Verbatim, Larry Eggebroten

Sequim's Larry Eggebroten says he spent his time in the service in "the bloody Navy." That included stints on various ships and a posting in Cuba in the mid-1950s.

_At that time Cuba was the Miami of the Caribbean. Poor people from all over showed up there to work. You'd see them lined up at the post office sending their money home.

At that particular time, Fidel (Castro) was running in the hills. He and his boys ruled the night. Batista was still mostly in charge during the day.

As one of our readiness exercises we'd go off the base and set up a radio. I saw buildings with lots of bullet holes in them. They'd shot up the movie theater. There was broken glass in the ticket booth that cut up the ticket taker rather severely.

I knew why they did it, but I asked (one of Fidel's troops) why they were shooting it up.

He said 'because they shouldn't be watching movies when we're in the hills fighting for them.'

Another trick was they would throw a chain over power lines and drive off, taking down the electricity and adding to the misery of the people.

I'm not surprised he's still around. He's a dictator. He was a dictator right away._