I never got to the Dominican Republic but was involved up to the hilt from the getgo.

On watch in the Panama Canal Zone at COM15 in what was called voice control on the mid watch. We handled all the nets serving South and Central America as well as the Carribean for voice communications. The Carribean net served all the Embassy's and was controlled by San Juan, PR as net control. It usually was a very quiet net with only occasional radio checks and those few and far between except for us and San Juan with official air traffic through the region. The volumn was usualy low to keep the static hum down.

I heard the Dominican Embassy call San Juan saying they had Flash Emergency traffic so that got my immidiate attention, then when San Juan said go ahead with traffic I started typeing. The message was from them to Washington and said that the Embassy could no longer guarentee the safety of American citizens and at that point I hit the panic button for the OOD and Radio watch officer. That set off an alarm on opperations that a deaf man couldn't sleep through. In about ten seconds I had both officers in the room along with the ops yeoman. I told them to read what I was still typeing and after they had the calls went out for the senior officers. Five minutes after I was neck deep in brass and anybody below the rank of Commander was ushered out to make room.

Over the course of the next four hours we had a special communications net set up for the increase in traffic that would come from American forces expected to enter the area as well as transit the canal. Six on and six off was instituted and we doubled up the watch in voice control. The traffic from the Dominican to San Juan went through the roof and we backed up units comeing into the area setting up comms. One of them was DesRon 12 and the flagship was the USS Davis, call sign Matador. I heard the stories about their transit in the harbor for the rescue when I got on her a year later. According to the guys that were there the approach to the docks was lined with tanks, all with their weapons pointed at her. Fortunatly, nobody was foolish that day and they entered without a shot being fired.

After the evacuation of Americans our net went back to normal and we returned to the regular task of being a sleepy radio station at one of the crossroads of the world.

Great post and info. Thanks from a old DR vet.

Quite the story. Awesome how things spring to life.

I never made it to the Dominican Republic. But just for the record, that conflict was percolating for quite a while.

Back in 1963, we - the 2nd Marine Division Combat Engineers at Camp Lejeune, NC - "mounted out" for deployment to the Dominican Republic. I remember sitting on our packs with our rifles and helmets outside the Company barracks waiting for the trucks to pick us up and take us to our ships. We had turned in all our base gear (linens, etc.) and had our personal gear in storage.

Our First Sargent pulls up in a jeep, dismounts and looks at us and shakes his head. "It's a no go." he said. "Collect your crap and return to the barracks. Work day starts tomorrow morning as usual."

So it went in 1963.

- LarSim