Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 12, 1991 TAG: 9104121058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
Gibson, 59, was stationed at the Guantanamo Naval Base on the day in 1961 that 1,300 Cuban refugees, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, tried to overthrow the regime of communist dictator Fidel Castro.
"It was a real, real blunder. Castro knew they were coming. He was waiting for them on the beach," said Gibson, who had his own dealings with the Cuban leader about 2 1/2 years before the failed invasion.
In June 1958, Gibson was on shore patrol duty with a busload of sailors returning to the base from liberty in Guantanamo City. About five miles out of town, the bus was stopped and 15 rebels fighting to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista forced their way on.
The rebels, who swore allegiance to brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, made the bus driver and his 28 passengers go into the mountains as far as the vehicle could go. Then everybody got off and started walking, Gibson said.
"About 3 a.m., we finally got to a rebel camp," he said. "During the next 19 days, we walked everywhere. We must have traveled at least 100 miles by foot, going from one camp to another."
Gibson was the highest-ranking sailor in the captured group, so he became their unofficial leader. The idea of taking American prisoners came from Raul Castro, he said.
"He wanted to cast attention on the fact that the United States was refueling Batista's planes on the base and loading them with bombs," Gibson said. "He wanted the world to know that Batista was being helped by the U.S."
The strategy of getting public attention worked, because Gibson and his fellow prisoners were soon joined by a couple of journalists who worked their way into the rebel stronghold. "They climbed over a fence at the naval station and made contact with some Cubans who took them into the hills," he said.
Gibson and his men were under constant guard but were not locked up or kept tied or chained. They slept in barn lofts, using burlap bags as makeshift hammocks, and were fed rice, sweetened corn meal and boiled beef that the rebels got by raiding ranches and stealing livestock.
The only time the sailors were seriously threatened was near the end of their three-week captivity, Gibson said, when they thought they were about to be released but then were ordered back onto a truck and into the mountains.
"I said, `Bull, we're not going back,"' Gibson said he told the sergeant who was in charge of guarding the group. "I pointed to where I thought the base was. He saw I was serious, so he gave a command in Spanish to surround us and lock and load. . . . So I said, `I think we ought to get back on the truck, men.' "
Three days later, the sailors were released following negotiations between American officials and Raul Castro. They were taken out of the mountains by helicopter.
Gibson said he never saw either Castro brother in person during his three weeks of captivity, but his greatest fear was not them. It was Batista.
"At first we wanted anybody to find us," he said. "But after a while we got to realizing our situation and that we were in more danger of Batista getting us. He could kill us and the rebels would get blamed, because everyone knew the rebels had us."
But Gibson said the rebels who kept him never made contact with Batista's forces during the ordeal. Shortly after his release, Gibson was promoted, and a few months later - in January 1959 - Castro's rebellion succeeded.
Gibson stayed in Cuba for three more years and was there at the time of the Bay of Pigs failure, for which he blames President John F. Kennedy.
"Kennedy did nothing to back 'em up," he said. "If you're going to launch an invasion, at least have the guts to go through with it."
by CNB