Grenada: How The U.S. Invasion Hit The Reset Button

If you've been following our adventures from a distance, chances are you knew nothing about the island of Grenada, up to and including exactly where to find it on a map, when we announced our arrival here last month.

You can take a moment to google it now. No, farther south. All the way down there, sort of close to Venezuela. Yeah, that's it.

If you do know anything, it's probably this: sometime in the 1980s (1983 to be exact) the U.S. rolled over this small Caribbean island in the first such deployment of American forces since the end of the Vietnam War. In one of the Pentagon's initial efforts at melding a code-name with a public-relations ploy worthy of a sixth-grader, the venture was dubbed Operation Urgent Fury.

More than 30 years later, you'd think everything would be forgotten. But you'd be wrong.

Few, if any bitter memories of Yankee imperialism. Instead, Grenadians are more likely to stop an American on the street and thank him or her for "saving" the country. That hasn't happened to me personally, but I have spoken to more than one cruiser from the states who's experienced it. There's even freshly renewed murals that appear on some street corners with American flags, or 82nd Airborne logos, thanking the United States.

This got me thinking. I do remember the invasion, but it is close to the periphery of my political consciousness. I was only 17 at the time. So, this post is sort of a study exercise in the history -- mostly for my own edification, but perhaps for you, too:

First, the backdrop. Reagan had been elected president three years before. The U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut had just been blown up by a suicide bomber, killing 241 marines. Some critics saw the move on Grenada, coming just days after the Beirut attack, as a "wag the dog" distraction (years before that term entered the popular lexicon). The evidence doesn't support that claim. However, Reagan -- always eager to reassert the Monroe Doctrine of U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere -- had been eyeing the situation in Grenada for some time. An influx of money and contractors from Cuba, and some from the Soviet Union, had alarmed him. The focus of their concern was a new international airport being built on the island's south side with help from international donors, including former sovereign Britain, but most worrying to Reagan's people, also Cuba. Ostensibly a commercial entrepot, the Reagan administration saw the 9,000-foot runway, able to accommodate large (Soviet) military transports, as a threat.

PBS writes that for Reagan, Grenada had been "something of a pet project ... since his visit to Barbados in 1982." Regional leaders had bent his ear about the socialist country, that it "could become a Communist beachhead in the Caribbean."

There is some historical evidence that Grenada's governor-general at the time, i.e., the British Commonwealth's representative on the island, had requested the U.S. intervention. Assistance had also been solicited by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, thus giving the Reagan administration diplomatic cover.

Grenada, the smallest sovereign country in the Caribbean, had won independence from Britain in 1974. Less than a decade later, the political situation was turmoil.

The events of October 1983 would have been hard for anyone inside or outside of Grenada to follow:

The country's prime minister, Maurice Bishop -- a socialist who had forged development deals with Cuba and the Soviet Union (thus alarming Washington) -- had toppled Grenada's first premier, Eric Gairy, in a bloodless coup four years previous. On October 13, Bishop himself was deposed and placed under house arrest by his ambitious deputy prime minister, Bernhard Coard. Within days of the putsch, mass demonstrations occurred in support of the popular Bishop. The crowds snatched him from his captors and paraded him through the streets. On the same day, military chief Gen. Hudson Austin seized the government, deposing Coard and recapturing Bishop, who was executed along with several of his close associates on the same day.

Maurice Bishop

Enter the U.S. The chaos offered an opportunity to make a few points in the Cold War containment game and to get rid of the (military trained) Cuban contractors. Gen. Austin had issued a shoot-on-sight order to enforce a dawn-to-dusk curfew on the island. One main justification for the intervention was the "rescue" of some 800 students, many from the U.S., who were attending the St. George's University School of Medicine. Otherwise, they might get shot.

