Posted on 04/15/2016 10:22:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
“The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year, the entire world held its breath, watching our two countries, as humanity came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war.” (President Barack Obama, Havana, Cuba, March, 22, 2016.)
Moral equivalence, anyone? Was this threat “humanity’s” fault? America’s fault? Are—just maybe, who knows?--were the Soviet satraps in Cuba at fault for this threat of nuclear war? You’d never know it from Obama. Here’s a little background on an event dated exactly 55 years ago this week that could have easily strangled that threat in the cradle:
“They fought like tigers,” wrote the CIA officer who helped train the Cubans who splashed ashore at the Bay of Pigs. “But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach.”
That CIA man, Grayston Lynch, knew something about fighting – and about long odds. He carried scars from Omaha Beach, The Battle of the Bulge and Korea’s Heartbreak Ridge.
But in those battles Lynch and his band of brothers counted on the support of their Commander in Chief. At the Bay of Pigs, Grayston Lynch (an American) and his band of brothers (Cubans) learned — first in speechless shock and finally in burning rage — that their most powerful enemies were not Castro’s Soviet-armed and led soldiers massing in nearby Santa Clara, but the Ivy League’s best and brightest dithering in Washington.
Lynch trained, in his own words, “brave boys who had never before fired a shot in anger” — college students, farmers, doctors, common laborers, whites, blacks, mulattoes. They were known as La Brigada 2506, an almost precise cross-section of Cuban society of the time. The Brigada included men from every social strata and race in Cuba — from sugar cane planters to sugar cane cutters, from aristocrats to their chauffeurs. But mostly, the folks in between, as befit a nation with a larger middle class than most of Europe.
Short on battle experience, yes, but they fairly burst with what Bonaparte and George Patton valued most in a soldier: morale. No navel-gazing about “why they hate us” or the merits of “regime change” for them. They’d seen Castroism point-blank.
Their goals were crystal-clear: firing-squads silenced, families reunited, tens of thousands freed from prisons, torture chambers and concentration camps. We see it on the History Channel after our GI’s took places like Manila and Munich.
In 1961 newsreels could have captured such scenes without crossing oceans. When those Cuban freedom-fighters hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs, one of every 18 Cubans suffered in Castro Gulag. Mass graves dotted the Cuban countryside, piled with hundreds who’d crumpled in front of Castro and Che Guevara’s firing squads. Most of the invaders had loved-ones among the above. Modern history records few soldiers with the burning morale of the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters.
From the lethal fury of the attack and the horrendous casualties their troops and militia were taking, the Castro brothers and Che Guevara assumed they faced at least “20,000 invading mercenaries,” as they called them. Yet it was a band of mostly civilian volunteers their Soviet armed and led-troops outnumbered 20-to-1.
“Where are the planes?” kept crackling over U.S. Navy radios two days later. “Where is our ammo? Send planes or we can’t last!”
Commander Jose San Roman kept pleading to the very fleet that escorted his men to the beachhead (and sat much closer to them than the Sixth Fleet sits to the Libyan coast today). Crazed by hunger and thirst, his men had been shooting and reloading without sleep for three days. Many were hallucinating. By then many suspected they’d been abandoned by the Knights of Camelot.
That’s when Castro’s Soviet Howitzers opened up, huge 122 mm ones, four batteries’ worth. They pounded 2,000 rounds into the freedom-fighters over a four-hour period.
“It sounded like the end of the world,” one said later.
“Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps broke and ran under a similar bombardment,” wrote Haynes Johnson in his book, “The Bay of Pigs.”
By that time the invaders were dazed, delirious with fatigue, thirst and hunger, too deafened by the bombardment to even hear orders. But these men were in no mood to emulate Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps by retreating. Instead they were fortified by a resolve no conquering troops could ever call upon – the burning duty to free their nation.
“If things get rough,” the heartsick Grayston Lynch radioed back, “we can come in and evacuate you.”
“We will NOT be evacuated!” San Roman roared back to his friend Lynch. “We came here to fight! We don’t want evacuation! We want more ammo! We want PLANES! This ends here!”
Camelot’s criminal idiocy finally brought Adm. Arleigh Burke of the Joints Chief of Staff, who was receiving the battlefield pleas, to the brink of mutiny. Years before, Adm. Burke sailed thousands of miles to smash his nation’s enemies at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Now he was Chief of Naval Operations and stood aghast as new enemies were being given a sanctuary 90 miles away!
The fighting admiral was livid. They say his face was beet red and his facial veins popping as he faced down his commander-in-chief that fateful night of April 18, 1961.
“Mr. President, TWO planes from the Essex! [the U.S. Carrier just offshore from the beachhead] that’s all those Cuban boys need, Mr. President. Let me order…!”
President John F. Kennedy was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering.
“Burke,” he replied. “We can’t get involved in this.”
“WE put those Cuban boys there, Mr. President!” The fighting admiral exploded. “By God, we ARE involved!”
Adm. Burke’s pleas also proved futile.
The freedom-fighters’ inevitably forced a retreat. Castro’s jets and Sea Furies were roaming overhead at will and tens of thousands of his Soviet-led and armed troops and armor were closing in. The Castro planes now concentrated on strafing the helpless, ammo-less freedom-fighters.
“Can’t continue,” Lynch’s radio crackled – it was San Roman again. “Have nothing left to fight with …out of ammo…Russian tanks in view….destroying my equipment.”
“Tears flooded my eyes,” wrote Grayston Lynch. “For the first time in my 37 years I was ashamed of my country.”
