Zumhingst, Herbert, Lt Col

Worst Moment
Some history of what Herb did when he was in the Dominican Republic. History does repeat it's self.

Operation Powerpack
When civil strife broke out in the Dominican Republic in April 1965, the United States decided to dispatch troops to protect American lives and to prevent a possible Castro-type takeover by Communist elements. Marines were landed on 28 April from ships offshore and two battalions of the 82d Airborne Division and their supporting forces were ordered to move with minimum essential equipment from Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, to Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico, on the 29th of April.

Fighting broke out in the Dominican Republic on Saturday, 24 April. By Tuesday, 27 April, the situation had deteriorated and the U.S. took the precaution of stationing a task force - including USS Boxer (LPH-4) and 1,500 Marines - off the Dominican Coast. Removal of U.S. citizens, however, was not ordered until two days later, when Dominican government officials warned that they could no longer guarantee the safety of foreign nationals.

On the evening of the 28th Boxer airlifted 400 Marines into the city of Santo Domingo for the purpose of protecting U.S. citizens. By the following morning, 29 April, 530 Marines were in the city. Later in the day they were joined by 1,000 reinforcements. While Marines cleared a safety zone between the U.S. Embassy and the Embajador Hotel, where refugees were gathered, helos ferried civilians to Boxer for further transfer to other Navy ships in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

POWER PACK I, as the 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, was designated for the move, contained 2,253 men. Approximately 67 hours after it was alerted, lead elements of POWER PACK I became airborne. Employing 111 heavy drop aircraft and 33 personnel carrying aircraft, the 3d Brigade headed for Puerto Rico. While enroute, however, Washington political and military leaders changed the destination of the force to San Isidro Airfield, Dominican Republic and ordered the 3d Brigade to airland instead of airdrop. This change caused some immediate problems since ground materiel handling equipment was not available at San Isidro to unload heavy drop loads and the equipment had to be unloaded manually. In addition San Isidro soon became saturated and only the 33 personnel carrying and 46 of the heavy drop aircraft were able to land on the 29th. This development separated the troops from much of their equipment at a critical moment. Fortunately no opposition to the landings arose and the missing equipment which had been landed at Puerto Rico was flow in to San Isidro the following day.

POWER PACK II, the 2d Brigade (-) of the 82d Airborne Division, was alerted on 28 April and ordered to move to the Dominican Republic on 1 May. The force contained two airborne battalions and supporting elements with a total of 2,276 men. Using the same planes as the 3d Brigade on a shuttle basis as they became available, the POWER PACK II force also arrived in the Dominican Republic approximately 72 hours after it was alerted.

By 1 May paratroop units had been flown into the city, bring the U.S. military strength to about 4,200 men. As the safety zone was sealed off and the waterfront area was secured, Navy ships began to take refugees directly aboard. On 2 May the Navy transported 1,415 civilians to San Juan, raising the total number to 3,000. In Santo Domingo 5,000 more awaited rescue - about 1,500 of them citizens of 30 different countries. On 3 May Great Britain officially thanked the U.S. for having evacuated British citizens from the danger area.

Navy ships which played a major part in the rescue mission included: USS Boxer (LPH-4), Wood County (LST-1178) Ruchamkin (APD-89) and Yancey (AKA-93). Other ships involved were: USS Rankin (AKA-103), Fort Snelling (LSD-30) and Raleigh (LPD-1).

The third echelon of the 82d Airborne Division, POWER PACK III, contained the remainder of the 2d Brigade, consisting of two airborne battalions and support forces, and elements of the 5th Logistical Command to provide logistical backup; it totalled 3,302 men and officers. POWER PACK III was shuttled in between the afternoon of 2 May and the morning of 3 May. With the bulk of six airborne battalions concentrated in the vicinity of San Isidro Airfield located east of the capital city of Santo Domingo, the Army units moved west to link up with the Marine forces that had already established a safety zone in the city itself. A junction between the Army and Marine forces took place on the morning of 3 May and a perimeter was set up.

