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Storming the Palace. The question was how much Imbert could do about it. From the first, the U.S. had never considered him as more than an emergency stopgap. He was encouraged to form his loyalist junta at a time when only U.S. troops stood between the Dominican Republic and a rebel victory. Loyalist troops were demoralized; most of them refused to budge from their bases in the countryside. Imbert, at least, was one man ready to fight. In the first days of the revolt, he had collected some 300 troops, who stormed the National Palace and then held it in the face of rebel attacks.
Now Imbert quietly rallied loyalist troops to fight the growing concentration of well-armed rebels in the northern part of the city. With tanks and heavy artillery, one column pushed in from the western garrison of San Cristóbal, 17 miles from Santo Domingo. Another column rolled down from the north across Peynado Bridge. In all, Imbert gathered 2,000 troops to attack an estimated 1,000 rebels holed up in an area that contains, among other things, low-income dwellings, small shops, the city's only peanut oil plant and the Pepsi-Cola plant, which provided an almost limitless supply of bottles for Molotov cocktails.
Wearing their caps backwards to distinguish themselves from the rebels, Imbert's troops proceeded to batter the rebels in a full-scale battle. Clanking through the narrow streets, loyalist tanks fired point-blank into every house suspected of harboring rebels. So vicious was the fighting that a hapless taxi driver who got out to fix a flat was gunned down and lay there a day because no one dared venture into the street. Rebels trying to escape through the rat-infested sewers were flushed out with tear gas.
As the rebels fell back before the assault, Colonel Caamaño railed that U.S. Marines and G.I.s were fighting side by side with the loyalists. The rebels said that paratroopers had helped Imbert's men capture Radio Santo Domingo, were moving in to secure areas attacked by the loyalists. The U.S. answer to this was a flat denial. At the White House, Press Secretary George Reedy insisted to newsmen: "The President's instructions to the troops when they went in were to observe neutrality. When the President issues instructions, we assume they are followed."
"We Won't Repulse Them." The U.S. admitted nothing more than sending teams of paratroopers equipped with walkie-talkies to keep Imbert's units from firing by mistake into U.S. positions. As they had all along, U.S. paratroopers manning the corridor checkpoints searched every Dominican male for guns before letting him pass. The G.I.s were ordered not to trap the rebels north of the corridor, as Imbert's forces squeezed them up against the line. "We are not going to repulse them," said U.S. Commander Lieut. General Bruce Palmer. "But we won't let them through with their weapons."
Obviously, with 20,500 marines and paratroopers on the scene, there had to be mistakes and isolated violations. Even so, virtually all the gunfire last week was in response to rebel sniping that has continued since the first marines stepped ashore. In a single 24-hour period, the U.S. reported 95 separate incidents to the OAS, bringing the total to 498 in 15 days. All told, 19 Marines and paratroopers had been killed, another 115 wounded.