God bless the men of Brigade 2506

On this day in 1961, my parents and lots of other Cubans woke up to “la invasion,” or the military operation that most of us expected and were ready for.  There were groups in Cuba who had been fighting Castro, from sabotage to confronting the regime block by block.   By the spring of 1961, a lot of the Castro magic had faded because promises about elections and reforms never happened.

The veterans of the brigade have a museum in Miami, a reminder to the young about the men who were willing to fight and remove communism from the island.

The politically correct explanation is that the invasion failed because Cubans did not rise up against Castro.  Actually, it failed because the total plan was never carried out, and the men were left stranded, as Michael Sullivan wrote:   

The invasion force, with four supply ships, landed at dawn, with a strength of 1,400 men. Initially things looked promising, American planes struck at Cuban air force bases and destroyed Cuban planes on the ground. However, the tide quickly turned on the insurgents. President Kennedy, anxious to cover up America’s role, inexplicably called off all American air support, leaving the rebels stranded on the beach. Cuban army and militia units, organized by Castro himself, swarmed the invasion site to block the rebels from gaining the interior of the island. The Cuban Air Force rallied to strafe the landing site and the supply ships moored in the bay.One ship sank and the remaining three barely made it out to sea. Without resupply or air support, the men of 2506 Assault Brigade managed to hold out for two days, until nearly all were either killed or captured by pro-Castro forces. When the smoke cleared, 114 died and 1,189 languished in Cuban prisons. There they remained for 22 months, until the Kennedy administration paid more than $50 million in food, medicine and cash for their release.The accusations flew around Washington, as well as Havana, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs and an administration struggled to retain its credibility.

It was a bad day, and many Cubans were thrown in jail after that.

Over the years, I have personally spoken to many of the veterans of Brigade 2506.

Like my parents, they started their new lives in the U.S., and many served in the U.S. military.  Every one of them tells me the mission would have succeeded if the plan had been carried out.

The lesson of The Bay of Pigs is simple.  Presidential weakness, and confusion, has consequences way beyond the event in question.

God bless the men of Brigade 2506.  They are heroes in my book.

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