Oral Histories
of the 100 Hours
"Football War"

El Salvador - Honduras 1969

Civilian Volunteer with the National Guard

by David E. Spencer

I started working with army intelligence in 1968, but my ideas were so radical that they sent me over to work for Chele Medrano, the head of the National Guard. My relation with Medrano was not close, but he had a certain use for me and I had a certain use for him, so we worked together. We saw how things were developing in the country and began to make contingency plans for it. What we saw coming was the guerrilla war we are going through today. While we were in this process, the problem with Honduras developed. We saw the war coming and tried to accelerate its occurrence.

For example we proposed launching a mission to fly in a small plane over Honduras and drop 60mm mortar rounds down on the Hondurans to provoke a violent response that would give us an excuse to launch the war. However, events took care of themselves and this proved unnecessary. A friend and I were sent to the front at Citala to see what we could do. We looked more like mercenaries than soldiers. I was wearing a green pair of pants and a camouflage jacket. They issued me a Madsen sub-machinegun, a bag full of ammunition and a bag full of grenades. Our appearance was so unconventional that we were once attacked in the house we were staying by Salvadoran soldiers who mistook us for Hondurans.

While we were at Citala we also received two foreign mercenaries. One was a Frenchman, Jeane something or other, a veteran of Katanga. The other was an American whose name I don't remember. The American said that after this war he was going to Colombia and offered to take me with him. At this house I planned an operation that I code-named "Vulcano." I asked for, and received aerial photographs of Puerto Cortez, Honduras. The plan was to fly a plane to Guatemala loaded with a speed boat equipped with a 81mm mortar and a .50 caliber machine-gun. We would land at a friend's ranch in this country that was on the coast. From here we would launch a raid on the Honduran oil refinery, perforate the large fuel tanks with our weapons and then light the spilt oil on fire. We would then return to Guatemala, load up the plane and fly back to El Salvador.

When I went to the National Guard headquarters, I couldn't find Medrano and the second in command treated me like a criminal. He took away my pistol and began to interrogate me. "Where did you get the photographs?" I told him I got them from the air force. He then informed me that the oil tanks were owned by Shell Oil, and they wouldn't like us attacking their installations. He wouldn't authorise the issuing of the weapons, and since Medrano wasn't there, the only possibility was the Army Headquarters. We got no commitment here, and in the end the operation was cancelled. We were told that if we wanted to continue helping to go back up to the front at Citala. We were told to go out and patrol in front of the lines.

They issued us a night vision scope, but when we went to use it, we found that the batteries were dead. We had to go all the way back to San Salvador to get new batteries. By the time we got them, the war officially started. They told us that if we wanted to continue helping, to go to the front at EL Amatillo. We agreed and left. We drove to San Miguel, and then up to the front.

We arrived at a place where they were holding a whole bunch of civilian prisoners accused of belonging to the Mancha Brava (5). With nothing else to do, we decided to interrogate the prisoners and have some fun. We set it up as a psychological operation. We went in and grabbed the first Honduran and said stuff like "You have the face of a scoundrel," grabbed him by the hair and dragged him off into a room separated from the main room by a wall. This wall was so old and worn that it looked like where executions had taken place.

To increase the psychological effect we set up a pair of funeral candles and burnt them on either side of where our prisoner was set. We blindfolded and gagged him and then faked like we were beating him, pounding the wall with our fists, imitating yelps of pain, and finally shooting the wall. For extra effect we killed some chickens and splattered their blood up on the wall and on the floor. The first man was taken out and then the next brought in. After hearing all our antics, the prisoners from the next room began telling everything. We got them to agree to identify members of the Mancha Brava from behind a screen. The men we "interrogated" identified three men, and these were passed on to higher headquarters. Our night of fun caused some wild rumours to circulate and the next day the officer that was responsible came over in a panic thinking we had murdered all of his prisoners. He was very relieved when he found out that not one had been physically injured.

After this episode we went up closer to the front. We were accompanied by an army officer and walking along when I suddenly heard a loud boom. I was so startled that I jumped down to the ground thinking that someone was firing at us. I was embarrassed to find out that the noise was not a shell for us, but a Salvadoran artillery battery that I hadn't seen opening fire from behind us.

As we moved closer to the front, I also began to realise that no Salvadoran soldiers were wearing a camouflage jacket like the one I had on, but I did see some Honduran officers taken prisoner wearing a similar jacket. I mentioned this to the officer we were with and he suggested that I take the jacket off, as the Salvadoran soldiers might easily fire on us. I figured it was better to go shirtless than to be dead.

A little later on we were told that one of us could go on a reconnaissance mission in a small private plane. I decided that there was no way I was going up in that plane with all the Honduran Corsairs flying around. Luckily, my friend wanted to go on that mission. The other mission was to continue interrogating prisoners. I spent the rest of the war conducting interrogations using the psychological techniques I had developed earlier. However, they did not work so well because the officer I was with was not too refined. You know that when someone is in physical pain, they'll tell you anything they think you want to hear to stop the pain. Most of the information he obtained was completely useless.

Footnotes

(5) The Mancha Brava was an organized mob that terrorised Salvadorans living in Honduras, committing atrocities and confiscating Salvadoran property.

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