At the beginning of the
Spanish
Civil War a battlefront
was established at Aragón. The first major campaign took place
at Aragón in June 1937.
The purpose of the Republican offensive was to draw the Nationalist
Army from
Bilbao. The first battle took place at Huesca where the Republicans
suffered 1,000 casualties. The campaign was a failure and General
Francisco
Franco
was able
to enter Bilbao on 19th June.
In August
1937, the International
Brigades attacked
on the town of Quinto. This involved dangerous street fighting against
snipers that were within the walls of the local church. After two
days the Americans were able to clear the town of Nationalist forces.
This included the capture of nearly a thousand prisoners.
The Lincoln-Washington
Battalion then
headed towards the fortified town of Belchite.
Once again the Americans had to endure sniper fire. Robert
Merriman ordered
the men to take the church. In the first assault involving 22 men,
only two survived. When Merriman ordered a second attack, Hans
Amlie at first refused saying the task of taking the church was
impossible. He help Amlie, Steve
Nelson led
a diversionary attack. This enabled the Lincoln-Washington
Battalion to
enter the town. The Americans suffered heavy casualties, Nelson and
Amlie received head wounds and amongst the dead were Wallace Burton,
Henry Eaton and Samuel Levinger.
(1)
Bill
Bailey, describing fighting in the
town of Belchite
in the book David
Mitchell's book, The Spanish Civil War (1982)
We would knock a hole through a wall with a pickaxe, throw
in a few hand-grenades, make the hole bigger, climb through into the
next house, and clear it from cellar to attic. And by God we did this,
hour after hour. The dead were piled in the street, almost a storey
high, and burnt. The engineers kept pouring on gasoline until the
remains sank down. Then they came with big trucks and swept up the
ashes. The whole town stank of burning flesh.
(2)
Marion
Merriman visited Belchite
at the end of the offensive. She wrote
about it in her book, American
Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
(1986)
As
Bob explained the battle to me, walking through the town's ruins,
the shadows lengthened across the empty fields nearby. Here one of
our best machine-gunners fell, beside that wall Burt was killed, there
was Danny's grave, here Sidney fell, a sniper's bullet between his
eyes, there Steve Nelson was wounded. Our losses were actually very
low, but they included some of the best and most loved of our men.
As we passed a little
factory, huge sewer rats scurried into a drain beside the road. They
were as large as cats. Even though it was two weeks later, the smell
of burned flesh still hung faint and nauseating in the cool dusk.
Their forces far outnumbered ours, but the fascists had not even attempted
to dispose of their dead. They had left hundreds of decaying corpses
stacked in various buildings.
As we passed through the
debris-filled streets, the air of desolation and death deepened. Homeless
cats scuttled about, hungry, and dogs howled and fought bitterly down
the blackness of narrow streets. The full moon was bright by the time
we reached the cathedral in the center. Across its worn stone steps
limply lay a purple and white Falangist banner. Further down was a
priest's cassock, perhaps shed in flight.
Only the square admitted
enough light for Bob and me to read the fascist posters still stuck
to broken walls, posters depicting the horrors of Marxism rather than
the horrors of the war that a small group of fascists had started.
I noticed there were posted rules for the modesty of young women,
rules requiring long skirts and long sleeves, saying sin is woman's
because she tempts man. There were no posters promising a government
for all of the people.
(3)
The Manchester Guardian (12th
March 1938)
Belchite has fallen to the rebels. It was taken from them
in a successful Government offensive in the autumn, but the
rebels claim that in their present offensive nearly all the ground
then lost has been regained.
According to a Salamanca
communiqué the rebel advance, which covers a front some 50
miles long, has been 'carried
to a great depth'. Troops on the left front are reported to have followed
the capture of Belchite with the taking of several villages. Gains
are also claimed for rebel forces in the centre and on the right front.
The communiqué
states that 'terrific' casualties have been inflicted on the Republicans
and that over 3,500 prisoners and 'enormous' quantities of war material
have been taken.
