Revolution

 

THE FIRST ARMED ASSAULT AGAINST THE BATISTA establishment consisted of an attack against Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953 by a group of young men. The revolution­ary chief was a former student leader named Fidel Castro Ruz. When news of Moncada reached La Pedrera, two of the local men an­nounced that they were off to join the rebels. I had no interest in politics at this time, but I did feel that this was quite heroic. Two days later, however, the heroes were located on a sugar‑loading wharf. Their weapons were not rifles but bottles of Bacardi, and they remembered absolutely nothing about any intention of joining the rebellion. Such was revolution in La Pedrera in 1953.

 

By 1956 Fidel Castro had been tried, imprisoned, amnestied, and gone off to Mexico, from whence he returned to Oriente once again at the head of an armed expedition. A major uprising took place in Santiago, and now there were truly revolutionary stirrings in the land. Castro captured the imagination of much of the country's youth, and in La Pedrera clandestine rebel cells were organized. Initially these acted por la libre, but then they tied in with the growing national resistance movement.

 

I was caught up in the revolutionary fervor, and I joined one of the clandestine cells, unknown even to my family. So secret were such matters that only later did I learn that an uncle of mine was also an active rebel‑neither of us was aware of the other's activities.

 

The authorities discovered that one Raimundo Castro ‑ Castro is a common name in Oriente ‑ was a member of the 26 of July rebel movement, and he fled into the hills. His home was burned to the ground by the Army, and a substantial number of troops were seen in the area. I was in bed with the mumps, but I arose and went out in an effort to ascertain what was going on. If the soldiers were hunting Raimundo Castro, perhaps he could be warned. My efforts were to no avail. Rifle fire was heard in the distance, and soon afterwards it was learned that Raimundo Castro had been killed. The official account given later was that he had been caught while at­tempting to set fire to a canefield in an act of sabotage. The local citizenry knew there had been heavy rains that night, however, and it would have been difficult for a person out in the open to light a match, let alone ignite an entire canefield.

 

Acts of sabotage, distribution of propaganda, procurement of weapons to be sent to rebel guerrillas, these were the functions of the clandestine movement in La Pedrera. On one occasion the under­ground learned that a sizable cache of weapons was stored in a private home some distance away. Four other rebels and I "bor­rowed" a Jeep and drove to the house at night. We disarmed a guard and, at pistol‑point, got him to tell where the weapons were kept. We happily made off with the revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and am­munition that we found.

 

My first taste of combat came in an unexpected ‑ and definitely frightening ‑ manner. I had escorted another member of the under­ground, who was sought by the authorities, to a guerrilla encamp­ment in the hills. While sleeping in the camp the night of my arrival, I was rudely awakened by an excited rebel who informed me that Rural Guards were approaching. Hearing the sound of nearby shoot­ing, I jumped out of my hammock and raced from the hut in which I had been sleeping. Soldiers appeared to have the camp virtually sur­rounded, and the rebels, close to panic, were seeking a means to escape. The soldiers fired into the camp; we shot back into the foliage. Bullets whistled through the air, and I could see them perfor­ating the trunks of palm trees.

 

The rebels scattered. Running in a crouch, sheltering myself as best I could, firing my few bullets as I ran, I managed to escape through a ravine. At one point a machine gun volley came so close that I had to fling myself flat on the ground. Examining myself for possible damage, I found that a bullet had pierced a pocket of my shirt, but had not touched me. In that pocket I carried a picture of the Virgin of Charity. I took it out ‑ it had been creased by the bullet ‑ and kissed it with gratitude.

 

I returned home safely. The day came, however, as it did to a good many young Cubans in those days, when I decided it was time to join the guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. The exploits of the guerrillas were being reported by a rebel radio transmitter and recounted person to person throughout the province. Unable to quell the spreading rebellion, the governmental authorities resorted in desperation to increasingly ruthless repressive measures, especially in the cities and towns where the clandestine movement operated. It was highly dangerous for members of the underground to continue their work.

Six other youths from the area and I set out for the Sierra Maes­tra, aided on the way by persons sympathetic to the rebel cause. The main underground route to the guerrillas lay through the town of Bayamo, but we were warned by a clandestine contact that there were large numbers of troops in the area, and the authorities had rounded up the persons who had been helping recruits to reach the guerrillas.

 

We reversed our route and headed toward the north central por­tion of the province, where there were other guerrillas. After a con­siderable amount of walking, the group ‑ now reduced to five members ‑ made contact with and joined a rebel band operating near the Chaparra sugar mill, not far from the city of Puerto Padre. We had just about returned to our starting point.

 

The first days at the guerrilla base were spent in routine guard duty. Then, one rainy afternoon, word was received that an Army detachment was moving toward the camp, and we took up defensive positions. The Army attacked and we were soon forced to pull out, abandoning the camp. One of us was killed: a 14‑year‑old boy who came from a peasant family a few miles away. We recovered the body and returned it to the Borrowing family. No casket was avail­able, so the body was wrapped in palm fronds and buried in the yard of the family's house.

