Fallen internationalists live in the memory of their people

BAYAMO, Cuba, Dec 7 (ACN) “Attending the traditional homage to the combatants is a duty to the subordinates who fell alongside me and to all Cuban internationalists,” said in this city the Hero of the Republic of Cuba and of the battle of Cangamba, Colonel (r) Fidencio González Peraza.
 
 
At 83, and despite the occasional health problem, Gonzáles Peraza commemorates every December 7 a new anniversary of Operation Tribute in Angola, even if the date always stirs him deeply, to the point that he cries at home when he remembers “his boys, both Cuban and non-Cuban”, as he admitted to the media, “and I remember all my subordinates who were killed or wounded, quite a few of them in all those years of fighting,” he stressed.
 
Precisely from that country, in addition to the scars of bullet wounds in his back and right leg, the university professor and first lieutenant of the reserve Luis Enrique Pompa Santos brought the satisfaction of having contributed to the independence of a sister nation.
 
“It was a great experience that I remember in great detail, and it hurts to talk with a comrade now and see him dead a little while later. It’s something you never forget,” said this combatant who participated in Operation Olive Tree to fight bandits.
 
 As in all of Cuba, local residents and authorities paid tribute Wednesday to the 171 fallen internationalist soldiers of the more than 30,000 from this eastern region that carried out missions in Africa in those years.