But while Castro did have a small force of Bs, his were of a strikingly different design. Quite the opposite: Castro now knew something big was coming.
On the morning of April 17, things went sideways from the start. Upon entering the bay, a troop ship ran aground on a sand bar after taking fire from quick-responding Cuban troops. An entire battalion swam for their lives, abandoning their heavy guns and ammunition.
An unexpected coral reef—misidentified from aerial photos as seaweed—slowed troop landing to a crawl. That decision doomed the entire operation. But then it opened fire on us. In moments, an explosion erupted at sea. The planes were destroying the Rio Escondido , a merchant ship carrying fuel and supplies.
Desperate to avoid a similar fate, the remaining supply ships headed out to sea. Now the invasion force, including five light tanks, had only the ammo they could carry. Former frogman Zayas-Bazan sighs as he sits in the sunlit office of his Miami home, where today he authors collegiate Spanish text books. I was sitting on the beach with another frogman. The Bay of Pigs invasion ended not with a bang but with a flurry of final shots as the exiles ran out of ammunition.
The brigade lost men. Demoralized and defeated, brigade survivors were rounded up and trucked to two notorious old prisons. Knowing the brigade felt betrayed by the United States, Castro soon made an extraordinary jailhouse visit for a bizarre town hall-type session. How are you being treated? Any complaints? If Castro thought he was going to win over this crowd, however, he was mistaken.
At the Bay of Pigs Museum, Lopez points to a fuzzy news photo of that meeting. A black Cuban exile named Tomas Cruz Cruz is standing among his comrades and speaking. I came to defeat communism! No one knows why, but Cruz got away with his impertinence. Another young man, an Asian Cuban named Jorge Kim, was less fortunate. A photo on the same wall shows him in intense conversation with Castro.
As the major Allied offensive masterminded by Robert Nivelle was failing miserably on the Western Front, British forces in Palestine make their second attempt to capture the city of Gaza from the Ottoman army on April 17, In the wake of the failed British assault on Gaza On April 17, , French General Henri Giraud, who was captured in , escapes from a castle prison at Konigstein by lowering himself down the castle wall and jumping on board a moving train, which takes him to the French border.
On April 17, , U. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash commandeers over half a ton of uranium at Strassfurt, Germany, in an effort to prevent the Soviets from developing an A-bomb. Pash was head of the Alsos Group, organized to search for German scientists in the postwar Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Early US. World War II.
Cold War. On Cuba's side, one of the commanders who led the resistance, Jose Ramon Fernandez, said in a book about the invasion he co-authored with Fidel Castro that they had incurred in deaths. The intelligence agency's leaders were convinced that Castro's revolution was unpopular and that all that was needed was a military invasion by opponents to spark a popular uprising against him.
He had given them electricity and agricultural aid. The CIA started from false and poor premises to carry out the invasion. Also, it was not that difficult to imagine that tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers would quickly defeat 1, invaders", Kornbluh argues.
Some 1, men of the Brigade were captured and sent to prisons in Havana. Before they sent us to prison, Che Guevara arrived. He asked us what we used to do for a living before leaving Cuba. He seemed very calm, but I always thought that at any moment he could shoot me. They moved us in several lorries. One of them was too crowded. It was sealed hermetically. Nine of my colleagues died inside that vehicle. My lorry had its windows open. While we were being moved, people shouted at us in the street: "Mercenaries!
We will execute you! Later, in Havana, we were locked up in the Castillo del Principe prison. We were not treated well. Some prison cells were over-crowded and you had to sleep on the floor. Getting cigarettes was very difficult. Some prisoners resorted to smoking orange peelings. When we were taken out to walk on the courtyard, a guard would poke us with a bayonet if we did not keep up the pace. We were around detainees in every prison corridor, but we only had one toilet for all of us.
We were given a cup of coffee that in reality was dirty water. Many times they would spit on it before handing the cup to us. The bread we were given was hard as a rock. They would throw it to the ground. You had to dip it in water to be able to chew it. Food was very scarce. Because of that, he was sent in the very last plane that took prisoners back to Miami. Kennedy had sent a famous lawyer to negotiate with Castro. He went to Havana for the first time on 30 August On the next day he met with the Cuban leader for four hours.
During the following months, Donovan held several talks with Castro. Negotiations were approached as a process of "indemnification", rather than as a humanitarian exchange, "something which Castro demanded from the beginning, because he wanted Cuba to be compensated for the expenses of the invasion", Kornbluh explains. Months before their release, the prisoners had faced a public trial for treason.
Many believed they would end up facing a firing squad, but they were sentenced to 30 years in prison. As the provisions began arriving in Cuba on 23 December, the first flights from Pan American airlines started to take the prisoners to Miami, where they were met by a welcoming crowd of 10, people at the Dinner Key auditorium.
In the meantime, Cuba celebrated the "second victory at Giron beach", as they described having won "the battle for indemnification". Lopez de la Cruz remembers being on the last Pan American flight, looking out of the airplane window and thinking that it would be very difficult to return to his country. Would I be able one day to sit with one of them and have a drink together? I think it would be very difficult, because of all my comrades who fell or ended up mutilated.
To talk, yes. Cuba is always open to dialogue. But there must be equality of conditions. While there is still a [US trade] embargo, this cannot be. The people of the Brigade are mercenaries because they sold themselves to a country that hired them. They will always be enemies of ours. They have never stopped being so. To this day, from Miami, they influence and try to decide, supporting this [US] blockade against our Fatherland.
But he also called to forget history. History is never forgotten. We always have it present. Every 19 April there is a celebration with military parades, commemorating what the Cuban government calls the "first defeat of imperialism in Latin America".
Ninety miles away, however, the feeling is very different. Nostalgia about what could have been runs through the streets of Miami. Monuments, museums and parks commemorate the heroes of Brigade. Today, 60 years later, the survivors don't like to talk about how many Cubans from the other side they killed during the invasion. We knew we were going to war, but nobody will ever tell you that we enjoyed killing people.
Deep down, we were all brothers", Lopez de la Cruz says. Today it seems different. It is true that we were all Cubans. The veterans of the Brigade still dream about seeing the fall of the Cuban government in their lifetime.
There are two US presidents whom they find difficult to forgive: Kennedy and Obama. It was an act of stupidity. Although he wanted to protect the US, it was easy to see that they were involved. Years later, I understand his decision, but the truth is that many people feel betrayed and disappointed for what he did", Lopez de la Cruz tells BBC Mundo.
Cuba opened the doors without changing anything. A substantial part of the Cuban exile community in Florida still supports a hard-line policy against the island. They venerate the former brigade members as heroes in exile. We fulfilled our duty even though we did not reach our objective. Here in Miami people respect us a lot. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
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