In last week’s issue, as part of marking the 40th anniversary of revolutionary Cuba’s victory over a U.S.-organized invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Militant reprinted excerpts from an account of the battle by Efigenio Ameijeiras. The excerpts were taken from the first two of a four-part series of articles, titled "Girón: The Shortest Battle," that appeared in the Cuban weekly magazine Bohemia in July 1989. Reprinted below are excerpts from the concluding parts of that series.
In less than 72 hours, forces from the Rebel Army, volunteer militias, air force, and police crushed an invasion force of 1,500 counterrevolutionaries, known as Brigade 2506. The battalion of combatants drawn from the Revolutionary National Police--led by Ameijeiras, with Samuel Rodiles as second in command--saw some of the heaviest fighting in the April 17–19, 1961, battle. The main group of mercenaries surrendered at Playa Girón, the name by which the battle is identified in Cuba.
The excerpts below describe the final day of the battle, April 19, 1961, and give an assessment of the Bay of Pigs events. The section published last week covered the period through the first two days of combat.
Ameijeiras, who was a commander in the Rebel Army during the revolutionary war against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in the late 1950s, is currently a division general in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.
The translation, footnotes, material in brackets, and subheadings are by the Militant.
After it is reported that the [police] battalion has taken Cayo Ramona, Commander Duque advances up to the junction of the highway leading to that site, and he falls into an ambush by the enemy, who was already preparing to retreat. The group of mercenaries, armed with machine guns, recoilless cannon, and bazookas is surprised to see this Rebel Army commander who, with no fear whatever, tells them:
"You all know you’re beaten. You’re better off surrendering. Approaching behind me is my battalion, which is part of thousands more men and a tank battalion. You have no doubt as to who is going to lose this war, right?"
They remain silent for a while--a few minutes that seem like centuries. By the time someone attempts to respond to Duque’s bold, haughty words, it’s too late. They all recognize that what Duque says is true, as true as the extraordinary personal courage of that man who was only coming to confirm the failure that had been apparent to them from the first day.
The columns from Yaguaramas, the Covandonga sugar mill, and Cayo Ramona gather in the Bermeja area for the final assault on Playa Girón....
In the morning the tank column under [Capt.] Joel Pardo advances toward San Blas to attack. When they arrive, there is confusion when they fire on San Blas. They are unaware that the Covadonga column has just occupied that position. Cooperation is soon reestablished before there are any casualties to regret. Together they continue the attack toward Bermeja, from which the enemy also retreats in great haste. Later they advance on Helechal, from which the enemy once again flees toward Playa Girón and takes Duque prisoner.
At the junction of the Cayo Ramona highway, another fatal encounter is on the verge of occurring between the forces of the 111th Battalion and the rebel column that has occupied Cayo Ramona. Here again, any confusion is prevented by Commander Saborit’s intelligence, boldness, and composure....
Since dawn, the positions for attacking Playa Girón from Playa Larga have been taken. A few kilometers away, we have gathered a large number of battalions, tanks, and artillery. The mercenaries see our columns advancing on them with tanks and cannon. They are desperately pleading for air support.
Mercenary pilots refuse to fly
Because they have suffered such heavy losses, the mercenary pilots refuse to fly that day. So the Americans who were training them fly instead. They promise to provide escort from the aircraft carrier Essex. Five planes take off (with three of them apparently manned by Cubans). One of the Cubans had said that if he didn’t see the escort planes by the time he got to the Cayman Islands, he would turn around--and that’s exactly what he did. Another apparently had mechanical problems and went back.
A big stroke of luck for our forces, which are already near Playa Girón, is the fact that, just as the planes with U.S. pilots were arriving, our planes arrived at the same time a few kilometers away from Cayo Guano. Two T-33 planes flown by [Enrique] Carreras and [Alvaro] Prendes had taken off from the San Antonio air base. Their mission was an offshore reconnaissance flight toward Cayo Guano. Carreras discovers a formation of four B-26 bombers. They agree on the attack and fire on the lead pair. In a single pass the planes are hit and fall to the water.