It is reported that Belchite
was defended mainly by soldiers of the International Brigade, the
majority of whom were
Canadians. About 100 foreign prisoners have been taken. The centre
of three columns used for the offensive was at first
delayed through having to encircle a hill held by the Republicans,
but caught up with the other columns on Thursday, partly through a
spectacular cavalry charge which General Franco personally watched.
Extending the front of
their offensive, rebel troops yesterday started a push down from the
Ebro River valley from the village of Fuentes de Ebro.
(4)
Elis Frånberg was born in the
northern part of Sweden in 1904. In Spain Elis Frånberg fought
with the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion at Brunet and Belchite. The
interview originally appeared in Swedes in the Spanish Civil
War, P.A. Nordstedt & Söners Förlag, 1972.
The first aid station was in a small abandoned house behind the groves.
During the day they had raised Red Cross flags. I was told that there
were half a dozen doctors there as well.
When
night fell the battalion's Commander, Colonel Merriman, a professor
at the University of Los Angeles, came. He told me to grab some of
the telephone boys and go fetch a man who had been lying wounded and
screaming all day - some hundred metres in front of us on the plain.
We lay in a little depression by a road. But it was hard getting anybody
to go with me.
They'll
have to shoot us before we go out there, they said. We're exhausted!
Well,
you have to, I told them.
Finally
I got two boys with me. We went out and carried the wounded man back.
They carried the stretcher very unsteadily, as they were utterly worn
out. Then a doctor came up to us. I think the kid had some six or
seven bullet wounds in him. The Moors were situated behind entrenchments
in the city, and would shoot at anything that moved. Maybe the kid
had been waving his arms every now and then.
The
Fascists still had control of the church in Belchite. There were probably
underground passages there, because some of our boys would suddenly
fall over, shot, while they were walking down streets several hundred
metres from the church. It seemed as though the Fascists had crawled
out through the passages. Also, there was a company of Franco's surrounded
on a hill. I don't know if the Fascists had any positions in the mountains
themselves, because I never went to take a closer look. But there
were armoured trenches running all around that they had dug. I was
given orders by Merriman to run a wire, one and a half or maybe two
kilometres long. There was hardly enough cable. We had to run the
wire via some trenches the Fascists had abandoned. There I was supposed
to set up an observation post. We crept into the trench, set up the
phone and spoke with the colonel. He said:- Now the tanks are going
to attack. But first we are going to shoot with our artillery at the
hill.
"All
ready here", I said. The trenches we lay in were no more than
two hundred metres from the earthworks around the hill, or cliff or
whatever you would call it. I had a periscope. When I looked through
it I would sometimes see the heads and arms of the boys on the other
side. The first grenade from our artillery hit the very top of the
hill. They asked me on the phone about the impact.
"You
have to lower your aim," I said. The next grenade exploded ten
metres behind me.
"This
is nuts" I said. You hae to raise it again.
"We'll
be done in a minute", they said.
I
saw tanks advancing from two different directions. The sound of the
firing was deafening. Then I saw a white flag being raised from the
Fascist trenches, and I called immediately.
"Now
they're… they're giving up, I said. So you can stop now. With
the bombing."
But
the hard part was that - my boys had left me. I was alone. There was
no infantry there, or anything else for that matter. The whole Fascist
gang came up out of their trenches. They walked down the hill, coming
straight my way. I was unarmed. I had one revolver, but it was a revolver
I had taken from a dead Italian Officer. There was no ammo in it,
even though it hung there in its holster. I had to leave the pit,
go up and meet the Fascists. They could see that my holster wasn't
empty.
I
pointed at the ground and showed them how to lay their guns in a pile.
There was… There was a young boy. More than half of his hand
had been shot off. There were no fingers left. Some of the things.
Outside
of the trenches lay two tanks of wine. The prisoners threw themselves
over these wooden barrels, broke them and drank it all. Because of
their thirst for water… which had almost killed them then. Three
officers came last. They shouted commands and the troop stood in formation.
I pointed at the church. That's the way they were supposed to go.
But at the same time our patrols came and marched away with them.
It was some fifteen or twenty men I had dealt with. I don't know.
They could have shot me any time.
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