“War does not determine who is right, only who is left.”

Bertrand Russell

Firearms were an element that the guerrilla lifestyle brought her face to face with, for which she had no frame of reference. Her mental outlook did a 180 the first time she squeezed a trigger. She hit the target, a rag hung from a tree branch. After that, she had to know everything about it. 

Due to her size, her first weapon was a six-and-a-half pound AM-15 Anderson with a 30-round AK magazine rather than the more common AK 47 at eight-and-a-half pounds. On a long march, every pound seems to multiply. In practice it was a lightweight pseudo-machine gun with minimal recoil and, once zeroed in, very accurate and not noisy considering how powerful it was. She was taught gun maintenance. Classes for gun cleaning were regular and mandatory for everyone. Before long, she was adept and could break down her gun and rebuild it. She was trained on both guns with both kinds of ammunition using 7.62.39 rounds. 

Her gun became her new focus in life. She loved firing it and practically had to be dragged from their established rural shooting ranges. She called her weapon Uncle Ernie. She loved that McCartney song. Calling her machine gun Uncle Ernie made it seem less lethal. Besides, Uncle Ernie kept her alive. By the time she was ten, she was an experienced cook, able to set up and break camp as second nature, a crack shot and experienced in hand-to-hand combat. Her opponents soon learned that in her case, her small size and childish appearance was an advantage.

The hand-to-hand combat skills she acquired surprised everyone. Her strength for her size was difficult to comprehend. Small as she was, she was a formidable foe for a grown man in hand-to-hand combat, especially when armed with a blade. They all wondered how she would fare on a mission where she was armed and expected to shoot to kill.

Before she earned Uncle Ernie, the first couple of missions she went on, she was instructed just to hang back, say nothing and watch. She was a guard and an observer with a pretend gun. A gun was considered too heavy for her until she became bush-hardened. The first mission was the usual visit to a small farm. The owners were sympathizers who warehoused dry goods for them in a shack hidden in the bush half a mile from their barn. This was also a supply trip to a weapons cache they maintained remotely from camp to ensure they were never at a loss for ammunition, no matter how fast they had to evacuate their camps. Ammo is heavy and had to be packed out in knapsacks and loaded into the boats. Everyone carried.

In the aftermath of that skirmish, their group received disheartening news: Top FARC commander Gullermo Saenz, alias Alfonso Cano, was killed in an attack during a military strike. Normally, Pip would have received more training before going armed on only her second mission, but the death of Saenz inculcated a sense of urgency. Besides, this was just a routine patrol through their own home territory. During the march, they came upon an injured farmer on the road with his family. They were doing their best but the man was barely able to walk and required medical assistance urgently. A boat was dispatched with the farmer to a town where an ambulance could be summoned. Pip felt encouraged about her participation. She felt she was doing something honourable. Helping save the man’s life as well as the viability of his family was something she could get behind. She was told later, that he wasn’t an ordinary peasant, he was one of the farmers who ensured that the guerrillas had the food and utensils needed to survive in the jungle. The guerrillas paid for his care and transportation.

Participation in patrols and guard duty started almost immediately after that. Despite her diminutive stature, they found she had no trouble keeping up or orienteering; a necessity in the jungle where sky is seldom visible. Trails don’t last long in the jungle, so it takes an alert person to navigate in a sea of trees. It was soon discovered that Pip could climb trees and seemed to have no fear of heights. That became useful, tree-marking and treetop caches were among the ways they could hide supplies to reduce the need to carry certain items. Such items, especially ammo and consumables up to and including toilet paper and money, were typically buried in underground vaults dug laboriously by hand, generally in inhospitable terrain. 

One stormy day, a couple of weeks after her acceptance into the group and just after her presumed tenth birthday, some of her recently learned skills were put to the test. She inadvertently walked into an ambush. It wasn’t an ambush set for her or her party. It was the National Army building an elaborate blind intended to be used as a screen, from behind which they planned to wipe out a group of sympathizers travelling downriver. She was dressed in her camo, complete with shoulder flash, mask and hood. She was having fun. Her group had received intelligence that an Army contingent might be in the area. They weren’t necessarily expecting anything. They’d fanned out into a line with Pip on the far left and were combing the bush along the river. Pip was in the verge since she was the smallest and could move through it like a cat.

It was pouring rain. They weren’t expecting much because it’s difficult for anyone to move equipment far or fast in heavy rain. But since it rains a lot in November in southwestern Colombia, to get anything done, you have to get used to working in heavy rain. The soldiers had set up a fly and were huddled under it studying a map when Pip stepped into their midst. Both sides were caught by surprise. The soldiers went for their guns, and three died where they stood. Pip was carrying her gun at the ready and only needed to point in the right direction and squeeze the trigger and spray as she’d been taught. No thought required.

