“Okay, but don’t desert us,” Pepe responded.
“We’re not going to desert you,” Lynch promised.
JFK’s ill-advised decision not to provide U.S. air cover, coupled with his unwillingness to permit the knockout blow against Castro’s air force, took a toll on the rebel air operations that day.
Shortly before sunup, Captain Eddie Ferrer, pilot of the first of six lumbering C-46s en route to drop 177 paratroopers northeast of Blue Beach to cut off and defend the invasion site, passed over the aircraft carrier Essex and two destroyers plowing toward the beaches. He was certain they were joining the battle.
“Hell, we can’t lose!” he exclaimed to his copilot.
The C-46s were slow and unarmed and without a fighter escort. Rebels were still under the impression that the United States was providing an “umbrella.” Ferrer was thus all the more surprised after he dropped his paratroopers on the San Blas Road to find Castro’s T-33s attacking the brigade flight. Machine gun bursts puffed smoke from attackers’ wings. Ferrer saw one of the C-46s plummet to earth streaking smoke. He managed to escape to sea by skimming the waves and slow-flying with full flaps.
As the battle progressed, T-33 jets picked five of the Brigade’s twelve remaining aircraft out of the air, including the B-26 flown by Americans Pete Ray and Leo Francis Baker, who were killed on the ground when they tried to escape their crashed bomber amid the fighting. Their bodies would be kept frozen in a Havana morgue for the next eighteen years.
American A-4D pilots from the carrier Essex watched helplessly as Castro’s bombers and fighters made sorties against the beaches, the freighters in the bay, and the hapless C-46 transports. A Cuban T-33 made a run at pilot Tim Lanahan, who was cruising his jet at twenty-five thousand feet. Within seconds, both jets were diving, with the A-4D close on the Cuban’s tail.
“Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” came the air controller’s frantic cry from the Essex. “Rules of engagement have been changed.”
Lanahan had no choice but to drop his pursuit of the T-33 and return to the carrier.
Pilot Jim Forgy came upon a Cuban Sea Fury riding the tail of a Brigade B-26. The bomber’s starboard engine erupted in flames. The Sea Fury closed in for the kill.
“I have a Sea Fury shooting this B-26 down,” Forgy radioed. “Request permission to take positive action.”
“Negative,” came back the reply.
On the ground, Erneido Oliva’s Second Battalion requested two Brigade B-26s to attack an enemy column of nine hundred approaching the battle zone in sixty vehicles, including buses. The bombers routed the battalion, but a Castro T-33 and a Sea Fury shot down one of the bombers.
By midnight of the first day, Fidel and twenty thousand soldiers had arrived to trap the invaders against the beaches, squeezing them into tighter and tighter perimeters. Castro’s tanks and infantry battered the Brigade with artillery fire for forty-eight straight hours. At the traffic circle on the northern outskirts of Playa Larga, Oliva and his men endured more than two thousand shells falling on them in less than four hours. Stalin tanks rumbled against Oliva’s dug-in defenders until midnight.
A little former barber called Barberito ran around and around one of the advancing tanks, peppering it with fire from his recoilless rifle until the frightened crew surrendered. Barberito was killed later by a machine gun burst.
A Brigade tank driver named Jorge Alvarez knocked out an enemy tank with his last shell, then deliberately crashed his tank into another Stalin. The two monsters rammed each other in a remarkable nose-to-nose battle until the Stalin’s gun barrel split and it retreated.
Of Oliva’s 370 men, twenty had been killed and another fifty were wounded by the time they beat back the enemy’s initial attacks. Weakened and bleeding, knowing another attack at dawn was inevitable, the Red Beach invaders retreated to Giron to link up with Blue Beach invaders. They arrived at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 18.
Castro closed in on Blue Beach.
Oliva organized the last battle of the Bay of Pigs, which came to be known as “the last stand at Giron.”
