Diary of a Combatant Read online

We began the trek without hurrying. When we arrived at the ambush site from a few days ago, one of the temporary men reached us, bringing a prisoner who, according to reports, is a policeman in disguise. Nothing conclusive came out of the interrogation; he claims to be a Fidelista and wants to join us. We spent the whole day waiting in ambush and during that time a discussion erupted with Fidel: I said that we couldn’t lose the opportunity to catch 50 or 60 Guards in an ambush, and he said that we should only attack a barracks because of the moral impact that would have.16 At first we had thought to attack El Uvero, which has 60 soldiers.

  In the afternoon an overweight rancher from the area turned up to offer us malanga and cattle. He came with [Hermes] Cardero, the son-in-law of the administrator of the Babún Company in El Uvero. Fidel made an appointment with the man for noon tomorrow. We learned from Enrique that there were three Guards disguised in the hamlet and we sent three men there. We moved to a new place, facing a rest stop on the side road. We were waiting there for food and cigarettes when, instead of these, Enrique came again to warn us that one of the Guards had left and there were suspicious noises heard near the hamlet. Fidel suspected that [Major] Casillas was nearby and ordered 80 men to advance toward the place, while two other men would try to capture the guardsmen. We took our positions when we were told that everything was quiet and that the [Rural Guard] spies had been captured. The prisoners arrived soon, one white and one black; the white one was crying his heart out. They confessed to having orders from Casillas to wander around checking things out. Their cowardice evoked repugnance rather than pity.

  27

  The jeep with the food arrived early and 10 of the officers met to receive instructions. They were only told to have all the men and weapons ready for battle because there would be fighting in the next 48 hours. The order was given to cook from 12:00 to 1:30. During this interval they brought in a guy called Pinto, who was suspected of being a snitch but who wasn’t one, however, and he was set free. A grave was dug for the two Guard snitches and the order to execute them was carried out by the rearguard.

  We walked slowly through the scrublands until nightfall, at which time we started out along the road. Fidel had ordered that the administrator’s wife and children leave, but we found out later she refused to go. We were marching at top speed toward the beach when a jeep came in the opposite direction and we hid. One of the rearguard (Barrera) was spotted by the driver (Cardero), but he was allowed to pass without being asked who he was. When Fidel found out he had a fit and detained the man from the rearguard. However, it was nothing more than a scare, and in a while we saw the jeep returning. That’s when we learned what happened to Cardero, who had the task of moving the wife of Lalo (the administrator), our good friend.

  It was decided to go ahead with the attack despite everything. When we drew near, the men were distributed and given final plans to attack before dawn. The orders included taking the guard posts and advancing on the barracks to shower it with bullets. The plan for the battle area was:

  I Guard Posts

  II Batey [hamlet]

  III Barracks

  IV Babún Company Installations

  1 general staff

  2 Raúl’s platoon

  3 Almeida’s platoon

  4 and 5 Jorge and Guillermo’s platoons

  6 and 7 Vanguard and Rearguard

  8 Crescencio’s platoon

  9 Me with the Madsen machine gun.

  28

  When it became light, we made the unhappy discovery that we couldn’t see the barracks. Some groups, like Camilo’s, took the wrong direction and another, Jorge [Sotús], was given incorrect information and his group didn’t dominate the barracks as planned. My position enabled me to shoot at the barracks from some 500 meters. As soon as Fidel’s shot gave the order to fire, the rapid fire of machine guns was heard. The garrison responded to our fire with great effectiveness as I learned later. Almeida’s men advanced courageously, inspired by his fearless example. I saw Camilo advance with his hat adorned with the July 26 bandana. I advanced from the left with two assistants carrying the munitions and Beatón with the machine gun.

