The Yankee Comandante

by Michael Sallah

  What struck Morgan was that Echemendia wasn’t afraid. He was good at slipping through army checkpoints, meeting with the rebels at dawn to deliver the young, skinny kids from Havana showing up to fight.

  Still dressed in the same white suit, now flecked with dirt, Morgan jumped in a Jeep with the two guides. For the first hour, they headed south, watching as the land grew steeper, covered in thick brush and palms that grew taller and darker the more they drove. Soon the sun barely flickered through the trees. Morgan had been all through Florida—his version of the tropics—but he had never seen anything like the Escambray. Wild parrots flitted from tree to tree and occasionally a dark, furry animal darted across the path.

  When they passed a row of hamlets, the Jeep came to a halt. They had reached the end of the road. Even a four-wheeler couldn’t make it up these steep hills with so many jagged rocks. Rustling up their water jugs and other supplies, the two men jumped out, expecting Morgan to follow.

  As they burrowed their way up, they found themselves at the mercy of a path choked by prickly bushes and tangled vines that wrapped around thick mahogany trees. At first, Morgan kept up with his escorts, but after a while, he began dragging his feet. Echemendia and Mur had no problem navigating the trails, but Morgan hadn’t even caught his breath. The sun arched high above the mountains, glaring down on the three men as they inched slowly into an open expanse. Much of the area had been cut back, and hammocks hung between trees.

  These were the central mountains, where few people tread. It was off bounds for American tourists. It was off bounds even for the native urban population. But in many ways, it was the heart of Cuba. Not only did it contain some of the richest soil in the Caribbean, but also the most rugged people. Fiercely independent, they cared about two things: family and land.

  Ramiro Lorenzo Vega, one of the Second Front rebels, credited Morgan with saving his life. Courtesy of Ramiro Lorenzo

  No sooner did the men step into the open than Echemendia stopped hard in his tracks. He put a finger to his lips. There was something ahead. In the distance, through the trees, were the sky and an open field. There could be soldiers ahead . . . or nothing.

  Echemendia signaled for quiet. At first, it sounded like a soft cooing. As it faded, Echemendia mimicked the noise, almost like a dove.

  The men heard rustling through the trees and then looked up to see a bearded, jut-jawed barbudo step out from the bushes and glare at them with steely eyes.

  “Ayu Acama,” he said, pointing his rifle at their heads.

  Echemendia nodded. “Ayu Acama.”

  The man lowered his rifle and immediately walked toward them, smiling. It was Ramiro Lorenzo Vega, one of the rebels standing sentry at the edge of camp.

  Lorenzo, a feisty twenty-year-old who fled to the mountains after Batista’s police began cracking down on revolutionaries in Havana, had joined the unit weeks earlier.

  As Lorenzo reached the two men and Morgan, more rustling preceded more men, who stepped out from the brush in olive fatigues clutching rifles. In seconds, they surrounded Morgan and his two escorts. Some of them had beards and sallow, dark eyes; others were dirty-faced kids holding M1s. The men recognized Echemendia and Mur, but they stared at Morgan in his stained and sweat-soaked suit and fancy shoes.

  Echemendia raised his voice in Spanish. “Está bien.” He’s OK.

  Roger Rodriguez had vouched for him in Sancti Spiritus. The American could be a good fighter, but clearly the men weren’t convinced. One of the rebels, a wiry barbudo with thick glasses, stepped out from the others.

  Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo had formed the rebel unit just two months earlier. He knew more than anyone how precarious it was for strangers to know the rebels’ whereabouts. They lay just a stone’s throw from Batista and his thugs compared to the rebels in the Sierra Maestra, hundreds of miles away.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  With the help of a translator, Menoyo asked why Morgan was in the mountains and who had sent him.

