Reader Report: Exploring the remnant of Grenada’s war with 2 expats from Newport

ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — It is desperately hot and steamy on this tiny island-nation in the eastern Caribbean, and my wife Ludie and I are bouncing along a winding mountain road with a pair of Newport Beach expatriates in their little Japanese sedan in search of two of the most startling, grotesque relics of the 1983 Grenada War.

Our longtime friends and hosts, Emily Vogler and her husband, Dan Flynn, are temporary residents here, having arrived on this 33-square-mile island six months ago after Flynn accepted a five-year appointment as a top-level administrator at the 8,000-student, American-run St. George’s University, which grants medical, veterinary and graduate-level degrees in science and education.

Flynn is driving, and he deftly navigates the rutted road along hairpin turns through the dense jungle (some call it a rain forest) past farm wagons, the carcasses of dozens of abandoned cars littering the roadside, small dwellings clinging to the hills (many island homes have no electricity, running water or inside toilets), wandering cattle and thick groves of banana trees.

Along the way, we pass women carrying bowls and cooking pots on their heads. Virtually all Grenadians are black, the descendants of slaves brought to the land beginning in the early 19th century by French and British landowners to work on the cotton, sugar cane, banana and spice plantations.

During our journey, Vogler and Flynn tell us about the Marxist coup on the island that led to the dispatch of U.S. forces by then-President Ronald Reagan 33 years ago.

The conflict, which was decisively won by the U.S. military and 350 soldiers from eight pro-Western Caribbean nations, had been authorized by Reagan, whose goals were to put down the communist revolution, support a new, democratically elected regime, prevent Cuban dictator Fidel Castro from establishing Grenada as a new political and military ally, and ensure the safety of the American medical students at St. George’s University.

When the war, which the Pentagon named “Operation Urgent Fury,” ended three weeks later, 19 U.S. service members had been killed and 116 wounded. As for the Marxist forces that consisted of the 1,500-man People’s Revolutionary Army and about 400 Cuban army reservists brought here to construct a new airport near St. George’s, the capital, more than 70 lay dead, 460 were wounded and 638 were captured. Reagan’s goals were ultimately met, and today Grenada is a democracy and a friend of the U.S. and the West.

Meanwhile, after nearly an hour’s drive, we reach northeastern Grenada and our eagerly awaited destination, the long-deserted Pearls Airport used by Castro and his Soviet allies in support of the communist coup and the Grenada War.

What a forlorn, decrepit place this is. Most of the windows of the airport’s former terminal building, café and duty-free store are broken, and shards of glass and litter surround the empty and vandalized wooden structures. But Dan Flynn drives on, to the runway.

Here, sitting on the side of the tarmac, lie rusting and ransacked remnants of both the Cold War and the Grenada War: two Soviet-made military aircraft, a single-engine Antonov 2-R reconnaissance plane and a twin-engine, turboprop Antonov-26 cargo aircraft which from Cuba Soviet-manufactured armored personnel carriers ferried artillery pieces, AK-47 assault rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition and North Korean, Vietnamese, Bulgarian and Libyan military advisers in support of the communist revolutionaries.

The aircraft, unable to get off the runway when helicopter-borne U.S. Army Rangers and Marines stormed the island during the invasion, bear faded Soviet and Cuban military markings and are surrounded by goats and cattle feeding on weeds and grass. The airplanes, sitting side-by-side, are scavenged and sun-bleached. As for Pearl Airport’s runway, today it serves as the island’s sole drag-racing strip.

The next day, at Fort George in the hills above St. George’s, Ludie and I were greeted by another remnant of the war.

It was at this fort, a legacy left by Great Britain, which ruled Grenada for 190 years before granting it independence in 1974, where Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, a communist and protégé of Castro, along with 15 of his associates including his pregnant girlfriend, were lined up and assassinated on orders of Bishop’s chief of staff following a bloody power struggle between the two men that led to the coup and war.

As we scrutinized the killing scene, easily identified by scores of pockmarks left in the brick wall by the assassins’ bullets, a dozen Grenadian policemen strode into the courtyard and began a game of basketball, bouncing the ball between the bullet holes. What a macabre scene we had stumbled upon.

I later learned that the murdered Bishop was himself no angel, having ousted his predecessor, also a Marxist, during an earlier, interparty feud. That fellow, an eccentric named Sir Eric Gairy, who had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, had claimed in a speech at the United Nations that mankind was being threatened by extraterrestrials speeding around the world in flying saucers. Former Prime Minister Gairy also practiced “Obeah,” an African folk religion that employs black magic, sorcery, the ritual killing of animals, exorcism and frenzied dancing to produce hexes, spells and other assorted misfortunes upon one’s political and romantic rivals.

Several days later, Ludie and I visited Vogler and Flynn at their 700-square-foot house, for which they pay $800 a month rent. The cinder block bungalow, which has a commanding view of the sea, is close to St. George’s University, where Flynn, who holds a Ph.D from UC Irvine in higher education administration, serves as director of faculty development and an associate professor of education.

Vogler, the daughter of the late Newport Beach entrepreneur John Crean, also earned a PhD at UCI, in neurobiology, and as a current UCI staff research associate, she is continuing her research here into the biological causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

What do Vogler and Flynn, who have been married 16 years, miss most about Newport Beach?

“Mexican food, our families and friends, the Daily Pilot and high-speed Wi-Fi,” they told me, almost in unison.

The couple, who will return to Newport in June for about two weeks, say they will have a “lot of catching up to do.”

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Newport Beach resident DAVID HENLEY is a former foreign correspondent. He serves on the Board of Trustees at Chapman University.