POWER PACK IV, the fourth echelon of the 82d, consisted of the 1st Brigade with three airborne battalions and support forces with a total of 3,000 men an officers. It began to deploy from the United States on the shuttling aircraft on 3 May and completed its move to the Dominican Republic the following morning.

In the five day period between 29 April and 4 May, over 10,500 men of the 82d Division and supporting elements were airlifted into the Dominican Republic. Additional Army units with a strength of about 3,000 men including the remainder of the 82d Airborne Division, Special Forces troops, psychological warfare units, signal and transportation elements, arrived in the Dominican Republic prior to 9 May. Together with over 4,000 Marines and over 1,000 Air Force personnel, the U.S. Forces in the Dominican Republic established firm control of the corridor between the San Isidro Airfield and of the safety zone in Santo Domingo.

By 8 May U.S. forces in the island republic totaled 14,000 men, including paratroop units flown from the United States and Marines landed by Navy ships. The evening before, in a televised address, the President had said" "What began as a popular democratic revolution that was committed to democracy and social justice moved into the hands of a band of communist conspirators." Later in the same address, he declared, "We will defend our nation against all those who seek to destroy not only the United States but every free country of this hemisphere."

USS Boxer (LPH-4) was acting as flagship for Amphibious Squadron 10 when she answered an urgent call on 25 April from the United States Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She steamed to the revolt-torn country to assist in the evacuating of U.S. and other nationals. On Tuesday, 27 April, 294 persons were brought aboard Boxer and were then transferred to USS Raleigh (LPD-1) on Wednesday morning. As the situation worsened, later that same day 705 additional persons were brought aboard. During the entire week Boxer evacuated more than 1,000 men, women and children from the island, administering medical aid, hospital facilities and food, and providing sleeping spaces.

More than 500 Marines from the Sixth Expeditionary Unit and Marine Helicopter Squadron 264, embarked in Boxer, were deployed to insure the safety of the evacuees. Men were berthed in the troop berthing areas, and the women and children in the officers' staterooms. After three days aboard Boxer they were transferred to adjoining ships, USS Ruchamkin (APD-89), Raleigh [LPD-1], and Wood County (LST-1178) for transit to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Many evacuees had gone without food or water for three days, some lost contact with their children during their escape. One woman who arrived aboard was in tears because she was separated from her family. The tears quickly disappeared as she found her children - for the first time in two weeks - already safe aboard. Violence was present in all quarters of the city as shooting rang out from building after building. Many of the people, hearing that they might be evacuated to Navy ships, had gathered in the Embajador Hotel to await their evacuation. For a large number of these evacuees most of that day was spent lying on the ground, listening to the whine of bullets overhead.

After the transfer of the evacuees to San Juan, Boxer stood by off the coast of the island, continuing to lend support in the form of food and medical care, remaining prepared in case additional evacuees were flown abroad

Other Memories
The 82d Airborne Division's deployment to the Dominican Republic should not be taken as an isolated incident, but rather, as one in a series of flash points where West faced off against East and Mutually Assured Destruction was the referee. It is as a representative of the XVIII Airborne Corps that I wish to discuss one of the Caribbean flare-ups, the civil war in the Dominican Republic or OPERATION POWER PACK.

By January 1965 the United States was firmly committed to the ideological war with the Soviet Union. And by April, when the 82d was chosen to participate in OPERATION POWER PACK, the Army had changed from Pentomic or Battle Groups to ROAD (Reorganization Objective Army Divisions), which, with its brigaded battalions, was a much more flexible tool to counter communist aggression in various third-world nations. Now there would be a clear distinction made between conventional and nuclear operations. Mechanized infantry was introduced at battalion and division levels, and airmobility was facilitated in the 101st and 82d airborne divisions by the introduction of the helicopter. The 82d Airborne Division under ROAD would be able to rapidly configure itself for any contingency across the spectrum of conflict by adding to its common division base, various types of maneuver battalions in a building block fashion. And, lest we forget, the ROAD divisions were still capable of engaging in nuclear war with the newly fielded Davy Crockett weapon system.

