As part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of revolutionary Cuba's victory at the Bay of Pigs, known in Cuba as the battle of Playa Girón, the Militant has been publishing articles and reprinting documents about that decisive event.
Between April 17 and 19, 1961, Cuba's militias, Rebel Army combatants, revolutionary police, and air force crushed an invasion force of 1,500 exiled Cuban counterrevolutionaries who had been armed, trained, financed, and deployed by Washington.
In last week's issue the Militant published the first part of a Sept. 18, 1961, report by José Ramón Fernández, who commanded the main column of Cuban combatants in the battle, to the general staff of the revolutionary armed forces, in response to a request that he prepare a detailed report on the operations carried out by the revolutionary forces against the mercenary invasion at Playa Girón. In that section Fernández gives an almost hour-by-hour account of the battle.
In this issue we publish the concluding section of Fernández's report, which draws a balance sheet on the difficulties the revolutionary forces encountered in the battle and how they attempted to solve them.
The report, previously classified, was among the documents publicly released by the Cuban government and made available at a Cuba-U.S. conference on "Playa Girón: 40 Years Later," held March 22-24 in Havana. Fernández, the main organizer of the conference, is vice president of Cuba's Council of Ministers. Though no longer on active duty, he is a brigadier general of the Revolutionary Armed Forces,.
At the conference Fernández noted that the commission reviewing documents for declassification had proposed they not release these final critical assessments of the Cuban forces. "I had my reservations about blacking them out, but I accepted the decision. However, it was the commander-in-chief, Fidel [Castro], who overruled the recommendation. He insisted the entire report be declassified."
The following translation, as well as the subtitles and material in brackets, are by the Militant.
by José Ramón Fernández
As a result of the operations carried out, and in light of the experiences we gained and the successes and difficulties we confronted, the undersigned officer [Fernández] sent a note, dated April 29, to the head of operations of the general staff, summarizing the difficulties encountered and some of the solutions. They are as follows:
A) We confronted the problem that the command--that is, the undersigned--on being designated the head of a group of units involving several thousands of men, including no less than nine battalions or similar units, did not have an organized general staff, nor did he have people truly qualified for these tasks. As a result, it was necessary to designate several officers, some of whom had limited capacity for the work of a general staff, a situation that led to a loss of efficiency and other problems. With this in mind, it is necessary to organize effectively the commands, and for the general staffs to act in coordination with the one in charge, so there can be a real sense of collective work and to avoid problems in similar situations.
B) The command faced the problem that many subordinate officers acted on the basis of their own judgment, not strictly following the orders they were given. Sometimes this was through trying to improve on them, through lack of understanding, or through negligence and dereliction. On several occasions we discovered that orders that had been given to withdraw, to modify the attack formation, to halt a unit, or to deploy it at a given place, were not duly carried out by the subordinate officers. In some cases the individuals lacked authority, in others they were compañeros we could describe as intruders, with the resulting consequences that could be expected.
C) With regard to combat ability, numerous errors were observed, such as lack of control by the heads of subordinate bodies. This was due not only to lack of training but sometimes to the fact there were no heads of platoons, squads, or even companies who were qualified and had sufficient authority over their men to get them to obey orders.
Another problem was the men's inability to take positions, take cover, and generally take advantage of the terrain. Although in many instances the units advanced with exceptional bravery, they did not take adequate positions at the right moment and did not fire with the effectiveness and intensity that should have been expected. This was not from cowardice but from lack of training. Another thing that caused us innumerable difficulties was not keeping the enemy located and engaged. This meant that on several occasions, after launching an attack on enemy positions while remaining at a distance from them, our units engaged them by trying to take their positions by storm and dislodge them. Instead of remaining engaged at a reasonable distance, keeping them under fire and observation, our forces would pull back to the approximate departure point. As a result, whenever a new attack was launched, we did not know whether the enemy had changed positions, and we were unable to keep them constantly under observation, as we would have wanted.
D) Communications: We lacked radios, telephones, and other adequate means of communication. In all cases we had to use messengers traveling on foot or riding in vehicles, with the accompanying delays and problems.
E) Vehicles: In general many people did not know how to drive the vehicles, where to go with them, how to camouflage or hide them, and so on. As a result, vehicles we might have saved were damaged or destroyed, and there were congested roads and points where the enemy planes were able to discover our points of concentration.
F) Camouflage: The infantry, artillery, tank, transport, command post, and other personnel often did not know the techniques and use of camouflage. They completely neglected and failed to use it, except when ordered by commanding officers, and in those cases they did so as little as possible.
G) The dispersal of forces is an initial, passive means of protection for all units. It was constantly neglected.
H) Orders: As previously noted, orders were sometimes not only given by unauthorized individuals--and, what is even more serious, obeyed--but frequently they were not clear and the appropriate channels were not used, creating much confusion.
I) Control: We lacked a military police or comparable force to control the evacuation, the moving of civilians from the front to the rear or vice versa, those falling behind, personnel who got lost, the adequate direction of traffic and orientation of units, as well as controlling and directing individuals who, whether because they were lost or for some other reason, tried to move toward the rear.
J) The 85 mm. cannon arrived with the shells not ready to be fired. This led to precious time lost in the face of enemy positions, and the pace of firing was one shot per minute or less, which appreciably hurt our operations, until it was possible to prepare a sufficient number of shells.
K) The artillery in general would take hours from the time it reached a position until it was ready to fire.
L) Tank units: First of all, they did not advance resolutely, and secondly, it appears the crews were not sufficiently trained to fire effectively [given] the capacity and limitations of the vehicles they manned.
M) The supply operation was completely disorganized. More than 24 hours passed before a quantity of food and water were received. Subsequently, they continued to arrive in a chaotic manner, which brought innumerable difficulties in feeding the troops.