Six days after Gen. Austin's counter-coup, on Oct. 25, U.S. forces, including Marines, Navy SEALs and Army special forces, landed on Grenada -- deployed at several points near St. George's Bay on the southwestern and southern side of the main island (including the cruisers' anchorage of True Blue and the resort island Calivigny), as well as on the windward side near Grenville.

Credit: Wikipedia Commons

It was supposed to be a cakewalk. While no one doubted that vastly superior U.S. numbers would score a quick victory against the tiny, poorly trained Grenadian forces and the better trained, but small contingent of Cuban contractors/soldiers, it didn't go exactly as planned for the Pentagon.

Famously, U.S. forces lacked proper military-style contour maps of the island and had to rely on the same ones handed out to tourists. As a result, they had a difficult time finding the medical students they had ostensibly been sent to rescue (many of whom, when located, had no idea that an invasion was even underway). The Army and the Navy couldn't talk to one another because their radios worked on different frequencies, which contributed to a friendly fire incident that caused U.S. Navy A-7 Corsairs to mistakenly bomb a brigade headquarters of the 82nd Airborne, wounding 17 army soldiers, three of them seriously. Navy A-7s also mistakenly bombed a mental hospital instead of the actual target, the Grenadian command post at Fort Frederick. Eighteen civilians were killed in that mishap. In that same raid on Fort Frederick, three Marine helicopters were shot down. As Military.com notes, "The Grenadian Army and its Cuban allies also offered greater resistance than the Americans expected."

The whole David and Goliath confrontation ended up taking weeks instead of days and the mop up wasn't finished until mid-December. A provisional government was installed that served a year until things had returned more or less to normal and elections could be set.

For the U.S. military, it was a hard lesson. It was also a training ground for future leaders, such as Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell, who both played major non-combat roles as major generals (two-star) at the time. Schwarzkopf was the Army's liaison to Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III. In hindsight, Powell -- who at the time of Urgent Fury was an Army liaison officer to Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger -- deemed the operation "a sloppy success."

Today, Grenadians seem to understand that the outcome of the U.S. invasion can be separated from Washington's rationale for it. A taxi driver, who goes by the name of Cutty, who says he personally knew Bishop and other top government leaders, said he thought the United States had "done the right thing for the wrong reasons."

The threat of communism in the Caribbean, especially given the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years later and the slow withering of Cuba that it triggere, was overblown. Serious Soviet military adventurism in the Caribbean arguably ended with the Cuban missile crisis and despite some support for civil wars in Central and South America, was never again a serious regional challenge to the U.S.

For Grenada, however, U.S. military forces helped push a reset button on the island's politics. Since 1983, there have not been any more coups. Democratic governments have come and gone, with peaceful transitions.

And that airport that caused so much concern? That would be Maurice Bishop International.

Eric's Visit

Our son Eric arrived at Grenada's Maurice Bishop International Airport nearly ten months after our tearful parting on the main dock at Magothy Marina, as we prepared to cast off the dock lines for the last time and set off on the ventured in these pages.

On a plane-load of heavily laden medical students from the U.S. preparing for the start of classes -- and seemingly bringing complete dorm rooms with them, Eric, toting just two carry-on bags, looked a little out of place.

To be sure, Eric always looks a little out of place. It's a hereditary trait.

The day after he arrived, we had planned to go snorkeling, but pushed it back a day due to overcast conditions and rain that would have reduced "viz." The next day, however, we went out in a glass-bottomed boat to visit a set of sunken statues at Grand Mal Bay, just north of St. George's Harbour. The story here is that about 15 years ago an artist got permission to drop his sculptures in this small bay as a work of art -- something like an undersea Christo project, I suppose. I believe he's the same artist responsible for similar pieces in Mexico and the Bahamas.

Our next big adventure was an all-day island tour. Noi and I had been saving this trip (and the snorkeling) until Eric showed up. We were accompanied by our friends on M/V Tropical Blend, Debbie and Larry.

Water wheel the still turns the sugar-cane press at Rivers Rum Distillery.

