The Fenceline

It's Thursday night. Your platoon, 1st Platoon, just went online and relieved 2nd Platoon from a long week of standing post and all night patrols. Now you and your team are looking forward to another week of the same: no drinking, no liberty, you're in cammies all the time, you bring your weapon to the chow hall to eat. You get the word from your Sergeant that you and your team will be screening the North East section of the fenceline tonight. Get some chow, and be at the Switch for the brief and to get your weapons, ammo, radio, flares, MRE's and other gear.

Great. Another week online. Another nighttime patrol.. "Just another day in 'Gitmo"!

We're Rifle Security Company/Winward. The Winward means that we're on the right half of the red shaded area. Leeward is on the left side, Guantanamo Bay splits the two halves, and you have to take a Ferry to get from one side of the base to the other. The top and right hand side of the red area was our side of "The Fenceline"; the line that separates the U.S. Base from Communist soil. Our job is to keep the base from being overrun (see the RSC link on Marine Hill for the official brief).

On the top left side of Winward towers Post 21, a.k.a. "The Watergate". This is where, much to the Cuban's chagrin, that most of the asylum seekers make their way to the U.S. base. To do so, though, they've got to get through their own Cuban Frontier Brigade, which don't like to see them make it alive. They were building a pier that reached from Caminera across the water that looked like it would stop those swimmers, but who knows if it ever got finished. This is a picture of the building you see just before you cross into the Cuban side of Guantanamo Bay. The metal structure to the right is the observation post (it's kinda tall). There's a sign on the building, written in Spanish, that are instructions to the asylum seekers that says, "Welcome to Guantanamo Naval Base. Please proceed to the refuge and wait. Help is coming, will be here in 15 to 20 minutes." The refuge was a sandbagged bunker to protect them. There's a pic of me standing on Post 21 next to the thermal camera with the city of Caminera in the background. My prediction is that when the Communist regime falls in Cuba, and the gates are opened up, Caminera will become the Phillipines of the Carribean.

On the top right hand side of the red-shaded area is the North East Gate. This is where the "commuters", Cuban residents that work on the base, enter in the morning, and leave in the evening. They are left over from before Communism days. There's still the money exchange building here that's abandoned, but will probably be activated again once the gates open again. As you can see from some of the pictures, there's quite a bit of concertina wire and concrete Anti-Tank pillars here now, because we hated being overrun by T-54's when we could avoid it.

Only a few hundred feet away from the NE gate is Post 31 and the Squad Bay, in front of which, there's a huge EGA (Eagle Globe and Anchor, the Marine Corps' Symbol). As the story goes, the Cubans used to spotlight the Squad Bay at night to harrass the Marines sleeping in there, so the innovative Devil Dogs displayed this enormous EGA on the lawn, and it made it seem like free advertising courtesy the Cuban Frontier Brigade, so the Commies stopped it. The Commandant, General Mundy, paid us a courtesy visit, as Gitmo was one of his first duty stations...you can see some of the EGA there.

Here's a rare shot of the Cuban post November.

	Some years ago, the Communists claimed that the Navy base was totally dependant on Cuban water. To prove them wrong, and to cancel any possible leverage the Cubans might enjoy over such a claim, the base commander ordered the pipeline severed from the base to outside Cuba. This proved that the base was self-reliant.

That about wraps up the tour of the fenceline. They gave me a neato fenceline thingy when I left, and here's a typical Carribean sunset seen from the back of Swain's hummer.

Securing the fenceline was a grueling task, but it did make me appreciate life a little better. I think all those days in the heat, and all those nights sweating and patrolling gave me direction and hardness in my life. I still miss the adrenaline of getting "cammied" up, putting on my "H" harness with 6 full magazines in the magazine pouches, and one in my M16 and getting inserted during the night somewhere to patrol and secure the fenceline. Sometimes at night now, when I step outside of my home, I rush back to those times, and my senses go super-keen, and it feels almost animal-like, and I can hear so much.

Anyway, enough of my prattling on, that was my brief tour of the fenceline, I hope you enjoyed it!