Read Online The Seeds of Fiction by Richard Greene, Bernard Diederich - Free Book Online Page A

We handed over to the goods, and they gave us several rolls of film to be developed in Santo Domingo and provided to the media.
    After we finished unloading, Baptiste looked at me with disappointment. ‘Where are the arms?’
    â€˜There are none,’ I said.
    Baptiste was crestfallen. He thought Rigaud had convinced the Dominican military to release the guns General Cantave had received in an airdrop at Dajabón.
    â€˜You tell Rigaud we need arms and munitions. This is top priority. We plan to go on the offensive.’
    I knew they needed arms, but all I could do was hand over a .45 -calibre automatic pistol I had purchased for $400 from a fixer I knew in Santo Domingo. It was a clean weapon with the serial numbers filed off. Baptiste took the weapon and shrugged as he placed it in his belt. ‘A lot of good this will do.’
    We were out of time. Hurricane Cleo was beginning to turn the mountain road into a river. We made it down safely, but when we arrived in Baní the waters were too high and the car stalled. We had to abandon the vehicle and take a bus back to Santo Domingo.
    Two months later a member of the Kamoken arrived at our door in Santo Domingo with a letter from Fred Baptiste. It said he was hospitalized in the Dominican army barracks in Azua with a fractured leg. The remaining members of his guerrilla force were being held in the army’s
fortaleza
in Neyba. ‘I must get out of the Azua
fortaleza
this week, and the fellows must be moved,’ the note read. ‘Alas, the inaction is killing me; I cannot stay any longer in the Azua
fortaleza.
Do your best for us. We cannot let go of the struggle … We are young. We will win or die.’
    According to Baptiste, the Kamoken heard voices coming from across the valley on the Dominican side of the border. They decided they were Dominicans. Two hours later one of the sentries saw two dozen men dressed like Dominican soldiers approaching through the pine trees into Haitian territory deployed and preparing to attack. He fired a shot in the air to sound the alarm. The approaching force opened up with a .30-calibre machine-gun. There was no question of fighting the intruders coming from the Dominican side. The only alternative was to split up into small groups and retreat further into Haitian territory. Baptiste fell over a precipice and fractured his left leg in two places.
    The weary Kamoken left their hiding places inside Haiti and straggled in twos and threes back across the Dominican border, and once again they were taken prisoner by the Dominican army. Because of his injuries, Baptiste was transported to the fort in Azua.
    No one knew who had attacked the Kamoken. Speculation focused on Dominican General Elías Wessin y Wessin, who feared that the Haitian guerrillas might cause an escalation of trouble with Papa Doc. At the time the top command of the Dominican armed forces was divided. One group of high-ranking officers supported exiled President Joaquín Balaguer, while another, which had opposed the overthrow of President Bosch, was in favour of a return to constitutional rule. Only Wessin y Wessin gave full support to President Reid Cabral.
    Reid Cabral had ordered reinforcement of the border but refused an army request for additional tanks in the area. He told me he was concerned that rival military groups might be trying to have Wessin y Wessin disperse histanks around the country in order to weaken his force in Santo Domingo and bring off a coup d’état. In early March 1964 Reid Cabral set off a minor controversy in the Dominican media and military when at the urging of the OAS he suggested it might be a good thing to re-establish relations with Haiti, even at a consular level, to learn what was happening there.
    There was another version of the attack on the Kamoken, in which Papa Doc’s Dominican-exile recruits may have been the ones who actually assaulted the Kamoken disguised as regular Dominican soldiers