Grenada's Scrappy Little Army

First published in Command Magazine No. 46, December 1997. With slight edits.

Grenada’s Scrappy Little Army

The US invasion of Grenada in 1983 provided a welcome foreign policy vic­tory for the Reagan Administration, even as the dust settled from the deadly bombing of the Marine bar­racks in Lebanon.

Government and media reports at the time emphasized the involvement of the Cubans on the island and downplayed the Grenadian role. The invasion — Operation Urgent Fury — was officially termed a “rescue mission” to liberate hostage American medical students and free the Grena­dian people from communist domina­tion.

But a close look at the fighting that took place reveals a more complex story, and shows the main and dead­liest opponent the Americans faced was not the Cubans, but the small Grenadian armed forces.

A Marxist and good friend of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, Grenada’s leader ear­ly in 1983, was a truly popular politi­cian. While he had attempted to make over Grenada into a communist state with Cuban and Soviet help, he’d been careful not to push his people too far, too fast. But that caution then proved his undoing, when his doctrinaire and dour second-in-command, Bernard Coard, became impatient with the in­cremental pace of change and jealous of Bishop’s “cult of personality.”

The simmering feud within Grena­da’s ruling circle erupted in October, when Coard led the more radical ele­ments of the New Jewel Party in a coup that removed Bishop from power, jail­ing bum and his allies on the 13th.

Coard misjudged the people’s temper, however, and a few days later, on the 19th, Bishop and his colleagues were freed from prison by a massive crowd of civilians. Coard’s faction counterat­tacked using three armored personnel carriers and troops. Scores of people were killed and Bishop was recap­tured. Shortly thereafter, he and sev­en of his associates were cut down by a firing squad’s machinegun in the courtyard of Fort Rupert, in St. George’s, the island’s capital.

The U.S. administration was, of course, concerned with the new com­munist state evolving in the Carib­bean. The build up of the Grenadian military and the growing influence of the Cubans bothered many in Wash­ington. Of particular concern was the construction of a 9,000-foot runway near St. Georges. Ostensibly created to boost tourism, the facility had obvious strategic potential, and captured doc­uments later revealed the Soviets and Cubans did indeed have plans for its military use.

Bishop’s execution, then, and the revulsion it caused across the Carib­bean, gave the United States the op­portunity to move to rid the island of its communist regime. An invasion force was quickly gathered.
The Grenadians, well aware of the growing US enmity, had also been con­sidering how best to use their small army to defend their island. Their hope was to hold out long enough for world opinion to come to the rescue, forcing a premature halt to any at­tack.

The largest part of their armed forces was the People’s Militia, several thousand strong. Besides filling six in­fantry battalions, the militia men and women were also to bolster several of the regular army units. But that ap­proach had to be scrapped when the fighting at the jail and Bishop’s execu­tion deflated the regime’s popular support. Fewer than 250 militia even­tually reported for duty.

Another blow to the Grenadian com­munists’ cause was the generally pas­sive stance adopted by the Cuban con­struction troops and military advisors. Since Bishop had been a personal friend as well as a political ally of Cas­tro, the Cuban dictator was appalled by his murder. He also foresaw the US was soon thereafter likely to intervene and there was little he could do to stop it. For political reasons Castro couldn’t openly abandon a socialist ally state, but he had no stomach for throwing more resources into a lost cause.

The only reinforcement Castro sent was a lone officer to take charge of the Cuban mission on Grenada. He was given orders to “uphold the honor of Cuban arms,” but nothing more. The Cuban construction troops and mili­tary advisory mission, about 700 troops in all, were ordered to defend their encampment but not to fire un­less fired on. So the single largest body of troops on the island were thus put under orders to merely defend them­selves and not to cooperate in any de­fensive schemes put forward by the Grenadians.

The major combat element of the Grenadian army was the Permanent Battalion, which consisted of four companies and some platoon-sized support elements, totaling 475 men and women. Spread around St. Georges and other sites in small de­tachments was the Security Company, under command of Capt. Lester Red­head, who had played a lead role in Bish­op’s death. Also manning positions around the town were the regulars of the Anti-Aircraft Company and some militia, under Lt. Cecil Prime. The Peo­ple’s Revolutionary Army Reserve was massed at Fort Frederick, and comprised the Motorized Company, orga­nized into two platoons with BTR-60 armored personnel carriers and another truck-mounted platoon. There was also the Mobile Company, with yet another three truck-mounted pla­toons. Both the Mobile and Motorized Companies were under command of Lt. Raeburn Nelson. Rounding out the force were 80 of the militia who did re­port for duty. They were formed into the Rapid Mobilization Company un­der Lt, Iman Abdullah.

