One of the least-known features of Cuba's dramatic history these days is that of the so-called second front in the Sierra de Escambray of Las Villas Province in the center of the island. Yet it is playing a role that will earn it a position of some prominence when the full story of contemporary events is chronicled.

The Sierra Escambray is called the second front in deference to the older and far more important front maintained in the Sierra Maestra at the eastern end of Cuba by Fidel Castro and his 26^th of July Movement. It is another rebel group, called the Directorio Revolucionario, or Revolutionary Directorate, that is fighting in Las Villas.

The Directorate was originally formed by members of the Federation of University Students, but as one leader after another was killed off it decided to expand the group to include nonstudents and older men. This was the outfit that made the desperate and suicidal attack against the Presidential Palace in Havana on March 13, 1957.

In November of that year the Havana chief of action of the Directorate, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, began organizing the second front. His family background is typical in some respects of Cuban youth movements. His eldest brother José, then 16 years old, was killed on the Madrid Front in the Spanish Civil War.

His father was a medical officer in the Republican Army and fled to Cuba after the war with his wife and two remaining sons. The elder of the two, Carlos, was killed in the attack on the palace in Havana last year. Eloy, who is now 25, also took part in that attack, but was more fortunate.

It was understood from the beginning that the second front would be only a part of the general strategy of the struggle and in no sense a decisive action and that when the time came it would take part in the general strike. Some of the arms saved from the palace attack and other arms, trucks, jeeps, food and medical supplies were assembled and distributed at key points in the Sierra.

About 300 men were trained in guerrilla mountain fighting and last Jan. 28 the struggle began unexpectedly when a truck convoy was surprised by an army detachment and the Directorate leader from the town of Sancti Spiritus in Las Villas, Enrique Villegas, was killed. In February a group of about fifteen youths got over from the United States with a supply of arms. They were headed by Faure Chomón, secretary general of the Directorate, and Luis Blanca, a student who had been living in New York.

In the original group was a North American named William A. Morgan, 33 years old, married and with two children, a veteran of the United States Army in World War II. He is said by his comrades to be an adept in judo, having learned it while with the Army of Occupation in Japan, and also to "handle a knife with exceptional skill." He speaks hardly any Spanish, but is clearly a favorite with his comrades.

He drew up a statement recently to explain "Why I Am Here."

"Here are men who are fighting for liberty and justice in their land and I am here to fight with them," he wrote, concluding: "Over the years we as Americans have found that dictators and Communists are bad people with whom to do business. Yet here is a dictator who has been supported by the Communists and he would fall from power tomorrow if it were not for American aid. And I ask myself why do we support those who would destroy in other lands the ideals we hold so dear."

The Directorate probably had about 100 men operating under arms in the Sierra de Escambray. They say they now know every path and corner of the mountains and are in control of the area.

Leaders of the Directorio Revolucionario with whom this correspondent spoke in Havana feel that they are accomplishing their objectives. They have set up a second front and maintained it against the soldiers of President Fulgencio Batista for more than two months.