President Johnson stated it most succinctly when he said, "No President seeks crises. They come to him unbidden, and in legions. While April 24, 1965 began calmly enough, President Johnson would soon be forced into a military confrontation in the Caribbean that he had avoided one year earlier over crises in Cuba and Panama. What had changed in just one year that was important enough to risk the loss of American lives and prestige in Latin America, and perhaps, invoke a nuclear war in Europe?

The answer rests with the American public opinion in 1965. President Johnson, was well aware that the American public would not stand for any political waffling on another Communist government in the Caribbean Basin, even if intervention meant earning a black eye from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the world at large. He said: "When I do what I am about to do, there'll be a lot of people in this hemisphere I can't live with, but if I don't do it there'll be a lot of people in this country I can't live with."

There were also geopolitical and strategic reasons why the United States was prepared to risk confronting Communist aggression in the Caribbean. By shifting the scene of conflict from Berlin to Santo Domingo, it gave both nuclear powers room to maneuver without immediate doomsday repercussions. While critics of the intervention would downplay the significance of the relatively small island of Hispaniola, the economic, geographic and military facts of the Caribbean Basin display a clear picture of why the United States was willing to risk letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle.

A statistical catalog of the region shows that 55% of the crude oil the United States used at that time and 45% of its imports and exports passed through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. In the event of hostilities in the NATO Theater or the Persian Gulf, 60% of reinforcements and supplies needed to conduct operations would pass through these waters. The Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti was also a very important transit route for vital minerals such as manganese, nickel, bauxite, and iron ore. Despite the fact that many world leaders pooh-poohed the Domino Theory, if the United States had stood idly by and allowed Panama and the Dominican Republic to follow Cuba into the Soviet sphere of influence, this would have put a major choke hold on the trade in that region. Not to mention the fact that their proximity to the American mainland could conceivably be used as forward staging bases for further Communist aggression. Jerome Slater, a vociferous critic of the Dominican intervention, did concede, "If one assumes, as I believe we must, that there are at least as many militant cold warriors in the Kremlin as in Washington, the price of non-action in the Caribbean might have been more aggressive Soviet behavior elsewhere, say Berlin or the Middle East.

President Johnson had shown his willingness to use diplomacy in the Panama and Cuban incidents, and it is likely that he would have preferred a collective security resolution to the April 1965 Dominican crisis, but what was lacking now, was time for political maneuvering. The rapid escalation from a not unexpected political coup to a totally unexpected civil war took just one day, and President Johnson heeded the advice of his Ambassador in Santo Domingo, W. Tapley Bennett, Jr., that American lives were in danger. If local Dominican authorities could not provide protection, the United States would provide its own. Furthermore, stabilizing this region would also enable the United States to commit its power in southeast Asia without having to worry about the security of the Western Hemisphere.

However, before describing how fielding the 82d Airborne Division facilitated the achievement of National Command Authority objectives, it is necessary to give a brief overview of unfolding events in the Dominican Republic.

The CIA had briefed President Johnson of an impending coup, but assessments had it figured for the May or June time frame. LBJ was concerned that the thirty-year dictatorship of Leonidas Trujillo had left the Dominican Republic with a chronic inability to govern itself despite its first free election in 1962 after Trujillo's assassination. The 1962 election had put Juan Bosch in power, however, Bosch garnered the wrath of the military and conservative businessmen when he legalized Communist parties and appointed several liberals to his cabinet. Bosch sealed his own fate in September 1963 when he demanded the resignation of the most powerful of the Dominican generals, General Wessin y Wessin. Thus challenged, Wessin led a coup that captured Bosch in the presidential palace and sent him to exile in Puerto Rico. Wessin then declared that "The Communist doctrine, Marxist-Leninist, Castroite, or whatever it is called, is now outlawed." While Wessin y Wessin's declaration was a step in the right direction, the American President couldn't ignore the fact that the general had just overthrown the democratically elected president. By threatening to sever all US economic aid to the Dominican Republic, Wessin y Wessin was forced to form a three-man junta, with free elections to follow in September 1964, and return quietly to his role as commander of the training center.

