Guarding the Wire at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (451)

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0:41Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Cuba's also had towers, and they had a fence line, but there was a gap in between our fences, as kind of a no man's land in between. And you could see the Cubans over there and you would be able to see them doing their shift changes like we do. And sometimes we'd give them the friendly one finger salute if they're watching us, you know, and they would do it back. Chris was a U.S. Marine assigned to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a sprawling U.S.

1:15base on the communist island of Cuba. He describes the guard duty along the fence line where the proximity of the Cuban border created an unusual tension. Chris also shares anecdotes of encounters with defectors and the fascinating dynamics of life on the base from observing Cuban life across the fence to the camaraderie among Marines. His stories paint a vivid picture of military life there. Chris also touches on the challenges faced by service members including the isolation and the impact of alcohol on morale with mandatory counselling sessions addressing alcoholism, he reflects on the importance of mental health support within the military community.

1:56I'm delighted to welcome Chris to our Cold War conversation. I'd always been interested in the military, even as a kid. Watched all the war movies and read war books and military books. Had family in the military. My brother was in the army, my grandparents. My dad was in the Air Force. My stepfather, he was retired Marine. So I kind of went that route. Then I ended up in the Marine Corps. I was the greatest of students in the high school, so I didn't have a whole lot of aspirations to go to college at the time. So off to the military I went. What year was this that you start with the Marines?

2:36In 1989, August, right after high school. Where does your basic training take place? Once you join, you are shipped down to the lovely place of Parris Island, South Carolina. And I guess it's not a holiday camp there, huh? Not particularly. You know, if you like people screaming at you and sand fleas biting you and the smell of the swamp, you know, it would be great if you like those things. The basic training sort of lived up to the movie expectations. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was somewhat similar, you know, if you've ever seen Full Metal Jacket back, you know, there was definitely some similarities.

3:19How long was that basic training? I believe that, and it varies all the time, I think then it was 10 or 11 weeks of basic training. How did you find that training? Were you ready for it or did you find it more challenging than you expected? Physically challenging. I was in pretty decent shape. I was a pretty decent runner at the time. So I was physically fit. It was trying to get over the emotional part of it, you know, having somebody in your face screaming at you. So, but I persevered and made it through, no problem. How did they decide what role you were going to have in the Marines? Well, me in particular, I went under what's called an open contract.

4:06I just kind of signed a contract, said you can have me for four years. and I just threw the dice and they were going to pick a job for me. And why I went that route, I don't know, but I was just ready to get out, get out of the house and go and get away from home and go start my own life. So you don't find out what your job is going to be until the end of boot camp, or you would go through a small, in those days we had a small course after boot camp called Marine Combat Training or MCT. And so it was a very condensed version of infantry school. they gave it to everybody in the Marine Corps, no matter what your MOS was going to be, even if you're a cook.

4:45Because in the Marine Corps, everybody's a rifleman in the Marine Corps first. Then you're a cook or truck driver or supply man or whatever. So you go there for about four weeks, and that's when you're going to learn what your MOS is going to be. And I end up going straight to the infantry field. The infantry field is divided down into its own particular segments like a rifleman, machine gunner, mortarman, or anti-tank. And you were infantryman, yeah? Yes, I went infantry. I ended up becoming a tow gunner, a tow missile gunner. So that's the wire-guided anti-tank missile, yeah? That's correct.

5:23The TOW tow stands for tube launch, off the fleet track, wire-guided. And where was your first posting and when was that? It was towards the end of infantry school. That's when you find out where you're actually going to be stationed at. anywhere in the U.S. or overseas. And several weeks before we graduated infantry school, that's when I found out myself and one other guy were going to be going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And I had heard of it, but I hadn't had particularly very much knowledge of it. By this time, the Berlin Wall has come down. Do you remember hearing about the Berlin Wall falling?

6:02Oh, absolutely. Yes, I do remember it, yeah. Can you tell me how you heard about it? And on TV, I always watched the news and I always kind of stayed up on current events a little bit. So I was pretty keen on watching that on news, watching the people on top of the wall and chipping away at it. And so, yeah, it was definitely an interesting time. Absolutely. I think a lot of people thought, there goes my job in the military. so you receive orders for guantanamo bay how do they get you in there is it ship plane or how is the transit done it is it is by airplane only supplies go by ship or actually bars i should say so we received orders myself and another marine we received orders and we had to take a bus from Camp Lejeune to Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.

