The Soccer War Read online

  ‘Maybe he’ll make it,’ one of the soldiers ventured.

  ‘No way,’ the orderly replied, holding the bottle of glucose at arm’s length above the casualty.

  There was a gloomy silence. The casualty inhaled violently, as if he had just finished a long hard run.

  ‘Doesn’t anybody know him?’ one of the soldiers asked eventually.

  The wounded man’s heart was working at maximum effort; we felt its feverish thumping.

  ‘Nobody,’ another soldier answered.

  A truck was climbing the road, its motor complaining. Four soldiers were digging a hole down in the woods.

  ‘Is he ours or theirs?’ a soldier sitting by the stretcher asked.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ said the orderly after a moment’s quiet.

  ‘He’s his mother’s,’ a soldier standing nearby said.

  ‘He’s God’s now,’ added another after a pause. He took off his cap and hung it on the barrel of the rifle.

  The casualty shivered, and his muscles pulsed under his glossy yellowish skin.

  ‘Life is so strong,’ a soldier leaning on his rifle said in astonishment. ‘It’s still there, still there.’

  Everyone was absorbed, silent, concentrating on the sight of the wounded man. He was drawing breath more slowly now, and his head had tilted back. The soldiers sitting near him grasped their hands around their knees and hunched up, as if the fire was burning low and the cold creeping in. In the end—it was a while yet—somebody said: ‘He’s gone. All he was is gone.’

  They stayed there for some time, looking fearfully at the dead man and afterwards, when they saw that nothing else would happen, they began walking away.

  We drove on. The road snaked through forested mountains, past the village of San Francisco. A series of curves began, one after another, and suddenly around one curve we ran into the maw of the war. Soldiers were running and firing, bullets whizzed overhead, long bursts of machine-gun fire ripped along both sides of the road. The driver braked suddenly and at that instant a shell exploded in front of us. Sweet Jesus, I thought, this is it. What felt like the wing of a typhoon swept through the truck. Everybody dived for it, one on top of another, just to make it to the ground, to hit the ditch, to vanish. Out of the corner of my eye, on the run, I could see the fat French TV cameraman scrambling along the road looking for his equipment. Somebody shouted, ‘Take cover!’ and when he heard that order—grenades going off and the bark of automatic rifles hadn’t fazed him—he hugged the road like a dead man.

  I lunged in the direction that seemed to be the most quiet, threw myself into the bushes, down, down, as far as I could get from the curve where the shell had hit us, downhill, along bare ground, skating across slick clay, and then into the bush, deep into the bush, but I didn’t run far because suddenly there was shooting right in front of me—bullets flying around, branches fluttering, a machine-gun roaring. I fell and crouched on the ground.

  When I opened my eyes I saw a piece of soil and ants crawling over it.

  They were walking along their paths, one after another, in various directions. It wasn’t the time for observing ants, but the very sight of them marching along, the sight of another world, another reality, brought me back to consciousness. An idea came into my head: if I could control my fear enough to stop my ears for a moment and look only at these insects, I could begin to think with some sort of sense. I lay among the thick bushes plugging my ears with all my might, nose in the dirt and I watched the ants.

  I don’t know how long this went on. When I raised my head, I was looking into the eyes of a soldier.

  I froze. Falling into the hands of the Salvadorans was what I feared most, because then the only thing to look forward to was certain death. They were a brutal army, blind with fury, shooting whomever they got hold of in the madness of the war. In any case, this was what I thought, having been fed Honduran propaganda. An American or an Englishman might have a chance, although not necessarily. In Nacaome the day before we had been shown an American missionary killed by the Salvadorans. And El Salvador did not even maintain diplomatic relations with Poland, so I would count for nothing.

  The soldier was taken by surprise, too. Crawling through the bush, he hadn’t noticed me until the last moment. He adjusted his helmet, which was adorned with grass and leaves. He had a dark, skinny, furrowed face. In his hands there was an old Mauser.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘And what army are you from?’

  ‘Honduras,’ he said, because he could tell right off that I was a foreigner, neither his nor theirs.

  ‘Honduras! Dear brother!’ I rejoiced and pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket. It was the document from the Honduran high command, from Colonel Ramirez Ortega, to the units at the front permitting me to enter the region of military activity. Each of us had been given the same document in Tegucigalpa before leaving for the front.

  I told the soldier that I had to get to Santa Rosa and then to Tegucigalpa so that I could send a dispatch to Warsaw. The soldier was happy because he was already calculating that with an order from the general staff (the documents commanded all subordinates to assist me) he could withdraw to the rear along with me.

  ‘We will go together, señor,’ the soldier said. ‘Señor will say that he has commanded me to accompany him.’

  He was a recruit, a dirt farmer; he had been called up a week ago, he didn’t know the army; the war meant nothing to him. He was trying to figure out how to survive it.

  Shells were slamming around us. Far, far away we could hear shooting. Cannons were firing. The smell of powder and smoke was in the air. There were machine-guns behind us and on both sides.