  For the first time, Morgan didn’t know what to say. He never expected this kind of questioning. He needed to say something to put them at ease; otherwise, he was done. It was like being back at the Paula Restaurant, except this time he was in the wild, with barbudos carrying guns. He thought for a moment and then let it out. He had come to the mountains to avenge the death of a friend. Morgan told them the same story he had told Chao and Amado: Batista’s soldiers had shot an old army buddy while he stood on a hotel balcony during the palace attack.

  Menoyo stared into Morgan’s eyes, listening. He had no way of knowing whether the visitor was telling the truth, but the rebel commander had a way of sizing up people quickly, and if Morgan was a spy, he was dead.

  Morgan told him that he had served in the US Army. He could strap and shoot an M1, and he could throw a knife.

  Morgan could see the rebels were trying to process what he was saying, but they were still suspicious. They had risked too much already. “They were afraid the police were sending him,” recalled Roger Redondo Gonzalez.

  Ultimately, the decision fell to Menoyo. Either the commander was going to let him in or they would escort Morgan to the edge of camp and ultimately back to a place where he didn’t want to go.

  The sun rose over the peaks of the Escambray, casting shadows over the camp as Morgan was rousted from his sleep. He was told to be up at dawn.

  The men jumped from their hammocks, strung several feet above the ground between unruly banyan trees. Like most mornings, they lined up for a hot cup of cortadito and then gathered in the center of the camp.

  Menoyo still hadn’t decided what to do with him. It was only a matter of time before Batista’s soldiers crept into the area. The rebels were far from ready. Most were farmers, students, or workers—poor people who had trekked into the mountains with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some brought their own guns and knives, but otherwise they had no experience in guerrilla fighting.

  For years, they had watched as the larger cities, especially Havana, grew in wealth and power while they still wallowed in a sharecropper existence. They had waited for roads to be built and for schools and hospitals to be established. They waited, but none of that happened.

  Menoyo had formed the Second Front on November 10, 1957, planning to grow the unit with several hundred rebels to control the Escambray. The mountains were far more important strategically to the revolution than the Sierra Maestra mountains, where Castro had staked his claim, for one simple reason: They were much closer to the capital. For all intents and purposes, the Escambray formed the last line of defense between the presidential palace and the fiercely independent provinces where much of the discord brewed. No one knew that more than Menoyo. If he and his men could drive the soldiers out of the highlands—a tall order—then they could clear a path to Havana.

  He had amassed just thirty men so far and was waiting for reinforcements and weapons. With the movement growing more popular, he was sure more peasants would come.

  As the men were about to go out for drills, one of the camp leaders offered an idea: Take the gringo with them. He said he had served in the American army? Fine. They would run him like never before. Lázaro Artola Ordaz, a tough-as-nails camp leader, had helped Menoyo form the Second Front and had been fearless during the unit’s brief confrontations with Batista’s soldiers. Artola motioned for Morgan to join them. Dark patches of thick jungle and the dangerous chichicaste plant surrounded the camp. A cousin to poison ivy, the wicked shrub has prickly stems, but the natives had developed an immunity to its stings.

  “We’ll see what he’s made of,” Artola announced.

  First, he started by ordering the men to line up along the bottom of the incline. The drill he had in mind not only tested their footing but also their endurance. Then, he raised his hand and ordered them to move. One by one, the men began climb
ing, some slipping on the rocks, breathing deeply as they reached the top.

  Next, Artola ordered them back down. No sooner did they reach the bottom than he ordered them back up.

  The others were taking quick, stutter steps, which they had learned to help master the terrain. Morgan kept up with the pack for the first cycle, but now he was struggling. His legs were tightening, his arms heavy, and he was starting to get dizzy.

  Keep moving, Artola barked.

  After another round, the men took a break. Artola glanced at the Yankee, whose white shirt was soaked in sweat and spotted in dirt. Soon Morgan would be begging to quit.

  Artola ordered them back up the hill and back down again. After a few minutes, he put them on a new drill: walking the area’s steep trail. For the rest of the day, the men trudged along the long, winding path, stopping occasionally for water but never for long.

