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L Life with the Cuban air trainees at JMADD was undoubtedly made even more difficult because few of the North American trainers were fluent in Spanish, even though Gar Thorsrud expressed a more pragmatic approach to the problem: "There was some language problem, but an airplane is an airplane; and they overcame it by physical actions and signs." 44/ Even though most of the other principals involved in air operations also tended to disregard the language barrier as a significant problem insofar as the train- ing went, it.is interesting to observe that in December 1960 MADD made a specific request to Headquarters for a Spanish speaking CI representative -- "request made due to increasing possibilities more trainees will try to leave base. In addition, will be asset to security." 45/* * Eduardo Ferrer, of course, was quite conscious of the lack of ability to communicate with the North Americans who did not speak Spanish. The cable traf- fic requesting increments of personnel to JMASH, to JMADD, and to JMT~DE reflects a strong interest on the part of the people involved in the day-to-day operations to have assignees available who were fluent in the language. The December request to Headquarters from MADD for someone fluent in Spanish had been pre- ceeded by a similar suggestion at the end of October in the course of a meeting called by Lt. Col. George Gaines, Chief, JMCLEAR. Several returnees from JMADD met with] ] Chief, WH/4/CI and other \rootnote continued on following page) - 127 -