Not all of them died. The two who didn’t die put their hands up and surrendered. A sixth man, concealed by one of those who was surrendering, tried to shoot her from a seated position. She caught the movement and shot him first, taking the penis and balls of the front guy at the same time. His screams were louder than the gunfire and the rain. The wounded man’s reaction gave the last man time to draw his pistol but not fire it. She dropped him too, then bent over to check the wounded man as a hail of bullets from across the river rocketed through the space she’d occupied a split second earlier.

It seemed best to withdraw and leave the man to his mutilation. Before she did, she disarmed him and threw his and the other weapons far into the bush where they could be recovered by her crew later.

In the meantime, her patrol had approached and sent covering fire across the swollen river where the soldiers had planned the other half of what was to be a companion ambush the following day. After some delay, the wounded man was dragged away from the river and into the trees for questioning and termination.

They forgot to consider that the soldiers across the river must have a boat hidden somewhere. Pip, having nothing to do with stripping the bodies, was on watch some distance away when a movement caught her eye. The soldiers had crossed the river, out of sight and were moving silently through the trees like shadows. They were fairly spread out, so no matter which one she shot, she wasn’t going to pin them down for long, and they would eventually get her. The saving grace was that they wouldn’t know where the first shot came from.

The AM-15 is far from a noisy gun, so it was not going to be loud enough by itself to alert her comrades over the noise from the rain. She needed a scream. She got it by shooting the trailing man in the thigh. As he went down, she shot and killed the next, then held her fire as the other four men spun around to try and spot the shooter. They dropped to the ground and scuttled for cover. She hoped two screams were enough to alert her companions. 

If she shot a third man, they’d know where she was, leaving three to chase her. All four were hidden in the leaves on the ground between buttresses of Ficus trees, but she knew where they all were. She thought about it. She could still see one of them. There was no sign of help, but at least she wasn’t being soaked by the rain where she was. Better to wait. 

From her position, she could hear a man on a sat phone calling for backup and giving coordinates for their location. With a heavier weapon, she could have shot him right through the buttress root he was hiding behind. She listened for names and details, but nothing of what was said made any sense to her.

An eternity later, the men stirred. They started calling to each other in low voices, trying to assess their situation. Finally, one stood up. Pip shot him, then the other soldier who had his back to her, not ten feet away. That left two. But those two knew roughly where her shots came from but not who took the shots. By now, her comrades must know she was missing, or maybe had heard the shots and were just being cautious. A line of leaf-cutter ants marched down the tree right through her line of vision and along the top of the buttress root she was hiding behind. It seemed funny to see these industrious little bugs strolling jauntily through a gunfight with their colourful leafy prizes like nothing of importance was going on. She had fleeting thoughts about watching the march. Another time, maybe. While she’d shot the other two men, the remaining two had taken the opportunity to improve their camouflage. It was a waiting game. They all knew it. Whoever moved first would be the first to die. Pip thought back to what she’d been taught since arriving in the guerrilla community, racking her brain for what to do in these circumstances. She decided to dig in. There was no leaf litter where she was and no shovel. The ground was harder than she’d expected. Nope, digging in wasn’t an option. The rain had stopped too, and a stillness settled as a blanket of mist started to rise out of the ground.

 Staying still and quiet was still the best option. Why wasn’t anyone looking for her? The noises from the soldiers she’d shot and wounded had long since subsided. Had they bled out, or had they taken the boat? That wasn’t likely, she decided. They’d probably passed out or died. There had been no sound from the motorboat, so it had to be wherever the soldiers had left it. 

Gradually, she became aware that there were other people in the vicinity. Like ghosts, they appeared. She heard the quiet spitting of two other AM-15s. Suddenly, there was chatter. Her comrades found her before she could do anything rash. The group leader came and personally thanked her for her vigilance and the cool manner in which she’d handled herself. “You know," he said, “If any of these men had escaped, the entire encampment would have been in danger. We would have had to abandon our present sites and relocate. That takes effort and time. We’ve done it many times. We’ve learned to our sorrow what a moment’s leniency can bring us.” 

“How do we know that was all of them?” she asked.

A launch drifted into sight from around the corner.  

“Down,” he said quietly. They both fell flat for cover. "Time to go, Pip. We’re low on ammo.”

“Wait. Let’s use the guns the guys we just killed were going to use on us.” He nodded. “Follow me," she said and led her Capo to the weapons she'd tossed out of reach of the men she'd shot. Re-armed with army-issue weapons, her crew crept to the river's edge and settled in, waiting to see if the patrol boat would approach close enough to engage. 

A motor started. When the boat rounded the corner, the fifteen soldiers in the boat were riddled with bullets.