  Morgan’s eyes glazed over, and he was close to passing out.

  As they returned to camp, Menoyo and the others smiled as they caught sight of the Americano, his shirt stripped off, his face and arms badly sunburned. Tiny red welts from the chichicaste covered much of his body. Redondo had just come back from a food run when he saw Morgan limp into camp. “He was looking very bad,” Redondo recalled.

  Ignoring everyone around him, Morgan lay down in his hammock, exhausted.

  This punishing training regimen continued. Each day, Menoyo and the others predicted that Morgan would quit. At the end of each day, Morgan stalwartly dragged himself back into camp, limping and covered in sores. He wasn’t going to make this decision easy for Menoyo.

  At one point, Artola pushed Morgan to the brink of collapse. He was exhausted, seething, his feet covered with blisters. Artola shouted at him to move. Finally, Morgan had enough.

  Turning around and facing the team leader, Morgan lashed back: “I am not a mule.”

  For a moment, Artola was taken aback. He had been pushing Morgan for days without a word. But every man has a breaking point.

  When they returned to camp, Artola walked over to talk to Menoyo privately. As the two men huddled off to the side, the other rebels stared curiously at Morgan, wondering whether he would be allowed to stay.

  After several minutes, Menoyo shook his head. The Americano had stood his ground. He had followed orders even when he was about to drop. He was accepted into the Second Front. He could carry a rifle; he would fight for their cause. But make no mistake: He would obey orders. Menoyo was their leader. If Morgan had other ideas, he was dead wrong.

  Again, some of the rebels angrily disagreed with Menoyo’s decision. Morgan didn’t belong with them, and they didn’t trust him. He wasn’t Cuban. He didn’t speak their language. He came from the country that had supported Batista with planes, guns, and ammo.

  Morgan could sense the resentment, but there was nothing he could do. For the first time since his army days, he had been given a rifle, olive fatigues, and a place to lay his head.

  During maneuvers the next day, Morgan lifted his rifle and walked to the middle of camp, making sure the other men were watching. Leaning back, he squared his shoulders, took aim at a tree about five hundred feet from him, and, squinting one eye, squeezed the trigger.

  The rebels were speechless. He hit the very center. Not even the unit leaders had shown that kind of precision.

  The following day, he had another chance to show what he could do. Morgan took a turn standing sentry, keeping an eye on the camp’s outskirts. Through a cluster of trees, he saw what appeared to be soldiers marching down a trail. He immediately turned and ran back to camp.

  “They’re here,” Morgan warned Menoyo.

  Menoyo quickly summoned his men to his side. They needed to set up an ambush. For Menoyo, the number one goal was getting weapons. If they could surround the soldiers and force them to surrender, he could lay hands on their guns and ammo.

  Don’t fire, Menoyo told the men. Repeat: Don’t fire. They were to take the prisoners alive. If there were six men in their midst, an entire company could be nearby. There was no way they could take on that many soldiers now.

  The rebels moved slowly to the top of the hill and stopped, waiting for the soldiers below. Morgan clutched his rifle, peering down until he spotted the men in their dark uniforms. Holding steady, he aimed and fired.

  The soldiers dived to the ground and scurried for cover. Within seconds, they began firing back. The entire area erupted in gunfire.

  Morgan stood and slowly walked toward Batista’s soldiers, continuing to fire his rifle, while the other rebels stayed on the ground. The startled men kept watching as Morgan pressed forward.

  Menoyo could see that two of the soldiers were injured—one struck in the shoulder—but the rest had jumped for cover and fled. Menoyo yelled for the men to cease-fire.

  On the ground, the two soldiers were bleeding from the gunshots. Menoyo was furious. Normally unflappable, he couldn’t contain himself as he approached Morgan.

  “I told you not to fire!” he screamed in Spanish.

  Morgan was stunned. He thought he was setting up an ambush—a basic field tactic. He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to shoot. No one had told him in English.