  His company had been crawling forward among the bushes, up this hill, when our truck came around the corner and drove into the turmoil of war and was abandoned. From where we lay pressing against the ground we could see the thick-ribbed gum soles of his company, only their soles, as the men crawled through the grass. Then the soles of their boots stopped, then they moved ahead, one-two, one-two, a few metres forward, and then they stopped again.

  The soldier nudged me: ‘Señor, mire cuantos zapatos!’ (‘Look at all those shoes!’)

  He kept looking at the shoes of the other members of his company as they crawled forward. He blinked, weighed something in his mind and at last said hopelessly, ‘Toda mi familia anda descalzada.’ (‘My whole family goes barefoot.’)

  We started crawling through the forest.

  The shooting let up for a moment and the soldier, fatigued, stopped. In a hushed voice he told me to wait where I was because he was going back to where his company had been fighting. He said that the living had certainly moved forward—their orders were to pursue the enemy to the very border—but the dead would remain on the battlefield and, for them, their boots were now superfluous. He would strip a few of the dead of their boots, hide them under a bush and mark the place. When the war was over, he would return and have enough boots for his whole family. He had already calculated that he could trade one pair of army boots for three pairs of children’s shoes, and there were nine little ones back home.

  It crossed my mind that he was going mad, so I told him that I was putting him under my orders and that we should keep crawling. But the soldier did not want to listen. He was driven by thoughts of footwear and he would throw himself into the front line in order to secure the property lying there in the grass, rather than let it be buried with the dead. Now the war had meaning for him, a point of reference and a goal. He knew what he wanted and what he had to do. I was certain that if he left me we would be separated and never meet again. The last thing I wanted was to be left alone in that forest: I did not know who controlled it or which army was where or which direction I should set off in. There is nothing worse than finding yourself alone in somebody else’s country during somebody else’s war. So I crawled after the soldier towards the battlefield. We crept to where the forest stopped and a new scene of combat could be observed
through the stumps and bushes. The front had moved off laterally now: shells were bursting behind an elevation that rose up to the left of us, and somewhere to the right—underground, it seemed, but it must have been in a ravine—machine-guns were muttering. An abandoned mortar stood in front of us, and in the grass lay dead soldiers.

  I told my companion that I was going no further. He could do what he had to do, as long as he didn’t get lost and returned quickly. He left his rifle with me and bolted ahead. I was so worried that someone would catch us there or pop up from behind the bushes or throw a grenade that I couldn’t watch him. I felt sick lying there with my head on the wet dirt, smelling of rot and smoke. If only we don’t get encircled, I thought, if only we can crawl closer to a peaceful world. This soldier of mine, I thought, is satisfied now. The clouds have parted above his head and the heavens are raining manna—he will return to the village, dump a sackful of boots on the floor and watch his children jump for joy.

  The soldier came back dragging his conquest and hid it in the bushes. He wiped the sweat off his face and looked around to fix the spot in his mind. We moved back into the depth of the forest. It was drizzling and fog lay in the clearing. We walked in no specific direction but kept as far as possible from the commotion of the war. Somewhere, not far from there, must have been Guatemala. And further, Mexico. And further still, the United States. But for us at that moment, all those countries were on another planet. The inhabitants there had their own lives and thought about entirely different problems. Perhaps they did not know that we had a war here. No war can be conveyed over a distance. Somebody sits eating dinner and watching television: pillars of earth blown into the air; cut—the tracks of a charging tank; cut—soldiers falling and writhing in pain;—and the man watching television gets angry and curses because while he was gaping at the screen he oversalted his soup. War becomes a spectacle, a show, when it is seen from a distance and expertly re-shaped in the cutting room. In reality a soldier sees no further than his own nose, has his eyes full of sand or sweat, shoots at random and clings to the ground like a mole. Above all, he is frightened. The front line soldier says little: if questioned he might not answer at all, or might respond only by shrugging his shoulders. As a rule he walks around hungry and sleepy, not knowing what the next order will be or what will become of him in an hour. War makes for a constant familiarity with death and the experience of it sinks deep into the memory. Afterwards, in old age, a man reaches back more and more to his war memories, as if recollections of the front expand with time, as if he had spent his whole life in a foxhole.

  Stealing through the forest, I asked the soldier why they were fighting with El Salvador. He replied that he did not know, that it was a government affair. I asked him how he could fight when he did not know why he was spilling blood. He answered that when you live in a village it’s better not to ask questions because questions arouse the suspicions of the village mayor, and then the mayor would volunteer him for the road gang, and, on the road gang, he would have to neglect his farm and his family, and then the hunger waiting for him on his return would be even greater. And isn’t the everyday poverty enough as it is? A man has to live in such a way that his name never reaches the ears of authorities. If it does, they write it down immediately and then that man is in for a lot of trouble later. Government matters are not fit for the mind of a village farmer, because the government understands such things but nobody’s going to let a dirt farmer do anything.

