BBC Radio 3 Proms Extra
On 9 August 2017, I introduced a number of readings relating to the International Brigades, movingly delivered by actors Christopher Ecclestone and Yolanda Vazquez and by Margot Heinemann’s daughter, Jane Bernal.
The IBMT’s annual commemoration: London 2024
I was very honoured to be asked to join PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote as a speaker at the annual commemoration of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. As always, the ceremony was held in front of the national memorial in Jubilee Gardens on London’s south bank. For those who missed it, there is a report on the Trust’s website and there are some great photos of the event on Andrew Wiard’s site.
Here is the full text of the speech:
I would like to talk to you today about a British volunteer, who lived just down the road from here. He was one of many who were taken prisoner by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. Some of you will have known him, some of you will have known of him. His name was George Wheeler.
George’s mother was an unpaid domestic worker, his father a door-to-door salesman and a socialist. George always saw himself as an antifascist, though he was not political in a party sense. He was much more interested in sport, excelling at football, swimming and, in particular, boxing.
In the spring of 1938, the 24-year-old was living with his mother in Battersea and working as a wood machinist. Incensed by the British Government’s support for non-intervention in Spain, which George could see was clearly working in favour of Franco’s Rebels, he decided to join the fight against fascism.
Following a brief interview in London by a senior member of the Communist Party, he was accepted into the International Brigades, despite a lack of military experience. George travelled to Spain in a group which included the Liverpudlian Jack Jones, arriving on 27 May 1938.
It was not an auspicious time to join the fight, for a huge Francoist offensive launched earlier in the year had smashed through Republican lines, splitting the Spanish Republic in two. As Bill Rust brutally summarised in his history of the British in Spain:
The 1938 … recruits had no illusions; they knew they had come to face death.
Bill Rust, Britons in Spain, p. 104.
Nonetheless George joined Number 4 Company of the British Battalion on 30 June. His first experience of combat came the following month when the British Battalion was part of the huge Republican offensive across the River Ebro.
In the full heat of the Spanish summer, bombed and shelled remorselessly, George fought alongside his comrades in the International Brigades and the Spanish Republican Army to try and retake the territory lost in the spring. He fought at Corbera, at Hill 481 near Gandesa and at the aptly named Hill 666.
After a brief stay in hospital due to an infection, George rejoined the battalion in September to participate in its final action on Spanish soil. As you probably know, it was nothing short of a disaster. Only a matter of hours from being withdrawn, many volunteers were killed or wounded, while George and a number of his comrades were surrounded and taken prisoner by Franco’s troops.
As George will have been well aware, many International Brigaders taken prisoner by the Nationalists were never heard from again. So when he and the other prisoners were lined up against a wall with their hands tied behind their backs, one can only imagine what must have been going through their minds.
But to their great relief, this was not to be their fate; Mussolini’s pressure on Franco to exchange captured International Brigaders for Italians probably saved their lives. Instead, they were taken away and locked up in the nearby city of Zaragoza.
Knowing what happened during the war that followed, we should not be surprised at the terrible treatment George and the other prisoners were subjected to: that they were transported for several days, crammed into cattle trucks; that the POW camp, in a decaying monastery near Burgos called San Pedro de Cardeña was, to all extents, a concentration camp; that the conditions were overcrowded and insanitary, proving a fertile breeding ground for fleas, lice and disease; that the food was woefully inadequate, George described it as a mixture of ‘stale bread and table scraps’, which looked like pigs’ swill; and that that violence was endemic, with prisoners viciously beaten with wooden sticks for the slightest reason, or for none at all.
It is almost impossible to imagine how awful the day-to-day experiences must have been. Understandably, many must have wondered whether they would ever see their homes again.
And yet, even in these darkest hours, prisoners showed astonishing courage, finding ways to maintain their humanity, to resist: they practiced sports, such as football and boxing (much to George’s delight); they played chess, with pieces carved out of old bits of soap or dried bread; they held political meetings and ran education classes; and a clandestine newspaper, The Jaily News, lampooned the camp and its authorities.
Mockery is, of course, a powerful form of resistance.
When one of George’s comrades, Morrie Levitas, was ordered to read out fascist propaganda, he deliberately mispronounced words, skipped punctuation and added random pauses, reducing the prisoners to laughter and the guards to fury.
When prisoners were instructed that, when saluting, they must bellow ‘¡Fran-co!’, in two distinct syllables, George described how they subverted the order:
With volume and enthusiasm we English-speaking prisoners shouted ‘Fuck You!’
George Wheeler, To Make the People Smile Again, p. 155.
