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  Before the brigade had even gotten its bearings, something occurred that the men would remember for the rest of their lives. As they made their way through the darkness toward San Blas, amid the sounds of rocket fire, airplanes, and the occasional bomb, there came from the shoreline an explosion so loud and powerful that it shook the earth below their feet. The men turned and saw a massive mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

  “Coño (damn),” said a member of the platoon. “Does Castro have an atom bomb?”

  Later, the men would learn that one of their primary supply ships, the Río Escondido, loaded with fuel tanks and artillery, had been hit from the air and ignited in a thunderous ball of flames. But at the time it shocked the men; they didn’t know what it was, leading them to surmise that whatever they were up against was more massive and destructive than anything they had imagined.

  The road to San Blas was littered with vehicles and artillery abandoned by the Cuban military. There were swamps on both sides of the road. They approached a sugar mill near the village of Covadonga. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the platoon first came ashore; the men were hungry and exhausted. Suddenly, out of the darkness, they saw a group of cattle crossing the road. Someone exclaimed, “There’s our dinner! We can kill them and eat them.”

  As they approached the cattle, the platoon came under attack. Out in the middle of the road, exposed to enemy fire, Battle’s men had no choice but to use the cattle as cover to hinder the incoming rounds. The animals were shot to pieces. The men would have preferred to eat the beasts; instead, they sacrificed the animals to save their lives and were then forced to scurry into the swamp to hide.

  Eventually, the Fourth Battalion achieved its primary goals: the men established a command post at San Blas and took over the hospital at Yaguaramas. There were many casualties along the way. The brigade may have been greatly outnumbered, but their training was superior. At least initially, most of the casualties were among their adversaries in the Cuban militia.

  By day three of the attack, Lieutenant Battle’s platoon was hunkered down at San Blas. Then an incident occurred that shaped the lives of numerous men involved—including the Fuentes brothers and José Miguel Battle. In later years, when the fog of war gave way to the harsh realities of civilian life, this incident would be used by defenders of Battle to suggest that, whatever else he was, he was a war hero. It would become the foundation of his legend, a facilitator and explanation for all that was to come in his life.

  RAUL MARTINEZ URIOSTE HAD NEVER HEARD OF JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE WHEN, ON APRIL 17—D-Day—he departed from Puerto Cabeza in a C-46 cargo plane as part of the 2506 Brigade’s paratroop unit, known as Company C. The company was comprised of four dozen paratroopers. They had trained separately from the other soldiers in an area of Guatemala known as La Suisa. As they approached the Bay of Pigs, their pilot flew in low at approximately six hundred feet. Gunfire struck the belly of the airplane.

  Remembered Martinez, “We looked at each other: Hey, we’re being shot at. This is real.”

  At the time, Martinez was a young man, having left Cuba in the wake of the revolution at the age of nineteen. He’d grown up watching World War II movies starring John Wayne at the local cinema and on television. He’d turned twenty in the training camp at La Suisa. Earlier that morning, as the paratroopers boarded their plane, he was excited but also startled by something he had seen. The number on the side of his plane was 8-6-4. For Cubans who are superstitious, numbers have a significance or meaning. Eight-six-four translated roughly as “death under the moon for the soldier,” or, as Martinez interpreted it, muerte con muerte grande, the big death.

  “When I first saw that,” he said, “I didn’t want to get on that plane.”

  His training as a soldier overruled his superstitions, and he got on the plane.

  The first squad of paratroopers jumped out over San Blas. Martinez was part of a second squad of nineteen men who were dropped over what had been designated Combat Outpost #2, a dirt road leading to the village of Covadonga. As he drifted down over Cuban soil, the first thing Martinez heard was what he thought was a police siren. Wait a minute! he thought. We’re soldiers, this is a war. And somebody called the cops!? He was offended. But as soon as his platoon touched ground, they knew they were indeed in a war.

  The siren, as it turned out, was from an ambulance, which was exactly what Martinez’s squad needed. Upon landing, one of the men had accidentally shot himself in the thigh. The paratroopers commandeered the ambulance and headed toward San Blas. There they were reunited with the rest of Company C.

