The Spirit of a Fighter

My name is Vannead Horn. I turned fifty-eight years old at the end of January 2016. In fact, I was a twenty-year-old young boy who lost his parents and siblings at the end of 1978 in the killing fields of the Khmers Rouges, Cambodia.
I succeeded in escaping from my home country to France in January 1981, where I became its citizen by starting to work first as a gardener and then as an engineer with a master's degree in electronics and computers.

As time went by, as I felt that I had succeeded in rebuilding a family of my own, I ended up as a man who has lives on three different continents of our Mother Globe (Asia, Europe, and America). I felt it was time for me to open my past and my chest so that I could show my wife, my children, and my grandchildren who I really was and the lovely relationship between my parents, siblings, and me. By having such a wish, I would especially like to send my tender message to heaven so that my parents and siblings know how much I have continued loving them until this very day.

In other words, I am infinitely happy and proud of myself as the sole survivor of my lost family, as the invincible carrier and transmitter of their genes, for the rest of my life and beyond.

As such, throughout my own book now, I would love for all of my adopted family, brothers and sisters around the world, who read this book to feel, as I do, that our families are very important and supportive to all of us.

THE SPIRIT OF A FIGHTER is a story about a person who was born in one of the poorest countries in the world, Cambodia. In fact, since the very first day of his life, he was not only condemned to be a kid living with a poor family in a poor country, but a kid who was victim of the cold war of the World Powers, the civil war and the genocide perpetrated by his own people, the Khmers Rouges in their famous Killing Fields.


In this respect, in 1978 when he was only 20 years old, he was the sole survivor of his loving family of seven. But he, himself escaped from Cambodia and went to France in 1981 with his wife and 6 month-old baby boy. He became citizen of his new adopted Mother Land and started working there, first as a gardener, then as an engineer, and in 2004 he immigrated to the United States of America. In his new land of freedom and dreams, he continued to work as Engineer while his wife operated a
Donut shop as the principal investor. In fact, the book provides details about the personality of a boy who did not want to accept his unlucky destiny by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. As such, by this book, he wants to show the whole world how such a very poor kid could fight and manage his life from being bullied by his peers in his home country, and how he could survive the Killing Fields of the Khmers Rouges.


Certainly by his own discipline, and aided by a sense of freedom's joy, he sought not only to succeed, but to excel by getting a Master's degree in engineering while in France. A degree he used and helped his three children to understand, love and work hard to be awarded the same degree.


In such a spirit, I, Vannead HORN, the author of this book who has lived in three different continents, would just like to share my story in which I thoroughly describe how love from my family, despite different and tragic experiences, encouraged me to grow, survive and excel in life and built in me a character that was joyous and successful. This power can be found in any family which is nourished in love.