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“I am not staying here. Either they send me to an operational zone or I flee from here ”. It was 1964. Marcelino da Mata can no longer bear the peace of life in the Bissau headquarters. In fact, he did not have to flee from the Bissau headquarters. because he managed to go to Farim, where in a few days he convinced Lieutenant Colonel Agostinho Ferreira to give him permission to form a special operations group.
“When I introduced myself to the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Agostinho Ferreira, I told him that I wanted to form a special operations group. He did not agree … So, to show that I could do such a performance, one day I took five men and left the barracks towards a PAIGC base, located 3.5 km from Farim, in a brandy distillery. We attacked at night and brought in nine prisoners, carrying 65 seized weapons. At six in the morning he was already knocking on the commander’s bedroom door, calling him. I didn’t want to show up, but I insisted. When he showed up, he asked me what I wanted from him. I said, “It’s to show weapons.” Ripostou: “And what are the weapons that I don’t know about?” I replied: “These are not known, as they belong to the PAIGC.” Amazed, he asked me how the performance had been. I replied: “Look! I never say how I do my operations. I went, killed some and brought them. He said, “So you let the prisoners carry weapons?” I replied: “It doesn’t matter; So they’re not men like us ?! … “
In the following days, Marcelino da Mata continued to carry out what he called “his operations”, which he describes Amaro Bernardo when he interviews him for the book “Guerra, Paz e Fuzilamentos dos Guerreiros. Guinea ”. Until the inevitable happens. One morning, Lieutenant Colonel Agostinho Ferreira called the second commander: “Tell that guy that he can form the special operations group.” Marcelino da Mata recalls: “It was from there that I formed the group Os Roncos”.
It may seem strange, but Marcelino da Mata’s military career began by accident: on January 3, 1960, his brother should have joined the CIM-Bolama. But Marcelino went to the recruitment center to find out about his brother’s situation and he has not left. He was then 19 years old. Initially, his main asset is not the way he fights, but the command of the different dialects that are spoken in Guinea.
In 1963 he traveled to Angola to take a command course. In 1964, he returned to Guinea in time to participate in the “Operation Trident”, whose objective was to expel the guerrillas from the islands of the Como region. It was two and a half months between swamps, bushes and mud. From Como, the Portuguese troops brought victory, and Marcelino da Mata his first war crosses.
Torre e Espada will win it years later for rescuing a company that had been imprisoned in the border area with Senegal. Marcelino da Mata leads a group of 19 men who manage not only to confront the PAIGC guards plus Senegalese soldiers but also to lead Portuguese soldiers for the more than 40 kilometers that separate them from Guinea. Who was there says that Marcelino da Mata’s group not only did all this but, once the soldiers were safe, they still returned to repel the PAIGC. It will not be the only time that his daring leads him to operations outside the territory of Guinea.
Operation Mar Verde told here in cartoon form by someone who fought in Guinea, Vassalo Miranda
On the night of November 21-22, 1970, Marcelino da Mata is one of the Portuguese soldiers who secretly enter Conakry to carry out one of the most daring and risky operations conceived by the Portuguese armed forces, the “Green sea”. Marcelino da Mata’s group has 40 men and is headed by Ensign Abílio Ferreira. The objective of this group, called Oscar in the Mar Verde operation, is the headquarters of the Republican Guard, transformed into a prison.
“We went to the weapons gate of the barracks and there we met three civilians who were warning the sentries that they had seen an armed group heading towards the barracks. The sentry fled and closed the door. I threw myself headfirst into the guardhouse window and killed the sergeant with my saber. I turned around and opened the gate, but the lieutenant died at the entrance, shot in the head by one of the sentries ”. This is how Marcelino da Mata recalled the episode of the interview he gave to António Luís Marinho and which he included in his book “Operation Mar Verde”. After the death of Ensign Ferreira, Marcelino da Mata assumed the leadership of the group.
The Oscar group fulfilled what was expected of them. In the end, Marcelino and his men took the body of the lieutenant with them to take them to the ships that would take them back to Guinea (Operation “Mar Verde” was a secret operation carried out in a foreign country, so the time it took was very brief. The Portuguese military could remain in Conakry). On the way to the port, the car broke down. Under the command of Marcelino da Mata, the men of the Oscar group return to the barracks, fight again, win again and fix the vehicle that allowed them to arrive. in extremis to the port where the Portuguese ships were already preparing to depart.
In 1973, Marcelino da Mata formed The Avengers, a group of special troops made up of 18 blacks.
The Avengers. * Photo from the blog Luís Graça & Camaradas da Guiné
They operate with great autonomy. They carry out high-risk operations: four or five men enter Senegal and lay mines in strategic places, support regular troops and are present in historic operations such as the “Royal Amethyst”. This jeweled operation took place on May 19, 1973, targeting the PAIGC base in Kumbamory, Senegal. Marcelino da Mata is with six men from his group. They fight, but above all they manage to make an important magazine rise up into the air. In the end, Marcelino and his group carry one of their own on their back who was wounded and almost ended up being the victim of friendly fire, all were black and did not wear regular uniforms and were often mistaken for the PAIGC guerrilla.
The pilot Miguel Pessoa when he was rescued by the group led by Marcelino da Mata, who in the photo wields a machete. Marcelino’s brand image was also the canteen with Fanta or Coca Cola. * Photo from the blog Luís Graça & Camaradas da Guiné
“I am Marcelino” – he will have shouted in the barracks. Two months before, it was also with a “Sou o Marcelino” who was presented to the pilot Miguel Pessoa who had been thrown from his plane hit by a missile and that he and his group had just rescued on the so-called death row.
In the war scenario, Marcelino da Mata did not need to indicate a patent, company or barracks. It was enough to say “I am Marcelino”.
By 1974, his record of service is impressive: he participated in 2,414 military operations that earned him fifty accolades for acts of bravery in combat. He received the Tower and the Sword, three first-class War Crosses, a second, and a third. But for Marcelino da Mata, a much more treacherous and painful battle will begin than any he fought in Guinea.
Despite having participated in more than two thousand military operations, some of them very violent, Marcelino da Mata was never seriously injured. The only time he needed more careful hospital treatment was because of a grenade, inadvertently exploded by a man in his group, further inside the barracks. At Bissau Hospital, they detect a splinter lodged near the kneecap. It is sent to Lisbon. Only in the meantime had happened on April 25. Some see the transfer of Marcelino da Mata to Lisbon as a ploy by the MFA to keep him away from Guinea and thus facilitate the transfer of power to the PAIGC. After all, one of the great concerns of the PAIGC was that they had to face the resistance of the three black commando companies that were part of the Portuguese Armed Forces, especially if these commanders had a military commander with the characteristics of Marcelino da Mata. . Or, on the contrary, was the transfer of Marcelino da Mata to Lisbon the possible way to save him from the firing squad that in “liberated” Guinea was becoming the destination of the black commandos?
Whether his injury was justified or not, he was quickly transferred to Lisbon, Marcelino da Mata quickly realizes that he can no longer return to Guinea, as the new authorities prohibit him from entering. Worse still, if he did return, he had serious reason to fear for his life. Information reaches Marcelino da Mata that confirms the worst fears about the future of Guinea: even before the independence of that territory, Marcelino da Mata learned of the dismissal of First Sergeant Zeca Lopes, one of the members of the Avengers.
Then it was the turn of Lieutenant Tomás Camará, who on his return to Guinea was arrested at the airport, taken to Cumeré, and shot.
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