Nineteen Americans died in combat during the invasion. About half per­ished in combat accidents and friend­ly fire incidents, but nearly all the rest were done in by fire from Grenadian defenders. Several of the most notable fights solely involved Grenadian de­fenders.

One of the initial objectives of the invasion force was the Richmond Hill Prison in the capital. Five UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were supposed to land there carrying Delta Force cornmandos whose mission was to liberate the political prisoners being kept in­side. Driven off by heavy fire from the anti-aircraft guns sited around the prison, the Black Hawks made a second attempt that resulted in one chopper going down, killing the pilot and wounding 11 other soldiers. The pris­on wasn’t liberated for more than a day.

Another special forces target in the initial assault was Government House, home of British Gov. Gen. Sir Paul Scoon, who was to form the post-inva­sion government. While the Navy SEALs succeeded in reaching him, they were then pinned down by Grenadian fire and unable to leave. It was only af­ter Marines, led by tanks, approached the next day that the siege was broken. One of the elements called in to help the beleaguered SEAL team consisted of a pair of Marine Cobra helicopter gunships. Anti-aircraft fire from the Fort Frederick battery succeeded in downing both of them, killing three of the four crewmen.

A third special forces target was the transmitter station at Beausejour. While the commando team succeeded in capturing their objective, they were soon faced with a counterattack by a scratch force led by Prime and con­sisting of one BTR-60, and 82mm mor­tar and a 20 man platoon from the Mobile Company. Prime’s men drove off the Americans but didn’t kill any.

The decisive fight was at the Point Salinas airfield. Two battalions of U.S. Army Ran­gers dropped from dangerously low altitude to capture the facility and at­tack the nearby Cuban encampment. Although no Rangers were killed in the ini­tial drop, one man later died in the fighting to expand the airhead. Both Grenadian and Cuban troops were in the area, so it’s unclear who fired the fatal bullet.

The main Cuban position was in the hills north of the airfield, and it was soon brought under attack by ele­ments of the US 82nd Airborne Divi­sion, who’d flown in to reinforce the Rangers. One officer was killed during a night-time reconnaissance of the Cuban lines, and he was the only fatality known for certain to have been caused by those forces. The Cuban camp was finally taken in a violent as­sault the next day. Sixteen of those de­fenders were left dead, but no more Americans were killed.

The biggest combat disaster for the Americans came during the afternoon of the first day, when a five-man, jeep-borne recon team of Rangers got lost while scouting a road leading from the airfield. They drove into an ambush set by the militia of the Rapid Mobi­lization Company in which four of the Rangers were killed.
The largest counterattack launched against the Americans was conducted by a BTR-60 platoon from the Motor­ized Company. All three vehicles were quickly destroyed by light anti-tank weapons and gunship fire. It was, in the words of one US soldier who ob­served it, a “valiant, heroic, but stupid move.”

By noon of the second day it was clear the Americans had arrived in overwhelming force. The Cubans had surrendered and soon the still-surviving elements of the Grenadian army simply began melting away, trying to blend in among the populace. While the Americans reported occasional sniper fire for days afterward, no more invaders were killed by enemy fire.

The small Grenadian army had man­aged to kill in action at least eight Americans, wounded scores more and shot down several helicopters. Despite their limited resources, they also man­aged to launch several counterattacks, including one that temporarily suc­ceeded. Looked at another way, if Saddam Hussein’s army had been propor­tionately as effective in 1991, the Coal­ition would have suffered tens of thousands of casualties, rather than hundreds, in Operation Desert Storm. And in contrast, though they received most of the press attention, the 700 Cubans on Grenada killed just one or two Americans.

— Seth Owen

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SOURCES

Adkin, Mark. Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada. London: Leo Cooper Books, 1989.

Bolger, Damel P. Americans at War Novato Calif., Presidio Press 1988

Russell. Lee & M Albert Mendez Grenada 1983 Osprey Men at Arms Series No. 139 London Osprey 1985

Mission: Grenada -- 25 years after invasion

It was a quarter-century ago that a coup in the tiny West Indian island nation of Grenada gave the Reagan administration a chance for a sure military victory that removed a long-time irritant and at the same time helped provide a public relations counterweight to what was one of the biggest disasters of the Reagan era, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that same October week.
There's only been one professionally published game on the campaign and its unlikely there will be another one, considering that there was never much chance of a contest between the world's strongest superpower and one of the world's smallest independent states. Most of the interest in the affair over the years has turned on its diplomatic significance. Militarily it's been eclipsed by the much bigger operations that followed in Panama, the First Gulf War and the Afghan/Iraq wars.
At the time, however, it seemed like a big deal as it was the first test of the revitalized U.S. military under Reagan and it revealed some flaws in training and joint operations that were remedied in large part in time for the later operations.

