Annie
Murray
was
born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland,
in 1906. She trained to be a nurse at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh.
A member of the Communist Party, she
volunteered in 1936 to join a British Medical Unit supporting the
International
Brigades fighting in the Spanish
Civil War. Murray remained in Spain
until February 1939.
During the Second
World War Murray was in charge of an air-raid station in London.
Later she worked as a children's nurse in Stepney and at the Post
Office at Mount Pleasant.
After retiring
in 1964 Murray lived with her husband in Fife.
(1)
Annie
Murray,
Voices From the Spanish Civil War (1986)
I
was very interested in the Spanish situation even before the Civil
War, and I volunteered in 1936 through the British Medical Aid Association
to go out to Spain to help the Spanish people. I went to Spain because
I believed in the cause of the Spanish Republican Government. I didn't
believe in Fascism and I had heard many stories of what happened to
people who were under Fascist rule.
The British Medical Aid
Committee was composed mostly of London doctors or British doctors,
and Labour MPs, left wing MPs mostly, people like that. It had been
set up specially for Spanish war aid.
I arrived at a small Spanish
hospital at Huete, more or less on the Barcelona front. Huete was
a little village north-east of Barcelona. From the hospital in Barcelona
we used to go out in the hospital trains all round the area, behind
offensives, and when there was more work to do outside of the hospital
than inside. In the hospital train it was pretty gruelling, you know.
On one occasion we went under a bridge to operate when bombs were
falling.
Hours of duty at the hospital
depended on the work, because we had many casualties at one time and
not so many at other times. We just worked when we had to even if
you had to get out of bed in the middle of the night, you know.
We had a lot of casualties
even in the little hospital at Huete, very serious ones, terribly
serious ones. Young, young men calling for their mothers. It was very
sad, terrifically sad. Many of the wounds were very serious - open
holes, stomachs opened up, legs off, arms off, oh, terrible, terrible.
I never saw anybody shell-shocked. It was a different kind of war
from the First World War. We didn't have any cases of shell-shock
in the hospital. We had lots of cases of frozen feet, and that was
a terrible thing because when their feet were coming round to get
their blood flowing again it was a terrible painful thing. We had
an awful job with that, and of course we hadn't really got the equipment
to treat that sort of thing very easily. So there was a terrible lot
of suffering from frozen feet. It was terribly cold in the winter,
very cold up in the hills in the winter where we were, extremely cold.
Most of the casualties
in our hospital of course were our own. At least eighty per cent I
should think were Spaniards, the remaining were Internationals from
all the countries. I met masses of Internationals. Lots of Americans,
Germans, Italians, Russians and, oh, every country you could think
about that sent volunteers - French, Yugoslavs. I think every country
almost you could mention there were volunteers from to the anti-Fascist
side.
(2)
Annie
Murray,
Voices From the Spanish Civil War (1986)
We mixed with the population in Barcelona and
of course the people we met and most of the people in Barcelona in
fact seemed to be against the Fascists. I knew there was fighting
in Barcelona itself in the summer of 1937 between the P.O.U.M., the
Anarchists and the Communists. But we were so busy in the hospital
we didn't see much of the outside life really. Oh, I knew the Anarchists!
They would shoot anybody if they thought they were well off. Yes,
they would just take them round the corner. You could hear the shots
sometimes. They weren't very scientific in their approach, you know.
We had them working in the hospitals and everything. They were a part
of the International Brigade actually. But as I say they weren't very
scientific in their approach to the whole cause. Nice enough blokes
but they would shoot somebody if they thought they were well off-
even just by the
way they were dressed, you know.
(3)
Annie
Murray, Voices
From the Spanish
Civil War (1986)
As we were coming out of Spain - the Fascists
were getting to Barcelona as we were getting out - I was with the
Spanish surgeon and some of the others as we came through Barcelona.
We found a whole lot of children, oh, dozens of them, with their hands
off, completely off. The Italians had dropped anti-personnel bombs
marked 'Chocolate'. The children were picking up these things - they
hadn't had chocolate for years - and they just blew their hands off.
This Spanish surgeon that I worked with, he was in tears. We all were.
This sort of thing was so horrible. It left a big impression on me.
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