The Army Goes to the Dominican Republic, 1965, by John Olden
From MemoryArchive
Who: John Olden What: Army When: 1965 Where: Dominican Republic
The Army Goes to the Dominican Republic, 1965
As a young Army 2nd Lt. in mid-April 1965, I had just finished Airborne training and reported in to my first duty station with the 18th Airborne Corps at Ft. Bragg, NC. They told me that as an airborne unit they practiced being ready to go on a moment’s notice by having alerts in the middle of the night. Two weeks later I received a phone call at 3 a.m. with orders to report in. Ah ha! I thought, this is one of the alerts they told me to expect. When they started checking shot records and issued live ammunition, I began to suspect this wasn’t a drill.
Soon there were sounds of C-130 aircraft from Pope Air Force Base next door. That was the first units of the 82nd Airborne Division leaving. Since I was in a staff support job, I didn’t leave for three days. During that time there was a constant drone of transport aircraft of all types that went on day and night. Troops were loading up with all their equipment. I was impressed at how much military power our country could put together on such short notice. The mission was to stabilize the Dominican Republic, and Pres. Johnson was concerned about a Cuba-style communist takeover.
The first 82nd Airborne troops to go were rigged to jump, but they were able to land at the Santo Domingo airport instead. That turned out to be fortunate, since the drop-zone, picked from aerial photographs, turned out to be full of sharp coral. My troops and I, along with 2 jeeps and a ¾ ton truck, loaded on a C-130. The air crew said this was their 6th roundtrip. After landing at the Santo Domingo airfield in midafternoon, we assembled into a convoy. We were to travel through the main part of the city to our destination, the U.S. Embassy grounds on the far side of the city. As we crossed the river into the city, I noticed spalled spots on the walls of stucco buildings. I later realized those were marks left by bullets hitting the walls.
The 82nd Airborne had cleared a route consisting of one street and the buildings on either side. About halfway through town we heard gunfire and our convoy came to a stop. We deployed to the buildings on either side. The route had a jog at one point, and the convoy had to travel down an intersecting street for a block before continuing in the original direction. This provided an opportunity for rebel snipers to fire headon to our vehicles. The infantry brought in a recoilless rifle, leveled the building the sniper was using, and the convoy was able to proceed.
At the peak there were 23,000 U.S. troops, including Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force around Santo Domingo. Twenty-four American lives were lost. This was just before the major buildup in Vietnam and there were more troops in Santa Domingo at that time than in Vietnam. But the handwriting was on the wall. I recall a savvy Master Sergeant reading the Army Times and predicting that Vietnam was going to be a war.
As it turned out, the communist threat to the Dominican Republic was not there. Some may argue that we should not have intervened in what was essentially a civil war, but the outcome has been a relatively stable democracy without any further violence.