The guards would come in among us swishing their sticks and yelling ‘¡mas fuerte!’ – much louder. And with even greater gusto we would respond with, ‘FUCK YOU! . . . FUCK YOU!’
After three months in San Pedro, in early January 1939, news finally arrived that George and 76 other British prisoners were to be released. However, freedom did not immediately beckon for George, only another prison in San Sebastián. It was not until April – after the end of the civil war – that he was finally released. This response to freedom was actually written by one of George’s fellow prisoners from Nottingham, but I suspect it holds true for all of them:
That day was surely one of the greatest of my life. I simply cannot convey all of the feelings and emotions which I experienced: relief at having come safely through the dangers of war, joy at being on my way home, excitement at the prospect of seeing my family again, sorrow over the certain defeat of the Republic, anger that the Fascists had been allowed to triumph because of the timidity and dual standards of the western democracies, and deep sadness at the loss of so many friends and comrades who would never be leaving Spain but lying for the rest of time in shallow graves in her dusty soil. All of these emotions and others welled up inside me, but no regret at having committed myself to a cause which I felt to be a just one.
Walter Gregory, The Shallow Grave, p. 152.
You will be pleased to know that George recovered from his experiences in San Pedro and continued his fight against fascism during the Second World War where he was posted, bizarrely, to Sierra Leone. After being demobbed he returned to a quiet civvie life with his wife Winnie, who he had married in 1940. George lived to a grand old age and, to his delight, his account of his time in Spain, To Make the People Smile Again, was published in 2006.
Today, we remember George and all the other open-eyed volunteers.
Joint launch of Forged in Spain and Perfidious Albion
On 15 June 2024, I joined Professor Sir Paul Preston at the Marx Memorial Library in London for a launch of our latest books, both published by The Clapton Press.
Both books are centred on Britain during the Spanish Civil War. Paul Preston’s Perfidious Albion is a collection of essays with three major themes. The first is the hypocricy of the British Goverment during the war, whose policy on ‘non-intervention’ was, Preston argues, driven not just by a willingness to sacrifice the Spanish Republic to preserve wider European peace, but by a sympathy among the establishment and political class that ‘leant more to the White than to the Red’. The second theme is the sacrifice of a number of medical workers from Britain who volunteered to help the beleagured democratic government of Spain. Finally, Preston turns to a number of writers and historians who have commented on the war, including George Orwell, Burnett Bolloten, Gerald Brenan and Herbert Southworth. Perfidious Albion was described by a reviewer as:
‘The perfect book for anyone seeking a dispassionate and scholarly introduction to the Spanish Civil War.’
John Green, Morning Star
Forged in Spain is a collection of ten biographies which tell the stories of a handful of extraordinary men and women, explaining why they went to Spain, what happened to them there and the lasting, often dramatic impact the war had on their lives. The subjects include several members of the International Brigades (including an artist and poet, two senior British Officers and a driver who later spied for the Soviet Union), a Surgeon, a Journalist, a young member of the ILP militia, an aid and refugee worker and, finally, a volunteer for Franco, who later served with distinction in the SOE during the Second World War.
‘These enthralling biographies give a picture of the passions of the age … Baxell’s research is meticulous … Forged in Spain is a serious and moving book that may inspire readers to fight the rise of a new fascism today.’
Michael Eaude, TLS.
Both Perfidious Albion and Forged in Spain can be obtained from all the usual outlets, or directly from the publisher, The Clapton Press.
Forged in Spain
Published by Clapton Press on 23 November 2023, Forged in Spain is a collection of ten biographies recounting the lives of a number of extraordinary men and women who left their families and friends to risk their lives in the Spanish Civil War. The majority of those to feature were members of the International Brigades, the battalions of foreign volunteers raised by the Communist International (known as the Comintern) to fight for the Republic. However, also included are a number of individuals who served in other roles, such as journalists, political functionaries, relief workers and medics. While the biographies centre on the experiences gained during the war in Spain, they all include an account of the subjects’ early lives and backgrounds, to help explain their political development and their choice to become involved in the war. Likewise, the consequences of their participation in the civil war are explored in detail: how they faced up to the defeat of the Spanish Republic and consequent forty years of Franco dictatorship, their involvement (or not) in the Second World War and their attitudes towards the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
Contents:
The Forgotten Warrior: Malcolm Dunbar
The Niños’ Second Mother: Leah Manning
The Cambridge Rebel: Peter Kemp
Their Man in Havana: Sam Lesser (aka Sam Russell)
A Family Goes to War: The Haldanes (Charlotte, JBS & Ronnie Burghes)
Out of Orwell’s Shadow: Stafford Cottman
The Truculent Scotsman: Peter Kerrigan
The Red Musician: Alexander Foote
The Painter of Words: Clive Branson
The Brilliant Surgeon: Alex Tudor Hart
Reviews of Forged in Spain:
‘As the Spanish Civil War fades from living memory, Richard Baxell has rescued from obscurity some of the brave men and women who left the safety of their homes in Britain to risk all in the fight against fascism, using newly released archival material to bring their stories vividly to life.’