When the smoke cleared and their ammo had been expended to the very last bullet, when a 100 of them lay dead and hundreds more wounded, after three days of relentless battle, barely 1,400 of them — without air support from the U.S. Carriers just offshore and without a single supporting shot by naval artillery — had squared off against 21,000 Castro troops, his entire air force and squadrons of Soviet tanks.
The Cuban freedom-fighters inflicted more than 3,000 casualties on their Soviet-armed and led enemies. This feat of arms still amazes professional military men.
“They fought magnificently and were not defeated,” stressed Marine Col. Jack Hawkins a multi-decorated World War II and Korea vet who helped train them. “They were abandoned on the beach without the supplies and support promised by their sponsor, the government of the United States.”
“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty!” proclaimed Lynch and Hawkin’s commander-in-chief just three months earlier.
***“But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach.”***
A Kennedy stab in the back. No planes. No ammo. Kennedy simply wished them luck AFTER they landed.
NEVER trust a Democrat!
This was the first time a U.S. backed effort had been defeated in the western hemisphere.
The Democrats in the State Department had brought Castro into power. They had betrayed the Cuban underground and had provided Castro with the exact site and date and time of the doomed landing.
The self described Best and the Brightest of the Kennedy administration then betrayed the Cubans by leaving them stranded to be killed or captured and imprisoned and tortured.
This was the beginning of one failed operation after another by the Best and Brightest Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It was the beginning of a 20 year decline of America that was not reversed until the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
One of my co-workers was one of the La Brigada 2506. I forgot how many years he was imprisoned after he was captured on the beach.
So, Kennedy deserted the Cuban freedom fighters he had sent to Cuba, just like Mrs. Clinton deserted the Americans in Benghazi! A blotch on American history in both cases.
son of a bootlegging ####.
worthless family from top to bottom.
good riddance.
Worth repeating.
“This was the first time a U.S. backed effort had been defeated in the western hemisphere.”
There are a few things that should be brought out.
One is that Eisenhower had been preparing the invasion before Kennedy, using the Green Beanies. When that pig-eyed, inbred, shanty Irish trash Kennedy was handed the reins, he took the operation away from the Army and gave it to the CIA.
In all fairness to the CIA, they didn’t really have time to get things together before the operation. In all fairness to the Cubans, the CIA did a terrible job. This might have been at the orders of Kennedy; I don’t know.
It kind of pisses me off that this CIA guy claims all the credit for training the Cubans.
If it was a Republican, he would have been driven from office. Him and his brother Bobby, 2 non military men running a military operation. You go to war to win.
2 non military men running a military operation...
that sounds familiar.
I’ve never understood why JFK allowed this operation to go forward if he was just going to let it founder like this.
Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.
More than abundant evidence that a DemocRAT should never be entrusted as Commander-in-Chief of the US military; but, apparently, certain people never learn.
Kennedy did serve during WWII; that and his father’s ill-gotten money is what made him successful in politics.
Never the less, the only thing you can trust a Kennedy to do is just what he promised not to do and vice-versa. I was in high school during the Bay of Pigs and I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to politics up to that time. That changed in a hurry. The Kennedy-Johnson years were a disaster.
“I’ve never understood why JFK allowed this operation to go forward if he was just going to let it founder like this.”
Kennedy just wasn’t very bright. The bogfather had planned to buy the presidency for John’s older brother Joseph, but he was killed during WWII.
OTOH, Soviet agents were running amok throughout the government, so it could have been them.
The Best and the Brightest first delayed and then demanded the invasion be a day time operation at The Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs was a terrible place to invade. It was isolated and precluded local help.
The people in charge then wanted to cancel the operation because it would fail.
They were persuaded to continue because they were promised air support.
The Russian and Cuban forces moved down a single road to get to the isolated Bay of Pigs. They would have been sitting ducks for coordinated air strikes. With effective air support and support of the underground it could of succeeded.
The Kennedy State department gave the Cubans information on the underground. Anti-Castro Cubans were betrayed, rounded up and arrested or killed.
The Cubans were not given naval support, supplies or air support. The invasion lasted three days. During that time Kennedy showed no leadership and the his advisers sabotaged the mission.
Eisenhower had been in charge of the largest successful amphibious invasion in history. The man in charge of the D-Day landings could have easily seen that Kennedy's plan was a disaster and could have never worked.
The self-described Best and Brightest of the Kennedy and Johnson administration failed at everything they did.
“Kennedy did serve during WWII; that and his father’s ill-gotten money is what made him successful in politics.”
That and the evilstream misleadia. Kennedy lost his boat through carelessness, and the media made him a hero. (Spit)
The media have long been the blood enemies of the US Constitution.
JFK pretended to take responsibility for what happened ("victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan"), then he and his best and brightest cooked up the "Tractors for Peace" plan -- trading US-made farm and construction equipment for the freedom of the Brigade. Kennedy was presented with a battle flag (or a commemorative one) by freed members, then promised it would be returned to them "in a free Havana".
Kennedy literally did not know what he was doing. He let advisers screw up the operation. He never bothered to thoroughly read through the documents or review the operation.
No, it was a CIA stab in the back. Kennedy was crystal clear at every step that there would be zero US military involvement. Allen Dulles later stated, CIA planners believed that once the troops were on the ground, Kennedy would authorize any action required to prevent failure.
They tried to strong arm him. He did exactly what he told them he would do and didn’t let the CIA and the Joint Chief morons start the war they wanted.
And some combination of the JCS/CIA/and he Cubes murdered him for it.
Oswald shot JFK, he acted alone, and any crazy conspiracy theory is just horsesh*t.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.