CASTRO'S NEMESIS: True Stories of a Master SpyCatcher
The Sweet Taste of Betrayal
Steam rose slowly from the still-warm bodies, creating ghostly apparitions as the first streaks of dawn raced across the sky. Broken and pulverized bodies— the unrecognizable wreckage of what were once men— littered the firebase like macabre leaves. A shrapnel-laced boot, still containing its owner’s calf, laid at the rim of an artillery round’s crater. The humid air— thick with smoke— also carried the acrid smell of burnt flesh. The few remaining trees were pock-marked by bullets and shell fragments. Designed by U.S. Army Special Forces advisors to be impregnable, it was the second time the five-year old fortress had been leveled.
Most of the soldiers at El Paraiso were casualties: sixty-nine Salvadorans lay dead or dying, and another seventy-nine were wounded. Also among the dead was 27-year-old Staff Sergeant Gregory A. Fronius, their Green Beret advisor, whom the American media mistakenly called the first American combat fatality. Still dazed from the intense battle, emotionally drained soldiers loaded the shattered and charred remains of their friends into body bags.