Billy Bragg
‘These enthralling biographies give a picture of the passions of the age … Baxell’s research is meticulous … Forged in Spain is a serious and moving book that may inspire readers to fight the rise of a new fascism today.’
Michael Eaude, The TLS
‘Excellent research based on the latest files from a range of sources, well put together, with some sound judgements and reassessments.’
Stephen Dorril, author of MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service
‘Ten fascinating biographies of extraordinary men and women … this book will obviously be of great interest to both specialists and general readers … thoroughly researched, absorbing to read.’
Brian Rubin, The Orwell Society
‘The great strength of the book lies in Baxell’s project of showing how these individuals’ life stories were given a defining “barricade moment” of political clarity during the war, and how the conflict called forth previously unknown strengths of leadership and organisation from its participants … the personal stories are absorbing and exceedingly well told, as Baxell skilfully interweaves varied sources — archival, oral history and autobiography.’
Helen Mercer, The Morning Star
‘Baxell’s book, published at a moment when most of those who experienced the civil war in Spain have died, provides a valuable, entertaining home for the memory of some exceptional individuals. It is also a resource for those interested not just in the war, but in the amazing lives of those who travelled to Spain to take part in it.’
Giles Tremlett, The Volunteer
Listen to the author discussing Forged in Spain with Eoghan Gilmartin and Catherine Howley on the The Sobremesa podcast, recorded in April 2024.
The Sobremesa Podcast is about modern-day Spanish society, politics and history. Please donate to make the podcast sustainable.
Geoffrey Servante – the gambling gunner
Over the last few years, several announcements have mourned the passing of the last of the British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. First there was David Lomon, then Philip Tammer and most recently Stan Hilton, all of whom were hailed as ‘the last of the last’. In fact, none of them were. As a recent article by Carmelo García in The Times revealed, 99 year old veteran Geoffrey Servante is alive and well, living in a nursing home in the Forest of Dean.
Geoffrey’s Spanish adventure began in the summer of 1937. He was drinking in a Soho pub with his father, when he overheard a man claiming that it was no longer possible to join the International Brigades, as the Spanish border had been closed. ‘I bet I can join’, declared Geoffrey, impulsively. When the man insisted that there was ‘no chance’, Geoffrey refused to believe him, vowing ‘I’ll bet you a hundred quid I can do it’.
Geoffrey was hardly a typical volunteer for the International Brigades. He had been educated by Jesuits and had never joined a political party nor even a Trade Union: ‘I wasn’t politically inclined at all’, he confessed. However, he had served briefly in the Royal Marines and his earlier experience working on the Canadian–Pacific line helped him secure passage on a boat to Spain.
When they docked in Valencia, Geoffrey jumped ship and accosted a local, repeating the only Spanish phrase he knew: ‘¡Internacional Brigadas! ¡Internacional Brigadas!’ Surprisingly, it was enough to land him a rail ticket to Albacete, the headquarters of the International Brigades. Interviewed there by a Political Commissar, Geoffrey admitted that he was only 18 years old, and was consequently refused admission into the British Battalion, which was then being slaughtered on the Brunete battlefield. Instead, he was posted to a much less hazardous unit, an artillery battery then in training in Almansa, some 70km east of Albacete.
The Anglo-American artillery unit, known as the John Brown Battery, was commanded by an Estonian born American called Arthur Timpson, who had been trained in artillery in Moscow. Alongside Geoffrey were four other English volunteers, all under the watchful eye of their Sergeant, David King, a Communist Branch Secretary and former Royal Marine from Skipton in Yorkshire. Initially posted to the Estremadura front in south-west Spain, the battery was transferred to Toledo in December 1937, where it remained for the duration of the war.
With ammunition extremely scarce, the men rarely did much more than take the occasional pot shot at the enemy lines. However, on one of the few occasions when they were called upon, the battery members had just taken the opportunity to polish off a barrel of local brandy. Geoffrey, who was by his own admission utterly ‘sozzled’, did his valiant best to aim the gun, but the shell missed its target by miles. For this, Geoffrey was punished with six extra guard duties; ‘it was a very lax discipline’, he laughed. Only later did he discover that he had inadvertently scored a direct hit on a fascist officer’s car, blowing him, his aide-de-camp and the car to pieces.
