El Salvador: We Are from These People

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At the top of the hill in a cornfield, we ran into a full-scale firefight. The guerrillas opened up with a .30-cal. machine gun from a clump of trees on a neighboring hilltop. Captain Juan Vicente radioed to Red Troop, an infantry unit operating near by. "Chele, Chele [Blondie], this is Grapefruit," he barked. "We have contact with their machine gun." He ordered Red Troop to move up and try to cut off the rebels. Turning to his own men, he muttered, "They're firing away like madmen. Let's hope they'll use up all their ammunition." Lieut. Jorge, a squad commander, struggled to set up a 60-mm mortar while his men fired M79 grenade launchers at the enemy gunners. When the first mortar shell overshot its target, a taunting cry echoed from the guerrillas' hilltop position: "Come and get us, you queer cowards!"

Jorge then ordered up fire support from the armored cars' 90-mm guns back in Palo Grande. Captain Juan Vicente warned him to make sure of the coordinates or the guns would "blow us to hell too." The salvos were on target; after two rounds the machine gun fell silent. There was no way to tell whether the shells had hit it or whether the guerrillas had decided to retreat.

The soldiers fanned out along a deadend track leading to Cerro los Ganchos, a favorite guerrilla observation post. Along the way, they stopped to search deserted farms, with their seed bins full of grain and with little family shrines with holy pictures on their plain walls.

The Giron ranch, in Cerro los Ganchos, was searched more thoroughly than the others. While a sniper with bad aim kept M16 bullets zinging through the banana leaves, soldiers discovered a hidden gun position, two first-aid backpacks, a homemade grenade, a Claymore mine and a 100-year-old muzzle-loading rifle.

From the ranch, with its commanding view of the surrounding country and the Guazapa volcano, sharp-eyed soldiers picked out two figures armed with rifles moving down the mountainside. "When they are in range, tell them to halt with hands up," the captain ordered. The call echoed over the valley, but the two figures chose to run. The soldiers bowled them over with their G3s. One fell on his back; a red stain appeared on his shirt. Two other guerrillas were also killed that afternoon from the Giron veranda.

By evening Black Troop had used stones to set up a defensive position in the yard. They expected a counterattack. In the cookhouse, meanwhile, soldiers started to prepare tortillas. Then came an order: "Chicken to the pot." Laughing and tripping over one another, the soldiers finally managed to catch 20 or so chickens around the farmhouse. As night fell, Red Troop arrived; a group of women and children also came to seek protection. A nightlong thunderstorm kept the guerrillas away, but it also obliged the troops not on guard duty, officers and men alike, to sleep on the veranda, with its large population of aggressive fleas.