A commercial
flight from the COHATA heading west as if it flew toward Cuba, next door to
Haiti, was suddenly nose diving like on the verge of clash landing into the
silver waters of the sea glimmering on the morning sunrise. The four-helix
plane seemed to flip over on the left then on the right. Below the
impassive sea was expecting to receive it as it did so many times in the past.
Who knows? By the end of the eighteenth century, the Caribbean sea used to
engulf gold-laden boats sailing to the European harbors after having been
hijacked by pirates, with goods stolen and their crew stabbed to death in some
bloody fighting. This time, the prey came from a sunny spring sky.
So the plane still was going down in a alar
crisscrossing dance a fatal one. It flew like a bird’s feather
brought in the wind. The sea would very soon swallow this butterfly-like
machine unable to stand up longer in the huge sky. For ever the plane was
plummeting; very soon everything would be over. What about the passengers?
Dying in a plane crash landing always appears to the passengers as if they live
their coming death in a powerless way. Nobody would survive in what is just a
matter of time. But, suddenly, as in flight training for students, the plane
which was nearing the blue and waving waters, suddenly stopped plummeting
and started going up higher and higher, like boats and birds inhaled by
the vast and mysterious horizon. That morning jaws dropped to witnesses
who were starring off at this scene.
Lately in the afternoon, we got the news. One Haitian
plane has been hijacked in a Cuba seized few months before by Fidel Castro.
The first hijacking in history!
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Everything started almost two years after Dr Francois Duvalier,
a former country doctor got elected as the
new president of Haiti in September
1957. It was a “ shaky start”, according to Bernard Diderich, the correspondent
of Times. These elections, the most troubled ever held in Haiti took place in
the aftermath of a civil was like split of the Haitian army. On the 25 May
1957, some young officers, mostly light skinned, shelled the main military
barracks. Another group arriving on their back shot them to death. Fortunately,
that day, the worst had been avoided, but the division remained in the army and
Duvalier had to deal with.
On that day it is interesting to note that the Haitian
aviation located at Bowen field, thirty minutes away from those barracks,
played the role of headquarters to a group o f military. At the very moment, an
f-51 took off and dropped a bomb upon the main building of the army where
officers and soldiers were still on duty. The bomb didn’t blow up. However people were killed in the
streets among them soldiers. It was a clear message. The line was crossed.
No legacy could be fiercer than Duvalier’s when he came to
power on October 22, 1957. At this time
his foes kept saying he would stay in power less than six months. In the summer
of 1958, a commando comprised of former light skinned officers and American mercenaries seized the barracks where less than a year
before the shadows of the civil war had been floating. Duvalier survived these attempts
to topple him, but the eight –man invasion was killed and dismembered bodies
scattered on the grounds. In the meantime, opponents such as Louis Dejoie, a
former senator and candidate in the last elections went into exile along with
many others.
The 1958 winter might be quiet for the Caribbean, but next
door to Haiti, on January 1959, Fidel Castro , a 32 –year old guerillero from
the Sierra Maestra stepped into La Havana. It was an arrival that sounded like
a party.
Meanwhile in Haiti, opponents still fought on. As a result,
Duvalier hardened his grip. The way the
power works in Haitian history can be summarized as a kind of monopoly. So man
hunting became the rule. Spring 1959 was about to repeat this classical
pattern. One of the key figures of this
time, the charismatic Clement Jumelle who graduated from Chicago and Fisk
University and became a minister of Financs in the early 50s, died in the Cuban
embassy while his brothers Charles and Ducasse Jumelle were killed in hiding.
It was a bloody spring. No one was safe, the opponents whispered.
The army reacted again.
Although provided with a so-called airport, Les Cayes in the
South have nothing to do with the airport life as known in other American and
Caribbean cities. This city 159 miles away from P.au.P the capital, still
seemed rural, mainly depending on livestock and gardening in the countryside. However,
it is in this bucolic land that the first hijacking in human history would soon
start.