  The command post at San Blas was bustling with activity. Over shortwave radio, the men heard reports from the front. Clearly, the battle was not going as planned, but at this point there was no sense that all was lost. The most disturbing reality was that even as they encountered Cuban armed forces that had advance knowledge of the invasion and were buttressed with an infantry and air force far greater in number than they expected, the brigade anticipated that they would receive backup from the United States. So far, that backup was nowhere in sight.

  At San Blas, Martinez’s squad was given an assignment by battalion commander Alejandro Del Valle. They were to return to Combat Outpost #2 and set up a roadblock to stop or delay the advance of enemy troops toward San Blas. Their unit of nineteen paratroopers would be augmented by nine men from the Fourth Battalion, including men from Battle’s platoon.

  It was at San Blas that Martinez first laid eyes on José Miguel Battle. Their introduction was so brief that he might not have remembered it at all except that Battle, like him, was a man who clearly liked to eat. “He was fat like me,” remembered Martinez, who had no idea that he and this man would soon cross paths in a way that would alter the trajectory of his life.

  The paratroopers and the men from Battle’s battalion headed back toward the front. They traveled with a tank, an ambulance, and a truck they had commandeered from the enemy. For artillery, they were outfitted with weapons from the heavy weapons battalion, which had landed by sea the night before. This included a .50-caliber machine gun and a 75mm recoilless rifle. Martinez was the unit’s forward observer, outfitted with a PRC10 radio, binoculars, and an M-1 carbine.

  Southwest of the Covadonga sugar mill, in the village of Jocuma— which was nothing more than a few houses on the side of the road—the unit spent the day without any disturbances. That night at 10:30 P.M., Martinez spotted an enemy jeep two kilometers south of the village, headed in their direction. “Hey,” he said to his men manning the artillery, “I got a target for you.”

  The men were excited. They advanced forward to the side of the road, out in the open. As the jeep approached, they aimed the .50-caliber machine gun and fired.

  They must have hit a gas tank, because the jeep exploded in a ball of flames. Martinez watched through his binoculars. “The driver of the jeep was trapped between his seat and the steering wheel. He was burned to a crisp and died a horrible death.”

  The brigadistas did not have time to celebrate. Twenty feet behind the incinerated jeep was a lumbering tank, a Soviet-made T-34 from World War II. With all that fire, the area had been illuminated. They could see that in the turret of the tank was a Cuban soldier with a heavy-caliber machine gun. The machine gunner spotted Martinez and his men and opened fire.

  Martinez and his men were completely exposed; they had nowhere to turn. Incoming fire sprayed all around them like a violent hailstorm.

  The man next to Martinez was hit and killed. The soldier to his right was hit in the back. “He made the mistake of screaming out and rising up. He was hit a second time and killed. The guy manning the .50-caliber, he was hit in the buttock, but he didn’t get up. That’s why he survived.” Miraculously, Martinez was not hit. As he remembered it, “I was born that day.”

  More enemy vehicles were approaching—another tank and infantry on both sides of the road. The squad was in danger of being surrounded and obliterated.

  “I
had no desire to play hero, but I didn’t have any choice. The shooter of our machine gun was hurt, so I took over the machine gun. My principle was, whatever moves, shoot it. I had a good time with the machine gun shooting tracer rounds. The leader of the post came over from the other side of the road and told me, ‘Hey, don’t waste so many bullets.’”

  One of their men fired a bazooka and hit the enemy tank, disabling the caterpillar treads so that the vehicle was dead in its tracks. Suddenly the occupants of the tank appeared through the turret; they were attempting to flee. In the darkness, Martinez opened fire. The enemy scattered for cover in the swamp.

  The dust settled. There was no way of knowing if Martinez had hit any of the men. It was eerily quite until one of the enemy soldiers cried out, “Teniente Julio, estoy herido (Lieutenant Julio, I’m wounded).” Apparently, Lieutenant Julio, the soldier’s boss, had vanished. He called out again, “Teniente Julio, estoy herido.”

