Around
2,000 volunteers fought in the British Battalion during the Spanish
Civil War. The unit was incorporated into the 15th
International Brigades in January 1937.
The first
British volunteer to be killed was Felicia
Browne
who died in Aragón
on 25th August 1936, during an attempt to blow up a
rebel munition train.
Men from
Britain who fought with the Republican
Army included George
Orwell, Christopher
Caudwell, Jack Jones, Len
Crome, Tom
Winteringham, Fred
Copeman, Tom Murray,
Joe
Garber,
Lou
Kenton, Bill Alexander,
David Marshall,
Alfred
Sherman, Ralph
Fox, Sam
Wild and John
Cornford.
After failing
to take Madrid by frontal assault General
Francisco Franco
gave orders for the road that linked the city to the rest of Republican
Spain to be cut. A Nationalist force of 40,000 men, including men
from the Army of Africa, crossed the Jarama
River on 11th February.
General
José Miaja
sent three International Brigades
including the Dimitrov Battalion and
the British Battalion to the Jarama Valley to block the advance. On
12th February, at what became known as Suicide Hill, the Republicans
suffered heavy casualties. Tom
Winteringham, the British commander,
was forced to order a retreat back to the next ridge. The Nationalist
then advanced up Suicide Hill and were then routed by Republican machine-gun
fire.
However,
on the right flank, the Nationalists forced the Dimitrov
Battalion to retreat. This enabled the Nationalists to virtually
surround the British Battalion. Coming under heavy fire the British,
now only 160 out of the original 600, had to establish defensive positions
along a sunken road. Unwilling to attack again, the Nationalist
Army retreated.
On 6th
July 1937, the Popular Front government
launched a major offensive in an attempt to relieve the threat to
Madrid. General Vicente
Rojo sent the International Brigades,
including the British Battalion, to Brunete,
challenging Nationalist control of the western approaches to the capital.
The 80,000 Republican soldiers made good early progress but they were
brought to a halt when General Francisco
Franco brought up his reserves.
On 25th
September 1938, Juan Negrin, head of the
Republican government, announced for diplomatic reasons that the International
Brigades would be unilaterally withdrawn from Spain.
However, General Francisco
Franco failed to reciprocate and German and Italian forces
remained to continue the struggle.
Before
leaving for home Sam
Wild, commander of the British Battalion,
was quoted as saying: "The British Battalion is prepared to carry
on the work begun here to see to it that our 500 comrades who sleep
for ever beneath Spanish soil shall serve as an example to the entire
British people in the struggle against fascism."
Fighting
in hot summer weather, the Internationals suffered heavy losses. Three
hundred were captured and they were later found dead with their legs
cut off. All told, the Republic lost 25,000 men. This included 260
men of the British Battalion.
The British
Battalion were responsible for capturing Purburell Hill at Quinto
(August 1937). They also suffered high casualties defending Teruel
in 1938 and Ebro (July/August 1938). It is
estimated that of the 2,000 soldiers in the British Battalion, 500
were killed and 1,200 were seriously wounded.
Members
of the British Tom Mann unit in Barcelona
in September 1936. Left to right: Sid
Avner, Nat Cohen, Ramona, Tom
Winteringham, George Tioli, Jack Barry
and David Marshall.
(1)
David
Marshall, interviewed by Stephen
Moss in the Guardian
(10th November, 2000)
By chance one day I bought the Times and in it there
was a one-inch paragraph that said there was no doubt that if the
republican government won, there would be some sort of socialist state
set up in Spain. Although I wasn't political, I had enough reading
to realise there was a chance of a different way of life.
At the
end of that month, I got my pay and bought a second pair of specs.
By the end of the next month, I had enough money to get me there.
I discovered that if you were under 21, you needed your parents' permission,
so I forged my father's signature.
(2)
Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt (1948)
The Communist party headquarters at King Street made all
arrangements. This was on 26th November, 1936. A party of us took
the normal boat train to France, arrived in Paris in the evening,
and left later the same night for Perpignan, a town in the south-west
comer of France. It is interesting to note that Shapayev, now known
as Tito, was in charge of this place at that time. The following day
we arrived at this small town, which had become the focal point of
all those wishing to serve the Republican Government. I found myself
one of some three hundred volunteers from Britain.
In the
late evening of the third day we travelled in lorries over the Pyrenees,
and early the next morning reached Figueras, the rallying point for
all volunteers, just inside the Spanish border. When we arrived there
were already
five or six hundred people there - a moving population - people coming
and going every day. We stayed a day
ourselves.