Armed with seven bazookas and three tanks, Oliva’s battalion destroyed three Castro tanks and an armored truck during the first fighting. The Brigade’s 81mm mortars fired so fast the tubes started to melt. When Castro’s troops pulled back to regroup, Oliva found he could no longer raise Pepe San Roman on the radio.
San Roman had pulled back to within twenty feet of the water. Crouching on the sand with artillery fire bursting around him, the Brigade commander issued his last radio message, shouting across the air to Grayston Lynch aboard Blager: “Am destroying all equipment and communications. I have nothing left to fight with. Am taking to the woods. I can’t wait for you.”
Abandoned by the United States, surrounded by a force ten times larger, pounded by artillery and fighter bombers, pushed back to the beaches and swamps, unable to escape, out of ammunition, Pepe San Roman ordered his command to break into groups and escape however they could. Grayston Lynch later told me it was the first time he was ever ashamed of his country.
I knew how he felt. At Guantanamo, I lowered my head and bit my lip to keep from bawling like an abandoned baby seal as news of the failure streamed in across the operation center’s commo. I wanted to go home—except Elinor was gone and I no longer had a home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IN MY ASSESSMENT, THE Bay of Pigs defeat and our reneging on aid to the rebels led to the communist presumption that the United States might no longer possess the moral courage to honor its commitments to the Free World. Communist foreign policy was like a pig in a gunnysack—a push here, a push there, withdraw at one point, then kick a leg out over there—a missile-rattling strategy that kept the rest of the world on the edge of paranoid schizophrenia.
MAD—Mutual Assured Destruction—seemed an appropriate term to describe the nuclear protocol whereby if you attacked me I struck back and we destroyed each other. Vaporize humanity, if necessary, in the pursuit of victory. American culture developed an apocalyptic side. Nuclear air-raid drills conditioned schoolchildren to cringe underneath their desks. Suburbanites dug air-raid shelters in their backyards.
Brigade 2506 lost 120 men killed during the Bay of Pigs landing. Pepe San Roman and about fifty of his followers hid out in the Zapata Swamps for two weeks before hunger and thirst forced them to surrender. Castro announced the capture of 1,800 invaders, many of whom Che Guevara executed.
“We abandoned those poor fuckers to die when they depended on us,” Boehm protested.
The fiasco in Cuba was still in the headlines, along with a new crisis developing in partitioned Berlin, when I received orders to report to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon as soon as possible. More than twenty thousand military and civilian employees worked in the U.S. Department of Defense. I had been to the Pentagon a few times and always before found the massive five-sided structure active with energy. This time, however, it seemed somber and bleak, under a dark cloud. Or perhaps I was merely transferring to it my own state of mind about Cuba.
I passed through Marine security at the main entrance and wended my way down the corridors to the office of the CNO, the most senior-ranking officer in the Department of Navy, where a sour-faced civilian receptionist showed me to Admiral Arleigh Burke’s office. His cluttered desk looked the size of my entire office at Little Creek.
Admiral Burke was sixty years old, fit looking, with a long Nordic face and a Marine Corps haircut with wide sidewalls. “Sit down, Commander,” he invited, gesturing. “I received your proposal outlining your plan to create a naval special forces unit.”
I submitted that proposal months ago. I thought it must have either been discarded or lost in the bureaucracy.
“Commander Hamilton, I hear scuttlebutt that you’ve already been training your UDT-21 men.”
“Yes, sir,” I admitted. “It seems needed. The Army has already done it.”
The admiral nodded and pressed his lips together. He
lifted one eyebrow. “It appears a lot of other people may agree with you. Your proposal has been widely circulated. Commander, I may have a job for you.”
He handed me a copy of a letter that had not yet been signed or distributed. The subject line read, “Development of improved naval guerrilla/counter-guerrilla warfare capability.”
I looked up, not quite willing to believe it. Admiral Burke nodded and motioned for me to keep reading.
