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Frank Sturgis

Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Sturgis offered to train Castro's troops in guerrilla warfare. Castro accepted the offer, but he also had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Sturgis became a gunrunner.[2] Using money from anti-Batista Cuban exiles in Miami and some suspect the CIA, Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammunition from CIA weapons expert Samuel Cummings' International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia. Sturgis explained later that he chose to throw in with Castro rather than Prio because Fidel was a soldier, a man of action, whereas Prio was a politician, more a man of words.[13]

In March 1958, Sturgis opened a training camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he taught Che Guevara and other 26th of July Movement rebel soldiers guerrilla warfare.[14] When Castro seized power, Sturgis was part of a rebel firing squad on San Juan Hill on January 11, 1959, that executed 71 of their opponents into an awaiting 40-foot ditch that had been opened with a bulldozer. Afterward, Sturgis was photographed holding a rifle on top of the covered mass grave.[15]