The game was published in 1985, less than two years after the event. While it does a good job with the U.S. order of battlee, which was extensively publicized at the time, the Cuban/Grenadian OB is seriously off the mark and so the game as printed is somewhat limited in its portrayal of the actual events. Within the game, however, are sufficient resources to reflect the actual match up.

Graphically, the game is a mixed bad. It's published in the "microgame" format pioneered by Metagaming and Steve Jackson games, although in this case the publisher is the designer, Wayne Close and his company, Close Simulations. As such the components are minimal: One die-cut countersheet, a map, a small rule book and a small cardboard box.

The best components are the counters, which abandon the usual NATO-style symbols for an imaginative mix of icons, unit insignia and silhouettes. The U.S. counters are black on dark green, and therefore hard to read in poor light, but otherwise a nice presentation. Besides unit designation and type the counters include attack and defense factors and something called "action points" which are a sort of souped-up movement factor.

Perhaps the worst component is the map. Most of the island was covered in dense tropical foliage, which Close chose to represent with dark green. On top of that is overlaid a road net and buildings in black, which is hard to read and makes the U.S. units too well camouflaged to see in anything other than excellent lighting. What's not in black is in red (namely contour lines, beaches and some key landmarks) is in red, and red on green is very hard on the eyes in any lighting condition.

In-between is the rulebook, which appears to have been produced with an early word-processing programming (it was 1985) instead of being typeset, which hurt readability a little, especially given the small type size.

The game system is variation on the action point system seen elsewhere where combat is a function of movement and action points are expended as part of the fighting. In every turn the U.S. player activates units and spends their action point allowance to move and fight, followed by the Cuban/Grenadian player. As a tactical game (units are mostly company-sized) the game system takes into account things like weapons ranges, combined arms, spotting and line of sight.

There are two scenarios included, one depicts the historical assault while the second assumes that the Rangers were used off-map to secure the island's second airport and so the main effort around the capital of St. George's fell to the U.S. Marines.

Both scenarios use the same Cuban/Grenadian OB, which would have represented the "best case" scenario for the defenders if the U.S. had invaded against a unified island well-supported by its Cuban patron.

The actual event, however, was considerably different. The bloody coup by the dour Marxist ideologue Bernard Coard against the popular and charismatic Prime Minister Maurice Bishop robbed the revolutionary government of all its significant public support. Bishop was a personal friend and protege of Cuban leader Fidel Castro who was very upset at Bishop's murder. While Cuban prestige required that the 800 Cuban construction (NOT combat) engineers defend themselves with their small arms if attacked, there was no attempt to coordinate defense plans with Coard's regime. One Cuban officer was sent to the island to take charge of the Cuban detachment, but that was the only reinforcement the island got before the invasion.
The Grenadian regime had been very unpopular with Reagan because of its closeness to Castro and the Grenadians had spent several years preparing for a U.S. invasion, mobilizing almost the entire able-bodied adult population, male and female, into a popular militia. Had the U.S. invaded against the Bishop-led government it would have been a tragically bloody affair. As it turned out, however, Bishop's murder (he and his top advisers were cut to pieces by machine guns in the prison courtyard) destroyed the morale of the popular forces and only a hundred or so reported for duty. They augmented the regular battalion.

That regular battalion, as it turned out, would provide the only organized resistance to the U.S. invasion. The major parts of the unit included a mechanized company, a motorized company, a heavy weapons company and an anti-aircraft battery. These Grenadian (NOT Cuban) troops would fight for most of the day against the larger U.S. invaders, killing 17 or 18 out of the 19 American KIAs in the battle, as well as shooting down a couple of helicopters.

In game terns the best way to represent the actual defenders is to put two 2-4-4 battalions on the hill overlooking the Point Salines airport (hex 0860/0807). These represent the Cuban construction troops.
Use one of the 2-3-21 mech companies, one 2-4-21 motorised company, the mortar unit and both anti-aircraft units to represent the Grenadian regular battalion (not Cubans). Mix the rest of the Grenadian units together and randomly draw three of them to represent the militia that decide to report for duty. This should be everything. In addition to the regular VP schedule award the Grenadian player 2VP for every turn that the U.S. has NOT scored VPs for achieving his major geographic objectives (Gov. General Evac; Point Salines; Med students evac).

Mission: Grenada is the only simulation of this interesting fight and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. With the OB adjustments noted it's also authentic to the actual battle. The Grenadian "Mouse" still won't be able to hold off the American Eagle in either version of the OB, but the revised version better shows how long the odds truly were. As it was, man-for-man, the tiny Grenadian army may very well have been the most dangerous forces faced by the U.S. since Vietnam.