7:01There's also a naval air station there. So that's where we were supposed to catch our flight. There was some misunderstanding when we got to Norfolk. On your orders, it actually has a phone number for you to call. So I had to go over to a payphone, if everybody remembers what a payphone was. But I had to go to payphone and call this number and somebody from a nearby marine unit or marine barracks because every naval base has a marine barracks they were going to pick us up and take us to the naval airfield where there was going to be a what they call a military airlift command flight which shuttles people back and forth from from the base twice a week and we were supposed to catch the flight from there and so they took us to the marine barracks because we were thinking that's where we were going to be stationed we weren't exactly sure you know because we're you know 18 19 years old don't know anything and there was some disagreement about whether we're supposed to be going overseas whether we're going to norfolk to stay there and then finally somebody figured it out oh no no they're they're going to guantanamo bay so they had to throw us back into another van with all our stuff and hustle us over to the airfield and get us on the plane to get down there So we made it in time and got on the plane and arrived in Cuba.

8:16And prior to you being sent out there, were you given any information about the base and how it operated or anything like that? No, we knew virtually nothing about what was going on. All we knew was our destination. That was it. Had no idea. When you arrive in Guantanamo, what are your first impressions of what you see? when i walk off the plane i thought it was going to be you know jungle or in in huts and stuff but it was it was a big kind of a sprawling base and very very hot very arid i should say because it's people think that all of cuba is jungle and it's it's not like particularly our the spot where guantanamo is it's almost desert like you have cactus sand dirt very dry so yeah but it was you know they met us there at the plane of course we're tired our uniforms are all wrinkly carrying all our gear haven't slept in a day and a half and but and then we get there they meet us at the plane and they take us over to processes at that at their admin center and you know i've looked at the base on the map and you're right it does look sprawling um it looks like a bigger area than i thought it it would be so where are you going to be located well the weird thing about guantanamo bay is it's divided by the bay itself there's actually two parts of the base the bay bisects the whole base entirely so there's a the the eastern part is called windward and the western part is called leeward and leeward is where the airfield is at and then all the main stuff is over on the other side the windward side well your your headquarters your px your commissary even a mcdonald's and ice cream shops all that stuff's over on the windward side so there's a ferry that runs in between both of them they use an old landing craft with the kind with the bow that drops down you know like iwo jima or d-day you know so that was that's how you transport it back and forth.

10:27It could carry vehicles and people. So the way the base is set up for the Marine Corps, all the Marines are under what's called Marine Barracks, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And then you have two what are called rifle security companies. You have RCL, which is R.C. Leeward and R.C. Windward. And obviously the Windward company is stationed on the Windward side, the Leeward Company station on the Leeward side, and you will be assigned to one of those companies. Now, the force, the Marine detachment that's in Guantanamo Bay, it's almost kind of a self-sustaining force. We probably had about 400 or so, maybe 500 Marines total there, and that included from the base, from the Marine commander down, included all your admin clerks, supply.

11:18we even had a tank detachment we had an artillery detachment and then we had always a few little ancillary things like your cooks and things like that so we had one company our company on the leeward side which is where i was going to be going so i was going to be crossing the bay to go process at our admin center and then coming back to the leeward side where airfield's at we were there to guard the airfield and that side of the base so we were actually a smaller company than the one that was on the windward side because it was actually there was more land on the wind They had a bigger fence line, so they needed more people over there.

11:50But I wound up on the leeward side. What are your first few days like there? I mean, you're the new intake. How are you treated by the more experienced Marines there? Well, you quickly find out. It was kind of a shock, you know, being around some of these NCOs and they do treat you, they kind of look down upon you because you're the new guy and it's understandable. But they try to take care of you, but kind of they're not sure about you kind of thing. So they want to size you up, sort of. I quickly found out, you know, our NCOs, corporals and sergeants, you know, they had absolute rules over us.

12:43You know, if you didn't do what they said, told you to do, you know you you might have you might have got some punishments or you might have even got dealt a hand you know because when we had a at our side of the base on our on lee where you know we only had three officers and one or two staff and co's and especially the officers they were they were off doing their own thing you are you know you didn't see them very much you You know, and our staff in the show kind of turned a blind eye, you know, to what was going on. You know, but not that I disliked it or anything, but you just, you kind of had to, you kind of forced us to fall on trail with them and do what they told you to do.

13:29So. So what did they tell you to do? What was a day like in the Marines in Guantanamo Bay? well when you first get there you know you do all your admin stuff and everything and you get introduced to your platoon they kind of you get your room assigned to you you're going to be bunkered with three other guys there's four to a room and depending on the week you get you know each of the we had two platoons there at our company and one platoon was on duty on the fence line and one was off duty doing either training or you're off you know you had the weekend off if your platoon was on duty, you fell into what's called a training.

