Unification of the armed services has made even less progress in Siam than in the U.S. In the two decades since Siam became a constitutional monarchy, political control has oscillated violently between the champions of either its army or its navy. The last successful Siamese coup in 1947 jolted navy-backed Premier Pridhi Banomyong, leader of Siam's pro-allied underground during World War II, out of power, and supplanted him with Army Man Phibun, a wartime Japanese collaborationist who is now an ardent friend of the West. Last week, with Phibun held prisoner on the warship Sri Ayuthia in the harbor, the navy announced that a new government, headed—with Siamese illogic—by a dissident ex-army officer, was taking over. The army supported Foreign Minister Nai Warakan Baucha as interim Premier.
Marines v. Police. Meanwhile, a full-fledged battle raged in Bangkok. Women seized their children, and cart ponies reared in their traces as the first detachment of soldiers came racing down Ploen Chit Road with bayonets fixed. As twilight fell, artillery fire was rocking the city streets. The navy established a beachhead at Lumphini Amusement Park. The army dug in at the Sports Club.
Time & again during the first night, the city was plunged into darkness as a main power plant became the scene of fierce engagements between marines and police. It changed hands five times during the night. Every time the power was restored, each party took the opportunity to broadcast the news that the revolution was over and it had won.