Another B-26 passes over our heads on the Playa Larga highway. In order to identify the mercenary planes, which are identical to ours, we’ve been told to look for a blue stripe painted on the belly. But when a plane appears, you shoot first and look later. Who’s going to be looking for stripes at a time like this?...
The forward detachment of the police battalion has been fighting furiously for about an hour. I get in the car with my escort and advance to where the flank fire seems to be coming from. I see our tanks about a kilometer away, with one of them spewing smoke--it’s been hit. Some combatants are returning. When they see me gesturing to them, they return to the front. I stop the cars next to the tanks, and we advance on foot.
We fall into the middle of a firefight. We shield ourselves in the ditch. We advance toward another tank nearby. We see the crossfire coming from the coast, and more crossfire coming from the left flank of the highway, where all we can see are trees. There is no question that they’ve prepared a good defense, from the coast all the way down the two highways from Girón, which at that point forks and makes a loop but, rather than entering Girón, merges with the road to San Blas. The coastal road is the one that goes into town. That’s where Commander Samuel [Rodiles, second in command of the police battalion,] was fighting on the seashore....
They’re firing a lot of bazookas, .50–caliber machine guns and recoilless cannon, backed by the tanks.
The example of Capt. Carbó
I’m given the sad news that Capt. [Luis Artemio] Carbó, head of the forward detachment, has been killed. Carbó and Capt. [José] Sandino had advanced, each with a column from the 116th Battalion, on both flanks of the highway.
Before reaching the curve where the fork begins, Sandino veers left and Carbó veers right, close to the water. When they run into the enemy, Carbó shields himself and his men, and sends for tank support. The tanks advance but, when they reach the curve where Carbó is, he is hit by cannon fire, and the second tank on the left is also hit and catches on fire.
It’s the mercenaries’ last stand. If they lose the position, they will fall into our hands. They put up a dramatic fight, resisting the drive by our forces surging on the left and right flanks of the highway. Sandino’s company, flanking on the left, is forced to cross some dense brush. A group goes out on the highway. They see people. They think it’s their comrades with Carbó and our tanks. They run into the enemy. The mercenaries, with a tank and a .50-caliber machine gun on a truck, take some of them prisoner as the rest withdraw while shooting.
Carbó sees a tank attack him, emerging from the brush and then hiding again. He stops and goes looking for a tank to support the attack. He is urging men and tank drivers to go forward. Suddenly they see him shudder and fall to the ground clutching his gun. They pick him up and have a hard time pulling the gun out of his hands. No wounds can be seen on his body. A bullet had entered his mouth and lodged in his brain. He is the highest-ranking infantry soldier of all those who die at Girón. He had been an outstanding guerrilla fighter in the liberation war, and was among those who performed the most feats on the Second Front.
I still remember when he came to see me very early that morning and I told him, "Carbó, I was waiting for you. You’re the head of the forward detachment of the police battalion. Get ready, we’re going to Girón."
He was very happy. Before leaving for the police station he went to his girlfriend’s house and told her, "Listen, I can’t wait any longer. When I get back from Playa Girón we’re getting married."
We have a dozen dead and more than 20 wounded. A group of militia members from the 116th Battalion are taken prisoner. There is confusion in the area and many people are retreating. I urge the troops on. Two companies from the second echelon advance. Luckily, we have Samuel on the right flank with a company that manages to reach Carbó’s positions and, in hand-to-hand combat, keeps the enemy from occupying that curve of death. The police fight to take away the supplies being dropped to them in parachutes from their planes....
From the left flank, that is, from the Girón loop, we are subjected to oblique fire backed by a .50-caliber machine gun. Unexpectedly, the companies advancing behind us start shooting and the curtain of fire nearly sprays us. We have to flatten ourselves against the side of a tank to get away alive--not from the mercenary fire, but from the fire of our own men in the rearguard.