  Shortly we were joined by the disabled man from Pilón17 (from Crescencio’s platoon), Mario Leal (from the rearguard) and old man Acuña (from Raúl’s platoon). We continued to advance and the two who ran toward the hamlet escaped the action of my Madsen. The battle continued but we kept tightening the circle. When there were no more bushes left for us to crawl behind, old man Leal fell near me and I went to give him first aid; he had a flesh wound on his head but the bullet also had entered the brain mass at the level of the left parietal convolution and he couldn’t move his right hand. I helped him breathe, bandaged the wound and turned him over to Joel, while I attended to the machine gun. Almost immediately, however, the garrison and the guard posts surrendered. The soldier who had wounded Leal and old man Acuña surrendered 15 meters in front of me. He led me to the infirmary where the [army] doctor and his assistant were holed up, but they too surrendered as prisoners. I started gathering supplies and collected two prisoners. Immediately the wounded began to arrive and we gave them first aid. Leal was in bad shape; Cilleros [Silleros Marrero] had a wound in his arm, which was fractured, and another bullet had passed through his right lung and was lodged in his spinal column; he was dying.

  The battle had developed this way: When the shot was fired and the machine-gun bursts began, we heard everyone advance except the general staff. Julito [Díaz] took cover behind a tree trunk, but he was hit in the eye and died shortly afterwards. The old man Eligio Mendoza (the guide) rushed to fight with the little gun he had been given and received a shot in the gut, dying after a while. Jorge advanced at the head of his platoon but was pushed back and had to jump into the water to save his life. El Policía [Francisco Soto Hernández, “the Policeman”] came after, and they killed him. As they advanced [Miguel Ángel] Manals was wounded in the lung and Quique in the arm, hand and right buttock. Anselmo Vega, from Guillermo’s platoon, went in too close and was shot down, dead. Luis Crespo came from the general staff to help and succeeded in eliminating the guard post, which was putting up almost no resistance. Three men stayed in place, the fourth fled and was shot dead on the beach. Almeida advanced on the post with his group and killed three; but one remained and caused a lot of damage, provoking alarm because our men believed that they were being attacked by their own compañeros.

  In rapid succession Silleros, [Mario] Maceo and Hermes [Leyva], a kid from Santiago who was Pantoja’s machine-gun assistant, were all wounded, and Almeida himself was hit in the arm and right leg. [Gustavo] Moll was killed in the same place. Raúl divided his platoon, and Nano [Díaz] was sent below with the machine gun. He almost reached the barracks with his tripod and then, abandoning it, he advanced with his pistol.

  At that moment a burst from our machine gun provoked a reply from the soldiers in the barracks, and Nano was killed by a shot to the head. Acuña was with us and, when he went to help Leal, he was wounded in the right hand and arm; he crawled out of the line of fire, and when he found Almeida wounded he carried him to the rearguard. Crescencio’s platoon engaged in almost no action because their machine gun didn’t work; it was situated in the best position to attack the barracks. When they surrendered, [Victor] Mora and Vitalio [Torres] from the vanguard wore down the soldier who was still fighting us. We took him prisoner and went to capture the doctor and his assistant; we then left them in charge of the wounded and I proceeded to check the hamlet and found two more guardsmen. There were 19 wounded and 12 dead, plus 14 prisoners. There were 51 in the barracks, excluding the medical staff, so six Guards must have escaped.

  What was amazing in that long battle that lasted two and three-quarter hours was that not one civilian was wounded. We took our wounded with us, except for Leal and Silleros, who were left in the care of the doctor who took responsibility for their lives. I thought our wounded would be taken to the nearby place where we had left the backpacks; but whe
n I went there to dress their wounds, I found they weren’t there, and there was no vehicle to go in. After a while the trucks that were coming higher up arrived and we spent three long hours near the hamlet without finding anyone. Eventually we had to enter the hamlet so that Enrique [López] could drive us to the place where the commander and the other groups were. At dusk I could finally attend to the wounded and get some sleep, which was my great desire.18

  29

  Planes started flying over us very early, prompting our immediate departure; the wounded remained in my care. Those of us who remained were: Almeida, Peña, Quique, Manals, Acuña, Hermes Leyva and Maceo (all wounded) and Acuña’s nephew, Sinecio Torres (as guide), my two machine-gun aids and me, with the weapons. Enrique had to look for us in a truck, as they had left a good portion of the weapons and items taken from the soldiers. Nevertheless, one of Enrique’s messengers came to say that he couldn’t come because his daughter was sick and he had to take her to Santiago. Because of this, we had to improvise a stretcher out of a hammock and move in the first stage to a ranch, overrun with chickens, where we ate well and spent the night. All the wounded did well, except Quique whose wounds were infected and Manals, whose wound in the lung is more dangerous. We have absolutely no news of the outside world.19