At this time, Ms Perrin , a well known owner of a popular
restaurant at les Cayes had the habit of greeting everyone who wished to taste
her cooking early in the morning. Now in her seventies and still cooking, she didn’t remember who came to order coffee
and eggs, on this 9 April. Even when authorities interrogated her, Ms Perrin
answered the way ordinary people did when facing hard times, that is, with a
genuine spontaneity. Investigators finally understood it would have been better
for them to leave her alone. Ms Perrin resumed her cooking. She wanted nothing
but so.
On the morning of this 9 April, two men, one of them an
officer of the Haitian Aviation, spent a few minutes taking their breakfast and
sipping coffee at Perrin’s before getting to the small land strip of les
Cayes’s airport located in Laborde. Daniel Georges a light skinned officer in his late thirties, from a Dejoist
family, arrived before noon. Instead of cement and highways. Laborde unfolds
plains and hills in a smashed landscape. All around there were nothing but thatched
cottages, animals grazing and the majestic heights of the Macaya mountains
chain swallowing and displaying what it left to the horizons. The sky always looked like that of fall. A plane in this place is
something eerie.
When Georges arrived, the DC-3 was on the ground, waiting for
passengers. The pilot, the best in Haiti and in the Caribbean at this time, the
major Eberle Guilbaud, 42, was going to flee to Jeremie, a coastal city 30
minutes away by plane. More passengers were expected to board. Later on, the
plane would be back in P-au-P in the
afternoon. Georges neared the major and asked him:
Do you have enough fuel to return to P-au-P?
The question was not particularly strange between crew’s
members. The major didn’t mind. As a pilot, Guilbaud not only flies well, but
he handles and repairs planes too. He
was a mechanic as well. His elder son, the late Elmer Steve Guilbaud, who adored his father like a god, tells us
how by starting his daily job at the Aviation, his father used to take off his
shirt, get to the planes’ motors, dismount them , throw and pour in oil. He
enjoyed doing so , Guilbaud jr continues. The major lived for his family and
his plane. People remembered his taking his children to school by motorcycle.
So, he was known as Guilbaud motorcyclist
as well.
This would-be pilot was only 4 years old when seeing planes
crossing his native town of Jeremie, he dreamed of flying. “ I’ll fly one day”,
he repeats over and over. He grew up to see his dream coming true. By the fifties,
everybody knew him or heard about him. Guilbaud was more than a pilot. He was a
flying bird. He handled his plane as maid did with their broom. People remember
staring at a plane flipping over and over, sometimes the engine off. At ten
feet from the ground, Guilbaud turns the engine on. Then, their heart into their
mouth spectators and passersby were frozen at this plane rising and speeding up again and again.
On the army’s parade day, Guilbaud’s plane revolved in the sky
as football players in soccer’s field. He multiplies acrobatics over acrobatics
in a way which appealed to folks glancing up at the sky. One day, flying lower
than the flag’s mast of the National Palace, Guilbaud could make out the
military salutation to the president Paul E. Manlier watching the parade. It
was incredible. Guilbaud had for long fulfilled his childhood dram. Even the
countryside was familiar with his plane. Flying over Belladere, a city of
Plateau Central, where his father lived, Guilbaud used to drop letters and
shoes, which his father was pleased about. His wife was going crazy at the level
Guilbaud was flying, close to the ground.
Lifting her hand to her head, Ms Guilbaud tried to call for more wisdom from
her husband but in vain, her voice silenced by the rumbling of this plane flying
so low that trees and gardens shook at its passage. Once a horse, peopled said,
jumped up frightened , breaking his rope. From then, the horse could no longer
work an kept wandering in individual and familial yards until death. As with
Jacqueline Auriol, the French woman pilot, Giilbaud seemed to be born to fly.
