The Yankee Comandante

by Michael Sallah

  In a letter he wrote to his mother earlier in the day, he said all men have “a right to freedom” and that he had a responsibility to finish what he started.

  With the footsteps of the guards echoing down the hall, Morgan stood up by the door. In just two more minutes, he’d be facing his accusers. As he rounded the corner of the chapel and headed to the hearing room, the prisoners came to the front of their cells and the guards stood from their stations to catch a glimpse of the Americano. As he walked by, he did something no one could quite understand. It started with a low hum and soon grew into a melody that caught the attention of everyone around him. Morgan began singing, “The Army Song.”

  No one knew why he was reciting the lyrics of a tune he had learned when he was eighteen years old and in boot camp, but now he was singing it before captors who held the power to decide whether he could live or die. He bellowed while heading toward the door:

  Till our final ride,

  it will always be our pride

  to keep those caissons a rolling along

  The room was packed with scores of spectators, including United Press International reporter Henry Raymont, one of the most prominent correspondents in Cuba. Off to the side, Olga’s mother and sister held back tears as the guards escorted Morgan across the room.

  Most of the hearings were cut-and-dried, with only family members in the audience, but this was already building as a spectacle. American broadcaster Lee Hall was in the audience. Luis Carro, the government defense lawyer, plopped down in a seat next to Morgan and the others, while district attorney Fernando Ibarra Luis Florez was already strutting in front of the five judges.

  Ibarra had earned a reputation as an icy-cold prosecutor who regularly sent men to the wall. As far as he was concerned, they could line up Morgan and the others now or later. It didn’t matter. They were traitors who deserved death.

  Carro’s job was to keep the men alive, but it was getting harder. With only minutes to meet with each man, he couldn’t possibly mount adequate defenses. Known as the attorney for the damned, he had been swamped for weeks with men begging him for help, sometimes shaking and crying in their cells. As he looked at Morgan across the table, he felt he already knew him. The Yanqui comandante’s face had been splashed in newspapers for the past two years as one of the heroes of the revolution.

  But Carro was up against a juggernaut. Morgan and Carreras, both comandantes, were accused of not just moving arms, but leading a group plotting to overthrow the government. The others—like Ossorio, Amado, and even Olga (being tried in absentia)—were all participants in the plan.

  Carro asked the military tribunal for a few minutes before starting the trial. Talking to Morgan and Carreras, Carro made it clear the government had a strong case against the men for hauling weapons to the Escambray. Secret police had already found the caches. They had a better chance of punching holes in the government’s case that they were plotting to overthrow Castro.

  On the other side, Ibarra was confident he had enough evidence to bury them. The prosecutor stood before the five judges and read the charges, his voice rising in anger. Morgan and Carreras used their positions of trust to betray Cuba and deserved nothing less than death. The weapons they moved to the Escambray—the .50-caliber machine guns, M1s, hand grenades, and antitank rockets—ended up in the hands of guerrillas who were actively fighting Cuban soldiers.

  To prove his case, Ibarra called Mario Marin to the witness stand. A hush fell over the courtroom as Marin, one of Morgan’s drivers, stepped forward. Just before Olga was arrested, Marin fled to the mountains, where he was picked up by Castro’s men. Under questioning, he said he not only loaded guns onto the trucks bound for the Escambray but that he drove them, too.

  Ibarra pulled out a detailed map seized from Morgan’s home with markings of strategic spots in the Escambray. There was no reason for Morgan to keep this map unless he was targeting these areas for future gun shipments.

  Ibarra also called on the testimony of two other members of Morgan’s entourage, Rueben Dominguez and Manolo Castro Cisneros. Both backed Marin’s claims.

  Listening quietly, Carro turned to Morgan. The Americano was already walking to the witness stand. A hush fell over the courtroom.