  30

  It had been agreed that six volunteers would come to carry in the hammocks those who couldn’t walk through the scrublands; but we heard a series of Garand rifle shots and nobody came. So we had to proceed with Sinecio and my two assistants, taking everything possible with us. We had to leave behind Crescencio’s machine-gun tripod and other weapons in bad shape, conveniently hidden, the same with helmets and other stuff. The journey wasn’t long but the wounded were quite weak and it took almost the whole afternoon, leaving some things behind hidden. We reached a little ranch house made of guano, inhabited by a former merchant from Palma Soriano and his wife and brother-in-law, where we spent the night, even occupying the couple’s bed.

  31

  Sinecio and Alejandro left early to go on an “errand” and to get everything ready for our departure. Acuña and Joel went to get the things we had left behind, but Joel returned in a little while to warn us that they had seen strange people on the slope. I took the machine gun and we approached cautiously until we cut them off. They turned out to be the prisoners Fidel had freed and they showed us the notes that they had been given in case they bumped into some patrol. The incident had a very good result because they were amazed at our effectiveness in the mountains. There was an old corporal who was almost crying from hunger and fatigue. We left them in the house where we had slept, and we departed, uneasy knowing that they now knew our trail.

  In the afternoon el Chino [the Chinaman] Mora came. He had been one of the occupants of the first ranch house we had come upon in the region; he was shitting bricks after having been detained by the Rural Guards. We decided against the plan to send a guide to Manzanillo because almost everyone was afraid.

  1. José Lupiáñez returned to the guerrilla group after an operation.

  2. See the chapter, “On the March,” in Che’s Reminiscences…

  3. Che recalled that he overheard a little girl, who had been observing these medical consultations, say to her mother, “Mama, this doctor says the same thing to everyone!” See the chapter “On the March,” in Che’s Reminiscences…

  4. Ramón Quintiliano Fiallo Barrero (Fiallito).

  5. Taber’s interview with Fidel Castro for CBS television.

  6. This was the trial of the Granma expeditionaries who had been captured and others charged over the events of November 30, which included Frank País. See the chapter “The Weapons Arrive” in Che’s Reminiscences…

  7. Andrew St. George is described by Che as an FBI agent. See “The Weapons Arrive” in Che’s Reminiscences…

  8. At the end of notebook III of this diary, Che wrote: “Andrew St. George, 104 Pearsdale Drive Apt 1/c Mount Vermont, NY. Tel 11MOmo4-7430.”

  9. Pupo and Manolo Beatón were shot after the revolution for assassinating combatant Cristino Naranjo.

  10. Alejandro Oñate Cañete (Cantinflas).

  11. Joel Iglesias subsequently fought in Columns One and Four and then with Che in Column Eight in the campaign in Las Villas.

  12. Translator’s note: A batey is a very small rural hamlet, usually a cluster of small houses near a sugar mill.

  13. This was Salustiano de la Cruz (Crucito), whom Che considered to be “one of the most loved combatants.”

  14. Translator’s note: Che refers to two kinds of machine guns they had at that time, one mounted on a tripod and another he refers to as the “bipod,” meaning it rested on two rather than three legs.

  15. This was the ill-fated landing of the Corynthia, organized by the Authentic Party, led by ex-president Carlos Prío. Virtually all the expeditionaries were brutally assassinated.

  16. In the chapter “The Weapons Arrive” in his Reminiscences…, Che writes, “Today, several years after that discussion, in which I was not convinced at the time, I must recognize that Fidel’s judgment was correct.”