  Remembered Martinez, “We remained quiet. Then the guy made a big mistake, he called out, ‘Teniente Julio, dónde estás? (Lieutenant Julio, where are you?).’ One of our men answered by calling out, ‘Está templando con tu madre, maricón (He’s out fucking your mother, faggot.)’ ”

  The guy tried to change his position; Martinez and his men saw him in the moonlight walking on the road, with his rifle raised, ready to shoot. “We took him out with the .50-caliber machine gun.” Martinez advanced to make sure the enemy soldier was dead. “He was cut into two pieces, honest to goodness. It was terrible, but that’s war. It was him or us.”

  It was a temporary victory, because more enemy vehicles were approaching. Martinez scurried back down into the swamp. It appeared hopeless.

  And this was where José Miguel Battle came into play.

  Apparently a man from Martinez’s squad had escaped on foot and run all the way back to San Blas. He told commander Del Valle, “It’s a slaughter up there. They are under attack from a tank column and infantry. The entire unit has probably been wiped out.”

  Del Valle suggested that they wait for tank support, which was expected to arrive shortly, but Battle spoke up. “What are we waiting for?” he said. “I’m going to get my guys.”

  “Battle,” said Del Valle, “you only have one truck. It’s a suicide mission. You’ll be driving into enemy fire, and they’re probably already dead.”

  “Well, then I’ll bring back their bodies.” Battle turned to his men and asked, “Who is with me?”

  The Fuentes brothers, Fidel and Ramon, said, “Let’s go.”

  The three men loaded the M-35 cargo truck with a .50-caliber machine gun and whatever hand weapons they had. That was it. They headed toward the front.

  It was after 2 A.M. The dirt road was barely able to handle the truck. The men sat mostly in silence, shrouded in near-total darkness except for the truck’s headlights, which illuminated the rocky, pockmarked surface of the road and the surrounding jungle of dense trees and mangroves. Watching the road was like looking through a keyhole: a sliver of light that stretched twenty feet and then a dark abyss. Battle and his men knew that there were enemy patrols likely all around them in the darkness. It was a journey into the unknown that could have ended at any moment in a hail of machine-gun fire or, even worse, a blast of artillery that would have blown them to pieces.

  Down the road, also in darkness, were Raul Martinez and his platoon, hidden in a ditch where they had been taking cover for at least the last two hours. They had suffered only three casualties, which was amazing considering the intensity of the attack against them. But they were trapped and figured that as soon as the sun rose they would be wiped out. Some of the men said their prayers.

  “We heard a truck coming,” said Martinez. “Then we looked and there it was, one of ours. They even had their lights on. I’m telling you, those guys had balls.”

  Martinez called out to the truck. Battle and the two Fuentes brothers saw the men and pulled over.

  Fidel Fuentes was the one manning the .50-caliber machine gun. “That was my baby,” he said. As soon as incoming fire hit their truck, Fuentes blasted away in the direction where the Cuban militia was hiding out. Meanwhile, Martinez and his group loaded their 75mm recoilless rifle and .50-caliber machine gun onto the truck. All together, eleven remaining men from Company C and nine men from Battle’s platoon loaded onto the truck. Martinez carried the M-1 rifle that belonged to one of the men who had been killed, thinking he could one day present the gun to the man’s wife. He grabbed onto the front grille of the truck and rode in that manner all the way back to San Blas.

  IT HAD BEEN A HEROIC ACT THAT SAVED MANY LIVES, BUT BACK AT COMMAND POST #2 there was no time for celebration. It was clear that in the last twelve hours much of the brigade had simply been overrun by Cuban forces. What was most shocking to the soldiers was that as the battle turned from bad to worse, the U.S. Air Force was doing nothing to back them up. Day and night, they waited for air support that never came.

  On the afternoon of the third day, around 3 P.M., Martinez, Battle, and the others saw three U.S. Air Force planes fly low over San Blas. The men let out a cheer. Finally, they assumed, they were getting some support. But the planes abruptly circled around and disappeared over the horizon, never to return.

  San Blas came under heavy attack from cannon fire. At the same time, over the airwaves the men could hear dispatches from Pepe San Román, a leader of the brigade, who was reporting from the front at Playa Girón to a communications center on the Blagar. These messages were relayed to military headquarters at Puerto Cabeza and by Teletype to Washington, D.C.