At Figueras
I was elected to take charge of the British contingent, now some four
hundred strong. The plan was to go through Barcelona to Albacete,
General Franco's home town, which had become the headquarters of the
International Brigade. It was a journey of some two hundred and fifty
miles. No sign of fighting was seen on the roads. The Spanish villages,
with their small clusters of single-storey buildings around the church,
looked peaceful in comparison to the news which at that time was going
out to the world from Spain.
(3)
Resolution passed by the British Battalion on 27th March 1937.
We the members of the British working class in the British Battalion
of the International Brigade now fighting in Spain in defence of democracy,
protest against statements appearing in certain British papers to
the effect that there is little or no interference in the civil war
in Spain by foreign Fascist Powers.
We have
seen with our own eyes frightful slaughter of men, women, and children
in Spain. We have witnessed the destruction of many of its towns and
villages. We have seen whole areas which have been devastated. And
we know beyond a shadow of doubt that these frightful deeds have been
done mainly by German and Italian nationals, using German and Italian
aeroplanes, tanks, bombs, shells, and guns.
We ourselves
have been in action repeatedly against thousands of German and Italian
troops, and have lost many splendid and heroic comrades in these battles.
We protest
against this disgraceful and unjustifiable invasion of Spain by Fascist
Germany and Italy; an invasion in
our opinion only made possible by the pro-Franco policy of the Baldwin
Government in Britain. We believe that all
lovers of freedom and democracy in Britain should now unite in a sustained
effort to put an end to this invasion of Spain and to force the Baldwin
Government to give to the people of Spain and their legal Government
the right to buy arms in Britain to defend their freedom and democracy
against Fascist barbarianism. We therefore call upon the General Council
of the T.U.C. and the National Executive Committee of the Labour party
to organise a great united campaign in Britain for the achievement
of the above objects.
We denounce
the attempts being made in Britain by the Fascist elements to make
people believe that we British and
other volunteers fighting on behalf of Spanish democracy are no different
from the scores of thousands of conscript troops sent into Spain by
Hitler and Mussolini. There can be no comparison between free volunteers
and these conscript armies of Germany and Italy in Spain.
Finally,
we desire it to be known in Britain that we came here of our own free
will after full consideration of all that this step involved. We came
to Spain not for money, but solely to assist the heroic Spanish people
to defend their country's freedom and democracy. We were not gulled
into coming to Spain by promises of big money. We never even asked
for money when we volunteered. We are perfectly satisfied with our
treatment by the Spanish Government; and we still are proud to be
fighting for the cause of freedom in Spain. Any statements to the
contrary are foul lies.
(4)
Bill Alexander, Memorials of the
Spanish Civil War (1996)
Around 2,400 volunteered from the British Isles and the then British
Empire. There can be no exact figure because the Conservative Government,
in its support for the Nonintervention Agreement, threatened to use
the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1875 which they declared made volunteering
illegal. Keeping records and lists of names was dangerous and difficult.
However, no-passport weekend trips to Paris provided a way round for
all who left these shores en route for Spain. In France active support
from French people opened the paths over the Pyrenees.
The British
volunteers came from all walks of life, all parts of the British Isles
and the then British Empire. The great majority were from the industrial
areas, especially those of heavy industry They were accustomed to
the discipline associated with working in factories and pits. They
learnt from the organization, democracy and solidarity of trade unionism.
Intellectuals,
academics, writers and poets were an important force in the early
groups of volunteers. They had the means to get to Spain and were
accustomed to travelling, whereas very few workers had left British
shores. They went because of their growing alienation from a society
that had failed miserably to meet the needs of so many people and
because of their deep repugnance at the burning of books in Nazi Germany,
the persecution of individuals, the glorification of war and the whole
philosophy of fascism.
The International
Brigades and the British volunteers were, numerically, only a small
part of the Republican forces, but nearly all had accepted the need
for organization and order in civilian life. Many already knew how
to lead in the trade unions, demonstrations and people's organizations,
the need to set an example and lead from the front if necessary They
were united in their aims and prepared to fight for them. The International
Brigades provided a shock force while the Republic trained and organized
an army from an assemblage of individuals. The Spanish people knew
they were not fighting alone.
(5)
Bob Condon, letter published in the Aberdare Leader (17th April
1937)
We are all fairly happy out here - that is as happy as men who hate
war and who are doing an unpleasant but necessary job can be.
Most of
our fighting has been against German and Italian trained troops with
superior arms to ourselves, but we possessed something they did not,
and with all their bombing of women and children and using of dum-dum
and explosive bullets against us they cannot pass or break our morale.
One day
we were in Madrid, and were a little surprised to see all the people
going about their work quite ordinarily. Some old men were hard at
work building barricades at strategical points. That day British workers
met Spanish workers, and although we did not understand each other's
language, we both sides understood the comradeship and the brotherhood
of man. The city was ours for the asking, but we came to give and
not to take.
