Robert
Merriman, the son of a lumberjack, was born in the United
States in 1908. While studying economics at University of Nevada
he spent two years in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps because
it paid seven and a half dollars a month. He also worked as a ranch
hand, cement worker and pulp feeder to help finance his studies.
After completing
his studies Merriman began teaching at University of California. While
in California he became active in left-wing politics and supported
the San Francisco General Strike. Merriman also won the Newton Booth
Travelling Fellowship. This enabled him to study agricultural problems
in different countries in Europe.
In 1937
Merriman joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion,
a unit that volunteered to fight for the Popular
Front government during the Spanish
Civil War. He joined the other International
Brigades at Albacete and as he spent two years in the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps at the University of Nevada, he was recruited
to train recently arrived volunteers from America.
Working
under James Harris, a former sergeant in the United
States Army, Merriman taught the men how to fieldstrip
rifles and machine-guns. He also organized a series of lectures on
scouting, fortifications and signaling.
His wife,
Marion Merriman, joined him in Spain and
became the only woman to become a full member of Abraham
Lincoln Battalion. She served as an administrative officer until
being sent home in November 1937 to begin a speaking tour of the United
States.
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
to the Jarama Valley to block the advance. Led by Merriman, the 373
members of the brigade 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 Merriman was shot in the shoulder, cracking the
bone in five places. Of the 263 men who went into action that day,
only 150 survived.
Merriman
was now replaced by Oliver Law as battalion
commander. It was the first time in American history that an integrated
military force was led by an African-American officer.
When Merriman
recovered from his wounds he was appointed as brigade chief of staff
of the Mackenzie-Papineau
Battalion. The next major action involving the International
Brigades took place during the Aragón
offensive at the end of August 1937. The campaign began with an attack
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. 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.
In March
1938 Merriman returned to the Aragón
front. Milton
Wolff
was now battalion commander and John Gates
was battalion commissar. Later that month Robert Merriman was killed
along with David Doran while fighting at
Gandesa.
(1)
Marion
Merriman,
American
Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
(1986)
As
we drove into Madrid, the first thing we saw was the big bullring
- the Moorish architecture, arch upon arch, dusky brown with beautiful
coloring in the tiles, the columns. It was magnificent, I thought.
Entering Madrid was like entering any big city's industrial section.
We drove through a ring of factories, then into the nicer part of
the city.
'Even under bombardment,
Madrid is marvelous!' I said to Bob. The wide tree-lined boulevards
and modern buildings had an air of dignity that even blocks of bombed-out
ruins could not dispel.
But the scene changed,
quickly. As we walked down a broad boulevard, we heard the crack of
rifle fire. Then the tempo picked up. 'That's machine gun fire,' Bob
said. The machine-guns rattled in the distance, perhaps a few blocks
away, I couldn't be sure. Then we heard the boom of artillery and
the reality of Madrid at war returned deeply to me. The artillery
shell landed some distance away, collapsing part of a building, which
fell into a rubble of dust. We dashed down the street, staying close
to the buildings. The horror of war was driven home to me. I was terrified.
I was shaking badly when
we entered the Hotel Florida and went directly up the stairs to Hemingway's
room. Bob steadied me, then knocked on the door.
'Hello, I'm Merriman,'
Bob said as Hemingway, looking intense but friendly, opened the door.
'I know,' Hemingway said.
Bob introduced me, and the writer greeted me warmly.
Then Hemingway and Bob
fell into conversation about the war and the broadcast they planned.
They were joined by John Dos Passos, Josephine Herbst, and a scattering
of American volunteers and correspondents who sipped Hemingway's scotch
and compared notes and stories. I slipped into an old chair, still
quite shaken by the action outside.
I studied Bob and Hemingway.
They got along. Each talked for a moment, then listened to the other.
How different they were, I thought, Bob at twenty-eight, Hemingway
at least a good ten years older. Hemingway seemed complex. He was
big and bluff and macho. He didn't appear to be a braggart but he
got across the message, through
an air of self-assurance, that he could handle what he took on.
Bob was taller than Hemingway
by several inches. They looked at each other through the same kind
of round glasses, Bob's frames of tortoise shell, Hemingway's of steel.
Hemingway was animated,
gesturing as he asked questions, scratching his scalp through thick
dark hair, perplexed, then scowling, then, something setting him off,
laughing from deep down. He wore a sweater, buttoned high on his chest,
and a dark tie, loosened at the neck.
Bob was clean shaven.
Hemingway needed a shave. He didn't appear to be growing a beard,
he just seemed to need a shave, the scrubble roughing his cheeks and
chin. He looked like he had had a hard night. He had a knot on his
forehead, probably suffered in some roustabout skirmish.
Hemingway sipped a scotch,
as did Bob. Someone offered me a drink, and I thought I'd never been
as happy in my life to get a drink of whiskey. Even in the relatively
safe room I remained frightened. The sheer madness of the war would
not leave my mind.
As Bob and Hemingway talked,
the contrast between them struck me time and again. Bob was an intellectual,
and he looked like one. Hemingway was an intellectual, but he looked
more like an adventurer. Bob looked like an observer. Hemingway looked
like a man of action.
I was fascinated by Dos
Passes, whom I had always thought was a better writer than Hemingway.
John DOS Passes was, without question, a seasoned writer of the prose
of war. But as a man, he didn't impress me. I thought he was wishy-washy.
I couldn't make out everything he was saying, but his message was
clear - for whatever reasons, he
wanted out of there, out of Hemingway's room, out of bomb-shaken Madrid.
I was scared too, with
good reason. But somehow Dos Passes acted more than scared. I guessed
it was his uncertainty, his facial expressions, his general attitude
that this was a lost cause, given the superior strength of the Franco
forces. Dos Passes criticized the Spanish Republic, for which Americans
were fighting and dying.
Hemingway, on the other
hand, let you know by his presence and through his writing exactly
where he stood. Hemingway had told the world of the murder in Madrid,
including the murder of children by fascist bombing. He had told about
'the noises kids make when they are hit. There is a sort of foretaste
of that when the child sees the planes coming and yells "Aviacion!"
Then, too, some kids are very quiet when they are hit - until you
move them.'
(2)
Robert
Merriman diary
entry (28th February 1937)
Boys
had little to eat and drink, and it meant death to carry food across
the road. We waited without promised machine gun support, without
telephone, artillery going to the left and not helping us. The armored
cars were behind the hill, no tank in evidence, no horses, no planes.
(3)
Robert
Merriman wrote about the offensive
at Jarama
Valley to his friend Martin Hourihan
(1st March 1937)
Our
men advanced under impossible conditions and did it without murmur.
Our boys plenty brave. Great boys and it grieved me to see them go.
(4)
Robert
Merriman diary
entry (2nd March 1937)
It
was a butcher shop. People died on stretchers in the yard. Went to
the operating room. Pulling bullets out of a man who had become an
animal. Several doctors operating on stomach exploring for bullets
while others died.
(5)
Frank
Ryan,
The Fifteenth Brigade (1938)
Merriman
was among the first Americans to arrive in Spain. He took an instrumental
part in organizing the Lincoln Battalion and was its first Commander
when the Battalion first went into action in the Jarama battles, being
wounded in the attack on February 27.
Still convalescing, Merriman
took charge of an Officers' Training School and later trained the
Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. Just before the Aragon offensive, he
was appointed Chief of Staff.
An able organizer, ever
teaching and learning, scrupulously attentive to details, combining
the geniality and shyness of a college professor with the decisiveness
of the athlete and military officer, Major Merriman has played an
important part in raising the military efficiency of the Brigade,
of the officers and the troops alike.
(6)
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.
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