Robert Klose is professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Maine. He
served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy from 1977-1981. His latest book is
“Trigger Warning.”

As a U.S. Navy veteran, I was astounded by the report that the United States had executed two Venezuelan men, survivors clinging to the remnants of a wooden boat that, moments before, we had bombed. I owe it to my fellow naval veterans, and to foreign observers beyond our shores, to assert that we Americans were not always like this.

From 1978 through 1981, I served as a hospital corpsman aboard the tank landing ship USS Saginaw. In the spring of 1980, we were ordered to the Straits of Florida to assist in the rescue of Cubans who had fled their home country. This was the so-called Mariel Boatlift, its preamble being the assembly of some 10,000 Cubans who had gathered at the Peruvian Embassy in Havana to request asylum.

President Jimmy Carter, in condemnation of the communist dictatorship, stated that the United States would welcome such refugees with “an open heart and open arms.” Fidel Castro interpreted these words as an invitation. He opened the floodgates, and Cubans streamed to the port of Mariel by the tens of thousands.

My ship had just completed a deployment, so the crew was not receptive to the captain’s announcement that we were being diverted south. Our orders were to rescue — not execute — any Cubans we came upon. The crew’s grumbling was immediate, often condemnatory, using expletives to preemptively characterize the Cubans who were upsetting our plans to reunite with loved ones back in home port.

The interior of the Saginaw contained a cavernous “tank deck.” We had discharged our last load of Marines and their equipment, so the space was empty — suitable for bedding down hundreds of people. The men were instructed to move the Marines’ mattresses from the troop compartments to the tank deck. This undertaking alone occupied a phalanx of sailors, distracting them from their dark mood.

It wasn’t long before we came upon the first boat — a large, wooden fishing vessel dead in the water, swarming with bodies, some hanging over the side, the boat sinking almost up to its gunnels under the weight. We later learned that the boat was meant to hold 20 men, but now it was brimming with some 120 souls.

We put one of the ship’s boats in the water. I was ordered in as the Spanish speaker, along with a pilot and boat officer. As we approached the boat, the officer directed me, “Tell them we’ll take 20 at a time.” I made the announcement to the screaming, jostling crowd of refugees. But they misunderstood me. They thought I was saying, “We’ll take 20 people.”

There was pandemonium. The boat began to list as its occupants swarmed the starboard
deck. Mothers dropped their babies into our arms. A man tried to escape, but a woman
pulled him back by the hair, screaming out, “¡Cobarde!” (“Coward”).

We eventually got everyone off the boat and into the belly of the Saginaw. The crew’s change of attitude was almost immediate. Once they saw the condition of these exhausted people, their sympathy welled. One hardened boatswain’s mate found himself comforting a baby in his arms. “Doc,” he said, “take my picture.”

We fed these people and carefully logged their identifying information. A woman burst into tears when I offered her milk for her coffee, because, in Cuba, milk was reserved for those under 7 years of age. An elderly man shook his head in disbelief when I gave him an apple. He held the red globe aloft and cried out, “¡Veinte años!” — Twenty years since he had seen an apple in Cuba.

We continued to take in boat after boat of refugees, including a vessel populated by mentally handicapped children. All told, we rescued more than a thousand souls. It was, during my tour of duty, the Navy’s finest hour.

At the end of the affair, I thought back on a painting I had once seen of foreign prisoners of war. Regarding their American captors, the caption read (and I may be paraphrasing), “In war they are as fierce as lions, but to their captives they are as gentle as Muselmen.”

I much prefer this to the merciless dictum reported to have been used by Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth: Kill them all.