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, 1937.
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.
Led by Robert
Merriman, the 373 members of the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion moved into the trenches on 23rd February. When
the were ordered over the top they were backed by a pair of tanks
from the Soviet Union. On the first day
20 men were killed and nearly 60 were wounded.
On 27th February 1937,
Colonel Vladimir Copic, the Yugoslav commander
of the Fifteenth Brigade, ordered Merriman and his men to attack the
Nationalist forces at Jarama. As soon as he left the trenches Merrimen
was shot in the shoulder, cracking the bone in five places. Of the
263 men who went into action that day, only 150 survived. One soldier
remarked afterwards: "The battalion was named after Abraham Lincoln
because he, too, was assassinated."
Edwin
Rolfe
survived but wrote: "When
we were pulled out of the lines I felt very tired and lonely and guilty.
Lonely because half of the battalion had been badly shot up. And guilty
because I felt I didn't deserve to be alive now, with Arnold and Nick
and Paul dead."
Fred
Copeman was wounded but survived. He later wrote
about meeting Kit Conway at the hospital at Jarma: "Kit was obviously
dying. The simple sincerity of people like Kit makes the struggle
for social justice the inspiring thing it is. Kit was in terrible
agony, and yet his one concern was that he may have been responsible
for the slaughter that had taken place. Six hundred and thirty men
had entered the line and there were not more than eighty left unwounded,
and the percentage of killed was very high. It was hard to convince
him that our fighting had taken place in the toughest, bloodiest battle
of the whole Spanish campaign, and that it had been decisive in the
defence of the Madrid-Valencia road."
(1)
Bill
Alexander, British Volunteers
for Liberty (1992)
By 11 February the fascists had crossed the Jarama river, using the
bridge on the small dirt road that ran from San Martin de la Vega
to Morata de Tajuna. They had taken some of the commanding heights
on the last ridge before the
Tajuna Valley, and their way was open to the Valencia road. In the
early morning of 12 February the British moved forward by truck from
Chinchon to an area by a large farmhouse where the Madrid-Chinchon
road crossed the smaller San Martin-Morata road. The San Martin road
climbed for about a mile to a plateau, covered with olive trees, and
then descended through broken hills and ridges to the Jarama river.
The farmhouse and buildings around it became and remained cookhouse
and rear headquarters throughout the long stay on the Jarama front.
(2)
Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt (1948)
Stretcher bearers were going back now in long
lines. Kit Conway had got one in the stomach and was obviously not
going to live long. Ken Stalker, the Commander of No. 2 Section had
been wounded. In fact, most of the leadership had gone. I decided
to find out where this machine-gun that was making it hot for us was
stationed. Turning round to look for its exact location, I felt a
burning in my hand, and looking down saw that the inside of my watch
had gone. There were two holes in my sleeve, and a piece of bullet
protruded from my hand. Within seconds the burning became almost intolerable.
I grasped hold of the bullet
and pulled. It must have been well embedded, it wouldn't move. I cursed
everybody and everything I could think of, but the wound was not bleeding
so I decided to wrap it up in the field dressing and go back later.
I turned to the hill,
and almost immediately received one in the head. It was a curious
feeling, rather like receiving
morphia. Everything went warm and I felt sleepy. All that I looked
at had a red tinge about it, and yet I could still see to move around.
By this tune the pain in the hand had gone, and I almost forgot that
the bullet was there.
The casualties were continuing
to come back now very thick. Only a couple of dozen men with Sam Wilde
were left on the white house hill. I suddenly realised that the pinkness
was from blood running from my eye. I started back with Danny Gibson
towards the dressing station. I was convinced that half my head had
disappeared, when in actual fact the wound was not too bad. Danny's
was pretty awful. Blood was pouring out of him. By now we were on
all fours crawling. Somebody passed on a stretcher and was immediately
killed from a hail of bullets that spattered around us. I woke up
in a front-line dressing station somewhere near Marata.
It was here I met Kit Conway,
who was obviously dying. The simple sincerity of people like Kit makes
the struggle for social justice the inspiring thing it is. Kit was
in terrible agony, and yet his one concern was that he may have been
responsible for the slaughter that had taken place. Six hundred and
thirty men had entered the line and there were
not more than eighty left unwounded, and the percentage of killed
was very high. It was hard to convince him that
our fighting had taken place in the toughest, bloodiest battle of
the whole Spanish campaign, and that it had been decisive in the defence
of the Madrid-Valencia road.
(3)
Joe
Garber
was interviewed by Peter Lennon in the Guardian (10th November,
2000)
We
were issued with uniforms and rifles of all descriptions. Most of
the Spanish had Mausers from 1896. First I was given a Canadian Ross,
a kind of elephant gun. But then the Russians sent us a whole load
of bayoneted rifles.