(6)
Bill Paynter, letter to Arthur Horner (26th May 1937)
To read the newspapers in England, one gets the mental picture of
uniformed soldiers, the rattle of machine gun fire, the hum of aeroplanes
and the crash of bombs. Such is a very incomplete picture. The real
picture is seen more in the drab scenes, in the less inspiring and
less terrifying aspects. To see twenty or thirty little children in
a small peaceful railway station, fatherless and motherless, awaiting
transportation to a centre where they can be better cared for, is
to get a picture of misery. To see middle aged and old women with
their worldly belongings tied within the four corners of a blanket,
seeking refuge from a town or village that has been bombed, is to
get a picture of the havoc and desolation. To see long queues of women
and children outside the shops patiently waiting to get perhaps a
half a bar of soap or a bit of butter, is to get a picture of the
privation and suffering entailed.
Yet, even
this is not complete, because despite this, and as a result of it,
you see the quiet courage and determination of the people as a whole.
It is a common sight to see the peasant farmer working in the olive
grove, or the plough field within the range of rifle or machine gun
fire; to see gangs of men right behind the lines who are tirelessly
working to build new roads, etc.; to see men and women who remain
in villages under Fascist artillery fire in order to care for the
wounded. Everywhere you see a people who by courage, self sacrifice
and ceaseless labour, are welded together by the common aim of maintaining
their freedom and liberty from Fascist barbarism.
Havoc
and ruin caused by Franco and the combined Fascist powers, but over
and above it, the unconquerable loyalty and devotion of the Spanish
people to the cause of democracy. This is crystallized vividly in
the events in Spain today. There is a section who would promote disloyalty
and disunity, but they are substantially uninfluential and futile.
The vast support for the new Government is proof of this. This section
will be crushed, not merely in the forma] sense by the Government,
but by the invincible loyalty of the whole people.
It is
when you see all this that you realise what the war is, and what it
is all about. It is here that you can feel the terrible menace to
France and the people of Britain if the Fascists are not crushed at
this point. It is here that you really feel that the people of all
countries have an obligation in rendering the maximum of assistance
to the Spanish people. It is here that you really feel that the International
Brigade is a necessary part of that assistance. It is here that you
realise that a battle is in progress not merely to defend a people
from a savage aggressor, but to destroy something that, if allowed
to advance, will eventually crush the people of all democratic countries.
In other
words your own senses compel you to realise that for the anti-Fascist
everywhere this is a fight of self preservation. More so, it is a
fight of self preservation for all those in democratic countries who
would continue the small rights and liberties they are at present
afforded. For those who would have the greater freedom and life under
Socialism it is certainly their battleground and testing place. Because
if defeat is recorded in this partial fight, then the prospects of
victory for the whole is indeed pushed further into the background
of abandoned hopes.
This I
suppose has all been said or written before, but here it is symbolised
in the most commonplace event and in the most ordinary place. It is
for that reason that it becomes outstanding in one's consciousness
and has to be repeated.
From it
all emerges one thing at least, and that is that the International
Brigade, and the British Battalion as part of it, is not some noble
and gallant band of crusaders come to succour an helpless people from
an injustice, it is just the logical expression of the conscious urge
of democratic peoples for self preservation. No one will deny but
that the Brigade has had a tremendous and inspiring effect upon the
morale and fighting capacity of the Spanish people. Yet no one would
claim that it was done out of pity, or as a chivalrous gesture of
an advanced democratic peoples. The Brigades is the historic answer
of the democratic peoples of the world to protect their democracy,
and the urgency of the need for that protection would warrant an even
greater response. The people who have organised and built the Brigade
are those who have clearly seen the need, and who strive to direct
the progress of history to the advantage of the common people.
The people
of Britain should be proud of the British Battalion. It is their weapon
of self preservation. Those who donate their pennies and pounds, those
who give their gifts of food, those who have given their sons, brothers
and husbands, to build and maintain the Battalion, are the real defenders
of democracy and progress. Their sacrifice and devotion is only surpassed
by that of the men who make up the Battalion and by those who have
already spilled their blood.
(7)
Jim Brewer, letter to his parents (29th May 1937)
A comrade from Bedlinog who has just gone home will call on you soon.
He was reported killed on three occasions, so if you get any reports
don't believe them until you hear from one of my pals. If I do get
knocked out don't grieve for me. I shall have been true to my belief.
Than that no man can do more. If I come through life will be a hundred
times more valuable to me than it was before. Also it will be a hundred
times more useful to my fellows. Industrial news from England cheers
us considerably. The Busmen's strike cheered us considerably and news
of the struggle upon which the miners
are about to embark gives rise to feelings I cannot describe. Everything
seems to be in time towards a new phase in the history of the working
class. Yesterday we heard that a few Italian provinces had revolted
against the sending of men to Spain. That is magnificent. In Germany
too, the working class movement is stronger in the sense of determination,
than it has ever been. When the movement comes Herr Hitler and Co
are booked for hell.
