(1) Paul White, confession in 1938.

After Belchite I knew I was afraid to go into action again. I tried all this time to overcome my feeling of fear. I felt we were doomed and fighting futilely. I dropped out of line and made up my mind to desert and try and reach France. As I ran towards the Ebro and met more deserters and routed troops, my fear grew. If I succeeded in getting to France, I still would have to face everyone at home but I had lost all control.

I kept going and debating whether or not to turn back. I spoke to the mayor at the border town in which I was arrested and asked where the command post was located. He told me and I decided to eat and make a final decision. I was arrested before I had done this. Once I was in custody I decided that I had been saved from wrecking my life completely.

I realize that "safety" of the kind I was seeking would never compensate me for the loss of everything and everyone I value. I ask for one chance and that is to serve in the lines and wipe out this stain on my military and Party record.

I am 29 years old and am certain that I can serve in the ranks for many years as a class conscious worker. I have had plenty of time to think before making this statement and sincerely believe I will be stronger in my work and devotion if given the opportunity to redeem myself. I regard my position now as the most serious crisis in my life and am ready to meet it.

(2) Cecil D. Eby, Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (2007)

Just after the stragglers of the Lincoln Battalion set up their camp at Marsa in April 1938, an order came down to Commissar John Gates from Division: court-martial all deserters and execute some as examples. Massive desertion must never be allowed again. Accordingly, Gates improvised a tribunal consisting only of brigade commissars and Party cadres. Three deserters received death sentences: an Algerian, a Spaniard, and an American named Paul White. White, a seaman with a splendid record in the Party, had deserted at least once before. (Merriman had complimented him for "doing a good job" in rounding up and provisioning the men scattered all over Madrid at the time of the Aragon offensive.) Executions followed that night. According to the later testimony of Major Umberto Galleani, the firing squad was commanded by a "very excitable" New Yorker known as "Ivan."

Some Lincolns bivouacked at Marsa heard isolated shots fired that night. Then four men were shaken out of their blanket rolls by one of Tony DeMaio's henchmen, who handed them shovels and said, "Follow me, and don't ask questions." They dug a trench in the hillside and dumped in a body. By morning everyone in the battalion knew that someone had been shot without being told the details. Later in the day they were told that Paul White had been executed as a deserter "by the unanimous [sic] decision of the battalion." They, the men of the battalion, had decided nothing - certainly not unanimously. Joe Bianca, a friend from the New York waterfront, who knew that White's wife had just had a baby, vented his anger by shouting over and over, for all to hear, "Those sons of bitches!" Having just been publicized as "the best soldier in the Battalion," Bianca had passed beyond the range of commissariat retaliation. (According to John Gates, many years later, on the next day an order come down from Division countermanding the executions. It arrived too late for Paul White.) At this time Gates and Wolff conducted the trial of Bernard Abramofsky, accused of multiple desertions and black marketeering. This was held in a darkened room with a single light shining on his face. Like White, he was executed by a nocturnal firing squad.