“… augment present naval capabilities in restricted waters and rivers with particular reference to the conduct and support of paramilitary operations. It is desirable to establish Special Operations Teams as separate components within Underwater Demolition Units One and Two.…”
I read it twice to make sure I understood. I felt dizzy with disbelief. Apparently, more military people than I imagined shared my vision. While I was occupied with training and preparing for the Cuban invasion, ideas expressed in my letter were secretly floating around within the Defense and Navy Departments. My proposals, I discovered, were the impetus needed to invigorate movements already under way.
The Unconventional Activities Working Group had been established back on September 13, 1960, in response to increasing insurgency challenges in Laos, South Vietnam, and Cuba. It was directed to investigate “naval unconventional activity methods, techniques and concepts, which may be employed effectively against Sino-Soviet interests under conditions of Cold War.”
Deputy CNO William Beakley suggested: “[T]he Underwater Demolition Teams and the Marine reconnaissance units are organizations capable of expansion into unconventional warfare.”
At the National Security Council meeting of February 1, 1961, less than a month after John Kennedy assumed the presidency, McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the president for national security affairs, noted in a top secret memorandum that President Kennedy “requested the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with other interested agencies, examine means of placing more emphasis on the development of counter-guerrilla forces. Accordingly, it is requested that the Department of Defense take action … and inform this office promptly of the measures which it proposes to take.”
A month before the Bay of Pigs disaster, Rear Admiral William Gentner, director of the CNO’s Strategic Plans Division, approved a concept for “additional unconventional warfare capabilities within, or as an extension of, our amphibious forces.”
This latest concept by Admiral Gentner was based on the one I submitted. It was the reason I now sat across the desk from Admiral Burke. The admiral pushed back in his chair.
“While the United States concentrated on conventional warfare and nuclear global deterrence,” he said, “the unconventional has slowly outflanked the conventional. As Cuba proves, we have failed to deter low-intensity conflict while strategists tell us this is the most likely form of conflict for at least the rest of the century. That makes us well prepared for the least likely conflict and poorly prepared for the most likely. Now we’re playing catch-up.”
He paused to study me. I was literally on the edge of my chair.
“Commander, I want you to be instrumental in building a naval special warfare unit using the UDTs as the base. You will work with Captains Mort Prince and Sandy Warren in OP-343E until we find a relief for you at COMUDU-Two. In the meantime …”
I would continue to also occupy my other slots as skipper of UDT-21 and COMUDU-Two. My additional new title would be CNO Assistant Head of Special Support Operations, Strike Warfare Division, which also included membership in the Unconventional Activities Working Group.
“It’s a lot to ask of you, Commander.”
“I’ll take it,” I responded before the CNO changed his mind.
Burke smiled. “That’s why I picked you, Bone.”
The CNO promised me wide leeway in training and bringing the new unit online. Roy Boehm was waiting for me when I returned to Little Creek. I gave him a mysterious smile.
“Lieutenant Boehm, you and I have shared a vision.”
“Yes, sir. Go back and kick Castro’s butt.”
“Better than that, Roy. You’re my ops and training officer. Can you make commandos out of our people?”
“We’re almost there already, sir.”
“We’ve just received the Pentagon’s approval.”
Boehm stared. A grin slowly crossed his rugged face. “I’ll coordinate with the staff right away.”
“No. This is classified top secret. You will report directly to me. I want you to select and train men as a nucleus for a special operations force to be incorporated into Underwater Demolition Units. You will discuss the creation of this unit with no one except me. You will volunteer information on the purpose of training to no one, not even the men undergoing it. Is that clear?”
“Aye, aye, sir. I will build a team within a team and tell no one. What kind of mission do you have in mind?”
I leaned across the desk on my elbows. I felt excitement welling through the both of us.
“Roy, do you know what this means? We’ve been granted carte blanche to create the finest bunch of unconventional warriors in the world. President Kennedy has taken a lot of flak for the Bay of Pigs. He’s not going to let it happen again. Now, let’s get to work. We want night fighters who can successfully complete any mission anywhere in the world. Provide me your concept of operations, a mission profile, and a profile of the men we need. Get cracking.”
