CAMAGÜEY.- In the Korean and Viet Nam wars, a couple of blows were dealt to the "vigilante" army of Yankee imperialism. Another of the great embarrassments suffered by Uncle Sam's troops occurred in Playa Girón, where the Cuban militias, with more support for their courage than for good weapons, raised their rifles to the sky as a sign of victory.
Many of those who raised their fists were just boys. Young people who had not even left their adolescence behind, but who, regardless of the fear of shrapnel or the flames of death, charged, even if they left their last moments of life there, against the Cuban mercenaries who were the spearhead in the North American invasion to Cuba.
One of those brave men was Amado Cruz Ortega, the youngest of his battalion. “That afternoon I was 16 years old, today I am 76. I was the youngest in my battalion. I was born in Havana, I came in the year '70 when the sugar harvest. From February to December of '60. After a military training, I took a position at the mouth of Mariel. We stayed there until January 19, when we also left for Escambray, for three months in the fight against bandits.
On Saturday, April 15, in the morning, when the airports were bombed, jointly in Ciudad Libertad and San Antonio de los Baños, after the burial of the victims and the declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution, by Fidel, we swear to defend our homeland. After waiting for a possible invasion ”.
Amado narrates how on the 17th, with the landing at the Zapata Swamp, the military actions began. “We arrived at the next Central Australia on the night of the 17th. On the morning of the 18th, while I was on duty with my machine guns, placed in the form of anti-aircraft, I see some lights coming from the front and I realized that it was an enemy plane. Although we shot him several times, we did nothing. Luckily, one of our gunners was able to shoot it down. "
In his words, when he arrived at that place "it looked like hell." The mercenaries first engaged the combatants from Battalion 139, who reported the first casualties. “To the cry of surrender! to the defenders of the ideals of Martí, those of the green olive tree responded: Homeland or death! And they shot at the servile to the then administration of John F. Kennedy, US President. They stopped the invasion out there. Practically at the gates of the central Australia ”. He says that this heroic attitude was assumed by all the revolutionary hosts.
“We live in horrible moments like the loss of many of our comrades in arms and I never forget how the battalions 113 and 123 that were going by bus, were set on fire with Napalm bombs, dropped from their planes. They painted them with our insignia, to confuse us all ”, said Cruz Ortega with pain.
Francisco Cornelio Fernández Díaz, another of our fighters in that feat, refers that when capturing the enemies “there was no lack of desire to retaliate with them for the damage they did to so many of our arms friends and innocent peasants who lived nearby. But Fidel prohibited us from such an act. We couldn't be heartless like them. It was very sad to imagine how many families disintegrated after that event ”.
The sacrifice was very expensive. The bloodshed was high because in that fierce combat there was no truce. Fidel assured us that this combat was carried out by all of the Sierra Maestra together because the machine guns did not stop firing, nor did the planes stop their offensive, nor the mortars from exploding. The road was chopped by the recoil of the cannons. I carry in my memory several of our heroes such as Mariano Regalado and Sergeant Galindo ”.
Serafín León Rodríguez, who was also a member of the Rebel Army, described the event as “a lesson that the Yankees have never been able to forget. We were under very difficult conditions, we had not taken water or tasted food for 72 hours. We only ate quietly, after defeating them ”.
He says that the mercenaries thought they would find a weak army, but "we show them that when we protect an ideal with integrity, there are no invaders to take it from us." Serafín has lost sight of him and walks with difficulty, however, his momentum is overwhelming and he says that even under these conditions he would be able to reissue the passages of his youth if the Revolution were in danger.
One of the moments that Amado and his compatriots treasure with pride, happened on the 20th, shortly after the news of the definitive glory was announced. “We were waiting entrenched for another possible landing and at noon a truck arrived to bring us food. “Later, over time, we began to find out who was driving that vehicle. Then I found out that the then President of the Republic, Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, was the driver.
Other chiefs of the General Staff distributed, with humility, the food to all the protagonists of the feat. And laughing, Cruz Ortega concluded: "they were very well armed, but they lacked what we had left over: a lot of courage and a just cause to protect."
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez