On Thanksgiving I shared a story of the 47th anniversary of the rescue of 24 missionaries by a CIA team of Cuban exiles in the Congo.

The rebels, who were known as the Simbas, were holding more than 1,000 Europeans and Americans hostages for 111 days in Stanleyville. Within the group of hostages were American missionaries and diplomats including undercover CIA agents.

The European nations and the United States were developing the plans for the largest hostage rescue in history using U.S. Air Force C-130s and more than 500 Belgian and 45 American paratroopers. Cuban-exile pilots would make the first flights over Stanleyville to take out the aerial guns. The ground assault would be led by a Belgian officer and a force made up mainly of mercenaries.

Hidden within this force was the CIA’s special Low Beam team whose mission was the liberation of the five American diplomats. The CIA had asked Rip Robertson, one of their top covert officers, to form a team from the Cuban exiles he had worked within covert operations against Castro’s dictatorship.

Team members knew when they flew from the United States that they would be serving the interests of their new country and fighting a Communist-supported situation.

As Stanleyville was being liberated, the Low Beam team made it to the airport after days of fighting. At the same time, a group of liberated American missionaries desperately pleaded for help in rescuing the missionaries who were being held at the KM 8 mission. This team of Cuban exiles put their lives on the line to save 14 children, nine women and one man. The team fought its way to the mission ,and in the fight back to the safety of the airport, their vehicles were so crowded one of the team held a 4-year-old girl in his lap as he fired his machine gun.

Forty-seven years later, the surviving missionaries would learn their rescuers weren’t mercenaries, but a special CIA team. Forty-seven years later some of the survivors and the team would be united for a few hours at Miami International Airport.

As the daughter of an American pilot who gave his life during the Bay of Pigs invasion, it continues to be bittersweet. I consider the Cuban-American community to be my family and want the world to know of their noble qualities.

Janet Ray, Miami