A whirlwind of confusion
That’s what these battles are like, a whirlwind of confusion. Today we lose our voices from shouting and relaying the message to the compañeros beyond the tanks to stop shooting. They keep shooting from the left flank with the .50-caliber machine gun, nearly over the tree tops. They seem to have it on a hill or on one of their command trucks. Capt. Marcelino [Sánchez] yells at the police, "Shoot the grenades over the trees, shoot, damn it! You can’t see the enemy, but they’re over there."
The tank next to us remains stopped, with another tank in front of it. I yell to the crew to turn the turret toward the left and fire a cannon at the machine gun nest. But in the din of the battle no one can hear me. In that whirlwind of shrapnel and explosions, I bang the butt of my gun on the tank’s fender and they still don’t hear me.
In the midst of the battle, running from death, some people are so shocked they don’t fire a single shot and, worst of all, they are sometimes killed without doing anything. In war you almost never see the enemy. You shoot at anything that moves, and when nothing is moving you have to shoot by intuition--even against the silence, which can be the most dangerous thing of all. Luck is a factor in every war, and the vast majority of the soldiers who die never saw who killed them.
Just when I am feeling the most desperate, Sgt. Kindelán, who is in my escort, jumps on top of the tank and bangs on the turret with the butt of his gun. Kindelán acts fearlessly, and I think: not even a Chinese doctor will be able to save him at this point. Kindelán grows so tall in my eyes that to me he looks like Gulliver banging on the tank’s turret with the butt of his gun.
To our joy, the tank crew member lifts the hatch and we’re able to talk to him and point out the target. Kindelán jumps to the ground and we wait under the rain of fire. It takes the tank a few seconds to turn the turret, seconds that to me seem like hours. It then fires its cannon and repeats firing, and then we no longer feel the crossfire from that flank.
I don’t know where the volunteers find the courage to reach our battle lines. Their patriotism boosts our morale to keep fighting in that inferno of steel, fire, and sand. Watching civilian workers arrive there, leaving nearby their small private cars or delivery vehicles on which they had painted a Red Cross; watching them arrive there to help us remove the injured and the compañeros who had been blown to pieces by the shrapnel--we always remember that in astonishment. It is horrifying to watch half a man’s torso being carried away. Another is taken away hanging from his limbs. His head is missing. Those volunteers are bigger men than we are....
Capt. [Conrado] Benítez arrives at the command post to tell me it isn’t necessary to find peasants for the exploration, that Capt. Marcelino has taken a detour about a kilometer above the Girón highway and reached the airport area, and that no enemy forces can be seen in that area going toward Playa Girón. This is the best news all day. Marcelino wanted to go that way with his company, with some bazooka support. I tell Roberto Benítez that we still can’t carry out any kind of movement, and that they should return to their position until the air attack passes. I think we can carry out that operation at dusk or maybe even at night, after properly relocating our forces and providing our men with ammunition.
What I never could imagine was that at this very time the head of the mercenary brigade had retreated from Playa Girón with 40 men, without even the knowledge of the second-in-command, who was fighting us at the fork in the road. They found out about the retreat by chance, after sending someone to Girón in search of reinforcements. They realized they were leaderless. Then they too abandoned their position and scattered. Some tried to escape by sea in the boats and rafts. But most of them fled inland. That was when our air force arrived to bomb Playa Girón.
At 3:30 p.m., Fidel leaves Point 1 for the zone of operations. At 3:45 p.m. the pilots take off from the San Antonio base: Carreras in a B-26, [Chilean pilot Jacques] Lagas in another B-26, [Gustavo] Bourzac in a Sea Fury, and Douglas [Rudd] in another, as well as Prendes in a T-33 and [Alberto] Fernández in another. It is the last massive attack that the air force will carry out at Playa Girón. At 5:30 p.m. Fidel is in Helechal preparing the final blow.
But Brigade 2506 is about to be routed. At that time their boats, newly regrouped, return only because they were promised naval and air support. In effect, they are accompanied by two U.S. destroyers. Here is the final conversation between the American directing the operation from the sea and his puppet on land:
"Gray [CIA agent Grayston Lynch], the enemy tanks have surrounded our positions. They’re right here, very close to our positions. You can hear the cannon shots. I’m going to order retreat."