My first battle was the
bloodiest of the whole war, at Jarama, near Madrid. Oh, it was horrible.
It was like a Hollywood film. We were issued with machine guns, German
Maxims, water-cooled things. We had dug ourselves into this escarpment
and the bastards, loads of them, came up howling. They had these Mauser
grenade rifles. I had a lump in my throat but I let fly at the bastards
with my machine gun and they all dropped down. I was really enthusiastic.
We had come to our enemies now, not just the Spanish - they were bloody
Germans. And there were a bunch of Italian Black Arrows too. I let
fly and got a couple of them as well.
The battle lasted a fortnight.
On the third day, over 200 of our boys lay dead out of 600. That's
where I copped it. I was shot in the groin.
(4)
Claude
Cockburn, The
Daily Worker (18th February, 1937)
"That
is the stage on which the first act of the world war drama is being
played," said a doctor of the militia to me today,
pointing down to the Valley of the Jarama as we lay on a hill in long,
thyme-scented grass.
I had driven out from
Madrid along the Valencia road, turning off along a mule track about
ten miles from the city. The track carried us into the heart of the
hills, along whose seemingly deserted slopes reverberated the booming
of guns.
At last we came to a little
hollow in whose shelter stood two ambulance cars.
"This is the place,"
said the army doctor with me, and getting out he told us to follow.
Imitating my guide, I crawled up the slope to the summit and there
we lay prone with our nostrils buried in the thyme and our eyes fixed
on the field of battle.
This was Valley of the
Jarama, that stream whose name, beside
that of the Manzanares, is now being written with letters of
blood in imperishable annals of humanity's fight for liberty. Beyond
the stream were our lines facing the long forbidding ridge
of Redondo, now held by enemy.
A week ago, in the most
powerful drive since the battle for Madrid began, the rebels advanced
along the ridge, and now from the bluff at the northern end their
fire commands the Valencia road and compels the convoys of lorries
carrying precious food to Madrid to
make a detour to the north.
But the mercenary troops
of international Fascism, despite repeated
attempts, have not yet set their feet on the road; between
them and their goal stand the men of the young Republican
Army, determined that just as the Manzanares defied
Franco when he tried to storm Madrid, so shall the Jarama
defy him as he tries to starve it.
Through field-glasses
we could see bands of rebel troops move
along the ridge.
"This morning we
saw a priest among them," said the doctor. "He
was carrying a machine-gun, but as soon as our men opened fire
he scurried off and took cover behind a boulder. Most of his companions
over there seem to be Moors.
"At night the Moors
steal down the hillside and crawl towards our lines. Then, when they
are quite near, they jump up, and uttering fiendish cries to frighten
our men, rush forward. But our lads are not frightened, and in many
cases those wild cries of the Moors have been their last."
A mule with two stretchers
strapped to its saddle was grazing in the hollow. "That's how
we bring in our wounded," the doctor explained. "Two men
at a time. They have to be carried across the bridge which spans the
Jarama and up this side of the valley to where we are, all under enemy
fire. Today we have brought in between sixty and seventy. Ten were
dead."
Seriously wounded men,
if they survive that nightmare ride on the
mule across the valley of death, are treated in one of the ambulances
which are equipped with an operating-table.
(5)
Republican government statement issued on 19th February 1937.
On the Jarama front the
rebels, in reply to the Government offensive, launched a vigorous
counter-attack in the La Maranosa sector. After five hours' fighting
the rebel onslaught weakened and the Government troops maintained
their positions.
The Government troops
carried out a particularly brilliant operation in the Marata sector,
where they stormed fortified positions held by German troops.
A diversion was staged
by the rebels in the University City sector with the double object
of distracting attention from the Jarama front and re-establishing
communication between the rebel positions at the Bridge of the French
(across the Manranares) and the advance guard holding the Clinical
Hospital. The attack, however, completely failed.
(6)
The Manchester Guardian (20th
February 1937)
The battle for the Valencia road begun by rebels almost
a fortnight ago had yesterday come to a standstill. The attack
began from Piato and some ground has been gained, but the rebels have
been pushed back from the positions they held at the beginning of
the week.
It was made clear by a
Government communique yesterday that the Jarama River has been crossed
and that a small force of rebels, said to be 'German troops', are
holding fortified positions in the Morata sector, north of Chincon.
But the main rebel forces appear never to have been across the Jarama,
and in the Government's counter-attack of Wednesday were pushed back.
According to the Government's claims the Republicans advanced on a
front of five miles, the greatest advance - of three miles - being
from San Martin.
