L/Cpl 1927106 Gwiazdon JD Was with C-1-11 in Oct 62 All of a sudden was transfered over to B-1-11 105s . To bring them up to strength . Did the regular things , shot card , will , personnel effects to storage etc. No one knew where we were going. B Battery was part of the BLT team. Assign to Gun # 4 . Was the ammo truck driver with C Batt , gun goon with B Batt. Damm It !! Any way took or guns and Prime movers up to El Toro. Then we sat on the runway for a few days , slept there too. And then one night a Delta airline plane landed and a Lt.Col was showing him where to park. Started thinking the could be for real. Next thing on the plane and away we go, still no poop. Lots of guessing. Knew we were heading southeast but to where ?? Come morning pilot on intercomm , we will be landing at GITMO Hoped you enjoyed your flight with us. Oh OH !! Got the scoop then. Waited till all our guns and truck arrived , then headed out to our position, took awhile to get there , was darker then you know what. Ocean to our left hills behind us., road in front. Dug in and there we sat . Boy did we dig deep, The all we did was fill sandbags and improve our position. LP out front back side everywhere. Just got the M 60 MG so we got to Fam fire those and the M 14 we had not had for very long. No one had fired them before. Consensus was 60/40 to get out M 1s back. No battle sights etc. Then we were given grenades , Oh boy what next. . Got to say the squids were really happy to see us. And they help us with what ever we needed. Silly boys , we might have taken a bit of and advantage of them , go figure. Listen to Cuban radio every day all day. Castro " send us your 10,000 Marines and we will send you 10,000 dogtags " Mmmmmm. Next we heard JFK . We were ready as we could be and willing. Guess ya know the rest. Come Dec. the CO said he wanted to put and end to the scuttlebutt CSMO ( close station march order ) Yahoo. Came back on the LPH Iwo Jima with a 2 day stop in Panama. Thats another story from PFC Gwiazdon. Was worth it. Docked at SanDiego Bussed back to Camp Pendelton And could ya belive it the civilians in Oceanside were glad to see us. Talked to the 1st shirt and he let me go back to C Batt. and my ammo truck. Yahoo !!~ Plus our CO Capt. Petterson gave me my L/Cpl stripes back. Semper Fi
I remember being assigned to India Battery 3rd Btn just after the base was empty and being assigned to guard duty that fall . I remember in basic training all the motor pool trucks on the freeway hauling munitions day and night none stop. People don’t have a clue about how many left for this event.