This is the penultimate or next-to-last installment of my series of blog posts in honor of my late father, Francisco Guerra, a veteran of Brigade 2506, Sixth Battalion.

Tuesday, 18 April (D-Day +1)

The brave men of the Brigade were able to repel a much larger and better-equipped force at the ferocious Battle of the Rotunda on the night of 17-18 April, but they were now running desperately low on ammunition. The Brigade’s remaining supply ships had fled into international waters after her sister ships, the Houston and the Rio Escondido, were bombed by enemy planes on the first day of the invasion.

But not all was lost. In addition to their (alas, short-lived) victory at the Battle of the Rotunda at Red Beach (Playa Larga), the Brigade had also secured a strategic airstrip at Playa Girón (Blue Beach), and Pepe San Román, the overall commander of brigade troops on the ground, was not only able to set up a makeshift military command center nearby; he was also furiously attempting to re-establish the brigade’s supply lines.

With the local airfield now under brigade control, the battle might yet be won. The brigade’s air force, consisting of two dozen B-26 bombers, could now begin airlifting additional men and materiel where they were most needed and change the tide of battle and perhaps the course of Cuban history, but in order to maintain control of the airport, the Brigade would have to defend the 40-kilometer, two-lane road connecting Red Beach and Blue Beach: the road with no name. (See Note #5.)

Note #5: As of this writing (25 May 2024), I am unable to determine if the Brigade had assigned a code name to this strategic road. In any case, at the time of the ill-fated invasion (April 1961), the Playa Larga-Playa Girón road was relatively new and had no official name or route number. According to Google Maps (see here; scroll down to the map below “Ocho Vías hasta Playa Larga”), this scenic road is now Route 11. Other maps, however, such as this one, call it Route 122.

On Tuesday morning (18 April), San Román sent the rest of the Sixth Battalion to defend this road. (See Triay 2001, p. 79; see also Johnson 1964, p. 145. Recall from my previous post that one of the Sixth Battalion’s companies had already marched up to Playa Larga to join forces with Oliva’s Second Battalion in anticipation of what would become the epic “Battle of the Rotunda”.) At some point during the day, the designated commander of the Sixth Battalion, Francisco Montiel, was wounded, so the legendary Erneido Oliva took charge of Montiel’s men and began preparing for their next major battle. (See Triay 2001, p. 79; see also Wyden 1979, p. 281: “On the western outskirts of Girón, along the road to Playa Larga, Oliva, the last Brigade fighter to give up, organized what the Brigade came to call the ‘last stand of Girón.’”)

But without air cover and with dwindling stores of ammunition, time was running out for my father’s dream of a Free Cuba. Moreover, the men of the Sixth Battalion now confronted a dire situation. How could they defend the road with no name with enemy forces now approaching from five or six different directions (see map pictured below), not including the enemy’s unrelenting attacks from the air? Stay tuned, I will retrace the footsteps of the Sixth Battalion (my father’s unit) and describe their last battle — the legendary “Last Stand of Girón” — in my next post …