Gray pleaded with him not to do so:
"Stay there, stay there, we’re going there with everything we’ve got."
"How long will it take?" his puppet asked.
"Three or four hours."
"I can’t hold up that long. You won’t get here in time. I’m going to break the communications equipment right now."
Carreras returns with his plane giving off smoke due to a short circuit. Risking his life, he lands with the bombs intact. This too is a vital necessity since there are only 25 bombs left, barely enough for another day of fighting. With everyone’s heart in their mouth, he makes the smoothest landing of his life, practically perching on the runway like a pelican on the water.
Meanwhile, the other planes have a feast at Playa Girón with their bombs and machine-gun fire. There is momentary confusion when some of them mistake the rafts and boats carrying the fleeing mercenaries for another landing. They fire their machine guns at some of them and drop bombs at Playa Girón--around the airport area and near San Blas.
Revolutionary forces enter Playa Girón
It’s nearly 5:00 p.m. when Pilón arrives along with other compañeros, giddy with happiness, to tell me that a group of prisoners whom the mercenaries had taken--from the 116th battalion as well as some civilians--reached our position carrying white flags, together with a group of mercenaries who surrendered. They report that the rest have fled in different directions. (The first one to advance on Girón with his men was Capt. Marcelino.)
At 5:30 p.m. we all arrive at Playa Girón. At the second curve, in the ditch behind a mound of sand, we see a destroyed tank and a dead mercenary on top. Up ahead is another destroyed tank, and farther still, a command truck with the platform holding a destroyed .50-caliber machine gun. In the ditch is a leg that had been cut off. The body might still be alive somewhere. Our eyes can’t see the extent of the weaponry left abandoned in various places on the beach and in town, especially the cannon, mortars, and bazookas. There are three tanks and several trucks with .50-caliber machine guns.
There is an outburst of joy--immense joy seen on the faces of that sea of people entering Girón: police officers, civilians, militia members, rebels. It seemed that we had already forgotten about those who had died, since victory mitigates the pain somewhat. But at roll call, with the changing of the guard, we would once again ponder and reflect deeply on the large number of lives that were saved by the lives of those who sacrificed themselves so selflessly--19 dead and 50 injured. There were another 15 dead from the 116th Battalion, which speaks very highly of those 11 hours of fierce fighting under the constant rain of mortar fire, advancing on the ambushed tanks, cannon, and machine guns. How could we forget [19-year-old Wilfredo] Gonce, so young and yet already a veteran of the Second Front? And [21-year-old Rafael] Carini, who voluntarily climbed onto the trucks, as well as so many others who would make the list go on and on?
With nightfall approaching and our troops yet to arrive from San Blas and Playa Morena, I tell Samuel to place all the troops on defense around the town’s perimeter. No one is to move, in order to prevent confrontations among ourselves. The cannon shots are still whizzing over our heads.
Since I have no communications equipment, I travel personally to the Australia sugar mill to call Point 1. Practically the only one still there is [armed forces chief of staff] Commander Sergio del Valle, and when I get on the phone I tell him that Girón has fallen. He asks me if he can confirm the news. Laughing, I answer, "You’re speaking to someone who has just left Playa Girón. I came flying over here in my car."
I suggest to him that we inform all our forces to avoid mix-ups. He congratulates me and replies that he will take it upon himself to inform everyone, mainly Fidel, who was in Helechal.
During the night, a tank comes from Helechal at full speed. Of course, almost everyone is nearly certain that it’s one of ours, but we still have to take precautions. At night we can’t see what kind of tank it is. Finally, Commander Samuel makes contact with the tank operator. The leader is compañero Joel Pardo, who had been told by Fidel not to stop until the tank’s treads touched the water....