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The major answered to Georges : I
have as much fuel to go to P-u-au-P and be back to Jeremie » then stepped
inside. Passengers were already aboard. Georges and a fellow did the same.
The DC3 didn’t fly too long. Jeremie was
next door to les Cayes. The plane landed in front of the most blue sea on earth
after allowing passengers to discover
and enjoy the sight of a still virgin nature. Jeremie’s airport looked like
les Cayes’. No building besides a military post. At Numero 2, as the airport
was called, more passengers stepped into the plane, among them, Jacques
Laforest and Dupuy Nouille, two Dejoie’s supporters. The latter would snake
into Haiti coming from Cuba to start a Castroist like revolution in 1961. It was past noon. The
plane was already on its way back to P-au-P.
It was a pleasant trip. The Haitian
spring has a Mediterranean flavor under an endless blue sky. Everything was
good so far. According to Guilbaud’s son, Daniel Georges went twice to speak to
his father busying himself at the
plane’s stick. Guilbaud has as copilot Emmanuel Raymond. Passengers also noted
that Georges was leaning and talking to the major in a natural way without
raising suspicion. But crossing over Anse-a Veau and heading Miragoane, two
small cities by the sea in the South, things changed all of a sudden.
« Go to Cuba » Georges shouted
aloud, as he stepped toward Guilbaud, according to Antoine St Charles, a former
pilot serving at this time under the major. St Charles went on : the major
thought he was a joke and smiled at George, his protégé in the past. Georges hardened his tone and ordered his
superior to obey right now while holding his gun. Before the pilot understood,
Georges shot him in the back at the pelvis level. Guilbaud stood up,his copilot
shouting :
-Major, shoot him, you’re bleeding.
-No, I could hurt the passengers, the
major answered. He sat and resumed his piloting, surprised and afraid at the
same time. He really didn’t understood anything, he was still bleeding.
Daniel Georges,34, showed really who he
was at this time. Quiet, elusive, he was soft spoken and could barely smile .
But, around the Aviation areas, he was
regarded as a troublemaker. Antoine St Charles, living now in Boston recalls he
didn’t get along with anybody. Always looking away, Georges seemed deep in his
thoughts. But at 6000 feet in the sky, Georges was taking the decision that sealed
his fate.
Guilbaud was still bleeding gazing at his powerless assistant because not
all Haitian pilots carry weapons.
Georges took the major away form his seat and threw him on the floor. He seemed
very sick, could not stand. His copilot was taken in the back of the plane as a
prisoner. Georges took the wheel. The plane was losing height. Accustomed to
drive small planes like F-51 and f-86 that are consequently named mosquitoes and mustang, Georges could not handle the DC3, the famous C-47 from the
WWII. The DC3 lost more and more altitude. It was nearing the blue sea, and the
sea, never fed up, was expecting its prey. A dying Guilbaud could see the blue
waters for the last time. Then he summoned his copilot to take over. At this
time, afraid enough, the hostess, Ms Mona Haig, 46, shouted aloud :
-The plane is going down ! the
plane is going down !
She hurried back to call for help
Emmanuel Raymond, the copilot under the control Jacques Laforest and Dupuy
Nouille, two Georges’s cronies who were participating to the hijacking.
The DC3 was 200 feet from the sea.
Under threats E.Raymond took over.
- « Cuba » , Georges ordered
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Robert Anthony, a former Haitian pilot, tells us that Raymond made sure the gas engine was safe. He seized the stick, pushed in the right way. The
plane which was nose diving, resumed the above level, then started rising. The
passengers felt a relief. It was said that
Georges has his gun held against Raymond’s head at this time. The plane
headed west.
Beyond the Wind Passage, Cuba is next
door to Haiti. Less than 30 minutes later, the DC3 landed in Santiago. The hijackers hurried off
the plane shouting : Long live Castro ! Long live Castro !. It was the Times of April 10, 1959 that gave more information.