I have
met some men who have just come from Germany and they knew. All over
the world the workers are ready, everything depends on the struggle
here. Therefore we have got to and we will win. Even now the situation
is as militant, I imagine, as it was at the end of the war. But now
we have the lessons of the last seventeen years behind us, and the
lessons are many and good. That goes for the world generally. A general
strike of the miners and one or two other key industries and the 'National
government' goes to the wall.
Did I
tell you in my last letter that we go to church twice a day? We eat
there. Last summer the chief priest fired on the people with a machine
gun and killed thirty. That's the sort of atrocity you never hear
of in England. The church was built in 1520 and this is the first
time its been put to decent use.
(8)
Tom Murray,
Voices From the Spanish Civil War (1986)
The role of the commissar of course is an extremely
interesting one and a valuable aspect of a popular army. You see,
in the days of Cromwell and the Roundheads, they had what was similar
to commissars, but they weren't called commissars - they were really
religious to some extent. But it's noteworthy that the commissar in
the Spanish army had a dual role. He had an equal military status
with the commander of the unit to which we was attached as commissar.
But he never interfered with the commander unless he felt that something
required to be corrected. All the time I was a commissar Jack Nalty,
an Irishman, was our company commander, and a very capable man he
was. Unfortunately, he was killed in the last stages of the War. Jack
Nalty and I of course ran this organization of the Company and only
on one occasion did I exercise my authority as a commissar against
him. He was dead beat and we were marching along a road with the machine
guns and I was becoming more and more conscious of the feeling that
we were going in the wrong direction. I said to him, "Well now,
don't you think you should halt the Company and let us think about
it?" Oh, he wasn't in favour. He says, "We're all right."
"Well," I says, "I'm afraid that I've got to exercise
my authority as commissar," and I halted the Company. A runner
from the British Battalion, whose commissar was Bob Cooney, had been
sent down in fact to see where we were. And right enough, if we'd
gone round another corner we'd have been bang into a group of Fascists
with machine guns. That was the only occasion on which I exercised
my authority to supersede the function of the commander of the company.
But it illustrates the high responsibility which rested on the shoulders
of the commissar.
The commissar
was the master of all trades, as it were. Our job was to look after
the welfare of the personnel, their clothing, their recreation, their
food, the distribution of food, and the general military efficiency.
The military efficiency of course was the primary consideration over-shadowing
everything else, and we had the job of dealing with any people who
were browned off or who had been there maybe for a long time and had
come back into the company from the
front, from the earlier actions before the rest of us were there at
all. And some of them of course were exhausted, mentally and physically
exhausted and we had to get them back to a normal state by whatever
form of special treatment that was desirable.
One of
the jobs of the commissar when people were killed was to take their
personal effects off their bodies and send them home to their people.
Also our job was to bury the dead. And as a matter of fact, up on
these sierras or mountains, Sierra Pandols, you could scarcely get
enough earth to cover them. It was a most difficult job finding ways
and means of covering the dead bodies.
Then another
job that the commissar had to do was to create a wall newspaper. And
we had wall newspapers with all kinds of press cuttings and contributions
from various people who were writing up little stories and so on,
and writing up reminiscences and their observations and so on. And
the wall newspaper was always a popular rendezvous for people to meet
and discuss things.
(9)
Bill Alexander, British Volunteers
for Liberty (1992)
Eleven men in all commanded the British Battalion in actual battle:
Wilfred McCartney (writer, who had to return before
any fighting), Tom Wintringham (journalist), Jock Cunningham (labourer),
Fred Copeman (ex-navy), Joe Hinks (army reservist), Peter Daly (labourer),
Paddy O'Daire (labourer), Harold Fry (shoe repairer), Bill Alexander
(industrial chemist), Sam Wild (labourer), and George Fletcher (newspaper
canvasser). All except Wintringham had the opportunity of showing
their abilities in action before being given leadership. All of them
had been involved in working-class, anti-fascist activities at home,
and had been influenced by Communist ideas and activity, although
only Wintringham had held responsible positions in the Communist Party
itself. In Spain their beliefs were reinforced by struggle and experience.
The majority had been manual workers, having left school at fourteen
- the usual lot of most in those days, no matter how intelligent or
able. Only McCartney, Wintringham and Alexander had been to university;
all had experienced the difficulties and frustration of finding work
in a period of heavy unemployment. Their anti-fascism was anchored
in hatred of the class and social system in Britain.