Eric makes the leap at Annandale Falls.

Raw cocoa.

Nutmeg. The red part is mace. The outer shell is used in cosmetics.

Nutmeg drying out at the processing facility.

Later in the week, we also hiked up to Mt. Carmel Falls, which was even more stunning than Annandale.

And, of course, there was the unfortunate incident of a boat burglary, which you can read about here.

It was sad to see Eric leaving again on the 22nd, jetting off for his school, his jobs, his life. 

We wish he could stay!

We Was Robbed!

Eric with his returned passport on S-dock at Port Louis. You can see how easily accessible this area of the marina is to St. George's harbour entrance in the background. 

Firstly, I promise there's a feel-good post to follow this that will detail our week with Eric in Grenada.

However, there is one unpleasant incident to report:

Friday evening, a young woman, whose name we later learned was Sinatra (yes, like Old Blue Eyes) approached Noi at the Port Louis Marina pool. We'd been staying at the marina since the 7th, in anticipation of Carnival and later, for Eric's arrival. It was first a matter of convenience and secondly -- especially for Carnival -- one of security. The latter turned out not to be the case.

Sinatra said she had discovered Noi's identification and debit card in a bag on the street near her home in a town not too far from the marina. She said she'd assumed Noi was a foreigner, and therefore might be at the marina. Armed with Noi's photograph, she asked at the marina and found us at the pool. Sinatra promised to return with the items and did not ask for a reward.

Noi was not even aware that her wallet was missing. The last she remembered it was in a backpack in the boat and hadn't been touched in several days. When we returned to the boat, we discovered that the pack with the wallet was indeed missing (it contained the equivalent of a few hundred US dollars) and, worse, another pack was also missing -- one that Eric had brought with him that had contained his passport! This happened late on a Friday and Eric was due to fly out very early the following Monday.

While we were waiting for Sinatra's return, we cancelled the missing debit card and started looking into pushing Eric's flight back to give us time to get a temporary passport. Noi went to report the incident to the marina security.

The bags in the boat had been sitting in a corner of the saloon since Eric arrived. Neither of them had moved. We began to realize that a curious incident several days earlier had probably been a sign of the break-in that we hadn't recognized at the time. A padlock that we use to secure the Lexan companionway slats was acting strangely. It is a combination lock that had become hard to open and had actually slipped a digit. The original combination no longer worked. Padlocks going bad is a common occurrence in the salt air, so it was not a surprising development. Afraid of getting locked out, we got a new lock the next day and threw the old one out.

Later, on closer examination, I noticed the latch was slightly bent to one side, as if someone was throttling it as they tried to prise open the lock.

We are therefore quite sure that the lock was broken, the boat entered and bags stolen. It was odd that nothing else seemed to be disturbed, not even a laptop or iPads that would have been in plain view once someone entered the boat. The only thing we can imagine is that they wanted quick cash and either realized one of the bags had a wallet or just assumed they both might. In any case, we know for a fact that the bags had not left the boat in the previous week, so they had to have been taken from there.

I have a hypothesis about exactly how it must have gone down, which I will detail below.

When Sinatra returned with the items, she had two other young women, Angel and Cassandra with her. She explained that one of them was a Grenadian friend and the other a friend visiting from Trinidad. Noi gave Sinatra a few dollars for her trouble and asked if she had any idea about the passport, promising dinner for the three women if they could help find it.

Obviously, there were natural red flags here when it came to enlisting help from the women. But, the authorities seemed likely to simply take a statement and satisfy their bureaucrats (some things are the same the world over!). The chances that the passport would be returned seemed remote, at best.

Sinatra said she thought she knew who might have done the robbery ("drug people" in her neighborhood) and that she could make some phone calls to see if she could get the passport back. After about an hour of calling (while I talked to security personnel at marina), Sinatra said she had heard that a police officer had seen the passport on the street, picked it up and returned it to the station. Apparently someone in her town had seen this happen, or else the police officer had asked around if anyone knew about the passport. Not sure which.

