Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “OVERKILL”

When the commanders of the RMC realized the rumors were true and their nearby superpower was going to invade, they hustled into tunnels under Fort Frederick. The fact that they would also not be able to communicate with their army by radio from inside the tunnels did not stunt their determina­tion to stay safe from the inevitable bombing and strafing that happens when a superpower invades your tiny island.

In fact, they didn’t have many troops to command. The main assault force of the RMC was a mobile company of about one hundred men with APC’s, two antitank rifles, some mortars, and two antiaircraft guns. There were another dozen antiaircraft guns scattered throughout the island manned by the militia companies. The militias, which in peacetime counted over three thousand strong, had quickly dissolved back into the populace when Coard had taken over, and only about 250 showed up to tackle the super­power invasion. The regular Grenadan army numbered about 500. They had a half dozen or so of the handy APCs with machine guns, manned by brave, bloodthirsty troops, as had been proved emphatically when they wiped out Bishop without hesitation in the name of the revolution.

Castro refused to provide any reinforcements to the 600 or so Cubans at the airport, except to dispatch an officer at the last minute to make sure the Cubans stood firm before the inevitable collapse. Castro was determined to make sure that the rabid anti-Communist, running-dog imperialist gen­erals of the superpower weren’t tempted to go island hop­ping through the Caribbean, issued strict orders only to fire at invaders if fired upon. The RMC, sensing perhaps that fighting a superpower army without radio contact with their own troops could perhaps occupy all of their attention, left the Cubans to handle themselves.

Arrayed against them were thousands of heavily armed, technologically superior, highly trained superpower warriors in planes, helicopters, ships, and vehicles, tracked and un-tracked. The force was overwhelming. Resistance would be futile. Or so it seemed.

In 1983 the U.S. military was still recovering from the debacle of the Vietnam War. There were not yet precision, satellite-guided smart bombs that promised collateral-damage-free attacks, with streaming video footage to prove it. In order to blow things up with its vast arsenal of rock­ets, bombs, and artillery shells, Combat Control Teams (CCT) — actual soldiers with binoculars and radios — had to direct the attacks. These spotters were usually accompanied by some of the growing forest of special forces the Ameri­can military now featured: Army Rangers, army Delta Force, Navy SEALS, and Marine Special Forces.

Special Forces had taken on a life of their own after the failed 1980 mission to rescue the hostages in Iran. With the entire U.S. military establishment desperate to chalk up a vic­tory in the first real action since Vietnam, confidence ran very high. Ollie North’s attitude was that coordination was for desk jockeys and ping-pong. But coordination of all these forces on such short notice proved to be complicated and as lethal as the enemy shooting back at them.

In addition to not knowing exactly where they were going, the commanders were not sure who they would be fighting, or how many of them existed. Old tourist maps were pulled out, and anyone who had actually visited the island was la­beled an expert. While the maps provided little information on enemy strongholds, they did inform the U.S. commanders where they could rent mopeds.

After careful consideration, American commanders esti­mated that they would defeat the enemy, no matter how well armed or how many there turned out to be, in one day. They also assumed that all the medical students were at the True Blue Bay campus adjoining the runway. This information, which could have been confirmed by calling someone run­ning the medical school or, perhaps, even a student there, was apparently beyond the operational scope of the mission.

The combination of an almost complete lack of intelli­gence, a dearth of accurate up-to-date maps of the island, and the scrum of interservice rivalry seemed destined to ensure communication gaps, miscues, and foul-ups. In a bu­reaucracy, this causes headaches. When that bureaucracy is the military, it causes deaths.

It was a rush to war, but an ambling sort of rush. Like a rusty car sitting on the lawn way too long, the engine of war had trouble turning over.

