Along with his doctor’s duties, Che proves himself repeatedly on the battlefield. It’s been said in more hands-on fashion than Fidel.

 

Che was a true model in front of us. While Fidel looks for a place of refuge to hide himself, Che was bare-chested. He always rushes to the frontlines during battles.

 

His willingness to confront deaths, to take life, to risk his own life came together to form a charisma that was highly unusual, and which gave him an enormous legendary reputation. And he emerged as a man, which others feared and also respected and admired.

 

Seeing how well Che conducts himself in battle, Fidel promotes him to commandant on July 12, 1957, and gives him his first military command of 75 men known as column number 4.

 

The vanity which we all have in us made me the proudest man in the world that day.

 

There were those who fell under his leadership and charisma. Particularly very young boys, you have to call them 15, 16 year olds. Some of them were runaways who became his disciples, and they became known as xx he, Che’s cubs. He was everything to them, an older brother, a father, a guerrilla leader, and an instructor, a very much the ideal log. He gave them literacy lessons. He wanted them to read and write.

 

Others do their best not to attract his attention.

 

He could punish someone for 3 to 6 days without food for something minor. This character and furious discipline of his makes me believe that it was fear that we had of him. We feared that he would impose upon us a punishment.

 

By October Che has a new base in X. With this freedom Che starts to organize the area, starting an armory, bakery, butcher shop, and even a newspaper called xx. By February 1958 they were broadcasting messages on their own radio station, Radio rebel day. Not all the guerrillas know they are fighting a communist revolution.

 

If Fidel has told us that it was a communist movement all of the recruits would have abandoned him for sure.

 

There were a lot of concerns about Castro’s power, rhetoric, and who he is was a bit of a mystery at that time. The CIA US military continue to give Batista weapons.

 

The Sierra Maestra swarms with Batista’s troops, yet the rebels maintained the upper hand having gained an enormous support from the local population.

 

Batista’s army was on the ropes, and it was to Che that Fidel looked to take the war to the north.

 

After 18 months in the Sierra it’s time to expand the war to the other parts of Cuba. Che Guevara and his column marched 370 miles to X province, strategically position in Santa Clara, Cuba’s fourth largest city just four hours from Havana.

 

In late 1958 that he met A. She was a supporter of the X movement.

 

A had smuggled weapons, and messages from the city to Che’s camp. But on such a mission her cover is blown.

 

She ended up staying in the mountains and joining Che, and in the course of the coming weeks as they left X to do battle against Batista’s army in the towns around Santa Clara they became lovers.

 

Meanwhile the guerrilla war intensifies.