14:09They would train you up on how to work the fence line, and they would assign you with somebody, a more senior guy who's been there for a little while, and he would shadow you on your post. He would teach you all the regulations and what to look for out there on the fence line. So you would spend a couple weeks doing that, getting familiar with everything on the fence line. on your duty weeks and then on your off weeks, you would be doing things like training, maybe go to a, we would have a live fire with our, our, our smaller caliber machine guns, you know, our, our M60s or our M16s or maybe a pistol shoot, or just doing some sort of training off to the side for that week.

14:55But our, our, and that's how you're, you kind of, your life was, it just rotated from one week to one week you know off duty off duty on duty off duty and it got monotonous a lot you know after a while i can i can imagine so the the guard duty on the fence line how did that work because you know you the other side of the fence is the enemy so it's an unusual posting because you are really close to the opposition right i guess you know between desert storm and and and vietnam that is probably the and it was probably the closest you could come to combat other than the dmz in korea too but we had a fence line a tall i think the fence was probably a good eight nine foot tall maybe maybe more but it was you know barbed wire and it spanned the entire perimeter of the whole entire base.

15:59The only place the defense stopped was at the water's edge, either on the Caribbean side or on the bay side. Occasionally, we had guard towers, and these guard towers were big. They looked like those old medieval siege towers. They were made of thick wood. They were about 30 to 40 foot up, tall. and that's where you you had what we call big eyes there are big big binoculars like you see on naval ships and they were very powerful and you could look look into into cuba onto the cuban side you can see the cubans because the cubans also had towers and they had a fence line but there was a gap in between our fences kind of a no man's land in between and you could see the cubans over there and you would you would you would you would be able to see them doing your shift changes like like like we do and you know sometimes we give them the friendly one finger salute if they're watching us you know and they do it back you know you know so but it was and you had we had a minefields set up around certain certain of our guard towers and those are the ones that were closest to the airfield so we had minefields around a couple of our towers there along with some trenches and some bunkers that had been dug by engineers a long time ago.

17:22I think the shifts were like eight hours, I believe. And you either had a normal day shift, like eight to four or four to midnight. And then you had a midnight to eight in the morning. And there was just nothing going on out there a lot of times. and you weren't allowed to have, you know, like bring any kind of radios or anything like that or any kind of entertainment. So it would get very boring. I would sneak a book out with me once in a while, you know. But our sergeant of the guard, he would make at least one round during your shift. You'd come out and check on your posts, see how you're doing, maybe bring a meal out.

18:03Sometimes we've got hot meals delivered to us. but otherwise you had a you know a good eight hours or so for a lot of self reflection you know and you've got live ammunition with you that is correct all our posts had live ammunition with us we had live every marine was issued I can't remember how many magazines it was I think it was six as soon as before you left to go stand guard because you had to do a guard mount prior to going out on guard and relieving the sentries that were out there. So everybody got issued, I think it was six magazines full. That's what you would take up there. We didn't have any heavy weapons on the post.

18:46It was just a rifle. So we weren't allowed to have anything heavier than that because we were just there just to watch the fence line and report. We weren't there necessarily to engage. We were just to observe and report. And what were your rules of engagement? if memory serves me correct if if you were fired upon you could return fire i can't remember exactly what the exact rules of engagement were i know if you got fired upon fired upon you were allowed to return fire but other than that you know you weren't allowed to shoot unless it was you were and or if you came across a defector you know you if it was or somebody out there who was trying to do you harm, then you could obviously protect yourself or protect the base from any immediate danger.

19:39Yeah, then you were allowed to engage. Was it really only the military you could see or could you observe other life in Cuba? We had one post that was the furthest one out. and there was a as the base is bisected by the bay just outside of our perimeter of guantanamo bay and i mean literally just outside like maybe half mile to three quarters of a mile there was a small very small city more like a town probably called caymanera and you can look over in there from this one particular guard tower you can look right down in there and you can see people what they're washing, hanging on the line. You can see old Chevys and old Fords driving around.

20:31Because that's all they, you know, once cashback came to power, all the new cars stopped pretty much. Unless they were Russian cars. But yeah, you can see people walking around. And you can see, you know, ships over there, fishermen on their side of the bay out there fishing. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify.

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22:17This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. It was definitely interesting. Sometimes they would have power outages over there because they're in Cuba. They were in that particular area, Cuba, they were using an old U.S.

22:53built power station. And every once in a while, they would just have these big blackouts. They would just go dark because they can't get spare parts for their power plants because they were all U.S. made, you know, due to the embargo. But it was it was interesting to see that, you know, all their all their old stuff over there. and you just see people milling around and going to and fro from wherever they were doing. It was very interesting. Yeah, I guess that was probably the most preferred post to take guard from because at least you had something to watch. Yeah, I remember one time being on guard post at that particular post.