On the first night, October 23, Navy SEALs and air force CCTs planned a landing on the Point Salines runway to clear obstacles and set up navigation beacons for the incoming wave of troops. Because the invasion was so rushed, these vanguard soldiers were forced to rendezvous with the navy by (1) flying directly to Grenada from the States, (2) para­chuting into the ocean, (3) in the dark, (4) somewhat close to the ships (5) from about six hundred feet up, in (6) high winds. The result was that four out of sixteen soldiers drowned, and their small boats, when they finally got aboard, were swamped on the way into the beach. The mis­sion was canceled.

The second night, October 24, the Special Forces again failed to get the small boats ashore in rough surf. This stung the American commanders. A flotilla of a dozen ships, in­cluding an aircraft carrier and an amphibious assault ship loaded with helicopters along with the thousands of soldiers and sailors, stood waiting in the dark off Grenada, held up by the failure to land sixteen (now down to twelve) soldiers on a beach. The Grenadans were winning… and they didn’t even know they were fighting.

The result of this small failure was that the invasion would have to start during the day of the 25th, a Tuesday. And in­stead of landing on the massive airstrip at Point Salines, the first wave of invasion troops would have to parachute in. A daylight jump meant no cover, spoiling the element of sur­prise. Conversely, the only element of surprise for the Ameri­cans was how many enemies lurked below.

Fortunately for the Rangers, the Cubans defending the airstrip were more afraid of Castro than the Americans: they held their fire, just as ordered by the maximum leader. This saved the day for the Rangers, who floated down well within range of the Cuban gunners, most of whom were actually construction workers armed with AK-47s, which carried only about one hundred rounds each. Grenadan gunners manning the antiaircraft guns were held at bay by U.S. air-power. The Americans had landed.

The Rangers’ goal was to capture the airfield and secure the True Blue campus. By 7:30 a.m. the Rangers rescued the students-who-would-be-hostages from the invisible people-who-could-be-hostage-takers. The Rangers’ glee was cut short when they discovered more students living at the Grand Anse campus, between the airport and the capital. Darn! The empire for a campus directory.

The soldiers at the airstrip moved out and captured the Cuban positions around their work camp. At one point the Rangers’ advance stalled under the fire of a single recoil-less rifle. Pausing to smash the enemy with an overwhelming dis­play of technology, they called in an air strike but were be­deviled by the miscommunication that was quickly proving to be endemic. Four Marine Cobra gunships, and small two-man helicopters raced in but could not contact the army or air force planes to confirm their targets. Two of the Cobras were finally able to contact a ground air controller but then discovered they had different maps. They finally pinpointed the enemy rifle by a ground soldier using a broad-spectrum photon beacon deflector, known as a shaving mirror in non-military parlance. Unfortunately for the invaders, the parade of ineptitude was just getting started.

In the south, two battalions of the Eighty-second Air­borne, the main invasion force of about one thousand troops, finally landed in the afternoon. Meanwhile, marine amphibi­ous units landed in the north, capturing the small, unde­fended airfield there. But coordination between these groups and the Rangers at Point Salines never materialized. The Rangers found themselves cut off from the commanders on the USS Guam as well as the Marine units in the north. Why? Because in the rush to deploy, they had left behind their vehicles containing long-range radios. The radio-free Rangers lingered, reduced to waiting for orders to arrive by telepathy.

Later in the afternoon, the Grenadans boldly counterat­tacked at the eastern end of the runway in three APCs. With­out any air or artillery support, the Rangers easily beat back the attack. American commanders, still lacking firm intelli­gence on the size of the enemy, worried that many more at­tacks awaited them.

By the end of the day, when the invasion was supposed to be wrapping up, the radio-free Rangers and Eighty-second still struggled to break out from their positions around the air strip, bogged down by their commander’s lethargy. The Grand Anse campus, only a couple of miles away, still con­tained students-who-could- easily-be-hostages. Assessing his troops deployment before his tiny enemy, the commander of the Eighty-second came to a worried conclusion: he needed more overkill. He sent his sweat-stained word up the chain of command: “Keep sending battalions until I tell you to stop.”