Donald Reid y Cabral, who now found himself at the head of the junta, was a moderate and generally regarded as an honest man. Unfortunately, Reid came to office at a time when his country's economy was severely crippled by the failure of the sugar market, the major commodity the Dominican Republic relied on for foreign exchange. Reid was also unpopular with most of the high-ranking officers in the military for his attempt to cut back on their privileges. Reid suspected, and with good reason, that some or all of these officers would try to overthrow him in the spring of 1965.

Hoping to forestall a coup by going on the offensive, Reid, on April 24th, dispatched his Army Chief of Staff to cancel the commissions of four conspirators. The four officers not only failed to surrender, but seized the military camp northwest of Santo Domingo, and took the Chief of Staff prisoner. The coup caught the United States with its pants down. Relying on the intelligence assessments calling for a May or June showdown, the Ambassador, W. Tapley Bennett Jr., had gone on vacation to visit his sick mother, and most of the US military mission members had been allowed to attend a military assistance conference in Panama. The only intelligence received on the progress of the coup was from the remaining Charge d'Affairs, William B. Connett, Jr., who wired the State Department that Reid would probably be able to get the support of the armed forces and remain in power.

By Sunday morning April 25, Reid's and Connett's estimations were dashed. In a lightening fast mobilization a mere one-half hour after the Chief of Staff's capture, the Soviet-oriented Dominican Revolutionary Party, and the Castroite 14th of June Revolutionary Party, put large numbers of armed civilians into the streets and created chaos. In an eerily similar scenario to what would occur in Haiti in September 1994, the Dominican national police were ill prepared or equipped to meet such brutal opposition from well-armed bands of teenagers (Los Tigres) who swarmed through Santo Domingo shooting any policemen they could find. The police abandoned their posts en masse, discarded their uniforms, and either disappeared into the crowds or sought sanctuary with Wessin y Wessin's forces in the eastern part of the city. The Dominican Popular Movement, a small by very active Communist party, now opened gas stations and distributed Molotov cocktails to the crowds, and the rebel military, well supplied with mortars, machine guns, bazookas and small arms established defensive positions at the Duarte Bridge.

In an attempt to keep the support of the military, Reid appointed General Wessin y Wessin Chief of the Armed Forces. Bosch, still in exile in Puerto Rico, was able to convince Jose Rafael Urena, a party leader, to become the Constitutionalist (rebel) provisional president until he could return to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican armed forces were adamantly opposed to the reinstatement of Bosch, and when word of this agreement between Bosch and Urena reached them, the service chiefs agreed to fight the rebels. They adopted the word Loyalist for their cause; they would be loyal to the Reid junta and opposed to the Constitutionalists. However, Reid was captured at the presidential palace by rebel forces commanded by Francisco Caamano Deno. General Wessin y Wessin now stepped into Reid's vacant position and became the de facto head of state.

By Monday, 26 April 1965, armed civilians, under the control of two major Communist parties, outnumbered the original rebel military regulars. Radio Santo Domingo, now fully under rebel control, began to call for more violent actions and for indiscriminate killing of policemen. Charge Connett was left in little doubt that the rebels were fully controlled by the Communist political parties, and began coordinating the evacuation plans for 3,500 American citizens living in the city.

Ambassador Bennett returned to Santo Domingo on 27 April with instructions to take charge of the evacuation and to influence the Loyalist Dominican military to use more forceful means to put down the revolt. Surprisingly, he was met at the Embassy by the Constitutionalist Provisional President Molina Urena and Colonel Caamano. The two rebel leaders asked for US intervention to stop the Dominican Air Force attacks on the rebel-held areas. Bennett refused thinking that the Loyalists were beginning to gain some ground over the rebels. Utterly dismayed by this rejection, Molina Urena relinquished his position as Provisional President to Colonel Caamano. In San Isidro, Loyalists generals chose Air Force Colonel Pedro Bartolome Benoit to head a new Loyalist junta.

