Jesus Avila Perez worked at Siboney Sugar Cane Mill when the First Sergeant Del Toro gave him the task to relocate to Sierra Maestra and then to the School of Militias, in Matanzas.
"I had completed the course when the landing of the mercenaries, on April 17th, 1961; we were prepared to face the enemy.
When Captain Fernandez sounded the Combat alarm! Everybody quickly picked up backpacks and rifles, and we made a line facing the institution.
The battalion was ordered to divert all trucks and buses to school, to complete the transport battalion, under the direction of Captain Fernandez, who was also the director of that center.
We arrived at Playa Larga at six o'clock in the morning, where we were received by mercenary’s aircraft with a terrible bombing.
Fernandez then gave the order: "everybody jump off"; We started to jump to the gutters of the road, while we were shot with machine guns and cannons to destroy all transportation and kill some of our colleagues.
The bombing from planes did not stop; Cuban pilots trained in US flew B-26 aircrafts, which were the fastest at that time and were also armored.
We went Forward, with great difficulty, along the road to Playa Larga to get to Las Carboneras, from there, we could not go further because they had a location with 50 machine guns, howitzers and mortars.
Fidel Castro arrived in the afternoon with artillery; he brought some tanks, howitzers, antiaircraft and a battery of mortars, one of the best. Then we started to fight toward the beach.
The Commander ordered Fernandez to regulate mortars to guarantee greater effectiveness, because "the mortar is of vertical shot and the more is pulled up the closer the cartridge drops," said Fidel.
The next day, when the sun rose, the mercenaries planes came again, but they got complicated because we had emplaced the antiaircraft and began to knock down some planes, while others fled from Long Beach to Playa Giron.
When they arrived at Giron, the Rebel the army was waiting for them with some officers, then they gave them the jack matte.
We thought that when they would be surrendered we could retaliate, but no. Fidel said, "Don't you dare on touching a mercenary, we are not war criminals, when the enemy surrenders we respect that."
At that time the mission was to fight and win, but now in peacetime we have the task of preserving our socialism, this Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble, "for which so many Cubans lost their lives.