(10)
Jack Jones went to
fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
He wrote about his experiences in the International
Brigade in his autobiography, Union Man (1986)
The focal point for the mobilization of the International Brigades
was in Paris; understandably so, because underground activities against
Fascism had been concentrated there for some years. I led a group
of volunteers to the headquarters there, proceeding with the greatest
caution because of the laws against recruitment in foreign armies
and the non-intervention policies of both Britain and France. From
London onwards it was a clandestine operation until we arrived on
Spanish soil.
While
in Paris we were housed in workers' homes in one of the poorest quarters
of the city. But it wasn't long before we were on our way, by train,
to a town near the Pyrenees. From there we travelled by coach to a
rambling old farmhouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees. After a rough
country meal in a barn we met our guide who led us through the mountain
passes into Spain.
In the
light of the morning we could see Spanish territory. After five hours
or so, stumbling down the mountainside (I found it almost as hard
going down as climbing up), we came to an outpost and from there were
taken by truck to a fortress at Figueras. This was a reception centre
for the volunteers. The atmosphere of old Spain was very apparent
in the ancient castle. For the first day or so we felt exhausted after
the long climb. The food was pretty awful. We ate it because we were
hungry but without relish.
For some
the first lessons about the use of a rifle were given before we moved
off to the base. I at least could dismantle and assemble a rifle bolt
and knew something about firing and the care of a weapon. But my first
shock came when I was told of the shortage of weapons and the fact
that the rifles (let alone other weapons) were in many cases antiquated
and inaccurate.
Training
at the base was quick, elementary but effective. For me life was hectic,
meeting good companions and experiencing a genuine international atmosphere.
There were no conscripts or paid mercenaries. I got to know a German
Jew who had escaped the clutches of Hitler's hordes and was then a
captain in the XII Brigade. He had
hopes of going on ultimately to Palestine and striving for a free
state of Israel. He was not only a good soldier but a brave one too.
That was also true of a smart young Mexican whom I met. He had been
an officer in the Mexican Army and was a member of the National Revolutionary
Party of his country.
(11)
William
Gallacher,
The Chosen Few (1940).
Around Easter, 1937, I paid a visit to Spain to see the lads
of the British Battalion of the International Brigade. Going up the
hillside towards the trenches with Fred Copeman, we could occasionally
hear the dull boom of a trench mortar, but more often the eerie whistle
of a rifle bullet overhead. Always I felt inclined to get my head
down in my shoulders. "I don't like that sound," I said
by way of an apology.
"It's
all right, Willie, as long as you can hear them,"
I was
told. "It's the ones you can't hear that do the damage."
We got
into the trenches and I passed along chatting to the boys in the line.
From the British we passed into the Spanish trenches and gave the
lads there the peoples' front salute. Then, after visiting the American
section, we came back to our own lads. All of them came outside and
formed a semicircle, and there, with as my background the graves of
the boys who had fallen, I made a short speech. It was good to speak
under such circumstances, but it was the hardest task
I have ever undertaken. When I finished we sang the Internationale
with a spirit that all the murderous savagery of fascism can never
kill.
The following
morning I went into the breakfast room of the Hotel in Madrid to see
Herbert Gline, an American working in the Madrid radio station, about
a broadcast to America from the Lincoln Battalion. When I got in who
should be sitting there but Ellen Wilkinson, Eleanor Rathbone and
the Duchess of Atholl. We had a very friendly chat, and I was fortunate
in getting their company part of the way home. But whether in Madrid
while the shells were falling or in face of the many difficulties
that were inseparable from travelling in a country racked with invasion
and war, those three women gave an example of courage and endurance
that was beyond all praise.
(12)
Thora Silverthorne,
was a member of Britain's first medical unit to serve in Spain,
letter to her family (9th March 1936)
Did you know that Comrade Ball of Reading (son of the chemist
Dad was friendly with) was killed on this front.! He'd behaved very
well: the commandant praised him highly. Said he was due for promotion
for his splendid behaviour. Please give my very sincere sympathy to
Comrade Ball's father; tell him his son died with many other fine
fellows but not in vain. The English comrades did much towards keeping
our front: they set a splendid example and greatly raised the
morale of the other battalions.
We have
become accustomed to air raids although they still worry me a great
deal: I dread them. The planes were over last night, dropped bombs
but did no damage. Considering the number of raids surprisingly little
damage is done. The swine deliberately attempt to bomb hospitals -
it's inhuman. The other day, an English nurse who works in a village
some distance from here came along to stay the night with us for a
change. She was very shocked. She'd had a nasty experience the day
before. She was sitting talking to a comrade when a bomb was dropped
quite near them. She was thrown off her chair and her companion was
killed. Then she saw a bunch of kiddies killed by another bomb. Its
really awful but I can assure you its absolutely true - the nurse
told me all about it. Poor dear, she was badly shaken up.