(7)
Edwin
Rolfe,
The Lincoln Battalion (1939)
Jarama
was a complete success, in a way which none of the Americans who took
part in it could then foresee. For the attack on February 27th impressed
the insurgents with one inescapable fact: that the Jarama front was
too heavily, too perfectly defended. From that day until the very
end of the war, the rebels never succeeded in advancing another meter
along the line which, they had hoped, would cut the Madrid-Valencia
highway, effect the encirclement and the capture of Madrid.
(8)
Tom
Wintringham,
The Manchester Guardian (13th
October 1938)
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.
(9)
Conny Andersson was born in Örebro, in the middle of Southern
Sweden. He was politically active, much against the will of his foster
parents. In 1928 he joined the Social Democratic Youth Organization.
Conny Andersson studied at a Folk High-school when the Spanish Civil
War broke out. At New Year 1936/1937 he went to Spain. He participated
in the battles at Jarama
and Brunete.
His ear drums were ruined at Brunete which made the army dismiss him
before summer 1937. The
interview originally appeared in Swedes in the Spanish Civil
War, P.A. Nordstedt & Söners Förlag, 1972.
They had told us we'd be
fighting the Moors and the Foreign Legion, and we weren't exactly
happy about it. We had to walk a few kilometers. It was a nice morning,
and the birds were chirping. The French battalion had been there before
us. We sort of fell into the battle unexpectedly. Suddenly we understood
that we weren't hearing chirping birds. The French had already pulled
back. We never saw them. Maybe they had moved back on the flanks,
so that we just came to fill up the empty space. We marched over the
ground, in firing column, trying to act like we were on the front.
The terrain was bushy and hilly, with forests. The Frenchmen had been
able to dig a little on a hill. Skotte probably meant for us to lie
there. But we were being fired at, mostly from rifles. We couldn't
see our assailants. So we figured we shouldn't be lying there. It
could have been nerves and it could have been something else. But
we wanted to get in close, so to say.
Group after group sprang up and raged down. We all got caught up in
the whole thing. We came down the hill, so we could see Jarama. That's
when we got into a little hell. We had concentrated machine-gun fire
on us. There was straight firing, but there could have been indirect
cross-fire too, from the flanks. Machine-guns can shoot a few thousand
meters, so… You can map in an area so that you have indirect
firing there. Those machine gunners who couldn't see us… when
they heard a certain gun start firing, they figured they ought to
be shooting at the field we were attempting to cross. We had tree
trunks to take cover behind. Once we had gotten that far, the machine
guns couldn't reach us anymore. But they were shooting with rifles
from straight ahead. The shortest distance was thirty or forty meters,
at least in the past where I was. The boys to the left may have come
a little further."
I saw boys being shot
down beside me, and boys being shot down on the other side. But if
it was me who shot them, or one of the other guys, I couldn't say.
We had to get back to the trenches. But then we would have to run
across the field, a distance of maybe one hundred meters. And there
you had the barrage from the machine guns. You ran and you had a feeling
of leaping hurdles over the machine-gun fire. The one who set my nerves
straight was a sailor boy from Kalmar, Ivan Karlsson. Some of the
fellows weren't on their best behavior at the front, so to speak.
They had been drinking. Ivar was a bit tipsy. He had brought along
his canteen, filled with cognac. And he said: "Here, have a sip.
All you have to do is lay here and try to survive. Then you've got
to run like hell for a bit, and then you get to lay down again, and
then - then I'll come."
A lot of boys were killed
there, already the first day. But we got support from the machine-gun
boys in "Edgar Andre". They were on the right flank and
saw how exposed we were, since they were situated higher than us.
From there they could also see the indirectly firing machine guns
that they opened fire on. But still… Our only chance was to leap
hurdles. The battle continued all night long. Then we were lying in
the trenches. We held them. They weren't trenches in the classical
sense. The ground was too hard. We tried to dig, working in shifts,
and got as far down as was possible. During the maneuver we had been
taught to make fairly soft sandbanks. A bullet from a rifle will go
through a piece of rail, but a pillow, for example a feather pillow,
will make the bullet spin. So we dug pits and put sandbanks all around.
But it was damn hard dirt. I was at Jarama for three weeks. You could
say that we basically, fought over a stretch of land approximately
two to three kilometers, back and forth. It wasn't even five kilometers
from the big road. We didn't have anything… There just wasn't
anything to choose from. Unless the road to Valencia would be cut
off. Our weapons were rifle, bayonet, spade and knife. But one day
the Cuckoo and I were sent to the battalion staff to fetch dynamite,
the kind that the dynamiters up in Asturias used.
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