On 28 April the Dominican Air Force resumed its bombing of rebel positions in Santo Domingo and armed rebel civilians overran a police station and summarily executed the policemen. Ambassador Bennett now cabled Washington that "collective madness" had engulfed Santo Domingo and asked about a possible introduction of armed US forces to protect Americans who had not been evacuated by US Marines on the 27th and, most importantly, to calm things down in the city. The high priority cable read, "I recommend that serious thought be given to armed intervention to restore order beyond a mere protection of lives. If the present loyalist efforts fail, the power will go to groups whose aims are identified with those of the Communist Party. We might have to intervene to prevent another Cuba."

The decision to intervene militarily in the Dominican Republic was Lyndon Johnson's personal decision. All civilian advisers had recommended against immediate intervention in the hopes that the Loyalist side could bring an end to the civil war. President Johnson, however, took the advice of Ambassador Bennett, who pointed out the inefficiency and indecisiveness of the Dominican military leaders. General Wessin y Wessin had done little or nothing for the last three, terror-filled days in Santo Domingo. Bennett suggested that the US interpose its forces between the rebels and those of the junta, thereby effecting a cease-fire. The United States could then ask the OAS to negotiate a political settlement between the opposing factions.

OPLAN 310/2-63 called for XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters to be activated and for two Army battalion combat teams to be air-dropped northeast of San Isidro Airfield. When notified on the night of April 26th to prepare his division for combat, General Robert York, Commander of the 82d Airborne Division, discovered some serious problems involving communications and existing operations plans.

The communication and coordination complexities of joint operations surfaced immediately. LANTCOM in Norfolk, Virginia and STRICOM at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida both owning a piece of this operation, began issuing competing orders to the 82d. This was never fully resolved but was somewhat alleviated when the Corps headquarters, upon arrival in Santo Domingo, established communications via C130 Talking Bird Aircraft directly to the Joint Chiefs. Critical information would go directly from Washington to Santo Domingo, with only administrative communications following formal channels through the Atlantic Command.

The other significant challenge facing the Corps and Division was the fact that neither XVIII Airborne Corps nor the 82d Airborne Division had received the updated LANTCOM contingency plans. This meant that the Corps' plan did not have up-to-date troop lists, while the 82d's did not even reflect the current ROAD configuration, but called for the deployment of two or three battle groups, the main combat element for the now defunct pentomic division. This also meant that the table of organization and equipment attached to the plan was inaccurate. Finally, none of the plans allowed for the possibility that an entire division might have to deploy to the Dominican Republic.

General York quickly determined that, in the absence of a plan, the first order of business was to craft a mission statement for the operation. The plan became an airdrop on San Isidro Airfield, expansion westward to the Duarte Bridge, and follow-on assistance to the evacuation order. This plan was surprisingly accurate given the fact that General York received only the sketchiest of intelligence on the identity, status, and location of friendly and unfriendly forces, and the location of key facilities in Santo Domingo.

At 1630 on Thursday, 29 April, General York was ordered to deploy the Division's Third Brigade (508th PIR) to Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico. Two hours into the operation, General York was ordered to bypass Ramey and airland at San Isidro. This was a case of good news/bad news. The good news was the change from airdrop to airland for it meant that the Division would not suffer casualties on the San Isidro drop zone which was covered in sharp coral outcroppings. The bad news was the paratroopers would have to off-load heavy equipment rigged for parachute drop sans material handling equipment. This slowed things down considerably and forced the C130s to rack and stack to await their turn to off load.

After meeting with his Naval and Marine counterparts in country, York's plan was a battalion-size advance from the airfield to secure the Duarte Bridge and establish a strongpoint controlling the western approach to the bridge. This would form a line running northeast from the embassy area to the Ozama River. The Marines in the embassy area would hold the left flank, Loyalist troops would form the center and the Division would hold the right flank thereby dividing the city in half. The 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, supported by Marine F-4 Phantoms, moved in two columns to secure the Duarte Bridge. It was at the Duarte Bridge that the division encountered a rather unusual problem. Since the Constitutionalists, who had defected from the military, and the Loyalists military wore the same uniform, it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe or as one Marine put it: "It's bad enough we can't tell a good guy from a bad guy, but on top of that they're all over the place!" The 82d's field expedient solution was to have the Loyalist military wear their hats backwards or to the side.