  Walking through the woods at sunset and straightening our backs because it was getting quieter all the time, we hit a small village plastered together out of clay and straw: Santa Teresa. An infantry battalion, decimated in the all-day battle, was billeted there. Exhausted and stunned by the experience of the front line, soldiers wandered among the huts. It was drizzling continuously and everybody was dirty, smeared with clay.

  The people at the guardpost led us to the battalion commander. I showed him my documents and asked for transportation to Tegucigalpa. That worthy man offered me a car but ordered me to stay put until morning because the roads were soaked and mountainous and ran along the edges of cliffs, and at night, without lights, would be impassable. The commander sat in an abandoned hut listening to the radio. The announcer was reading a string of communiqués from the front. Next we heard that a wide range of governments, the countries of Latin America, along with many from Europe and Asia, wanted to bring the war between Honduras and El Salvador to an end, and had already issued statements about it. The African countries were expected to take a stand presently. Communiqués from Australia and Oceania were also expected. China was silent, which was provoking interest, and so, too, was Canada. The Canadian reticence could be explained by the fact that a Canadian correspondent, Charles Meadows, was at the front and his situation might be complicated or made more dangerous by a statement now.

  The presenter then read that the Apollo 11 rocket had been launched from Cape Kennedy. Three astronauts, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, were flying to the moon. Man was drawing closer to the stars, opening new worlds, soaring into the infinite galaxies. Congratulations were pouring into Houston from all corners of the world, the presenter informed us, and all humanity was rejoicing at the triumph of reason and precise thinking.

  My soldier was dozing in a corner. At dawn I woke him up and said we were leaving. An exhausted battalion driver, still half-asleep, took us to Tegucigalpa in a jeep. To save time, we drove straight to the post office, where, on a borrowed typewriter, I wrote the dispatch that was later printed in the newspapers at home. José Malaga let the dispatch go out before all the others waiting to be sent and released it without the approval of the military censors (it was, after all, written in Polish).

  My colleagues were returning from the front. They arrived one by one, because everyone had got lost after we drove into the artillery fire at that turning in the road!.’ Enrique Amado had run into a Salvadoran patrol, three members of the Guardia Rural, the private gendarmerie maintained by the Salvadoran latifundistas and recruited from among the criminal element. Very dangerous types. They ordered Enrique to stand up to be executed. He played for time, praying at great length and then asking to be allowed to relieve himself. The guardistas obviously loved the sight of a man in terror. In the end they ordered him to make his final preparations and were taking aim when a series of shots rang out from the bushes. One of the patrol fell, hit, and the other two were taken prisoner.

  The soccer war lasted one hundred hours. Its victims: 6,000 dead, more than 12,000 wounded. Fifty thousand people lost their homes and fields. Many villages were destroyed.

  The two countries ceased military action because Latin American states intervened, but to this day there are exchanges of gunfire along the Honduras-El Salvador border, and people die, and villages are burned.

  These are the real reasons for the war: El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, has the greatest population density in the western hemisphere (over 160 people per square kilometre). Things are crowded, and all the more so because most of the land is in the hands of fourteen great landowning clans. People even say that El Salvador is the property of fourteen families. A thousand latifundistas own exactly ten times as much land as their hundred thousand peasants. Two thirds of the village population owns no land. For years a part of the landless poor has been emigrating to Honduras, where there are large tracts of unimproved land. Honduras (12,000 square kilometres) is almost six times as large as El Salvador, but has about half as many people (2,500,000). This was illegal emigration but was kept hushed-up, tolerated by the Honduran government for years.

  Salvadoran peasants settled in Honduras, established villages, and grew accustomed to a better life than the one they had left behind. They numbered about 300,000.

  In the 1960s, unrest began among the Honduran peasantry, which was demanding land, and the Honduras government passed a decree on agricultural reform. But since this was an oligarchical government, dependent on the United States, the d
ecree did not break up the land of either the oligarchy or the large banana plantations belonging to the United Fruit Company. The government wanted to re-distribute the land occupied by the Salvadoran squatters, meaning that the 300,000 Salvadorans would have to return to their own country, where they had nothing, and where, in any event, they would be refused by the Salvadoran government, fearing a peasant revolution.

  Relations between the two countries were tense. Newspapers on both sides waged a campaign of hate, slander and abuse, calling each other Nazis, dwarfs, drunkards, sadists, spiders, aggressors and thieves. There were pogroms. Shops were burned.

  In these circumstances the match between Honduras and El Salvador had taken place.

  The war ended in a stalemate. The border remained the same. It is a border established by sight in the bush, in mountainous terrain that both sides claim. Some of the émigrés returned to El Salvador and some of them are still living in Honduras. And both governments are satisfied: for several days Honduras and El Salvador occupied the front pages of the world press and were the object of interest and concern. The only chance small countries from the Third World have of evoking a lively international interest is when they decide to shed blood. This is a sad truth, but so it is.