  At 5:00 A.M.: “Do you people realize how desperate the situation is? Do you back us or quit? All we want is low jet air cover. Enemy has this support. I need it badly or cannot survive . . .”

  At 6:13 A.M.: “Blue Beach under attack by B-26. Where is promised air cover?”

  At 6:45 A.M.: “C-54 dropped supplies on Blue Beach. All went into the sea. Send more.”

  At 9:14 A.M.: “Blue Beach under attack by two T-33 and artillery. Where the hell is jet cover?”

  At 9:25 A.M.: “Two thousand militia attacking Blue Beach from east and west. Need close air support immediately.”

  These and other desperate pleas for support went unheeded.

  What the men of the brigade did not know was that back in Washington, D.C., President Kennedy, after consulting with CIA supervisors who had devised the invasion, ordered that no matter what the circumstances, U.S. jets would not and could not be involved in the fight. The soldiers would have to fend for themselves.

  By April 19, it was clear that the mission was doomed. The various units of the brigade had begun to disintegrate. Rumors of an attempted evacuation circulated among the men. Everyone started to retreat back toward Playa Girón. “The trucks and tanks looked like a routa treinta on a Sunday morning,” said Martinez. Routa treinta was the bus route in Havana that took people to the beach, and on weekends you would see the buses packed with people hanging off the sides and riding on bumpers.

  Martinez jumped onto the tank and rode back toward the beach. At a junction in the road from Cayo Romano, the tank commander said, “Hey, hombres, this is the best I can do for you.” Martinez got off the tank and followed on foot, part of a large cortege of defeated soldiers in retreat.

  “When I got to Girón, I didn’t like what I saw. The morale was down. The people from Battalion Number Two who had fought valiantly, they were there, some wounded. After waiting there for a while, I decided it was time to go. I started to walk on the road back toward San Blas. From the tank I had seen a couple of trails that led from the highway. My hope was that I could get to the border between Matanzas and Las Villas. I was trying to get to my father’s farm that had been confiscated [by the revolutionary government]. I was trying to get to an area that I was familiar with.”

  Martinez slept in the woods during the day and walked at night, his face covered with charcoal from the coal deposits that were common in the area. The land
scape changed from swampland to sugarcane fields to the occasional flamboyant tree, with its spectacular bright red blossoms that struck a discordant note of beauty amid the death and carnage of the war.

  After three days, Martinez came upon an older brigade member, also on the run, who had a small transistor radio. They listened to local propaganda reports about how the war was over and the Cuban militia had won, but they chose not to believe this news. At one point they heard vehicles coming, so they hid in a ditch on the side of the road. Three trucks full of Cuban solders drove by with their guns raised in triumph; they were shouting, “Vencimos! We’ve won!” Martinez thought, Oh my God, it’s true. They won.

  Later that night, as they walked on the road, Martinez and his companion were suddenly approached from behind by a militia patrol of seven men. The militia soldiers opened fire, and Martinez returned fire with his M-3. But he was greatly outnumbered. His companion surrendered to the enemy and said, “Don’t shoot him, he’s just a boy.”

  A militia soldier with an M-1 rifle with a telescopic sight pointed his weapon at Martinez and said, “Que ’ta haciendo? (What are you doing?)” Martinez dropped his M-3 and said, “Nada.”

  “I’m thankful that he did not shoot me,” said Martinez of his captor. “I owe my life to this guy.”

  He was held with a group of other captured soldiers. While they were waiting to be taken away, up drove the head of the Cuban Communist Party in a big gray Buick. On the side of the car, painted in red, were the words Muerte a los invasores! (Death to the invaders!).

  MEANWHILE, BATTLE AND HIS MEN WERE ENGAGED IN A SIMILAR STRUGGLE FOR SURvival, as was the rest of the brigade, which had been scattered into the Zapata swampland.

  Battle had his truck—the same one that had been used to rescue his men. On the truck were eleven members of his platoon, including the Fuentes brothers. Six of the men were injured. The truck soon became stuck in the swamp, and the men were forced to abandon the vehicle and flee on foot. Their progress was hindered by their having to aid their wounded brethren.