But he was betrayed by one of his men and executed by firing squad at the notorious La Cabana prison in March 1961. In the words of one observer, Morgan was “like Holden Caulfield with a machine gun.” He was the only American in the rebel army and the sole foreigner, other than Guevara, an Argentine, to rise to the army’s highest rank, comandante. “ 
 
 It is easy to see why Morgan’s life has attracted so much attention. She suffers migraines after being struck with a rubber club in the head. Menoyo had identified the body at a Havana morgue before heading into the mountains. He was so fair-skinned and had turned such an angry red.” Morgan’s body also offered clues to a violent past. For years, Morgan was just a historical footnote. It simply made things more difficult.” Batista’s soldiers approached the ridge. “This was a guy who was a pivotal player in the Cold War between Cuba, the United States and the Soviet Union,” said Sallah. He attended Catholic school and initially earned high marks. His mother wondered whether something had happened to him during her pregnancy, lamenting, “That boy hasn’t given me a moment’s peace. She was only 79 pounds when she was released from prison in 1972, according to the Blade. In the Sierra Maestra, Castro told a reporter, “I have never been, nor am I now, a Communist. When Castro canceled elections, seized properties, and imprisoned Morgan’s fellow freedom fighters, Morgan decided to take action. Why did I come here far from my home and family? Only up close was it evident that the rebel was a woman. She would sometimes prepare him rice and beans (“I’m a guerrilla, not a cook”), and he would complain, “Too fast!” as she spoke, in gunfire-patter Spanish, about the need to hold elections and build hospitals and schools. Goodwin escaped Cuba during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. In the image, both are wearing fatigues; a rifle is slung over his right shoulder, and she leans on one, as if it were a cane. While fighting in Cuba, Morgan met then Olga Rodriguez and married her. He becomes a hero in Cuba.” 
 
 In 2012, David Grann published a story about Morgan in the New Yorker magazine. to find how much faith the Cuban people had in this revolution. Morgan confided that Guevara and Raúl Castro were Marxist-Leninists who threatened the revolution. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason 
 
 Under Morgan’s leadership, his band of guerrillas—known as the Second National Front of the Escambry—worked in concert with Castro’s group eventually toppling Batista’s government. Even greater complications ensued as Morgan was recruited for a plot to assassinate Castro, turned double agent by revealing the plot to the targeted dictator while continuing to play along, and ultimately found himself stripped of his American citizenship and imprisoned by the Cuban government. Yet there was tension in the revolutionary forces between Morgan's Second Front and Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, as the former remained committed to liberating the country and holding elections while the latter was consolidating power and turning the new government into a communist dictatorship. Olga becomes his driving force through the rest of his life.” 
 
 His devotion is evident in a farewell letter Morgan wrote just before he died. He hailed Morgan as a “Cuban,” and Morgan referred to Castro as his “faithful friend.” Menoyo recalls, “They had complete trust in one another.” The Yankee comandante revealed to the public that, after being approached to lead the counter-revolution, he and Menoyo had alerted Castro, who directed them to draw out their enemies. I promised I would do this.” 
 
 The Cuban government erased him from its history after a brief service was held for Morgan in Havana’s Colon Cemetery in 1961. In August, Rodríguez gave birth to a daughter, who was named for Morgan’s mother, Loretta. “For too long, the Cuban government has stood between an Ohio woman and her husband’s remains,” said Meghan Dubyak, Brown’s spokeswoman. Goodwin promised Morgan’s mother that she’d get his remains back to the town he loved. “It always seemed that we could never be alone,” he once said to Rodríguez. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). “His mother and wife wanted him buried next to his family in Toledo, Ohio and we’re trying to honor that wish,” said Rollison, who successfully got Morgan’s citizenship restored in April 2007. Much of her sentence was spent in solitary confinement with a hole in the floor for a latrine, according to Sallah. Food was scarce in prison and she received one small cup of water to wash. 
 
 “We prayed a lot,” Goodwin said told the Toledo Blade when asked how she survived. “In the end, he was a ne’er-do-well who found his cause, his love and his redemption in Cuba. If now is my time I will be ready and am looking at death not with fear but with expectation. Since the first time I saw you in the mountains until the last time I saw you in prison, you have been my love, my happiness, my companion in life and in my thoughts during my moment of death.” He regretted how little time they had spent together, and he recalled the “beautiful plans” that they had made to settle in the “mountains with the girls, living in peace and tranquility.” He tried to console her, assuring her that he was not afraid, and did not consider death “an enemy.” Though some members of the Second Front had vowed to retaliate if he was killed, Morgan told Rodríguez that he did not want anyone to seek revenge on his behalf, not even against the bodyguards who had betrayed him. The return of Morgan’s remains will fulfill a widow’s promise and also close the book on the life of an American patriot, Sallah said. Morgan prayed the whole way, then removed the rosary around his neck and gave it to a priest, asking that his mother receive it. When his executioners told him to kneel, Morgan reportedly said: “I kneel for no man.” 
 
 The firing squad shot out his knees before killing him as he lay on the ground. The Yankee comandante tried to stay on his feet, blood spilling around him. “The rumbling, that almost rose to the pitch of a riot, was a tribute to William Morgan’s popularity.” Rodríguez, sequestered in the safe house, did not yet know of her husband’s death, but she felt a presence in her room. Late that evening, the commander said, “I have nothing left to fight with. In one famous picture, Morgan and Goodwin are captured in a bit of bliss as they stand together in the mountains. Now, his widow fights to bring his body home.
– In America, he was William Morgan, a high school dropout from Ohio who worked for the mob. But in Cuba, he was the Yankee Comandante who fought the revolution alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; as a biographer puts it, the "ne’er-do-well who found his cause, his love, and his redemption in Cuba. He became something he never was in America. He becomes a hero in Cuba." The Daily Beast takes a look at the curious and fascinating case of Morgan, whom a New Yorker profile once celebrated as "Holden Caulfield with a machine gun;" executed in 1961 after a failed counterrevolution against Castro's turn toward Communism, Morgan is buried in an unmarked grave in Havana. Now, with US-Cuba relations warming, his widow hopes that Cuba will at last return his remains to American soil. "For me, he is a hero," she says. "For the Cuban people, he is a hero. He gave his life for my country. I promised I would do this." Morgan's story is the stuff of movies (and has in fact been optioned by George Clooney): He became the only foreigner other than Che to reach the Cuban army's highest rank, comandante; fell in love with and married Olga Rodriguez; and reportedly told the firing squad that executed him, "I kneel for no man." But "once he died, much larger events eclipsed his story," says Michael Sallah, the author of The Yankee Comandante. "He kind of got lost in history." Havana scrubbed mention of him, and his American citizenship was only restored in 2007, notes the Beast. But now, says a lawyer in Ohio, where his widow wants to bury him, "we're more optimistic because of recent developments." Says Sallah: "No one should ever doubt his love of America. This is where Morgan was from. This is where he learned freedom and democracy." Click for the Beast's full piece.