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There were times when it was hard to tell who was shooting at whom or who held what ground. At the corner of Avenida Francia and Calle Rosa Duarte, an Airborne colonel asked a Marine lieutenant his line of fire. "Before us, sir, and down the street." "Damn it," roared the colonel, "that's the 82nd Airborne before you!" In a strafing attack on the city's rebel-held radio station, a pair of General Imbert's loyalist F-51 fighters from San Isidro airbase accidentally machine-gunned a nearby Marine position. U.S. troops promptly shot down one of the F-51s. Next day, as loyalist F-51s prepared for another strike, a column of U.S. paratroopers arrived with orders to destroy the planes if their pilots so much as punched a starter button.
Harder & Bloodier. In Manhattan, the United Nations voiced its alarm at the rapidly disintegrating situation by unanimously voting to send a team of "observers" to the Dominican Republic. The U.S. agreed that it might be helpful but insisted that the problem was one for the OAS. At OAS headquarters in Washington, U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker urgently advised Latin Americans to honor their pledge for a multination military force to help the U.S. keep order. And indeed, the first Latin Americans started arriving: 250 Honduran infantrymen, 20 Costa Rican policemen. Others were on their way from Nicaragua, probably from Brazil.
The U.S. hoped that their mere presence would have a calming effect on the Dominicans. But at week's end loyalist and rebel attitudes had hardened to the point where that seemed forlorn. Once more President Johnson appealed for peace and promised that the U.S. "will render all available assistance toward rapid economic development." As he spoke, 1,500 of Imbert's loyalist troops opened a major attack with tanks and heavy artillery aimed at wiping out about 300 rebels in the northern part of the city. The danger now was of another full-scale bloodbath—no matter how many U.S. and Latin American troops occupied the shell-shocked city of Santo Domingo.