Soldier; official.

Charles Hernández y Sandrino was born on the sixth of May, 1867, in Pinar del Rio and spent his youth partly in Cuba, partly in Santo Domingo, and partly in the United States where he obtained his education. Here also he gained his first military training, in the Massachusetts National Guard which he joined in 1887. Later he went to Florida where he studied agriculture in general and especially tobacco culture.

Hernández enjoyed the confidence of José Martí, "the apostle of Cuban freedom," who commissioned him in 1894 to make preparations for the Revolution. He brought to Cuba the first orders of General Máximo Gómez, calling upon all the leaders of 1868-78 (the Ten Years' War) to place themselves at the command of Hernández and Martí for the rising of the twenty-fourth of February, 1895. At the outbreak of the war he was the first to leave the coast of Florida in command of an expedition with arms and supplies. Three months later he returned with another expedition, running all manner of risks and disembarking under the fire of the Spanish go in the harbor of Varadero de Cárdenas.

His knowledge of the topography, geology, and botany of the country served him in good stead and was of great value to the army. He placed the mines in the River Cauto, entrance to the Bay of Puerto Padre, and in various other places of special peril and observed, hidden along the shore, the Spanish gun-boats escorting troops and supplies.

He won the rank of Major by gallantry in the face of the enemy in the attack of Guáimaro and that of Lieutenant Colonel in the famous battle of Jiguaní, and General Funston said of him that he was one of the bravest and most skillful of the Cuban

Early in May, 1898, he was commissioned by General Calixto García to accompany Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Rown of the American Army to Washington and to set forth to the Secretary of War the situation of the Cuban Army in the eastern end of the island; after which he returned, at the request of General García, to assist in taking the city of Santiago de Cuba. At the siege of this city he won the rank of Colonel.

At the close of the war he turned enthusiastically to the task of organizing the Republic, laboring first in. developing the national police, and later in the postal service where he continues to serve as Director General of Communications.