Photo By Sgt. Kenneth Tucceri | Naval Station Guantanamo Bay's Cuzco Wells Cemetery is on the site of the Battle of...... read more read more
Subscribe
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Of the many hidden historical nooks that lie in the hills of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, perhaps it is the Cuzco Wells Cemetery that is the most fascinating.
The cemetery, which sits on a small plain that was the site of the Battle of Cuzco Wells in 1898, is a physical manifestation of the then and now of GTMO history.
Walking through the rows of small, white granite headstones, a viewer can see names from an Italian civilian, a Brazilian sailor, a merchant mariner, Sailors and their loved ones who were stationed here, and perhaps most infamously, many newborns whose graves mark their resting places.
Numerous tombstones indicate the buried souls of Cuban exiles, many who spent a majority of their lives in GTMO.
“They left their families behind in Cuba,” said Stacey Byington, U.S. Naval Hospital Guantanamo Bay’s public affairs officer, of the exiles, “and they couldn’t get back. Everybody expected Castro to only last a couple of years, and then they’d all get to go home. Essentially, they ended up living their lives here.”
Some headstones mark Sailors who passed away while out at sea that were then taken here to be laid to rest.
“A lot of them were Sailors on ships,” said Byington. “They would bring them in [to bury them].”
The cemetery is only open to the public for two hours a year, on Memorial Day, for a flag-raising ceremony, according to Byington. It begins right after morning colors.
“During Memorial Day, the Boy Scouts come in and have flags for all the different countries [represented at the cemetery],” said Byington of the ceremony.
| Date Taken: | 05.15.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 05.15.2014 14:47 |
| Story ID: | 129946 |
| Location: | GUANTANAMO BAY , CU |
| Web Views: | 900 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Cuzco Wells Cemetery: history in the hills, by SGT Spencer Rhodes, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
