Chaco War - Composition of The Armies

Composition of The Armies

Paraguay had a population only a third as large as that of Bolivia (880,000 vs. 2,150,000), but its guerrilla style of fighting, compared to Bolivia's more conventional strategy, enabled it to take the upper hand. In June 1932 the Paraguayan army totaled about 4,026 men (355 combat officers, 146 surgeons and non-combatant officers, 200 cadets, 690 NCOs and 2,653 soldiers). Both racially and culturally, the Paraguayan army was practically homogeneous. Almost all of its soldiers were European-Guaraní mestizos. Bolivia's army, however, consisted mostly of Altiplano's aboriginals of Quechua or Aymará descent (90% of the infantry troops), the lower-ranking officers were of Spanish or other European ancestry, and army chief Hans Kundt was German. In spite of the fact that the Bolivian army had more manpower, it never mobilized more than 60,000 men, and never more than two-thirds of the army were on the Chaco at any one time. Paraguay, on the other hand, mobilized its entire army. Paraguay's war effort went all out. Buses were confiscated to transport troops, wedding rings were donated to buy weapons, and by 1935 Paraguay had widened conscription to include 17-year-olds and policemen. While both armies deployed a good number of cavalry regiments, these were actually infantry troops, since it was soon learned that the Chaco could not provide enough water and forage for horses. Only a relatively few squadrons carried out reconnaissance missions at divisional level. In the course of the conflict, Paraguayan factories developed their own type of hand grenade, the carumbe'i (Guaraní for "little turtle") and produced trailers, artillery grenades and aerial bombs. The Paraguayan war effort was centralized and led by the state-owned national dockyards, managed by José Bozzano. The Paraguayan army received the first consignment of carumbe'i grenades in January 1933.

The Paraguayans took advantage of their ability to communicate over the radio in Guaraní, a language not intelligible to the average Bolivian soldier. Paraguay had little trouble in mobilizing its army in large barges and gunboats on the Paraguay River to Puerto Casado, and from there right to the front lines by railway, while the majority of Bolivian troops had to come from the western highlands, some 800 km away and with little or no logistic support. In fact, it took a Bolivian soldier about 14 days to traverse the distance, while a Paraguayan soldier only took about four. The heavy equipment used by Bolivia's army made things even worse. The supply of water, given the dry climate of the region, also played a key role during the conflict. There were thousands of non-combat casualties due to dehydration, mostly among Bolivian troops.