What It Was Like

Right up to the dramatic climax of President Arbenz' forced resignation, the war in Guatemala was a strange, onesided air war, fought by three mysterious F47 Thunderbolts and an absurd little Cessna sports plane, all under the command of the leader of the anti-Communist rebels, Colonel Castillo Armas.

The F-47s, probably operating from Nicaragua, functioned as a strategic air force, doing the relatively heavy jobs.

For two days they bombed and strafed Chiquimula, a provincial capital (pop. 9,000) at the south end of the 130-mile front paralleling the Honduran border.

After that Castillo Armas' guerrillas walked in, took the town without resistance, established headquarters, and set up a provisional government.

Tactical Air. The Cessna, at times flying so low it scratched its belly on the treetops, was the rebels' tactical air force.

It dropped antipersonnel grenades on the city of Zacapa, and the government began evacuating civilians. A Thunderbolt worked over a troop train near by and stopped it. Soldiers leaped from the cars and melted into the countryside; some of them reportedly went over to the rebels.

In Guatemala City, meanwhile, F-475 poured bullets into the vitally needed Shell gasoline storage tanks, and 40,000 gallons squirted out. One of the five forts that guard the capital was bombed and set on fire. Arbenz' emphasis, in his radio talk, on how much the air attacks had hurt, was an eloquent restatement of an old principle: in air war, as in poker, a low hand can win the biggest pot when the opponents hold nothing at all.

On the ground, meanwhile, a few U.S.

newsmen managed to get a quick look at the rebel army -- 2,000-odd Indian-faced peasants, no two dressed alike but most of them wearing blue armbands with the white dagger and cross of the "Liberation Movement." They fingered black burp guns and seemed to have plenty of ammunition. The officers were upper-crust Guatemalan exiles--lawyers, engineers, coffee planters driven out for their politics or stripped of some of their land under Arbenz' Communist-administered agrarian reform program. Castillo Armas himself turned out to be a slender, sallow, diffident man in a checked shirt and leather jacket, with a .45 automatic jammed into the belt of his khaki pants.

Strategic Aim. The rebel leader at first seemed cold and reserved, but he warmed up in a hurry when asked about his objectives. "Primarily," he answered, "to throw Communism out of Guatemala . . . All the Guatemalan people are anxious for our arrival. But we must be prepared for every action of the enemy.

Communism is not a good enemy! It is one of the worst enemies we can have in life!" As the words poured out, his eyes caught fire and his voice rang.

If the weekend mood at rebel headquarters was dedication, the mood in Guatemala City was depression. Food supplies were running short and prices were rising. Police were everywhere. Fear and distrust were in the air. Even high-ranking officers carried submachine guns in their own offices.

A different sort of fear blanketed the countryside--fear of the peasant bands and Communist partisans whom the government had called out to patrol roads, to search houses and arrest anti-Communists and other "traitors." Many of these barefoot supporters of the Arbenz regime obviously knew as little of Marx as they did of Hart & Schaffner, but many of them had got land under the agrarian program, and they could be counted on to defend it ferociously. Men like that who get weapons in their hands do not turn them back meekly; Guatemala would probably hear of them again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.