It’s said that it was easy, but it was a tenacious sacrifice by our youth, who defeated on the ground a brigade with a battalion of tanks and several artillery groups. They sank their main boats and blew away more than 10 planes in less than 72 hours. This would seem astonishing to any impartial observer, but it had a logic borne of overwhelming necessity. The reality was an epidemic and we had to take drastic action to save the situation. The tumor of Brigade 2506 was amputated from those swamps. It can be said that victory was achieved on the verge of the beginning of a larger war. Never before in the history of Cuba had a landing force been counterattacked so rapidly with tanks, artillery, and planes. Never before had so many lives and material resources been saved.
Time element crucial in victory
One might rightly question why we attacked them frontally on such narrow strips of land, giving them the opportunity to inflict so many casualties on us. From that point of view it seems like a terrible mistake. But if we consider other strategic factors of a political nature, we can fully see our need to take advantage of the time element. Never before had the revolution experienced a more dangerous moment--nor would it ever again, not even during the [October 1962] missile crisis nor with Mr. Reagan’s recent Caribbean paranoia1.
They could not be allowed to consolidate a beachhead, because then they could have landed the Cuban puppet government--which was practically being held hostage in the United States--at the Girón airport or by boat. If that had happened, they would have started blowing hot air at the Organization of American States to seek a consensus for an intervention under the cover of other flags.
But there was something worse still. It’s now known that if the mercenaries had held out another day or for just four more hours, the boats from their flotilla would have arrived under the escort of U.S. ships to disembark again. This operation would most likely have led to an escalation of the conflict and we might still be firing shots.
For these and other reasons that are part of our Cubanness, the order was to be on top of them at all times, not even giving them time to sleep. Never before had a fiercer battle been waged in Cuba, neither in the independence wars, nor in the campaign against the [Batista] tyranny. The order was carried out in that strange setting. The swamp is a quiet and impressive place--such as its iron ebonies--a place where Christopher Columbus mistook the manatees for mermaids. Walking around there is like grinding your eyes with the sandy wind.
Defending gains of the revolution
There, in its still, murky waters, the best of the Cuban youth came together, as if arriving to sacrifice themselves at the altar of the homeland. There they laid down their roots with uncommon heroism, in contrast to the historic poverty of the charcoal makers of the swamp, who could not understand why other Cubans would want to destroy the only government in the world that had built highways, schools, hospitals, and masonry houses, while students from the cities were working hard on a literacy campaign. It doesn’t matter--it will always be that way, there will always be people who don’t want to look at anything but their own narrow interests.
The terrain in the Zapata swamp does not lend itself to guerrilla warfare. In the mid-1960s, several guerrilla groups were defeated in this area without the use of major resources, because it is a terrain that greatly favors the defense. They simply never thought about the possibility of failure and therefore had no contingency plans. Their arrogance allowed them to think only about another weekend Guatemala operation.2 My goodness, not even an evacuation plan!
Actually, if they had made a good effort, they might have at least held out overnight. They had to concentrate on a compact arc of defense one kilometer inland, which would have allowed them to fight in three directions. But they had lost faith; from the first day they were hoping that the Americans would bail them out. I don’t know how long they would have been able to hold out. But to tell the truth, the final assault that Fidel was preparing was going to be a hurricane. We were going to train our cannon directly on them, send the battalions in waves, and drop on their heads the 25 bombs that the air force still had in clusters. Still, their only duty was to resist, because they still had weapons and ammunition.
In [the Angolan town of] Cangamba,3 a FAPLA brigade [in 1983] was besieged together with a company of Cuban advisers, five battalions with armored cars and artillery deployed in three rings of defense. The enemy concentrated all its artillery and thousands of men. After one month of combat, the brigade had been decimated. The only ones still fighting in the inner ring of defense were the company of Cubans, with heavy losses, and the general staff of the brigade. No water, no food. On some nights the volunteers would steal water from the enemy. A week later they were still resisting. They took water from the radiators, they ate toothpaste and drank urine, but they continued resisting. The ring of defense had shrunk to the size of a baseball field. Under enemy mortar and antiaircraft fire, helicopters parachuted them ammunition and food.
