Oral Histories
of the 100 Hours
"Football War"

El Salvador - Honduras 1969

Second Lieutenant, 1st Battalion, TON

by David E. Spencer

I remember on the morning of the 16th, that the 1st battalion attacked toward Nueva Ocotepeque led by an M-3 tank. However, as it moved toward Honduran positions, it ran out of gas. The helpless tank now began to attract considerable Honduran fire. With Honduran bullets striking the tank, the crew abandoned the vehicle as Salvadoran troops roared with laughter.

One of our mortar sections hid behind the tank, and during the fighting was able to infiltrate behind the Honduran positions and begin dropping shells on the Hondurans. The Hondurans thinking it was their own mortars making a mistake, sent runners back to tell the mortars to fire 200 meters further out. The runners were taken prisoner. Later on that day we took Nueva Ocotepeque and the Hondurans retreated up the road toward Santa Rosa de Copan.

The next day we were ordered to drive up the road with some National Guards and link up with another unit of National Guards that had supposedly cleared the area. As we reached a place called El Portillo, we were ambushed by the Honduras. At El Portillo, the road runs through a ravine with steep hills on either side. The Hondurans could have wiped us all out, but they were too anxious to open fire and didn't wait until all of the trucks were in the ambush zone. They fired on the first truck. We were ordered to dismount and advance up the hill. We were riding in a bus.

When the firing started we got off quick and began running up the hill like we had been ordered. When we looked back, no one was behind us. We stopped and waited for the night. In the middle of the night we crossed over the hill, and walked right through Honduran positions. We could hear the soldiers talking and equipment clinking, but we didn't know who they were at the time. Now I'm sure they were Hondurans. We didn't talk to anyone and just kept on marching, right down to the road. We just kept walking back toward Nueva Ocotepeque.

Finally we saw someone on the road and prepared to shoot. We identified ourselves as Salvadorans and waited for a response. It was some National Guard troops that turned their position over to us and decided to withdraw now that another group was there. Our platoon stayed on the road, until they were finally contacted and ordered to withdraw and establish better positions further down the road.

Oral Histories:

Back to Table of Contents: Booklet No. 7, Leticia Conflict
Back to El Dorado List of Issues
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1998 by The South and Central Military Historians Society
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com