IN “GREY HELL OF THE CHACO"

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1935, Page 14

IN “GREY HELL OF THE CHACO"

Paraguayans, Hopelessly Outnumbered, Have Wiped Out One Bolivian Army

‘ Despite the many efforts to end the long and disastrous war in the Gran Chaco, fighting is still going on. In this article, reprinted from the “New York Times Magazine,” P. S. Schor outlines the cause of this dispute and describes what is happening on the battlefields. BOLIVIA, in the foothills of the Andes, felt herself hemmed in. Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay surrounded her, cutting her off from communication with the outside world. All the other repuolics of the continent had a seaboard of their own or, in the case of Paraguay, access by navigable river to the sea. The River Pilcomayo was unnavigable, blocked up with mud shallows, but greedily she eyed the River Paraguay, placidly bearing its steamship traffic from Corumha to Asuncion, from Asuncion to the River Parana, and from there to Buenos Aires and the Atlantic Ocean.

Paraguay appeared to be a miserably. weak nation with its 800,000 inhabitants scarcely recovered from the almost complete annihilation suffered during the wai' 1864-70, when the Dictator Lopez, refusing to surrender, had fought the combined armies of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Bolivia could crash her way through the Chaco and establish her port on the western bank of the River Paraguay, perhaps opposite Asuncion itself. That was the line of least resistance, of no resistance at all, so far as she could see. In 1932 Bolivia proudly boasted that her army was the finest in South America. The boast was not without foundation. German-trained under a German general, equipped with all the latest armaments with an air force flying fast, fighting ’planes and trained by an English representative of a world-renowned aircraft manufacturer—this great war machine began silently to penetrate into' the heart of the Chaco, building a line of strongly fortified posts from which it was to begin its' rapid advance to its goal, the River Paraguay. On paper the result seemed a forei gone conclusion. Paraguay, economically poverty-stricken, With only 800,00Q inhabitants, her standing army numbering 6000 men, untrained and unarmed except for a few obsolete rifles, her “forts” unfortified thatched mud huts, what could Paraguay possibly do to obstruct the advance of the perfectly trained and equipped Bolivian army of 80,000 men? One thing, however, had been left out of the reckoning: the grim determination of the Paraguayans. The same spirit prevails in Paraguay today that prevailed in 1870. They are proud, tenacious, brave, patriotic, unconquerable. Their bodies can be starved, but their spirit remains indomitable. They i can be killed, but they can never be beaten. > At the first threat of invasion the students and lawyers and architects and business men, the farm labourers and cotton growers, flocked to join the army. Within a week the University of Asuncion was closed and only women, children and old men were left in the city. Young Paraguayans studying in the universities of Buenos Aires or Europe or North America left their lecture

rooms, laboratories or workshops and trooped back to the Chaco. The government could not arm them; they seized any weapons they could buy or find—axes, knives, anything—and marched out to face the intruder, to drive him out of their country. They were irresistible, and the Chaco itself fought on their side. Its tortuous mazes of forest hid them from their enemy. The silence, the apparent emptiness, the sudden attack from an unseen foe, bewildered the Bolivians, who had been trained to sight their rifles at a visible objective a given number of metres away. In their retreat the Bolivians had no

time to dig for water; thirst began to torture them and they entered the Chaco malaria belt. All the time the sun beat down relentlessly on those men accustomed to the cool rarefied' atmosphere 12,000 fet up on the Bolivian highlands. The air here was thick with heat and disease. Under the glaring canopy of sky the /great military machine wilted. ;. ' By the end of 1933 the first Bolivian army had been annihilated, ♦and the second army was retreating in disorder, when Paraguay, in reply to the League of Nations Commission which had just visited both countries in an attempt to settle the dispute pacifically, offered a brief armistice. i From the Paraguayan military point of view this offer was the great-

est tactical mistake that could have been made, and it resulted in the only serious difference of opinion which has arisen between the President of Paraguay, Dr Ayala, and the Commander-in-Chief. General Estigarribia.