Unable to help them by land, a company landed in the rear guard, fighting its way forward and joining them. With the help of the air force, the enemy was forced to retreat on the ninth day. One or another individual went crazy from killing so many attackers. But the Cuban and Angolan combatants were fighting for freedom--with no quotation marks. When the battle was over, it looked like a hurricane had hit the town. There were so many craters from the howitzers that it looked like the surface of the moon.
Mercenaries lacked moral values
I think the mercenaries at Girón must have fought, but they lacked the most important thing--moral values. Without moral values there is nothing. Everybody dies, but not everyone dies with moral values.
The things that would happen to us were grotesque and at times laughable. We would start firing on the enemy without lighting the fuses in the grenades. Some of the tank drivers were teenagers who had absolutely no tactical training. Many hadn’t even had more than two weeks of courses. They only knew how to start the tank and make it go backward and forward. Sometimes you had to yell at them: "Come on, damn it, don’t you see they’re firing, fire that way, damn it!" "I don’t... I don’t know how to shoot." "Bam!" All you could do was shut the hatch and not go crazy. Just keep going.
The tanks attacked with their extra fuel tanks attached, and there was one instance where our own infantry set them on fire. Also, some tank drivers were so naïve that they turned on their headlights during a nighttime battle. The air force was not sent to support the infantry attack. On the last day we asked for ammunition for 122-mm. howitzers. At the last minute we received a truckload of mortar ammunition.
Sometimes we shot at our own planes and other times they shot at us. We forgot to be more guerrilla-like. But to tell the truth, guerrilla fighters are never in a hurry. We were in a hurry. Time was of the essence for us. Carrying out a frontal attack, we moved several battalions in a column with tanks and artillery. They always fought under ambush. Would they have attacked like this had it been the other way around? What would have happened if they had had to go help their troops that were surrounded at Playa Larga? This operation, which failed on the first day, was not carried out the next day because they abandoned Playa Larga. In a sense their fleeing worked out well for them. Otherwise the battle would have ended 24 hours earlier.
This chronicle does not go beyond a summary of the police battalion and the Battle of Girón. I apologize for all the events that are missing. These are preliminary notes for writing a book that will cover this historic episode in every aspect: military, political, social, and economic.
Plenty has already been published. In fact, the enemy has written more about some aspects than we have. If they had won, who could have put up with their lecturing? To write a highly ambitious book we need, above all, the testimony of the participants--of all the forces as well as civilian volunteers whose feats have yet to be recorded in depth. It’s not too late for us to do so--more than 20 years later, we can be more objective. May each one write or tell their testimony without prejudices, and that will be the best basis for putting together a complete book on Girón. It should be dedicated to today’s youth, in honor of those--themselves young--who died for them on the red sands of Girón.
What was the main factor in defeating Brigade 2506 so rapidly? I am always asked this question, and while it may sound a touch metaphysical, you wrack your brain pondering so many factors, both internal and external. You have to answer without romanticism, without prejudice, although reality can also be wonderful, as [Cuban poet] Fina García Marruz says.
As I see it, the decisive factors were Fidel’s leadership and the courage of our men. This combination of patriotism and intelligence reflected a new ethic, based on the moral values of the revolution.
Footnotes
1. Through the late 1980s, the U.S. government carried out a war drive in Central America and the Caribbean--including the U.S.-organized mercenary "contra" army against the Nicaraguan revolution, efforts to overthrow the government of Panama, military pressure against revolutionary Cuba, and a stepped-up military presence in the Caribbean in the wake of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada.
2. In 1954, seeking to crush broadening political and social struggles in Guatemala accompanying a limited land reform initiated by the government of Jacobo Arbenz that affected the holdings of United Fruit and other U.S. companies, mercenary forces backed by Washington invaded the country. Arbenz refused to arm those ready to resist and resigned. A right-wing military dictatorship took over.
3. Tens of thousands of Cuban volunteers fought in Angola alongside troops from the Angolan armed forces, FAPLA, to defend Angola from attack by the South African apartheid regime between 1975 and 1990. Ameijeiras served an internationalist combat mission in Angola in 1984.
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