Eric with Sinatra, left, Angel and Cassandra (or Cassandra, Angel)

The marina security requested the the three young women answer a few questions in the office and they did so without reservation. The police were called and two detectives from the Criminal Investigation Division showed up about 15 minutes later and also took a statement from me, Noi and the three women, including Sinatra.

When asked if the police had found a passport, the detective said "yes." Presciently, Eric's mom had photographed the faceplate of his passport before he left the U.S. and I had it on my phone. I scrolled back to it and showed it to the officer. He immediately recognized the passport! Whew! What a relief. The women gave each other a high-five.

So, because it was a weekend, we had a bit of a hassle getting the passport back in our possession, but eventually did. We treated the women to a dinner at the marina and they seemed quite nice and friendly. I tried inquiring about some of the odd details of the incident, and their knowledge of it, but with the thick Creole accent, I didn't get very far.

So, here's what I think happened:

First, let me say that when we were given our slip assignment on the 7th, we were placed as far out in the marina as it is possible to be, closest to the water approach. The dock (S-dock) is normally reserved for megayachts, but it wasn't filled, so they put us and a few other decidedly un-megayachts out there. At the time, I was a bit nervous about security in that spot, especially the ease with which someone could dinghy in from the harbour and land at the dock. But, at the time I dismissed it as paranoia.

Subsequently, I did see a few dinghies land there full of people who were obviously not from the marina, but I didn't think too much about it, having already satisfied myself that we were safe. On one occasion, I did see them chased off by marina security; however, on another, they landed and entered the marina. I probably should have reported that incident, but did not. It occurred during Carnival, and the people in the dinghy appeared to be revelers. I figured they meant no real harm.

So, my hypothesis is that sometime in the week, while we were off on an island bus tour or out snorkeling, someone pulled up in a dinghy, quickly jimmied the lock, possibly with a crow-bar, grabbed a couple of items and were off before security noticed anything amiss. Why they put the slats back in or re-locked, I don't know. Perhaps in hopes that we wouldn't immediately recognize what happened (and we didn't!).

I have a few thoughts about Sinatra and the other two women. Sinatra said she was just trying to be a Good Samaritan, and I would like to believe that's true. I am not sure what her motive could have been to return Noi's identification. If she and/or the others were directly involved in the burglary, it seems to me the reward that she received (and had no guarantee of receiving) was too small to risk getting caught. And, the promise of a dinner to help get the passport back does not seem a great enough incentive either. Also, it had been several days since the actual robbery. If the thinking was to return the identification in hopes of a reward, why wait so long? She had no reason to believe it would have taken us so long to discover the missing items and also no reason to think we might still be in the marina.

A few things, however, leave me with questions:

How did she know to look at the marina? There is a large medical college on the island with lots of foreign students. Noi could have been one of them. Sinatra's town, however, is closer to the marina. So, it might have been a logical place to look. Now, obviously Sinatra did know a few ins and outs of the way these crimes go down. She might also have known that foreign yachts are a target.

She said she found the identification the same day she tracked down Noi. Why was the identification in a plastic bag? We don't know, but it apparently saved most of the items from getting wet in several rain showers that had occurred during the week. The photograph of Noi that Sinatra says she used to track her down did have some water damage, which seems to bolster the young woman's story. Otherwise, if she was the thief and meant to try to return the identification for a reward, it would have been in her possession since the robbery and therefore, presumably, dry. The passport also had no water damage, but it could have been picked up by the officer the same day as the robbery. The police did say it had been in their custody for a "few days."

We probably won't ever know anything else. I will say that Port Louis Marina security -- after an initial defensiveness -- was ultimately quite helpful. I don't really blame them for what happened; I think it happened quickly and it was probably unavoidable. I would recommend some way to better monitor the outer dock, or to keep intruders from the water away. I don't know how that could be accomplished, but I am no expert in security matters, either.