23:32I got there in the morning and I heard something. I was like, what is that sound? and it sounded like an engine it sounded like it was an old it's like an old radial engine i like i kept looking it was coming from the direction of cuban's side i kept looking and i got under my what we call our big eyes these big binoculars are on a stand and i looked and i was looking and it's like there and finally i saw it it was a it was a soviet made an2 colt biplane i don't know if you're familiar with what those look like like a big bulky biplane and it was just coming towards camonera and i could see it it was getting lower and lower as i was getting close to Camonero just putting along real slow because they have virtually no airspeed.

24:12He flew right over this baseball field and you see a bundle drop out of it. And it landed on the baseball field and off the side of the baseball field, I see this motorcycle sidecar come in from the side of the baseball field and picks up the bundle and they put it in a sidecar and they drove off into the city. So I'm guessing it was maybe like mail or something, but I was fascinated with that. Wow. Wow. It's a unique way for the Cuban Postal Service to deliver. Yeah. I'm assuming it was the mail. I'm not sure if it was secret orders from Castro or the mail, you know.

24:59were they ever brought trying to broadcast propaganda to you through loudspeakers or anything like that like on the dmc no i i never i've never heard of anything like that happening anywhere down there it was they it was it was usually pretty quiet they you know the cubans the cuban frontier brigade which was the unit that that that was opposite us they they i never heard anything from them other than the only thing they would ever do that i saw they would try to intimidate us or do anything towards us was they on our side directly across from our friends from us they had a small barracks where they were post their frontier brigades some of their frontier brigade soldiers and they had a small firing range not not not too far from there and you would see them out there occasionally shooting off their ak's or you know blasting off an rpg or two towards towards their side not not towards us they didn't you know in a safe distance away from us but you can see them out there on their range shooting their various weapons and stuff i don't know if it was done in an as an intimidation thing or or what but maybe it was maybe it wasn't i don't know i don't they were just doing just their their version of qualifications or what i guess you had to do exercises just in case the humans decided that they wanted the base back yeah yeah we would do we would do one it was a it was a yearly thing i forget what's called i think it was called defx or defense x it was defx for short i believe that was about what it was called but yeah it was a big base-wide drill and it spanned a couple of days and we would work in tandem with the Navy because on our side of the base we had a small platoon of Navy guys who did defense who were defense as a part-time their side, kind of their side job it was a platoon of Navy personnel, they were all people of like cooks and aircraft mechanics and things like that and they were called Q platoon and we would do exercises we would do this exercise with them and they would just kind of augment us in some of our positions you know you would see them in their very old style vietnam era steel pot helmets and their vietnam era flak jackets and the old m6 version of the m16s and they would augment us in some of our positions and stuff and help and assist us if the cubans did attack was there a length of time that you were expected to hold out for Oral.

27:37Well, I don't, I don't, I don't think we had any hopes of hold up for very long. So, especially if you were on the sentry duty, you were, you were, you were pretty much going to probably be gone. I remember that, that issue coming up because people were a little worried that, especially the, some of the posts are a little further out. you know if something was to happen you probably weren't gonna gonna make it you know because you were so far out there was no way for you to get back because everything was clustered around the base at least on our side everything was clustered around a base and you had we had some small hills around the airfield and around those hills we had our we had some entrenchments some trenches and a few bunkers here and there scattered facing particular avenues of approach.

28:29We also had the minefields just on the other side of those bunkers and trenches. And that was kind of our fallback position, so to speak. We weren't going to try and defend the entire base. We would just go back and fall back to where it was more defensible. So that was the intent. Were you patrolling along the fence line as well? so you weren't just in the watchtowers did you have to do foot patrol? Yes, yes every week when we were on the fence line there was at least a couple patrols that would go out at night and you would carry again you would carry live ammo and you would patrol this area along the fence line at night or such and such area or sometimes you would do an LPOP set up with you and one other guy and you would sit there for a couple, two, three hours and in a hide position.

29:23They would just use some of the old-style night vision goggles, and you would go do your patrol. You would get it inserted by vehicle. Nine times out of ten would be by vehicle, and they would drop you off. Like when they were going, they would try to do it stealthily. They would drop you off. Either like when they were going to go relieve the post, do shift change to the post, as they would pull up or get to an area that was kind of wooded or brushy. We knew that Cubans couldn't observe us. We would quickly jump out of the vehicle and go into the weeds and wait until the vehicle would move off.

