CUBA

For five days last week the Cuban government kept officially mum while high-ranking members of the regime leaked to the press that 11,000 army troops, with artillery, mortars and bombing planes, were in an all-out drive to flush Fidel Castro from his mountain fastness in the Sierra Maestra. "This is the real thing," they said.

The clandestine rebel radio seemed to confirm that some hard fighting was in progress, because it appealed: "Come to the Sierra Maestra, Cuban doctors. We need surgeons urgently. The enemy offensive has begun violently along a 200-kilometer front."

On the sixth day of the "offensive," President Fulgencio Batista's government finally issued a statement denying that its army was engaged in "full-scale combat" in Oriente--"only small skirmishes," it said. Other reports indicated that heavy rains and a sea of mud had bogged down the troops and grounded the air force.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the rebels maneuvered their small bands swiftly over the trackless mountain terrain and carried out several surprise assaults on isolated Cuban army patrols, reports said.

Talk of a "big drive" involving 110000 army troops is undoubtedly exaggerated, but there is evidence that Batista is beefing up his operations against the rebels. The army is now establishing fortified posts deep in the Sierra Maestra. Men and arms for these posts are supplied by a new weapon in Batista's arsenal--British-made, armored helicopters, each reportedly carrying 14 men with full equipment.