1968, May 20: (The Cap Haitien Invasion: Big Game Styled by Broadway, the Leaflets Nobody Untied, the Accidental Sinking, the B-25 War Prize, and Fifty-Seven…

1968, May 20: (The Cap Haitien Invasion: Big Game Styled by Broadway, the Leaflets Nobody Untied, the Accidental Sinking, the B-25 War Prize, and Fifty-Seven Hostages Executed at Fort Dimanche): May was the season for coups and invasions — not only because of the political cycle but because it marked the end of the coffee and sugar harvests, when peasants were laid off and money and food grew short. On May 20, 1968, after a morning leaflet-strike on Port-au-Prince in which someone forgot to untie the packed propaganda leaflets, two Bahama-based aircraft landed at the Cap and disgorged a landing force of some thirty-five invaders garbed in jungle-camouflage suits labeled Big Game: Styled by Broadway. One aircraft took off to shuttle in reinforcements while the invaders began a spirited attack across the salt flats toward the Cap. Duvalier’s immediate response was to execute numerous hostages at Fort Dimanche — the Coalition Haïtienne said fifty-seven — and to order all cabinet members and chief macoutes to the palace under guard, sleeping Mafia-style on mattresses in the council chamber. He dispatched Colonel Romain and Major Monod Philippe to the North with soldiers and miliciens, and ordered Zacharie Delva north from Gonaïves to take charge of the Cap, a task the chief boko performed with murderous zest. But the invaders’ enterprise was already doomed: the aircraft that flew away for reinforcements never returned — the pilot lost his nerve. The seaborne follow-up echelon, nearly a hundred men with heavy weapons, never left the Bahamas because, incredibly, their ship was accidentally allowed to sink. The rebels held the airfield and outskirts of the Cap for forty-eight hours until units of the Garde-Côtes steamed up from Bizoton and shelled them into submission. Several insurgents were killed, ten captured, and a few vanished toward Santo Domingo. The remaining aircraft, a World War II B-25, was claimed as a war prize and eventually joined the Corps d’Aviation — the second rebel vessel in Haitian history, after the Molly C, to be absorbed into the national fleet.