  Carro opened up by asking Morgan about the guns. It was critical to deal with those charges first. Turning to the judges, Morgan said that whatever guns he moved to the mountains were only for his protection and that of the Second Front. They were a militia that fought bravely in the central mountains, and they had every right to stockpile weapons. The map the prosecutor was waving around was left over from when Morgan helped save the fledgling Castro government from the Trujillo invasion. They didn’t need directions to get to the guns that they themselves stored.

  As far as Marin and the other witnesses, Morgan said they were “personal enemies” whom the government sent to spy on him. Their sole purpose in testifying against Morgan was to curry favor with the government.

  Morgan had just a couple of minutes to make his case. To Morgan, this wasn’t about running guns or unseating Castro. As far as he was concerned, the charges were a sham. This fight was about protecting the principles of the revolution—a revolution they all believed in. Morgan made it clear that none of the defendants in the courtroom had betrayed the cause. The revolution was bigger than all of them.

  He looked at Ossorio, Amado, Carreras, and the others and turned to the court. No one did anything to hurt the people of Cuba. They were all still fighting a revolution in which they believed. “I stand here innocent, and I guarantee this court that if I am found guilty I will walk to the execution wall with no escort, with moral strength and clear conscience. I have defended this revolution because I believed in it.”

  The Yankee comandante had said everything he needed to say.

  The judges—Jorge Robreño Marieges, Mario A. Tagle Babe, Roberto Pafradela Napoles, Pelayo Fernandez-Rubio, and Ramon Martinez Fernandez—turned to each other and began to whisper. It was time to decide the fate of the defendants. They had done this scores of times before and would do so scores of times again. Rarely, if ever, was there dissension.

  After just a couple of minutes, the chief judge, Robreño, looked up to say they had reached a decision; it was unanimous. With the courtroom quiet, the judge slowly read the charges for each man. Everyone sat still, staring straight ahead.

  “Guilty on all charges,” he said.

  In the gallery, some of the spectators gasped. Olga’s mother and sister grabbed onto each another and began to cry. The judges rose from their seats, turned around, and walked back to their chambers.

  The guards escorted the defendants from the hearing room. Down the hall, they were led into the solitary cells at the rear of the chapel, where they would await sentencing.

  Morgan walked to the rear of his cell, but before the guards could slam his door shut, he asked for paper and a pencil. It might be the last time he would have a chance to write Olga. He wasn’t sure how she would get the letter, but he would make sure it was passed to his lawyer. As he leaned over a small table in the cell, he thought about the woman he had met in the Escambray what seemed like an eternity ago. Night was falling on the camp when she walked in, and everyone was tired. But he could never forget the moment.

  “Since the first time I saw you in the mountains until the last time I saw you in prison, you have been my love, my happiness, my companion in life and in my thoughts during my moment of death,” he wrote. As he thought about their short life together, Morgan couldn’t help but mention the regrets of all the external events that came between them: the crowded homes, the emergencies that consumed him. “Such little time we had to spend together, you, the girls and myself, it always seems that we could never be alone, the moments that we were able to, we had to steal them.”

  What bothered him now was that the Castro government was accusing him of hurting the re
volution, but it was Castro who had abandoned the revolution. “Olga, I have never been a traitor or have done any damage to Cuba. I tell you this because you know this is the truth,” he wrote. “I ask you to please never allow that my name, the girls and yours get utilized for political reasons. For those who would use them for hatred, wrongs, or to attack Cuba or its people or to represent things which I could never represent.”

  Morgan went on to caution Olga that he had thought long and hard about his accusers and pleaded with her to rise above her personal feelings. “I do not want blood spilled over my cause. Revenge is not the answer. It’s better that I die because I have defended lives. I only ask that someday the truth will be known and that my daughters will be proud of their father.”

  After he finished the letter, the guards came to the door. The judges were waiting at the dais. The spectators had filed back into the courtroom. With guards on both sides, Morgan walked down the hallway and entered the room.

  After waiting for the defendants to take their place, Morgan and Carreras were told to stand before the court. The chief judge looked up and without showing any emotion, he declared: death by firing squad.

