Roberto de los Heros
Paratrooper
I grew up in Havana, Cuba and had an uneventful, happy childhood and early adolescence until Fidel Castro came to power when I was 16 years old. I graduated from high school in June 1959 and afterwards, began to work in life insurance because the University of Havana, where I had hoped to enter in medical school, was closed. Very quickly, I became involved in relatively disorganized anti-Castro activities and at the suggestion of my friends, who felt that I was in imminent danger, my parents sent me out of Cuba late in the Fall of 1959. My parents stayed in Cuba at that time, but they arranged, through a friend, for me to get a job in London, England as a clerk in a life insurance company. They felt that I would be safer in England with less likelihood of returning to Cuba to get involved in the underground.
After ten months in England, I heard from friends that men were being recruited to train somewhere in Central America for an invasion of Cuba. I arrived to the training camps in Guatemala in September 1960 and shortly thereafter volunteered to join the paratroopers and I was in the first group that arrived to the new training base for the paratroopers. On April 17, 1961, I was dropped at Palpite with the A Company of the paratrooper battalion. Before the paratroopers were dropped, our plane was being shot at and this made the pilots have to drop us somewhere off the plan drop area. In addition, we were dropped without our supplies which were hastily dropped by the pilot in the swamps since the plane was being shot at from the ground. We had a brief encounter with militia men to take over the town and then set up to block the road to Playa Larga which was our objective. Unfortunately, we quickly ran out of ammunition and since there was no supply, when Castro’s tanks began to come, our company Commander, Tomas Cruz, ordered us to retreat since we had no bazooka projectiles to fight the tanks. We then intended to go towards Playa Larga through the swamps because the tanks were passing through the main road. Unfortunately, our radio did not work and we lost communication and essentially got lost in the swamps. The next day, Cruz asked for volunteers to try to find the way to Playa Larga and I volunteered to go together with the legendary veteran of WWII and Korea, Manuel Perez Garcia. He and I arrived in Playa Larga, but because Castro’s men were already in control and Battalion II had retreated towards Giron, we could not make contact with the second battalion and we returned towards the point where we had left the rest of our colleagues in Company A. Our intention was to go to Giron the next morning, since by the time we returned it was the middle of the night. By the next morning, it was obvious that the battle was lost. I went with my squad towards the swamps with the intention of getting to Havana, but we were surprised by Castro’s soldiers from the rear and most of my squad were taken prisoners with exception of myself and Rolando Otero. We escaped to the swamps and stayed there for 12 days until we were finally captured. Eventually I was released with the rest of the prisoners after the United States agreed to pay the ransom.
Since returning to the USA, I have become a physician and then I trained in Neurosurgery at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Eventually I became a Professor at Harvard and then the Chairman of Neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. In 1995, I moved to Miami where I am now the Professor and Co-Chairman of Neurosurgery at the University of Miami.
Ricardo L. Sanchez
Paratrooper
-Born 3/41 (Age at time of invasion, just turned 20)
-Paratrooper (reported to camp in first days of February 1961)
-Landed in Yaguaramas (short distance from sugar mill) along with 18 other paratroopers
Yaguaramas and another 19 men advance post towards Covadonga, were advance posts for San Blas, a major center for troops (part paratroopers and part Batallion 3)
-Objective was to be first line of resistance against incoming Castro troops, slow down their advance and eventually retreat to San Blas to join the main forces
-Faced battle for all 3 days until captured on 4th day by troops which included Fidel Castro personally
-Photographed as a prisoner and photo was presented as 1st photos of battle in Life Magazine May 5, 1961
-Held prisoner, and later judged and sentenced (as President of military tribunal) by first cousin Comandante Augusto Martinez Sanchez which shows how deep family differences happened during that time
-Was one of about 50 or more prisoners that had viral hepatitis in an epidemic in prison
-Have memorabilia including personal items from days in prison, an original copy of the sentence and an original of Life Magazine (May 5,1961).
-Upon release from prison, went to Philadelphia to join my girlfriend and graduated from College with a BS degree in Business Administration in 1967.
-At the same time started working in a bank in Philadelphia, came to Miami in 1968 and have continued a banking career for 47 years.
-Currently Executive Vice President-US Century Bank
-Greatest acoomplishment-4 children,10 grandchildren and happily married