Establishing a bridgehead and securing the area around it was a perilous operation requiring house-to-house searches while under sniper and automatic weapons fire. By mid-afternoon the bridge was secure to include the 1st Battalion of the 505th's capture of Santo Domingo's main power station and the establishment of a position atop an eight-story silo overlooking the rebel stronghold in Ciudad Nuevo. The entire operation had only resulted in five paratrooper casualties, none of them fatalities.

If General York's original plan had run true, the junta troops would now begin patrolling the area between the 82d and the marines. Instead, the Loyalists with all equipment, returned to San Isidro. Until York received the requested four additional combat teams and permission to close the gap between the Army and the Marines, the plan to isolate the majority of the rebel forces in Ciudad Nuevo would have to be put on hold. While the Joint Chiefs okayed the additional troops, they could not get President Johnson's permission for the troops to advance across Santo Domingo. President Johnson was concerned that the additional show of force would give the OAS delegates more reason to vilify the United States. This subornation of military objectives to the State Department's concern about world opinion would haunt the entire operation. Seen retrospectively, this type of presidential decision (overruling solid principles of war to try and placate world opinion) did not portend well for traditional US military missions, and set up President Johnson for failure in Vietnam.

By mid afternoon of April 30th, a cease-fire, facilitated by the Papal Nuncio, was negotiated among all the principals despite the fact that Ambassador Bennett believed it unwise to agree to a cease-fire while the rebels still controlled most of Santo Domingo.

After only one day of intervention, President Johnson was coming under serious sniping of his own. The angry reaction of the OAS delegates, the press, and several notable members of the Senate and Congress, made him determined to end the hue and cry as quickly as possible. Deeming it less politically damaging to end the intervention quickly by overwhelming power projection, LBJ ordered General Wheeler to get the "best general in the Pentagon" to be the commander of US forces in the Dominican Republic. General Wheeler chose LTG Bruce R. Palmer, Jr. for that role with the stated mission of protecting American lives and property, and the unstated mission of preventing another Cuba. The last order General Wheeler gave to Palmer was probably issued with an eye to the political repercussions caused by the military intervention. General Palmer was to seek out the US Ambassador and "stick to him like a burr." General Palmer, who had been slated to assume command of the XVIII Airborne Corps in a few months, was ordered to leave for Fort Bragg immediately, pick up a bare-bones headquarters with communications support from the Corps, and fly posthaste to Santo Domingo. Taking his instructions seriously, Palmer arrived at the San Isidro airfield shortly after midnight in the first minutes of 1 May.

What disturbed Palmer the most was the fact that, under the current cease-fire, US forces would have to live with the gap between the Army and Marine positions. The rebels had initiated a reign of terror and anarchy in Ciudad Nuevo and were able to move at will to reinforce their positions and to snipe at his troops in this gap. They were also using captured Radio Santo Domingo very effectively to incite crowds to further violence. On the other hand, the Loyalist troops under Wessin y Wessin had retreated across the Duarte Bridge to the San Isidro Airfield. Of the 30,000 Dominican soldiers, airmen and police at the start of the civil war, General Wessin now commanded less than 2,400 troops and only 200 national police. This was militarily unacceptable. A corridor had to be established between the two US positions. At 0900 on 1 May the 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry sent a task force across the Duarte Bridge to see if contact could be made with the Marines in the International Security Zone, approximately two and a half kilometers away. By 1315 hours they had successfully linked up with the Marines, but had incurred the first 82d combat KIA since World War II. The successful linkup encouraged Palmer to ask the Joint Chiefs for permission to close the gap permanently.

President Johnson approved General Palmer's plan with the proviso that Palmer gain the approval of the five-member OAS commission overseeing conditions in Santo Domingo. The commission agreed on the grounds that closing the gap would provide a land route for resupply and evacuation from the International Security Zone to the airfield at San Isidro. The operation began at one minute past midnight on May 3. Using a leapfrog method, the 82d encountered only light resistance and made contact with the marines one hour and fourteen minutes later.