  Morgan stared at the judge without flinching. Carreras stood erect. From the rear, one of the prisoners stood up. “I, too, want to die,” said Ossorio. “If you’re going to shoot William Morgan, then shoot me.” Next to him, Edmundo Amado stood and said the same.

  The spectators in the gallery stirred and murmured before the chief judge warned Ossorio and Amado to sit down. They were in no position to ask for anything. The sentences had been decided.

  48

  A gentle wind blew across the water as the guards took their place in the dry moat of La Cabaña, just as they did every night before falling in line at the execution wall. In the distance, the faint sputtering of the transport car could be heard at it entered the large gate at the far end of the fortress. Morgan stood next to the priest, John Joseph McKniff, another tranquil night over the vast, dark waters.

  The aging priest dreaded these moments. He had watched so many young men lined up against the wall after praying with them that it sickened him. But something stirred in him after meeting Morgan. In the quiet of the prison cell, Morgan had whispered his last confession to Father McKniff and then turned to him calmly and said he was not afraid to die. He was supposed to be executed the next day in accordance with the law, but Morgan and Carreras had asked that their sentences be carried out that night.

  “I have made my peace with God,” he wrote from his cell. “I can accept whatever happens with my mind clear and my spirit strong.”

  Now standing next to each other, the men heard a sound coming from the prison that began in a low drone and then started to rise. The wind muffled the noise as it echoed from the center of the compound, but as they listened closer, they could hear the word “Viva” and then another: “Morgan.” Then again: “Viva . . . Morgan.”

  To the guards, this wasn’t good. The prisoners were chanting in unison, a telltale sign that something was going to blow. Ever since Morgan was called to trial, the inmates had been uneasy, shouting at the guards and gathering in groups on the concrete patio in the yard. Now they were yelling from the rafters, “Viva Morgan.”

  There had been rumors of an attack from the outside, prompting some of the guards to keep constant watch on the roof, lugging .50-­caliber Czech and Russian anti-aircraft guns. The guards just needed to get Morgan into the car that would take him to the wall. The rush was on.

  The transport car rounded the corner of the dry moat, rattling louder. The guards had long ago cut off the muffler of the vehicle so that it would create a loud, popping noise to scare the prisoners.

  As Morgan and McKniff stood waiting, the priest glanced over at Morgan. These were the moments when the men began to whimper or shake uncontrollably. Some even refused to get into the car, planting their legs on the ground until a guard mercilessly slammed the backs of their legs with the butt of a rifle. Some even wet their pants. But Morgan waited calmly until the guard swung the rear door open, and he climbed into the backseat without saying a word.

  As the car took off, the priest noticed that Morgan’s lips were moving. As McKniff inched closer, he could hear Morgan pray. It was as if Morgan couldn’t hear the roar of the engine. The vehicle rumbled around the stone wall encircling the fortress until it came to a stop in the center of the dry, grassy moat, the same place where everyone was taken.

  Every time the car stopped at this spot, McKniff’s heart never failed to skip a beat. Instead of getting easier, the executions were harder. The priest had been in Havana since 1939, but the last two years had been wrenching. The guards opened the rear door.

  Morgan stood up, turned to the men, and stepped away from the car. On the other side of the wall, the city was still alive, the faint glow of lights from a carnival breaking through the bleak darkness. As Morgan stood in the shadows, a guard flicked a switch, and suddenly the entire moat was bathed in the glow of floodlights. The guards looked at Morgan, but he was unfazed. As he wrote in the last letter to his mother: “It is not when a man dies, but how.”

  Morgan raised his cuffed hands to the head guard. “I don’t want to wear these,” he said. Without hesitating, the guard nodded. Morgan was condemned to die, but he was still a comandante.

  With free hands, Morgan turned to the middle-aged priest and embraced him. In just a short time, the two men had bonded. Then turning around, Morgan approached the sergeant of the firing squad. Stopping directly in front of him, Morgan held out his arms and surprised everyone by hugging him. “Tell the boys I forgive them,” he said.

