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Like Armageddon
- So chaotic was the battle that at one point, when one
of the Brigade's supply ships was destroyed by Cuban attack planes,
some believed that Armageddon itself beckoned.
- Lynch recalls:
- ''The Rio Escondido exploded in a huge, mushroom-shaped fireball... At this moment, I received an urgent call from Rip up at Red Beach... ''Gray!'' Rip said. ''What the hell was that?'' I told him that the Rio Escondido had been hit and had
exploded. ''My God, Gray! For a moment, I thought Fidel had the
A-bomb!''
- Lynch asserts that Cuban ground defenses ''were kind
of like a mob, coming at us in open trucks while we blasted away,'' and
the invasion would have wildly succeeded if not for the aerial
bombardment.
- the bombings caused panic aboard the remaining supply
ships, mostly operated by civilian crews, which fled to sea, and left
the Brigade without ammunition.
- Lynch includes this last dispatch from Brigade commander Jose ''Pepe'' San Ramon:
- ''Tanks closing in on Blue Beach from north and east. They are firing directly at our headquarters. Fighting on beach. Send all available aircraft now!''
- And finally:
- ''I can't wait any longer. I am destroying my radio now.'' All of this tragedy Lynch attributes to Kennedy's last-minute decision to cancel air strikes, fearful of widening U.S. involvement.
- ''This may have been the politically proper way to fight a war, according to the rules laid down by the 'armchair generals' of Camelot." Lynch writes, "but we called it murder."
Rescuing survivors -
The one honorable U.S. aspect of the failed invasion, he says, was the Navy's full-scale effort afterward to rescue survivors. He describes this scene:
- ''The search planes reported a survivor sitting under a mangrove tree, slowly waving a white cloth on the end of stick... He'd been drinking salt water and could neither stand nor talk...
- ''Slowly, drop by drop, we were trying to get water into him... Finally, he was able to form a few words.
- ''I asked what the man had said. Turning to me with
tears in his eyes, [frogman Amado] Cantillo said, 'He wants to know if we won.' ''
- Despite Lynch's contempt for Kennedy, the agent believes Kennedy's subsequent secret campaign against Castro -- which brought to Miami the largest CIA contingent outside of Langley, Md. -- was devastatingly successful and would have toppled Castro if not for Kennedy's assassination in 1963. He plans to publish a second book
about those Miami years, tentatively titled The CIA's Secret War on
Cuba.
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