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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 18, 1963)
MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFORD. OREGON .. mt-"r"""- """"" THURSDAY. APRIL It. 1963 g y Abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion Described Editor'i note: "Alert alert - look well at the rainbow. The fiih will be running very toon." Theie cryptic words crackling out over a clandestine radio two years ago signalled one of the worst fiascos in U.S. his lory - the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The following dispatch recapitu lates the grim episode. in comoai unuorms stormed , and rid Cuba of international organized them, it was 72 I ashore in a remote and cruelty and oppression." hours of heartbreak, blood- swampy section of Cuba fac- In the early morning hours j shed and total disaster. The i dangerous and grim repcrcus- sions have influenced power fusion; but this in itself was an experience that became a teacher. Lessons learned in April, 1962, were not forgot ten by the Kennedy adminis- uauuca ana Diplomacy unui irauon in ine American - so- ft, t-.. i. ui... and the Cuban people it an-! today, two years later. vict missile slowdown last B.,t no'nct nn .... nounced: Out of the episode emerged October. , li... By NORMAN RUNNION United Press International Washington - IUPII - In the early morning hours of April 17. 1061, a force of 1,500 men ing a body of water called the of April 20, just three days nay oi rigs. j later, Havana radio also had As brigade 2505 slugged in-.i a communique. To the world land with high hopes, a Madi son avenue public relations nrm in lar-otf New York is-: Army Crushed much tnat was Bad, indeed Because the Bay of Pigs was sued a communique in the ! "The mercenary armv ! terrible, and a little that was sllrh , fl.., a. wii "Alert alert - look well at the rainbow. The fish will be running very soon Chico is at home visit him name of the Cuban Revolu-1 which occupied Cuban tcrri-! Bd tionary Council. tory for less than 72 hours j Castro Endures "Before dawn," it said with j has been crushed, the govern- Brigade 2505 set out to de- unjustified optimism, "Cuban ment disclosed at 2:30 (A.M.) stroy Castro, but Castro is patriots in the cities and the I today in communique No. 4." still there, hills began the battle to liber-1 For the men of the brigade. The invasion was launched ate our homeland from the and for the United States gov- from a sea of errors and en- dcspotic rule of Fidel Castro I ernment which supported and gulfed in a tidal wave of con- tragedy for the men involved, and because it was such a glaring failure of U.S. policy, it will remain a controversy for years to come. The adventure began, on the night of April 16, with a poem. Verse Alerts Broadcast by a clandestine radio starting before mid night, the poem appeared to be beamed at the Cuban un derground to alert it that the "fish" were at that very mo ment approaching the Cuban shores. It Is an old trick, hid ing a message in verse, and was a method employed by . 300,000-man militia. the Allies to alert the French Behind this lack of knowl unnergrouncl on the eve of edge was simple fact. The D-Day. Although melodramatic and exciting, this poem alerted virtually no one. It was mere ly symbolic of futility. The anti-Castro underground w is very much in existence. Some of its members heard the verses on short - wave radios and with agony realized they had no instructions to unlock the code of the fish, Chico or the rainbow; no prepared plans to blow up bridges, block trains, or delay Castro's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) planners who organized and directed the Bay of Pigs expedition had decided to all but ignore the underground, which they did not totally trust, and concentrate instead on a one-hot landing of 1,500 men with no local support. Blunder Seen In the penetrating light of hindsight, it was a blunder that forged another link in the chain of destruction which was to crush the whole oper- NO STAMPS NO GIMICKS NO CONTESTS BETTY CROCKER PANCAKE THUNDERBIRD . 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The invasion began at 3 a.m. Brigade 2505 hit the beaches on the southern coast of Cuba less (nan 100 miles southeast of Havana and start ed to move inland toward its initial objectives. In its ranks were men both rich and poor who were dedi cated to overthrowing t h a man and the regime which had driven them from Cuba. Some had fought In Castro's ranks. But because of CIA in aistence there also were soma - a handful - who had been Involved with the deteated Batista, another mistake that was to provide Castro with propaganda ammunition. For nearly three months American and exile personnel naa trained the assault forces, mostly at a remote camp in Guatemala. Report For Duty One such trainee was Man uel Penabaz, who waa ordered to report for duty in Miami on Jan. 24, 1961. This was four days after John F. Kennedy had been in augurated President of the United States and found him self confronted with plans for an exile invasion of Cuba which had been drawn up in the Eisenhower administra tion. Only a comparatively short time was to elapse be fore Kennedy gave the final go-ahead for an operation whose ramlflcatlona neither he nor his chief advisers had really mastered. In the meantime Penabez, one of the lucky few who eventually was to escape from the hell of the beachhead, was to undergo his military train ing. During this same period the master plan which he and his fellow exiles were to fol low was drastically altered. Penabez kept a diary. On April 14, as the six ships car rying the invasion forces were en route to Cuba, he mad this entry: Flotilla Moves "The flotilla is steaming to ward our date with destiny . . . two destroyers ... I think they are North American . . . flank us. The sensation Is ct an authentic war convoy. "We were told that the un derground waa to deatroy the) bridges and declare a general strike throughout the island. we were told we would have an air umbrella over us at all times ao as to guarantee that the sky would alwaya ba ours.'' There was no general strike. There was no umbrella. To provide sufficient aerial firepower to protect the In vasion forces, American planes would have been need ed. But Kennedy irmly ruled out any overt U.S. participa tion. Four Americans did. in fact, fly planes provided to the exiles, and vanished un der attack from Cuban jets. But the four had been hired -presumably by the CIA - for the sole purpose cf aiding the exiles. Pottpona Strike Available to the brlgada were World War II vintage B26s, no match for Castro's Mlgs. Two days before tha landing the exiles had bomb ed Cuban airfields In the hopa of knocking out Castro's air force, but destruction had been far from total. A second planned strike was postponed because of the worldwide storm over the first one. April 17, the day of the landings. From the diary of Manuel Penabaz: "We are en trenched on Cuban soil, and here we will stay . . . In less than 24 hours we have already driven 42 kil ometers (26 miles) Inland." A little further on the ad vance halted in the face ot Cuba's military might, per sonally directed by Castro. Con.olidaie On April 18, the second day, Penabaz reported: "Early to day battalion two pulled back to Blue beach to consolidate our forces already too dis persed and far from supply lines. For the first time, en emy aviation appears very ac tive . . . the enemy planes . . . arc constantly bombing and strafing our landing strip. "Everyone keeps asking us: 'Where are the Americans? t don't see any Americans here.' They are ronvinced that the Americans are landing! and no amount of persuasion changes their minds. Napoleon Villa Boe, executive officer of the battalion, tells me we are fighting against 100 times our number hut that he is not dis couraged." Within hours he would be. On April in it was all over. Pounded relentlessly by jets and Castro's tanks, deprived of supplies that were destroy ed when ships were sunk, alone with no air cover, lack ing any internal uprising that would have diverted the mi litia, the brigade floundered and then quit. For 10 months its mem bers suffered In Cuban pris ons before New York attorney James Donovan, aided quietly I by the Kennedy administra ! tion and openly by the Ameri- can Red Cross, obtained their i release. Water Renttl 77c Day