 

After a while, in our freewheeling, characteristic style, our group left the band we had been with and joined another in the Sierra de Gibara. The main rebel units were designated as "columns," and ours was Column 14, commanded by Major Eddy Sunol. My first task was to help guard a number of Army men that had been captured, and in the following weeks we participated in several small ambushes and skirmishes. In the main, however, the government's military forces had withdrawn into their cuarteles and rarely ventured out­side. The Army by now was largely demoralized, and we were be­coming ever bolder, spreading our activities over widening areas.

 

Column 14 set forth to attack the Army post in the town of Velasco, but we found that the troops had hurriedly abandoned it upon learning of our approach. The citizens of the town joyfully greeted us and provided us with shoes, clothes, medicines, ham­mocks, and other supplies. I obtained a nylon sheet, truly a luxury because of its usefulness in covering oneself in a hammock during a rainstorm.

A siege of malaria and grippe struck the guerrillas, and I was among those who fell seriously ill. I was sent to the home of an aunt, and then my own home, where I was reunited with relatives and friends for the first time since I had embarked on my military career.

 

Once recovered, I joined the rebel unit I had been with that night of the ambush and my narrow escape, when I had taken a member of the underground into the hills. This unit was now a part of Column 12, commanded by Major Delio Gomez Ochoa. By this time ‑ December of 1958 ‑ the civil war had reached its climax, the government position was rapidly deteriorating, and we rebels were clearly on the offensive.

 

The commanders of Columns 12 and 14 prepared an attack on the military, naval, and police installations in the city of Puerto Padre. The actual attack would be made by Column 12, while Col­umn 14 would lay in ambush to trap any Army unit that might try to come to Puerto Padre from the cuartel at nearby Delicias. At midnight of December 24 the attack was launched. I participated in the assault against the Navy cuartel, a concrete building by the sea. The rebels held positions atop nearby houses and maintained an almost continuous stream of fire against the sailors. They returned the fire, refusing demands that they surrender. Throughout the night rifle fire and Molotov cocktails lit the night with their fury.

 

The rebel assault took its toll of the defenders, and by morning their gunfire was noticeably reduced. Then, when we thought they were about to make a substantial capture of weapons and prisoners, we saw that the sailors were dumping their guns and ammunition into the sea and jumping in after them, to make their escape by swimming away. The naval commander, meanwhile, maintained his own fire in order to cover the flight of his men, after which he surrendered and the post fell.

 

The Army post and police station also surrendered, and the city was firmly under our control. People flocked into the streets to see the barbudo liberators and invited us into their homes to be feted. The joy turned to fear, however, when it was rumored that the city was about to be bombed by the government's air force, and an exodus began from the city. Two fighter planes appeared overhead, circled and dived, but limited themselves to strafing runs outside the city at points where they believed there were rebel forces. Clearly the pilots did not want to inflict casualties on the civilian population.

 

A few days later the war came to an end. The nation floated on a euphoric cloud. Most of the population had been involved, in vary­ing degrees, in the struggle to unseat the dictator, and now the national aurora had finally arrived. A far worse nightmare was ap­proaching, but few saw it in those days of joy and victory and what was thought to be the restoration of democracy.

 

My military career did not end with the coming of peace. My unit was moved several times to different military posts, and the men were given formal military instruction. I was selected to become a recruit in a new marine corps that was being organized. Creation of the corps was the idea of Raul Castro, who at this time was not yet adverse to following American models. The corps was established at Granma Base in Pinar del Rio, but facilities were so primitive that they were virtually nonexistent and the recruits had to build them, in addition to their training.

 

The marine corps did not last long. Perhaps the Castro brothers feared that an elite military unit was a potential threat to their regime. Perhaps the rebel army resented establishment of a special military unit for which it saw no need. At any rate, one day the base commander summoned the marines and told us that the corps was too costly and that there were other forces, such as the police, that were in need of manpower.

 

The marine corps was dissolved and we were sent to Havana to become part of the Revolutionary National Police. I was assigned to the Sixth Precinct, where I did routine work: walk a beat, handle the front desk, operate the switchboard. I managed to get out of these tasks by joining the police baseball team, on which I was a pitcher.

 

A police combat battalion was organized, and I was picked to be a member. The regime was now confronted with the same problem that had vexed Batista: anti‑Castro guerrillas were operating in the Escambray Mountains in south central Cuba, not far from a place that would come to be known as the Bay of Pigs. The police battal­ion was dispatched to the Escambray, where it spent weeks combing caves and canefields, flat lands and mountainsides looking for guer­rillas. Only a few were captured. The police also spent a month cutting cane: most of the regular cutters had joined the rebels.

 

The police especially sought to capture a rebel leader known as "Captain Campito." Campito had fought against Batista, but later had turned against Castro, also. Campito knew the area in which he was operating so well that his pursuers never seemed able to come close to him. I began to suspect that he was a myth, but then local peasants would talk about him, and it was evident that Campito was very real, indeed. Our police unit never did succeed in capturing him.

 

In Central America, at this time, Cuban exiles were in training for an attack on Cuba, and in Cuba rumors circulated that the attack was imminent. The police battalion was transferred to Matanzas Province, where it was assigned the task of guarding a beach consid­ered to be a possible landing point for invaders. The invasion did not materialize, and so the police made additional moves, finally being sent to a camp at a place called El Esperon in Pinar del Rio Province, where the men were to receive more military training.

My combat days were not yet over.