30:02And then we would get in our patrol formation and walk the perimeter and then meet the vehicle back at a specific time and location. And then they would pick us back up and go back to the barracks. Were there any incidents while you were there along the defense line that you can recall other than we had some a few defectors though i we never had any like there was no there was never any any aggression from the from the cuban side but we did have some defectors here and there generally our our defectors didn't come across the fence because their side was mined also as far as we knew and so i i think there might have been one that came across a fence but it was on the windward side i'd heard about it kind of through the grapevine thing but generally when we got defectors they would swim along the coast and swim and once they got in the water on the cuban side they would go out a short distance go around the cuban the cuban sentry post and then make their way towards shore towards us and then they would see our post because our post that was closest to the water it had a big strobe light on it so you could see it for for miles and miles and miles so they knew they knew where to go and they would swim to that and we've had it on several occasions we've caught some defectors there i mean they're not like they caught because they gave themselves up you know they would swim to the swim right to the shore and the way the way the geography there is it's a close is right up to the edge of the shore but It's a cliff.

31:38It's a good 30, 40-foot drop down to the ocean. And, you know, I know particularly one night, one of my buddies, he was standing in that post that's right next to the shore. And all of a sudden, he heard some yelling and screaming. And he looks down on the shore, and there's two Cuban guys down there waving their hands, you know, yelling for him. And so they called the sergeant guard out. They brought him up off the cliff because there's a little path that goes down. And they brought him up. And so there's a couple Cubans who defected. They swam all the way. They probably swam a couple miles. underwater to get the freedom.

32:11Wow. And what happened to those defectors when they arrived in the base? As far as I know, they get processed and they're given asylum. So that's the only... I've never heard of any... There's no criminal charges or anything like that that I'm aware of. They don't send them back or anything. They usually just take them and give them asylum. Were any Cubans working on the base? yes there there were i don't think i put that in my notes either i've done my research chris because when when cash flow came to power there were still there were still quite a few cubans who worked on the base who lived on the cuban side the communist side so when cash flow came to power he said okay i'll allow them to continue working but they're not allowed to hire anybody else it's just them once they retire or die or whatever then that's it they're not going to be replaced there'll be no there'll be no more of that so when i was there there was there was maybe less than a dozen that still came across to work there on the base because we had on the windward side there was a big gate this one particular location and that's what they would come through at all the workers would come through at and there was a bus there would meet them and pick them up once they came through the gate they checked their they checked out their credential and id and everything and they go up they get on the bus and they get transported to their job wherever it was on the base and i do particularly remember one time i had to get a new id card i had to go the other side of the base on the windward side take the long ferry over there get over there and went to the id card office and there was a hispanic gentleman in their process and he's doing your new id card because i got promoted so i did my id card and then maybe a year or two later and I particularly remember this guy for some reason but I remember about a year or two later there was a documentary done about Guantanamo Bay about the Cubans who still work there and lo and behold there was that guy so I didn't even know he was a Cuban Brilliant Brilliant It's strange you know you think they'd be worried about intelligence gathering from having cuban workers in there yeah yeah that that was i remember because we used to get intel briefings occasionally and i think that did come up they that was explained to us you know they they i think they they did keep an eye on them per se you know but i'm sure they they had gathered some info and reported it back to where you know to wherever you know I got no doubt.

34:54Somewhere somebody did, I'm sure. I don't know. I guess I imagine issuing ID cards is perhaps not a job that you'd expect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But hey, hey, who am I to say? Who am I to say? You mentioned the Colt flying in or dropping off that package on the other side of the fence. were there any defectors you tried to fly in yes there were our our platoon was on duty when one of our sentries spotted this aim to cult coming from cuba on the cuban side he he saw it he called it in as it got closer and closer to the fence like it was coming straight for the base and before anything could happen the plane that already overflew the fence line on the cuban side and our fence line and it landed at the at the airfield and inside was the cuban pilot and all his family and he was defecting and they said it was they said when i was told that when he landed and they all the family spilled out of the airplane there was a number quite a number of family members and they said it was like chaos there for for a couple minutes trying to round everybody up and figure out what was going on you know there's you know it was it was they said it was kind of a chaotic scene for for a few minutes that they got a grasp on the situation you know sorted it all out you know wow wow what happened to the plane they let the It was flown back.

36:37Pick it up. Oh, right. Because in Key West, there's been a number of defections in Key West where Cuban military pilots have defected with their plane, like a jet fighter plane. I know that's happened a couple of times. And they'll allow the Cuban government to send the pilot over to pick it up and take it back. It's their property, essentially. You mentioned a little while back about some tanks being available for defense. How many were there and what type? I presume they weren't the bang up to date ones. No, we had, I want to say it was four tanks. We had a small tank platoon and they were M60 patents.