The Hunters Are Hunted

A bloody surprise on the mountain for attacking troops

The fighting around the Guazapa volcano was observed firsthand by TIME Photographer Harry Mattison, the only journalist permitted to accompany the Salvadoran troops for three days during the fiercest combat. Mattison's account begins as he boards a helicopter gunship:

The sun is already beginning to slant low as we head toward the volcano. Smoke trails in long plumes from a dozen places on the mountainside. We come in over a cluster of bombed-out buildings, low enough to see through the gaps in the crushed orange tile roofs. The first cracks of ground fire come up at us, and the door gunners rear from their seats in their harnesses on either side of the chopper and shoot back. The ship reverberates with the sound of alternating bursts of fire, left and right.

We seem to be floating, going slower and slower, wheeling around these buildings. No one is visible on the ground. The ship yaws and weaves in and out through the smoke. The left gunner's weapon jams. He stares stunned and confused at his weapon as the second gunner erupts into obscenities. Now all the crew is shouting, and the pilot angrily drops the helicopter closer to the target and orders the second gunner to take all the ammunition. We are completely exposed on one side of the craft, but the pilot wants to fire until the last bullet, and so we circle around the firing zone over and over again, corkscrewing to favor our "good side." The last ammo finally runs through the gun only when the light has gone and the sun is sitting pale on the slope of the volcano.

We angle off the slopes at treetop level. When we are almost on a ridge line, an entire column of army troops appears, dark figures moving like bearers through the high, waving grass. They fan out around the ship and fire continuously back at the tree line. More men come running with bodies slung over their shoulders, dropping them hurriedly at the chopper door and darting away. There is something imploring in all the eyes that I can see. Nobody wants to touch the bodies. The dead men's shirts are off and at first I think they are guerrillas until I see the army boots. The soldiers are very young. Most of them seem to have been hit in the head.

While we are still hovering inches off the ground, bodies are heaved onto the chopper floor and stacked on top of each other, the wounded sitting or lying against the dead. A sergeant yanks off two unwounded soldiers who have managed to jump on and desperately grab the door. As we move forward heavily, as if drugged by the new weight, one of the gunners pushes off another stowaway. He sprawls on the ground a yard beneath us. The one interloper who did make it into the craft does not talk. He sits in the doorway, legs swinging in the rush of air, staring at the volcano, where the sun has set, leaving a ribbon of red across the sky. Nobody says anything on the way back.

When we land, one of the wounded tries to disentangle himself from the limbs of the dead. A soldier in regular uniform starts throwing gear onto the ground, then the dead. The corpses are arranged around the gunship, one here, one over there, one face up, another face down. A medic leads the stowaway off. The crew still stands by the craft, but no one wishes to move or speak. It is a moment of shock and disgrace. I squeeze the pilot's shoulder. "You see," he says, "here there really is a war going on."

The teams of guerrillas come from the base of the volcano, slipping through the army lines in the darkness to attack small outposts. They dress themselves up in army uniforms to greet a returning patrol or a lone watchman. Earlier they killed two guards near the gate of the hospital that is also used as a temporary barracks in Suchitoto, a once prosperous town five miles from the foot of the volcano.

Tonight an army doctor has called in a civilian force to protect us. The heads of the men have been shaved and their ears seem too big under their caps. Their uniforms look too small or too big and they have basset hound eyes from a lifetime of taking orders. But they stay up all night so the regular troops can sleep on the cold tiles of the town square.

The guerrillas keep up their probes all night long. The heavy firing was no more than four blocks away from the hospital. A student nurse's eyes are wet when she talks about how frightened she becomes. Most of the beds in the hospital have no mattresses. The toilets are outside. In the kitchen, blackened by smoke, a cracked plastic plate with an "Alliance for Progress" logo lies on a shelf among mouse droppings and rotting grains of rice. On the wall of a nearby building, huge white letters shout: DEATH TO RED PRIESTS. On other walls are the red and white graffiti of the guerrillas.

The call comes in on the radio of a command post on Guazapa. A wounded officer is at the village of Palo Grande. The chopper pilots discuss strategy with the commanding colonel over the luncheon table. Can they get a small chopper in to pick him up? No way, say the pilots, the area is too hot. One pilot took eleven holes through the floor on the last pass. They decide to send in two gunships.

We scramble to the helicopter and angle out low and fast while the door gunners begin checking the feed of the cartridge belts into the breeches of their weapons. Suddenly the guerrillas' fire shakes the aircraft violently. The door gunners respond with bursts of pinkish red tracers that hit the ground like sparklers. Even at 1,000 ft., the ground looks too close. The firing from the ground gets lighter and we come in low, blurring at treetop level for nearly half a mile. The blossom of a purple smoke grenade opens beneath us. Four figures run toward us carrying a man. Before the wounded and unconscious officer is even inside, we are taking off again. The soldier who brought the officer on board sits beside him and holds his hand during the ride back.

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