The General believed that a critical moment had been reached. His aim was to surround the Bolivian army, which, in its hurry to get away, was leaving stores, trucks, ammunition dumps; and artillery behind it. With the destruction of that army, he felt sure Bolivia must agree to Paraguay’s terms. But President Ayala, at heart a pacifist but whose unhappy destiny had made him ruler of a war-mad nation, determined to offer a gesture to the League Commission.

The 10-day armistice was lengthened to 16 days. The League Commission, first in Montevideo and then in Buenos Aires, were earnest but ineffective; they could offer no suggestions acceptable to both belligerents, and the valuable days sped by.

January 6, 1934, hostilities were renewed. 1 For six months the Paraguayans battered at the new Bolivian . line, built in that valuable armistice, before they could break through it, six months during which the resources of both nations were drained, their man power sapped by disease and death. Once Fort Balivian had fallen, the Paraguayans steadily advanced again, and the war took on a different complexion. The Paraguayans were no longer merely driving out an invader. Victory began to make them greedy. Just over the horizon, where the forests thinned out and the flat Chaco rose into bumpy hills, were oil fields and two valuable refineries. The war which had begun as an attempt by Bolivia to annex an outlet for her petroleum now developed in-

to a fight for possession of the oil fields themselves. During November and December of 1934 and January of this year it ' seemed as if nothing could stop the Paraguayan advance In those three 1 months they pushed back the Bolivian line 150 kilometres. How could the conventional arts of war prevail when their field of vision was obscured by thick forest, and when they were matched against a mobile enemy utilising every device which the peculiar’characteristics of the country offered? Along the bank of the River Pilcomayo the Paraguayans made successive loops around the 'Bolivian regiments so that, one by one, these regiments found themselves closed in on three sides by the Paraguayans and on the fourth side by the river. They were presented a Choice of three courses—of trying to fight their way through; of surrendering, or of crossing the river into Bolivian territory, leaving baggage and equipment behind them. Not one regiment managed to break through the Paraguay-, an loop. In the northern sector General Estigarribia detached his second division from the centre and sent it by forced mafches, cutting . its way through the thick jungle at'a speed of 20 and 30 kilometres a day, to get behind the Bolivians’ northern division and cut it off from its water supply. In three days 8000 Bolivians died of thirst—or were captured. It was a few days after that action that I reached Paraguayan General Headquarters at Camacho, in the heart lof the Chaco. ; There were long lines of well-built mud huts, and petrol-driven pumps sucked up the precious water from deep down in the Chaco clay. There’ was a hospital, its floor-space packed indiscriminately with wounded Paraguayans and Bolivians lying on blankets in the restless heat. In a hut built of mud bricks and thatched with grass and palm leaves General Estigarribia lived. One wall of his “office” was covered with an immense map of the Chaco on which red arrows, marking the position of the Paraguayan army, pointed, toward its objective. Through an open door was a glimpse of his bedroom: a camp bed, tin wash basin, and earthenware jar of water. On his desk stood two photographs, one of President Ayala, the other of the general’s wife and little daughter, whom he had not seen since the war began in 1932: for the general, setting an example which his army was proud to follow, had not taken a single day’s leave of absence. He rose to greet me as I entered, a short, strongly built man of 45, with a mop of black hair, a firm jaw, and an expression of peculiar sweetness. , He spoke quietly and unemotionally of the past, confidently of the future. I came to realise then and during the following days when I was his guest why he was the idol, the almost legendary hero, of Paraguay. Defeat or victory left him calm, quiet, determined, purposeful, confident: qualities which spread through his general staff to every soldier in the army. This man was no mere guerrilla war chief; he was a brilliant tactician, trained at the French Military College of St. Cyr, a man of culture, breeding and quiet personality. /

The difficulty Paraguay had to face from the beginning of the war onward was the smallness of its army compared with that of Bolivia. Forty thousand men may drive back an army twice that size, but they cannot surround it when the front stretches across a hundred kilometres of thick forest.