I would also add that I don't think the three women were directly involved, but they almost certainly knew people who were. And, maybe they simply didn't feel like "ratting" anyone out. It might have even been dangerous for them to do so. Under the circumstances, I can understand that. If they had simply kept the items in their possession in hopes of a reward, they would have tried to return them earlier. Further, the fact that the picture of Noi was water-damaged lends credence, in my mind, to Sinatra's story of finding it on the ground.

Today, we are off to buy a better padlock!

NOTE: An earlier version of this post referred to the lock being "jimmied," however on further reflection that is not the right term for what we think happened. Jimmied implied that it was picked, which as a combination lock without any keyway,  would have been impossible. We think it most likely that it was leveraged apart, perhaps with a crowbar. This might also explain the bent latch.

Home, Sweet Home. For A While At Least

Noi's morning dip in Prickly Bay.

We are finally getting settled into a sort of routine here in Grenada, our new temporary home.

Yes, we still watch the weather, but not with quite the same urgency as we did a few weeks back, when we were always searching for the next little window to set off for our next landfall. That's perhaps the biggest difference in our lifestyle now, that we have sort of lost our sense of urgency. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Instead, we get up each morning, put on some coffee, listen to the morning cruisers' radio net, take a quick salt-water dip/freshwater rinse and start planning our day. There are always cruiser friends who are showing up or the ones already here who have some activity planned that we might tag along on. Also, I am working on a few freelance pieces, one for the Annapolis free magazine SpinSheet, which has been a great outlet, actually. The other is for Cruising World. I can do that work aboard, but it's nice to get out of the boat -- so, that often means a lazy afternoon at our favorite Internet cafe at Prickly Bay Marina. The place has strong wifi (unusual on the cruising circuit) and power points at each booth. Plus a bar, of course. There are a dozen other similar options here, too. The place is packed with cruisers and the locals have definitely figured out that there's money to be made on us. Good for them.

In a few days, we will go back to Port Louis Marina. Carnival -- the annual bacchanal celebrated in the Caribbean in various forms, according to the island -- starts on Sunday, and we want to be in a secure location and closer to the action by then. Theft from boats has been an on again, off again, problem here, and especially so when everyone is ashore for the big Carnival events. We had already planned to go into the marina for the arrival of our son, Eric, the following week, so thought it made sense just to extend it a few days to get the marina's security staff keeping an eye on Symbiosis.

Visiting West Indies Beer Co. with Debbie and Larry Gaddy from Tropical Blend.

Speaking of security, I should mention that there was one very unpleasant incident in the past week in an adjacent bay to ours (we are in Prickly for the moment). A cruiser walking his dog was approached by two armed men (it's not clear if they were Grenadians or off islanders) on the beach and forced back to his boat, where his wife was aboard. The men, apparently on the lam from the authorities, demanded they be taken on the boat to Puerto Rico. Coincidentally, the boat's engine was not working, but the men demanded the boat be sailed there -- easily a three to four day passage. I won't go into much more detail except to they are alive and to add preemptively that no, having a gun aboard (I assume they did not) would not likely have helped them. In fact, they'd probably be dead now. You can read a detailed report here under the Grenada item dated July 30, 2016. In any case, these things must be kept in perspective. Yes, it was an unfortunate incident but seems to have been a one-off. Crime occurs all over the world. Just because we are in "paradise" doesn't mean we couldn't be a victim. But, it could just as easily (perhaps more easily) happen in the U.S.

Nutmeg. The outer red shell is mace. Grenada is the nutmeg capital of the world.

Mangoes. Another favorite in the islands.

Anyway, we are very excited about Eric's arrival. We haven't seen him in 10 months and we have lots of things planned that we hope he will enjoy: tours, waterfalls, river rafting, snorkeling. We will post an update soon on Carnival and Eric's big adventure!