« A group of six young Haitian
revlutionaries forced a DC3 to land in Santiago, Cuba this afternoon. The plane
was on a Haitian domestic flight.
The Times went on :the pilot of the
plane Eberle Guilbaud was shot and killed when the group of youth disarmed the
crew and the guards aboard and took the
control of the plane. Under threats by the group, the co-pilot brought the
plane into Santiago,
Among the passengers aboard, besides the
six hijackrs, were a Canadian nun ; A French citizen ; an American,
Geoge Sollun ; an Englishman, and a Belgian and several Haitians.
The passengers and crew were taken to
the Moncada military post. Later, the foreigners were turn over to their respective consuls in Santiago. The plane and
the body of the pilot were delivered to the Haitan consul. The six rebels were
jailed at Mondada post » the Times concluded.
Although it is true as a whole, the
story of the hijack ended with more details. Guilbaud died later at a Santiago
hospital from hemorrhage, maybe from kidney damage. He only was agonizing on
the plane. Feeling the coming death and glancing down for the last time at the
large blue sea, he quietly whispered his
copilot to take the control of the plane, caring for the passengers’life. Death would finally
came at a hospital in Cuba. In fact, the
major’s son, Elmer S. Guilbaud affirmed
that the family and Haiti got the news by the Cuban radio broadcast late in the
afternoon. It was a great event in Cuba : La Muerte del Piloto
Haitiano » the Cuban papers read.
The hijackers spent some time in the
Cuban jails before being freed by the government of Fidel Castro. The main
hijacker, the former officer Danile Geoges went to the US and soon would be
granted political asylum. His chidren would grow up in the U.S. His family,
afraid to be persecuted in Haiti, took refuge in embassies. Jacques Laforest
also arrived in the U.S. He got his daughter married in the seventies. But
Dupuy Nouille continued to fight Duvalier. In 1961, along with a famous Haitian
writer, Dr jacques Stephen Alexis, he slipped into the North West of his island
trying to ignite the left revolution. Dr Alexis has assured
the Vietnamiense leader Ho-Chi Minh that 50.000 haitians were ready to
figt for the victory of the people.
Instead Nouille and Alexis were stoned
to death at Mole St Nicolas, the nearest part of Haiti to Cuba. The Cuban move of this Haitian guerillera
while stepping in the footsteps of castroism corresponded to the Haitian
situation. Georges and his fellows feared
being arrested by Duvalier at their arrival upon P-au-P . Consequently
they shifted the plane toward Cuba in a so spectacular way that once in Florida, D.Georges prided himself in
being the first to be involved in hijacking a plane paving the way for other
hijackers the world over.
On the morning of April 12, 1959, school children back from
Sunday mass, silent and their eyes full with sadness, stared at the fatal plane
sporting the red and blue Haitian flag as it landed. Guilbaud was dead, folks
kept saying. Children, ordinary people across the country felt something bad
had happened. The Haitian sky, so blue, suddenly became the main topic even
though it seemed so empty . Guildbaud won’t fly any longer. He was gone as
Icarus in the sky.
As a result, the mourning would be national along with a
half-masted flag. The body flew home through the U.S. naval mission in Haiti.
The president Francois Duvalier in person would attend the funeral and visit
the family. But as time went on, legend would replace history. As in the sand,
time would set Guiilbaud’s myth into memories, making him greater in death than
alive. Having lived for planes, he had died in flying.
Could he get a simpler way to say farewell to life ?
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| Haiti. Bowen Field Aviation |
Footnotes
Africa is rising, Nigeria wants a profile on its own . An
oil heaven and a very Black Muslim country, renowned few years ago, for some
wellness feeling, Nigeria is facing some indefinite future. Nothing yet to do
with Haiti, the country of the magic voodoo. Don’t miss Haiti anyway. Pretty
girls will reward you with a kind of sunny smile
never seen elsewhere. It’s not a PNB item. But, it’s worthy.