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered a “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs.” He enunciated his goal to land an American on the moon within the decade and to expand U.S. special operations forces.
“The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe—Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East,” he said. “[Communist aggressors] have fired no missiles, and their troops are seldom seen. They send arms, agitators, aid, technicians, and propaganda to every trouble area. Where fighting is done, it is usually done by others—by guerrillas striking at night, by assassins striking alone—assassins who have taken the lives of thousands of civil officers in the last twelve months in Vietnam alone.…
“I am directing the Secretary of Defense to expand rapidly and substantially, in cooperation with our allies, the orientation of existing forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, paramilitary operations and sub-limited or unconventional wars. In addition, our special forces and unconventional warfare units will be increased and reoriented.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
WITH MY DUTIES SPLIT between the Pentagon and UDT-21, I made Boehm my XO and put him in charge under my supervision for the largest share of training our new special warfare unit. I ran interference to keep the brass off his ass while he got the job done.
He was a rough sonofabitch, like most bos’n mates, and never played the political game of CYA—Cover Your Ass. By the time we finished he would have four courts-martial pending against him for various crimes and misdemeanors involving acquiring equipment and training outside the normal military channels. Sometimes it was all I could do to keep his ugly butt out of the brig and working on our warriors.
JFK wanted sea warriors; Boehm and I would give them to him. Commies were spreading like lice throughout Latin America and you could whiff Vietnam on the wind. It was up to us to stop the cocksuckers. We knew what we wanted for our unit. Swift, deadly, like the shark. Capable of infiltrating or striking from the air by parachute or helicopter, from overland, from the surface of the sea, or from underneath the sea.
They had to be more than killers, all muscle and neck and attack-dog mentality. I wanted—demanded—creative men who operated with their brains as well as with their muscles. Men of courage, dedication to duty, sacrifice, personal dexterity, and intelligence. Team and mission must come first. At the same time, they must be individuals, near rogues in fact. Rough men, tough men who could kick ass and operate outside protocol.
Boehm liked to tell the story of a man he knocked down dur
ing a fistfight. “You’re not going to kick him while he’s down, are you, Roysi?” asked Lump-Lump, his old shipmate, with a sly grin.
“What the fuck you think I’ve got him down for?”
I gave the lieutenant a complement of ten officers and fifty enlisted and asked him to report back to me with the names he selected. The officers he chose were all young junior officers, like Lieutenant (JG) Dante Stephenson, who had a hair-trigger temper but whom we could use if he controlled it. Also, “Tex” Hager, George Doran, Dave Graveson, Jose Taylor, John Callahan. Most were LDOs (limited duty officers) like Boehm, mustangs who had worked their way up through the enlisted ranks and weren’t preoccupied with their careers as officers.
From the enlisted ranks came tried warriors. Harry Dick “Lump-Lump” Williams, “Hoss” Kucinski, “Legs” Martin, James Tipton, Rudy Boesch.
I went down the list when Boehm submitted it to me.
“Rogues,” I commented.
“These are the caliber people we need for what we’re asking them to do, skipper. We don’t want Jack Armstrong all-American types who’ll say, ‘Yessir, nosir, two bags full, anything you say, sir.’ We need sonsofbitches who can and will think for themselves and will get a job done no matter what. We might not win popularity contests—but we’ll be capable.”
I agreed. “Make it happen. Start training.”
I had the CNO’s green light to go anywhere, do anything to provide the right training. Boehm went even farther than that sometimes. We laid on Ranger training, jungle warfare, martial arts. One group went to Annapolis to learn how to sail boats. I figured we’d be in Vietnam sooner or later—and the Vietnamese junks had sails. We sent men to prison to learn safecracking from experts. Our people became automobile hot-wire artists and lock pickers. They went to learn trick shooting, photography, and intelligence gathering and analysis. At Ops and Intel Training at Fort Bragg, Hoss Kacinski creatively photographed his naked penis and balls with a pair of sunglasses to show hairy heavy jowls and a long nose, which circulated around as “Bos’n Hose Nose.”
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