More Violence in Dominican Republic

Apr. 30, 1965 - One U.S. Marine, Pvt. Clifford Benware Jr. of Malone, N.Y., was killed and 13 wounded today as American troops battled side by side with Dominican forces against a ragtag army of civilian and military rebels.

For the first time since they began arriving in Santo Domingo Wednesday, U.S. troops fought alongside forces trying to establish the rule of the newly formed Dominican military junta.

The clash occurred as the Marines moved from their staging area at the Embajador Hotel to establish a 9-square-mile “international safety zone.”

The situation in the capital was officially described as “almost anarchy.” There was major fighting in the old city between the leftist rebels and 200 police troops holed up in Ozama Fortress. 

The Marines established the safety zone as U.S. paratroops secured two bridges leading from San Isidro Air Base, headquarters of the loyal government forces.

The Marine combat force setting up the zone was of near-battalion strength. Troops moved in behind five tanks. Then, at the U.S Embassy, which was under rebel sniper fire for more than six hours yesterday, they fanned out in eight armored troop carriers and three trucks behind a thin line of combat infantry.

Twenty-five hundred members of the U.S. Army’s 82d Airborne Division were ordered in to join the 1,700 Marines protecting an estimated 1,000 Americans and other foreigners. It was these troops that secured the bridges.

“There’s a sniper at every corner,” said Paul Rudd, an attaché at the British Embassy — itself in the safe zone established by the Marines. “Any movement outside the safety zone is dangerous. I cannot say who is winning. We don’t even know who is fighting.”

The White House insisted today that the military mission’s goal on the island remains the same — to protect American lives.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk refused to go along with suggestions that the U.S. is intervening in the Dominican civil war to prevent a takeover by Communists.

Rusk told newsmen that there is no “organic relationship” between the crisis in the Dominican Republic and the war in Vietnam “except possibly for the usual Communist propaganda.” Rusk said he would definitely not consider the situation on the Caribbean island “a second Communist front.”

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