I spent some time with the Cuban exiles those who are still alive the there are not a lot
of them who are still around who were in the brigade now they are still as angry as they
were in nineteen sixty one angry against Castro and even angry against John Kennedy for abandoning
them on the beaches uh but they will say their children and grandchildren don't seem to care
as much I mean they're American and this is old history to them but the exiles they have
a museum there they try to keep the history alive uh but it's a bit of a struggle uh and
you know one of the guys who was in the brigade said an interesting thing to me about Cuba
he said that he realized that he didn't know a single living person in Cuba anymore I mean
so their ties to Cuba the men who actually invaded Cuba to get their homeland back those
ties have been severed as well uh so yeah they they definitely feel that the history
is being lost but boy they still live it and they talk about this the invasion in vivid
detail they have very good memories they can tell you hour by hour how things went and
what they particularly remember is that sense of abandonment they all went in there thinking
they were going to be backed by the United States they get there they find themselves
under attack from the air from artillery and they realize nobody's coming to their rescue
and these fourteen hundred men are alone there just waiting to be slaughtered uh and it that
that sense of of anger but it's not even it's more than anger it's a sense of loss uh is
still very very powerful and very poignant when you when you listen to it wasn't that
one of the things that became impressed on Americans starting for example with the sailors
on the ships on the American Navy ships yeah who were told no we're not going to blow up
those tanks that are on the beach we are going to we are going to get out of the beach area
yes you know I interviewed a number of men who were young American sailors on American
ships that escorted and shadowed the brigade during the invasion they were just over the
horizon loaded to the gills with weapons there was an aircraft carrier out there with A4
Skyhawks on it and these men who were young at the time they some of them started to cry
when I interviewed them because they felt a sense not of loss but of having watched
somebody drown of letting this happen and they they could not respond but this was a
particularly powerful memory for men who were aboard two US Destroyers the Easton and the
Murray that were sent into The bay of Pigs to basically do some reconnaissance to find
out what was going on and their orders were find out what's going on there because communication
has been cut off by this point pick up any survivors if you can don't fire don't fire
unless fired upon uh well so these destroyers go in there Castro's tank brigade turns towards
these and starts firing towards them uh now Castro's tank leader I think his name was
Fernandez later said we were not firing at the destroyers we were firing at brigade men
who were trying to escape in small boats but these guys aboard these destroyers felt like
they were being fired upon they thought they were being bracketed which means uh you know
a shot fired in front and a shot fired in back trying to get to get a target on the
destroyer range shots yeah they and and I spoke to a gunner aboard one of these who
said we were locked and loaded we were ready to go the commander saying to them hold fire
hold fire hold fire they were ready and he said he wished they'd been hit because they
would have opened fire and they would've blown them away I mean these two destroyers would've
would've ended this thing instantly uh and for this man it was you know it was you could
hear the pain in his voice that they hadn't been able to do this but what if they had
what if shots had been fired and uh they had would it become an overt American enterprise
at that point and then what I mean that's the thing you have to keep asking and certainly
that was and that has to give you some sympathy for for John Kennedy he always had to ask
then what then what if that you know the minute American overt force is used this becomes
a global struggle wit the Soviet Union and then what uh so there're no easy answers to
it but there certainly is among people who are still alive today a great deal of raw
pain that's still left over This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School
of Law