This war
is just bloody but if possible has made me even more violently anti-fascist.
Their methods, even for war, are horrible. I can imagine by this time
Shon is almost on the point of coming out. Please don't let him: I
just couldn't stand the strain of knowing he was in danger too. God,
I'd love to see you and talk to you. I miss you more and more. Do
try to write more frequently. I don't know when I'll get home.
(13)
Edwin Greening, letter to Dai Mark Jones about the death of his brother
Tom Howell Jones (August 1938)
I regret having to write this, but Tom Howell was killed a few days
ago (at 2.30 p.m., August 25 to be exact). We were together in an
advanced position with the boys on some mountains called Sierra de
Pandols, which overlook the town of Gandesa. I was in our company
observation post, which was situated only 5 yards from where Tom was
posted.
Every
night Tom and I would have a little chat about home and other things,
and that morning I had given him an Aberdare Leader the one
in which Pen Davies' pilgrimage to the Aberdare Cemetery was reported,
and he was very happy to receive it.
From early
morning things had been very quiet on our sector. Then suddenly the
enemy sent over some trench mortars; one of the shells made a direct
hit on a machine gun post, nearly killing three men, a Spaniard and
two Englishmen. I shouted to Tommy "All right there Tom?"
and he shouted back, "O.K. Edwin."
Then this
trench mortar landed near us. I called out again and receiving no
answer, crawled to Tom's post, where I found him very badly wounded
about the neck, chest and head. He was already unconscious and was
passing away. I ran for the first aid man and we were there in two
minutes, but Tom was, from the moment he was hit, beyond human aid
and all we could do was raise him up a little and in two or three
minutes, with his head resting on my knee, Tom passed away without
regaining consciousness.
You can
imagine how I felt because Tom and I had been very close to one another
here. But I could do nothing.
That night
Alun Williams of Rhondda, son of Huw Menai, and Lance Rogers of Merthyr,
one of Tom's pals, carried his corpse to the little valley below,
where he was to rest forever.
And there
on that great mountain range, in a little grove of almond trees, we
laid Tom Howell to rest. I said a few words of farewell but Tom is
not alone there, all around him lie the graves of many Spanish and
English boys.
Tom always
made me promise to write you if anything like this happened. You will
have already heard about Tom a week or two before you receive this
letter.
His thoughts
were to the last and always of his mother and the people at home.
He lived and died a good fellow. If fifty years pass I shall not forget.
(14)
Tom Wintringham,
The Manchester Guardian (13th
October 1938)
The international brigades are leaving Spain and the men of the
British Battalion are expected to reach London this month. They will
be welcomed home by many; many others who have regretted their 'interference'
in a foreign war, or distrust the politics for which they fought,
may feel a reluctant pride that English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish have
left behind them so great a name in Spain. Their reputation is that
of a battalion impossible to shift until in danger of encirclement.
Against frontal or flank attack, tanks or planes, it seemed able to
hold its ground until the Spanish summer freezes. This reputation
was won in spite of many difficulties.
In briefest
outline these difficulties included recruitment in secret, lack of
trained officers, the wide gap between British
military practice and that of most Continental countries, and the
even wider gap between British standards and habits and those of the
Continent in matters of food and cooking.
The men
in the line got better food than was elsewhere available in Government
Spain. Even so, they had usually to
fight on bread, beans, olive oil, and goat or mule. Mild forms of
dysentery were endemic; recovery of the wounded, often
surprisingly rapid, was sometimes hampered by a lack of suitable food
and an English aversion to olive oil. It was not good to see a lad
from Yorkshire, with five bullets through him, trying to tackle Spanish
sausages. These, as we met them, were either romantic and dangerous
with bitter red herbs or classically enduring, able to resist, unchanged
knives, teeth, and the ferments of digestion.
I doubt
if even the lack of trained officers was a more serious handicap than
that connected with food and cigarettes, but it was serious enough.
Not one of those who commanded the battalion in action had been an
officer 'in a real army'. Wilfred Macartney, author and critic and
our first commandant, who was accidentally wounded before we went
into the line, had been an officer in the war and was therefore able
to give much to our training. He was followed by myself, journalist,
Jock Cunningham, coalminer, and Fred Copeman, steelworker. I do not
know what had been the employment of Peter Daly, the battalion's next
commander, in peaceful Ireland. Nothing neat and tidy, I am certain,
remembering a tear in his breeches wider even than his smile. Harry
Fry had recently left the Scots Guards, his term of service ended.
Sam Wilde has been a sailor.
There
were one or two other commanders of the battalion for short periods;
casualties were particularly heavy among officers. Of those named
above, Daly and Fry are dead, and the other five share over a dozen
wounds.