  17. A man crippled in one leg, known as “Bomba.”

  18. See the chapter, “The Battle of El Uvero” in Che’s Reminiscences…

  19. See the chapter, “Caring for the Wounded” in Che’s Reminiscences...

  June 1957

  1

  We decided to move to the woods, about 200 meters away from the little house, to await the arrival of Sinecio.1 At about 1:00 in the afternoon the owner of the house told us he was going with his wife to look for some chickens at the house where we had left the guardsmen. At 3:00 Sinecio arrived with three new recruits: Feliciano, an old chatterbox; Banderas,2 a moreno,3 who didn’t seem like a bad guy; and Israel,4 who seems the best of all, quiet and energetic. They left with the wounded to spend the night in a little hut near Papo’s house beside the Peladero River, and Sinecio and I waited until 6:10 for the owners of the house to return with the chickens. We had to leave at that time without being able to take our things as night would be upon us on the way, and that was very bad. We arrived after the others had already cooked the first pot of food.

  2

  Today, the sixth month since our landing in Cuba, started out rainy. We began our march very slowly, with me at the rear accompanying Almeida, who was dragging himself along. When we came to a rough patch, Almeida’s pain increased and we had to wait there while Israel cut a swath through the undergrowth so that we could save time going that way. When we began our march again, Israel returned with food, which reanimated Almeida; we carried him for a while in a hammock until we reached a place where that was impossible. He continued dragging himself along until we were hit by another rainstorm that held us up until 5:00, just a few meters from the house. We had taken 12 hours to cover a distance no greater than a league, but that night we were able to sleep peacefully under a roof, although somewhat cramped, in Israel’s house.

  3

  In the morning Israel’s family went down to a house below that belonged to his father. He has been our best collaborator so far. We went with Sinecio to take some corn cobs to a house nearby. It’s completely abandoned. Communication with Santiago is becoming urgent, so Sinecio was sent to get 20 pesos from the other Israel and the backpacks we left. They didn’t return all day. The only supplies that arrived, as an advance, was some cheese—the only event of the day.

  4

  Sinecio and the compañero arrived early; they had brought the backpacks and the pot but they couldn’t get the money because the man hadn’t shown up all day. We immediately prepared everything for Manals’ departure as he was already doing pretty well. Sinecio himself left with the family of Feliciano, for whom the prospect of a trip to Santiago chilled all his revolutionary enthusiasm, and so he went with them. I ordered payment for the pigs and hens that he had bought in Santiago for a good price. Sinecio’s mission is to take Manals to Santiago and come back immediately to take Quique on the m
ost viable route. All the wounded are getting better, even Quique, who is the most delicate of all of them. Israel came to say that there’s a cow for us on the beach, but we have to go and get it.

  5

  Nothing new, waiting for supplies that didn’t arrive. Maceo has now recovered. No news from Fidel.

  6

  We went with Banderas and my two assistants to his farm to look for food, but on the way we ran into Israel, who was bringing supplies, and he advised us that the cow was ready below, and that we had to get it soon. We delayed a long time with the food and Israel went ahead with Acuña and Hermes, who was also judged as “fit” today. Banderas and my two assistants left afterwards, but well behind the others and not at all happy. They didn’t return all night. Israel brought the disturbing news that Celia Sánchez was taken prisoner. If that’s true, my diary is also a prisoner.

  7

  The carriers arrived in the morning; the delay by Banderas and the young guys meant that they missed each other and they had to carry the whole load by themselves. I spoke to Banderas and asked him where he stood; if he was going to continue with the movement he would have to subject himself to the discipline and, if not, that he would be considered just a collaborator and sympathizer. He said that he would continue with us. Nothing important happened during the day.

  8

  They told me to go to a house below that belonged to a brother of Manuel Rodríguez to talk about a few matters. I went with Alejandro and I learned there that all the supplies had been brought up already. I consulted with Israel and figured out what was missing; I brought the man up and they took an inventory, showing that, even at inflated prices the bill scarcely reached 50 pesos and they had been given 70; so at least 20 pesos were missing. He said he’d return to the beach himself. I threatened that no one would be allowed to join the movement until the matter of the missing 20 pesos was cleared up.

  The contact with Manuel served to clarify the situation with Celia; the news was that there’d been a battle in Peladero where she had died. As there had been no battle, there can be no problem. Manuel agreed to be back the day after tomorrow. There’s no news of Fidel and Sinecio hasn’t returned. What’s more, it is said that photos were taken of two corpses in El Uvero: one was Eligio, the other unknown. The question is whether he is the man we’re missing, nicknamed Niquero, because that’s where he’s from.