Ready for Ruben

At the height of the Cuban crisis recently, a truck driven by a U.S. marine went out of control on a steep hill at the Guantanamo naval base. The speeding truck hurtled down the hill, smashed through the steel Cyclone fence separating the base from the rest of Cuba, and rolled into Castroland. Red militiamen moved fast--the other way. The marine backed his truck home, but it was a long five minutes before the first Cuban, reassured that this was not the "imperialist invasion," returned to his post.

The once arrogant--or at least voluble --Castro soldiers ringing the base are not so cocky any more. In a month Guantanamo has been transformed from a post guarded by a thin contingent of marines into a front-line fort manned by thousands of combat-ready troops facing the 10,000 militiamen Castro has outside. It is not a particularly pleasant duty. The shrapnel-proof vests the marines wear are hot; they call Cuba's tiny, biting insects "flying teeth," and they already have a marine nickname for the militiamen opposite--"Ruben the Cuban." The marines have no special animosity toward Castro's troops, but they are honed to such a fighting pitch that, as Corporal Jerome Golden, 22, says flatly: "There's not a man here who doesn't want to go over that fence."

The reinforcement of Guantanamo started on Sunday, Oct. 21, the day before President Kennedy's TV speech announcing the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Before dawn, waves of big Boeing C-135 jet transports started slamming down on Guantanamo's Carter Airfield. Each plane carried 125 fully equipped marines, among them platoons of "force reconnaissance" marines with a very special job: to scout out the size and type of enemy forces. Within 5^ hours, the airlift was completed.

The marines cleared a field of fire along the fence, built pillboxes every 40 or 50 ft. on the hillsides. The strip between the main line of resistance and the fence was seeded with thousands of mines. Heavy 62-ton tanks were brought into position; so were antitank vehicles the marines call "The Thing"; each packs six 106-mm. recoilless rifles. Said Marine Corps Commandant General David M. Shoup, after flying in last week for a look at the defenses: "I think I'd rather be on this side of the fence than that side."

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