  Menoyo didn’t have time to explain to Morgan through a translator why he didn’t want to fire on the troops. Now he had a bigger problem: They had to get the hell out. The soldiers who escaped would tell their commanders, and soon Batista’s soldiers would be crawling all over the hills.

  For weeks, they had managed to build their small unit under the cover of trees in the foothills near Banao. From the day he arrived in the Escambray with just a few men, Menoyo’s strategy had been to recruit men, gather weapons, and strike from calculated positions of strength. Now he had to scramble.

  6

  The rebels had to find a hiding place for their weapons: forty-seven Italian 6.5 mm Carcano carbine rifles. Redondo and others volunteered to drag the guns down a trail so that they could stash them in one of the underground caves.

  The other group, led by Menoyo, had to move quickly to a trail that stretched west into the next ring of hills.

  They knew the wide sweeping terrain, and they knew the guajiros who had given them food and even their rusty old shotguns and knives. The rebels needed to stay out of the line of fire—and out of sight of Batista’s men—until they could reach safety.

  Menoyo’s group scurried along the trail, stopping every few hundred yards to make sure no aircraft were soaring overhead. As soon as they found tree cover, they would wait until night to move again. For Morgan, it was a rough start. They had to flee because he had screwed up. This is what he got for not knowing the language. He wasn’t going to be able to survive without learning it.

  Menoyo was still angry at him for blowing their cover. But what really concerned him was that the Second Front wasn’t ready for a serious confrontation with the enemy, and the soldiers were going to catch up with them.

  No one in the Second Front understood the importance of experience and military training as much as Menoyo. Growing up in Spain in the 1930s, he watched as his family took up arms to protect themselves from Francisco Franco’s soldiers during the Spanish Civil War. One of his older brothers, José, was killed at age sixteen during the conflict.

  Not long after, another member of the family, Carlos, decided he was going to leave home to fight for freedom but against a new enemy: the Nazis. He joined the forces of Jacques-Philippe Leclerc in the liberation of Paris, and twice the French government decorated him.

  Like his brothers, Menoyo was expected to take his place at the revolutionary table, even after the family moved to Havana after the war. Menoyo’s father, a physician, was passionate about his political beliefs, condemning all forms of dictatorship. Even in his newly adopted country, he never wavered. After Batista seized power in 1952, the family aligned itself with the growing underground mov
ement against the dictator.

  The eldest brother, Carlos, quickly gained a following among the young student radicals. Smart and charismatic, he desperately had wanted to leave a mark on the growing rebellion. In March 1957, he led the attack on the presidential palace, but he wouldn’t let his little brother, Eloy, join the assault. The family couldn’t afford to lose two more sons if the plan failed.

  Carlos led the commandos into the palace, tossing hand grenades as they made their way inside. Unable to find Batista, Carlos and his men bolted to a set of stairs but were quickly met by guards, who gunned them down. Eloy was devastated. Nothing was going to stop him from throwing himself into the revolution.

  Where Carlos had been fiery, Eloy was quieter and reserved. Frail with thick, dark glasses, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo looked more like a college professor than a guerrilla leader. But when anger rose up inside him, he cast a cold, steely stare. He had large shoes to fill and not a lot of time to prove himself. This was a critical juncture in his command.

  For two days, the men kept to the trail, walking mostly at night to avoid being spotted. They talked little, fearing that their voices would carry on the wind. They weren’t allowed to smoke, and they stopped only to fill their canteens. They were exhausted.

  Hours passed before they could sleep, making it harder to cut through the thick shrubs. Slowing each man was a knapsack stuffed with clothes, blankets, bandages, cans of condensed milk, ammunition, a hammock, and a nylon sheet to shield against the rain. Everyone pushed on until in the distance Menoyo finally saw the familiar row of sabal palms along the creek leading to Finca Diana. The farm set high in the foothills of the Escambray should have served as a welcome sight. But for the rebels, it was a painful memory.