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But Thailand's conservative forces, by now fearful of the nation's steady drift to the left and its vulnerability to pressures from its Communist neighbors, fought back. Police seized two students who were putting up anti-Thanom posters and summarily hanged them. Several thousand right-wing vocational students known as "Red gaurs" (wild buffaloes) demanded that the left-wing students be ousted from the university.
A student skit triggered the final crisis, and the coup. Selecting a youth who resembled Thailand's Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, 24, the leftists staged a mock hanging. Gruesome pictures of the charade were splashed all over Bangkok's daily papers that night. By dawn, an enraged mob of 10,000 rightists armed with rifles, swords and clubs began attacking Thammasat. They were met by M-16 gunfire and grenades. Then the troops moved in.
Spearheaded by a dump truck that smashed through the main gate, Thai paratroops, border guards and marines rushed in. Peppering the buildings with small arms fire, grenades and anti-tank shells, the soldiers swept through the campus. The toll: 41 dead (only two of them police) and 180 injured. "They were out for blood," said one Western newsman who had covered the war in Viet Nam. "It was the worst firefight I've ever seen." Huddled in terror on the central soccer field, student captives were stripped to the waist and kicked around by swaggering soldiers. Shoes, watches, eyeglasses and golden Buddha medallions were confiscated. The wounded were left to bleed—drawing flies in the noonday sun, while military doctors awaited "instructions" from their commanders.
A few desperate students managed to escape by the Chao Phya River at the rear of the campus. Others who ran for the streets were set on by the rightist mob. Several were beaten close to death, then hanged, or doused with gasoline and set afire. One was decapitated. The bodies of the lynched victims strung up on trees were mutilated by rioters, who gouged out their eyes, slit their throats and lashed at them with clubs and chains.
Radio Omens. From Thammasat, the mob moved on to Government House, where a tearful Seni Pramoj, who may well have known about the military's plans, offered his capitulation. "I did my best," Seni told the crowd. "I tried to keep law-and-order in this kingdom, but if you wish, I will go." The military, after taking power, promptly installed Supreme Court Justice Tanin Kraivixien, 49, as the new Prime Minister.
At week's end the junta was apparently in control of Bangkok, but it faces dangerous threats. Communist guerrillas are active in Thailand's northeastern provinces, and Radio Hanoi has denounced the coup as a plot between "American imperialists" and Thai "reactionaries." It was an ominous signal for a nation from which the remaining U.S. forces pulled out just last July, leaving the Thais to their own devices.