We had
to make do without the military experience at the disposal of most
other nationalities in the brigade. Cunningham and Fry had been infantry
corporals. I had endured plenty of O.T.C. as well as two years in
the ranks in France. Daly was trained by the Irish Republican Army,
as was Kit Conway, who led our Irish contingent with the first company.
Copeman and Wilde had the Navy's training behind them.
"Thank
God we've got a Navy," used to be our wry comment in France twenty
years ago on our efforts to make an amateur army work. Under Copeman
and Wilde the British Battalion did not necessarily use the same phrase
(discipline is discipline) but may well have felt the same emotion.
The fleet, it seems, lives up to its tradition. It turns out men who
can make "a Navy-shape job" of any job, anywhere in the
world. These two sailors commanded the battalion for half of its twenty-one
months in Spain. Their theoretical knowledge of war may have had some
gaps, but their practical 'savvy' made them dangerous opponents even
for the 'volunteer' regular officers from Italy opposed to them.
The battalion's
first company was in action by the end of 1936. Ralph Fox, novelist
and historian, and John Comford, the
young Cambridge poet, were among those killed while the other three
companies were getting their one to six weeks'
training, in mid-February, 1937, the full battalion, exactly 500 strong,
butted into a Fascist offensive.
This was
a full-scale drive to cut the last road into Madrid. At 'Suicide Hill',
within distant rifle range of the Jarama River,
the battalion found itself facing three times its numbers, with a
gap of three miles in our line to the left of it, and a gap
of 1,000 yards on its right. None of our machine-guns was less than
twenty years old, and two of the three types jammed continually. The
hill was held until near nightfall with rifles only; then we retreated
- six hundred yards. This effort cost the
battalion nearly half of its strength in casualties. But it was a
necessary effort; for the timidly orthodox, clockwork strategist from
the Reichswehr opposed to us did not think it right to move forces
between our hill and the river until we were driven back, and therefore
did not find the three-mile gap on our left until it was no longer
a gap - Lister's division had filled it.
In subsequent
days of bitter fighting the battalion gave ground only to regain all
but 200 yards of it. Franco's offensive
was stopped, and the Madrid-Valencia road remained open.
Followed
ninety days in trenches without relief, and then the Brunete fighting,
when the village of Villanueva de la Canada was carried. Copeman leading,
by a night attack made in close formation as if an enemy ship was
being boarded. Next month's attacks in Aragon cost the battalion two
of its commanders.
The capture
of Teruel by the Government forces in December, 1937, was almost the
only great action in which the 'English' could have taken part but
were not called upon to do so. At the beginning of this year they
were fighting in
deep snow in the vain effort to hold Teruel. In the retreat of seventy
miles that followed, from Alto Aragon to the coast,
they were twice almost surrounded and got away by legs and luck. Twice
they stood, at Caspe and Gandesa, to hold up for some days the drive
to the sea; and near Gandesa they were ambushed by Italian tanks and
Moorish cavalry. They lost a hundred captured, but fought so stiffly
that the raiders withdrew.
In the
recent Ebro battle they were among the first to cross the river and
for sixty days resisted Franco's counter-attacks
so successfully that he could not retake a sixth of the ground they
had won.
Rather
more than 2,000 men went out. The known dead are 432: with the missing
the figure must be nearly a quarter of those who fought. Four-fifths
of the remainder - over 1,200 - have been wounded, and of these nearly
500 have been
invalided home. Care for the wounded and maintenance for the men now
returning, until they can fit in to civilian life again, will need
some thousands of pounds. But it will surely be difficult even for
those taught to think of the brigades as 'international gunmen' to
resist the impulse to pay tribute to the courage and endurance of
these men of our speech and our blood.
(15)
Fred Copeman, letter in the
The Manchester Guardian (26th October 1938)
Nearly a thousand survivors of the British battalion of the International
Brigade will shortly be returning to this country in accordance with
the decision of the Spanish Government to evacuate all foreign volunteers
of whatever category serving in the Republican Army. The story of
the International Column, as it was then called, dates back to November,
1936, when the arrival of the first contingent of volunteers from
all parts of the globe coincided with a stiffening of the defence
of Madrid and the halt of Fascism at the very gates of the city. The
British battalion was founded as a separate unit in the following
February and underwent its baptism of fire in the valley of Jarama,
when it took a prominent part in repelling the Fascist onslaught on
the Madrid-Valencia road, thus preserving essential communications
between Madrid and the rest of Republican Spain. From that day, February
12, 1937, until the latest Ebro offensive the British battalion has
blazed a path of glory. Many of this band of heroic Britons have fallen
in the struggle for the freedom of Spain and for democracy the world
over. They will never rise again, but the cause of liberty and justice
which moved them to offer their services to the Spanish people will
live for ever.