This Line of Communication (LOC) would be dubbed the All American Expressway by the 82d, and General York delivered a blatant psychological message to rebel troops by marching the 82d Airborne Division Band "All the Way" through this sniper infested corridor. The LOC allowed paratroopers to begin distributing food, water and medicine to the city's residents regardless of political affiliation. It also improved the military situation in that it split the rebel forces trapping the majority of Caamano's troops in Ciudad Nuevo. Most importantly however, the LOC ended any chance that either the Constitutionalists or the Loyalists could take control of the country by military means--both sides would be forced to negotiate a political end to the civil war. With the threat of the Dominican Republic's turning into another Cuba removed, the US was able to turn its forces from military peacemaking to the more political realm of stabilization and negotiation. On May 5th, just seven days after the first 82d paratrooper landed at San Isidro, the Act of Santo Domingo was signed by Colonel Benoit (Loyalist), Colonel Caamano (Constitutionalist) and the OAS Special Committee. The Act provided for a general cease-fire, recognition of the International Security Zone, agreement to assist relief agencies, and the sanctity of diplomatic missions. While the Act set the framework for later negotiations, it failed to stop all of the fighting. Snipers still shot at US forces, however, major fire fights between Dominican factions did subside for a time.

Denied a military victory, the rebels quickly shifted to political-propaganda tactics by having a Constitutionalist "congress" elect Caamano "president" of the country. US officials countered by backing General Imbert, a national hero for his role in the assassination of Trujillo. On May 7th, Imbert was sworn in as president of the Government of National Reconstruction. The next step in the stabilization process, as envisioned by Washington and the OAS, was to arrange an agreement between President Caamano and President Imbert to form a provisional government committed to early elections. However, Caamano refused to meet with Imbert until several of the Loyalist officers were made to leave the country. Most notable of these was Wessin y Wessin. LBJ's personal emissary, John Bartlow Martin, suspected that radical elements within the Loyalists were deliberately trying to sabotage any political solution.

In a move that caught almost everyone by surprise, the cease-fire was shattered not by Colonel Caamano, but by General Imbert who began Operation LIMPIEZA (Cleanup) on 13 May. Contrary to initial American expectations, General Imbert's forces were successful in eliminating pockets of rebel resistance outside Ciudad Nuevo and silencing Radio Santo Domingo. Operation CLEANUP ended on 21 May when General Imbert's forces reached the LOC to the south and the Ozama River on the east.

By mid-May, a majority of the OAS voted for Operation PUSH AHEAD, the reduction of United States forces and their replacement by an Inter-American Peace Force (IAPF). The first contingent to arrive was a rifle company from Honduras which was soon backed by detachments from Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Brazil provided the largest unit, a full reinforced infantry battalion commanded by Brigadier General Hugo Alvim. Alvim assumed command of the OAS ground forces, and on 26 May, the United States began withdrawing its forces. Since the Marines had been first in country, they would be the first to leave.

For those All Americans remaining in country, peacekeeping duties would be a severe test of their discipline, personal courage, and ability to only apply force when absolutely necessary. Rules of Engagement would now be generated with an eye on more diplomatic than military considerations. Combat operations would be defensive in nature and soldiers would have to engage in activities normally performed by civilian agencies. An excerpt from the 307th Engineer record of their time in Santo Domingo gives a clear impression of what the combat soldier felt about these new restrictions.

�?�"We couldn't fire until we were fired upon, we would hand out food to the people one minute and then be engaged in a fire-fight with the same ones the next�?�Clean up the streets, hell--we came here to fight!�?�Many times we had to drop our shovels and dive for cover as the sporadic fire from rebel rifles started hitting all around us."