  For a moment no one said anything.

  They had been shooting men every night, but they had never witnessed anything like this. Turning his back to the firing squad, Morgan walked slowly to the wall covered with gouges and bullet holes. McKniff followed him, whispering a prayer and then making the sign of the cross. As the priest stepped away, Morgan stopped him. “Father, wait,” he said, removing the rosary from around his neck. “Take this.”

  McKniff tucked the beads in his pocket.

  After waiting for Morgan to take his place, the sergeant shouted for the men to get ready. Standing in a straight line, the marksmen raised their Belgian rifles. Under the lights, Morgan looked larger than life as he stared across the moat at the men with the guns.

  “Fuego! ” the sergeant shouted.

  Shots jolted the air, the force of the bullets slamming Morgan against the wall.

  Instead of shooting his heart or even his head, they had shot out his legs. McKniff looked up and saw that Morgan was not lying down, but sitting up. The priest could hear him gasping for breath. The hyenas had aimed for his knees. McKniff braced himself for the next volley. He could see the pain was shooting through Morgan’s entire body.

  Breathing deeply, Morgan stared at the guard walking toward him. Stopping just a few feet away, the man aimed his submachine gun at Morgan’s chest heaving up and down in the light, and squeezed the trigger. The noise echoed across the prison yard as the smoke rose like mist under the floodlights.

  The guards lowered their rifles.

  Olga woke, her heart racing. In her sleep, she had seen William approach and kiss her. She looked around the room but didn’t see anyone. It must have been a dream, she said to herself.

  She had arrived at the safe house in Santa Clara and wanted to rest until the escorts came to drive her to Camagüey. The secret police were crawling all over Santa Clara, so it was too dangerous for her to leave the house. The only thing keeping her going was the thought of being with her husband.

  William. She had rehearsed what she would say when she saw him in the morning sun. With no radio in the house, Olga had no idea what was happening in Havana. It had been four days since she bolted from the embassy in the trunk of the ambassador’s car. She had stopped at a safe house in Cienf
uegos and then left for Santa Clara. She wasn’t going to call her contacts until she reached Camagüey. She would know soon enough, she told herself.

  Just after dark, the owner of the house went to the window and spotted the glow of headlights coming down the street. It was time.

  It would take five hours to get to Camagüey, but if there were checkpoints on the main highways, it could take longer. Olga gathered her clothes and thanked the owner. She had stayed in so many safe houses by now that she had lost count. But she was grateful. Every person who hosted her was taking a deep, personal risk. Walking to the door, she looked both ways and then ran to the car with a man and two women crouched inside.

  Three years earlier, Olga had disguised herself and jumped on a bus in Santa Clara to escape Batista’s secret police. Now she was heading out again, except this time she was going to rescue her husband.

  The driver sped down the road . . . and into a phalanx of flashing red police lights. He tried to turn down another street, but more police cars blocked the road. Olga and her helpers were surrounded.

  “No,” Olga said as she looked out the window.

  The car came to a halt, and the police ran toward them with guns drawn. Olga wanted to run, but she couldn’t get out. There were too many police.

  At the window, one of the officers screamed for them to surrender. Olga calmly exited the car and stepped to the curb. The policeman asked if she was Olga Morgan, but she shook her head. They would find out soon enough.

  People gathered in the street, watching. The police were grilling the other two women and the man in the car, but they, too, weren’t saying a word. In frustration, the officers swung open the door of a police car and ordered them inside. They were going to the G2 station.

  Olga stared straight ahead as the driver pulled away. There was nothing they could do to force her to talk. The police had tried to work the crowd of onlookers, but no one said a word. At first, Olga didn’t think anything of it. She was still jittery from the arrest. But as the car bounced along the back road, she realized that the people in the streets could have snitched on her. So could the people with her in the car. But no one did.