Those
who have survived and who will be returning home shortly will come
back with their heads held high. They have
done something to redeem the honour of the British people, as a people
that loves freedom and fair play. Many will be
disabled, others wounded, and all will have a tale to tell of dangers
braved and hardships undergone. Shell-fire and aerial bombardment
were only a part of the tests which these men have faced. Beneath
the burning Spanish sun, in the snow of Teruel, without food for days
at a time in periods of heavy action, undergoing operations for the
extraction of shrapnel often without anaesthetic, spending sleepless
nights in digging trenches, dirty, lousy, weary, and hungry, these
men have kept alive that fierce spirit of determination that democracy
shall triumph over Fascism. They have known all the exigencies and
perils of war plus extremes of privation and want, some of them due
the policy of non-intervention which prevents the Spanish people from
obtaining adequate food and medical supplies.
It is our
duty to see that when they come home they shall have clothes, food,
and other necessities to tide them over
the period until they are able to obtain work. It is doubly our duty
because these men, who have been steeled in the heat
and fires of battle, have a leading role to play in the struggles
that lie ahead of democracy in this country. We appeal, therefore,
to your readers to help us immediately in collecting 3000 pairs of
boots, overcoats, and suits. They can be sent direct to me, or if
money is sent we can buy them at wholesale prices.
(16)
Tom Wintringham,
The Manchester Guardian (9th
December 1938)
I have read with some surprise in a London paper that the International
Brigades consisted of 'the lowest dregs of the
unemployed' and of 'Marxist hordes that desecrated churches'. Desecrating
churches has not been an English habit for 300 years. We had unemployed
in our ranks whose courage and endurance proved what a waste it is
to keep men of such quality eating their hearts out in idleness. But
most of our volunteers gave up jobs to come to Spain.
Some of
those who are buried in Spain would have enriched English literature
if they had lived: Ralph Fox, as novelist: and four poets, John Comford,
Julian Bell, Christopher St. John Sprigg, and Charles Donnelly from
Ireland.
Our brigades
have been called 'international gunmen'. Let me run through names
that seem strangely at variance with
this and other labels stuck on us by those who choose to write without
knowing the men they are writing about.
Traill,
a journalist from Bloomsbury, Chief of Staff of the 86th Brigade;
Bee, our map-maker, an architect; David McKenzie, son of an admiral;
Giles and Esmond Romilly, relatives of Winston Churchill; Malcolm
Dunbar, son of Lady
Dunbar, our last Chief of Staff of the Brigade; Hugh Slater, journalist,
and very neat with his anti-tank guns; Clive Branson; Peter Whittaker;
Ralph Bates, the novelist.
Clem Beckett
gave up the princely salary of a star dirt-track rider for a few pesetas
and a grave on the Jarama; Noel Carritt and his brother came from
the quiet of Boar's Hill, Oxford; Miles Tomalin became less interested
in psycho-analysis than in the fireside sing-songs that he accompanied
on a recorder; 'Maro', the cartoonist, drew his last sketch for us
the night before he was killed.
Lorimer
Birch was a scientist from Cambridge; R. M. Hilliard was known as
the 'Boxing Parson of Killamey'. Lewis Clive, a descendant of Clive
of India, was a Labour borough councillor and an active worker in
the Fabian Research Bureau. Bill Alexander, who commanded the battalion
at Teruel, was from the 'Fabian Nursery'. Chris Thomycroft, Richard
Kisch, who fought in Majorca when the war was a month old, and all
those others whom I have mentioned were neither 'gunmen' nor 'dregs
of the unemployed'.
One boy
brought me a letter of introduction from a Liberal M.P. - which might
be thought a queer thing to bring to the
adjutant if you are joining a 'Red' battalion. Another, from County
Cork, wore a crucifix. Frank Ryan, who was in Franco's
prisons for some months and is now 'missing', is a Catholic Irish
Republican.
Last in
the roll-call and, I think, representative of all those who fought
in Spain, I remember Will Paynter, of the South
Wales Miners' Executive, and three men whose graves are in Spain who
were my company commanders in the Battle of
the Jarama in that battle our battalion helped to hold the last road
into Madrid, a road open today. These three are William Briskey, a
London busman, member of the Transport and General Workers' Union,
a sergeant in the Great War; Harold Fry, from Edinburgh, at one time
corporal in his Majesty's Brigade of Guards; and Kit Conway at one
time of the Irish Republican Army.
They were
known, by the man who commanded them and the men they commanded, to
be the equals in courage and
comradeship of those fighting men of the past whose names wake pride
in the English, Scottish, and Irish peoples.
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