After the May 21st cease-fire, General Palmer began to place a greater emphasis on civil affairs, humanitarian aid and enforcing neutrality. However, distributing food and clothing brought the Marines and paratroopers into close contact with Dominicans from both political parties, and some friction between US military and the Dominicans was inevitable. For one thing, the US soldiers were seen increasingly as an army of occupation, especially when they were used to break up public demonstrations. This is where the 82d's experience in riot control discipline came in handy. The All Americans were one of the few units that had yearly riot control practice. They also had previous experience in maintaining discipline before angry mobs, having been used in desegregation disputes in Oxford, Mississippi and Detroit, Michigan. And it became increasingly evident that the soldiers would have to be very disciplined to obey the Rules of Engagement.

The order not to fire unless fired on or in imminent danger of being overrun was imposed on the US soldiers due to the politicians' fears that too much aggressiveness on the part of the military would lead to a breakdown in diplomatic initiatives. It was unfortunate for the paratroopers who found themselves bound by these rules that once the rebels learned of the no fire order they increased their confrontations. To avoid becoming sniper fatalities, the troopers moved tactical operations from the street to the rooftop level. Rebel snipers caused most of the American fatalities--13 KIA and 200 WIA for the All Americans. The 7mm bolt-action Mauser rifle used by the rebels had very definite advantages over the newly fielded American M-16. It had greater range and its higher caliber passed easily through the lumber and concrete block construction common in Santo Domingo, while the M-16 was prone to jam frequently and lacked telescopic sights. The paratroopers countered this ballistic handicap with characteristic ingenuity. It didn't take them long to figure out that while doctrine might dictate buildings be cleared from the top down, doing so in Santo Domingo would earn you a one-way ticket home in a body bag. If taller buildings overshadowed a key objective, it would be cleared from the bottom up, with adequate covering fire to discourage the ever-vigilant snipers. Adequate covering fire included the 106-mm recoilless rifle, which had the advantage of not only killing the sniper but also destroying the building that had concealed him. Through admirable fire control the All-Americans quickly turned sniping into a suicide mission.

It was this restraint, perhaps, that proved to be the key to obtaining the Constitutionalists and Loyalists signatures on the OAS-sponsored Act of Reconciliation in August. Now, from a peak strength of 24,000 in May of 1965, the US could safely begin redeploying the marines and paratroopers who helped engineer this rapprochement of brother with brother. The last All American would leave the Dominican Republic in September 1966 after Joaquin Balaguer was sworn in as the freely elected President.

POWER PACK, as the first real deployment under the ROAD concept of tailoring a force for its mission, STRICOM mobility and Flexible Response, demonstrated that the United States could move rapidly, and forcefully when it believed its national or hemispheric interests were in jeopardy. Moreover, it showed that while deploying maximum force to get the job done quickly, those forces were disciplined enough to use only the minimum or appropriate force for the situation.

President Johnson was also successful in achieving the majority of his stated political goals: preventing loss of any American civilian lives, preventing a Communist takeover so close to home, creating an Inter-American Peace Force as a tool for stabilizing the Caribbean, and establishing a climate for free elections in the Dominican Republic. The military, however, would chafe at his restricted, top down, political management. But, during the middle years of the Cold War, it was unrealistic to think that Washington would give a nuclear capable military free reign to accomplish the mission. Despite this contretemps, the Dominican affair also set a precedent for close civilian-military relations at high decision-making levels. By having the senior US commander establish a close working relationship with the US ambassador on the spot, appropriate political-military tactics were employed.

Another successful political-military technique used in Santo Domingo was the separation of the senior military headquarters from the tactical commander directing the operations. This permitted a seamless transmission of political-military guidance and relieved the tactical commander from bearing the brunt of having to explain to his troops decisions made due to political constraints. In this case, Headquarters XVIII Airborne Corps took the senior military position of Headquarters US Forces Dominican Republic, while Headquarters 82d Airborne Division was selected to be the tactical force.

This operation would also establish patterns and uncover common problems for future contingency operations that would prove to be disastrous if left unheeded or uncorrected in the areas of joint interoperability, communications, intelligence collection, and, in particular, civil-military end states. For while military intervention can stabilize conditions it cannot alone solve political problems; much less correct inherent social and economic inequalities.