When the majority of the International Brigades were withdrawn and repatriated at the end of 1938, the battery members remained in place, seemingly forgotten. Only in early 1939 were they withdrawn to Valencia, then on to Barcelona. From there, a narrow gauge railway took them half-way to the frontier and they then had to walk the remaining 80km, harassed constantly by Nationalist aircraft. Safely across the French border, Geoffrey and his comrades enjoyed a huge breakfast, courtesy of the International Red Cross, before being repatriated via Paris and Dieppe.
Within a year, Geoffrey was back in uniform, having been called up into the British Army. He had a relatively good war, spending three years in Egypt with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. After demobilisation, he worked for Marshalls, reconditioning military lorries, joining Vauxhall Motors in 1957, where he remained until he took early retirement twenty years later.
Only in 2009 did Geoffrey discover that the Spanish government had offered citizenship to surviving veterans of the International Brigades:
‘I heard on the radio that there were no more International Brigades left, and I said, ‘Well, that’s nonsense. There’s still me.’
When his daughter Honor contacted the Spanish embassy, Geoffrey was invited to London to sign the declaration entitling him to his Spanish passport. He still retains an interest in Spanish affairs; he is a strong supporter of Catalan independence and voted in the 2017 referendum. Geoffrey remains extremely proud to have fought for Spanish democracy and has no regrets. Well, perhaps one. When he returned from Spain and triumphantly called into the pub to collect his winnings, Geoffrey was saddened – and a little disappointed – to discover that his fellow gambler had passed away. So he never did get to see his £100.00.
This article first appeared in the IBMT‘s ¡No Pasarán! 2:2018, pp. 8-9.
Using the online Moscow files
Please note that, as of early 2020, RGASPI have rearranged their website. I have put together a new blogpost that should help you locate the files you’re after.
If you are looking for information on one of the 2500 or so British and Irish volunteers for the Spanish Civil War, it’s well worth considering tackling the RGASPI Archives, held in Moscow. In an amazing piece of good fortune for researchers, all the personnel files (or those that exist, at least) now seem to have been placed online. The majority of the documents are in English, though quite a few are in Spanish and a smaller number in French and German. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the website itself is all in Russian. However, if you know how to use the web, it’s not that difficult to negotiate. (And if you use Google Chrome, you can download the Google translate extension and convert the Cyrillic to English with a click.)
First, go to the home page of the 545/6 series here. You should be presented with something like this:
As you can see from the image, the files are in numerical order, with up to 50 listed on each page. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will notice that you are looking at page number 1 of 33. The first of the British personnel files is on page number 3: file number 100, covering surnames from Aa to Ai (though the numerous lists contained in files 87-99 might also be worth looking at). Clicking the name of a file will take you to a summary, as shown in the screenshot below.
N.B. Top tip: if you intend to look at a number of different files, don’t left click on the file number from the index page. Instead, right click the link and select ‘Open Link in New Tab’ or ‘Open Link in New Window’. That way you keep open your original index page, rather than being returned to the first page each time. I found that this saved me a lot of time and hassle.
From the file summary page, click on the link halfway down the page marked ‘”Cyrillic text” 84’, which will take you to the first of five pages. From there it’s really just a process of browsing through until you find the individual you’re looking for. While some volunteers have extremely large, detailed files, others consist of little more than a mention. In general, the later they arrived in Spain and the longer they were there, the more detail there will be. Not so good if you’re looking for one of the many volunteers killed at Jarama in February 1937, unfortunately.
Copying files is a slow and laborious process I’m afraid as, as far as I can see, it has to be done one image at a time. If you find a better way, do please let me know!
p.s. For those looking for other nationalities in the predominantly English-speaking 15 International Brigade: Australian & New Zealander files begin at 545/6/67, Irish at 545/6/439, Canadians at 545/6/534 and Americans at 545/6/845 (though the first personnel file, Aa-Ai, is not until 545/6/855)
Good luck!
British & Irish killed in Spain
Precise figures for the numbers of British and Irish volunteers killed in the various battles in the Spanish Civil War are hard to come by. Record-keeping was not always as accurate as historians might wish for (there was, after all, a war on), leading to a number of errors in lists that have appeared over the years.
Many include the names of volunteers who, it later transpired, had actually survived the war. For example, a young miner from Swansea called Dillwyn Ledbury was long thought to have been killed during the Republican Ebro offensive of July 1938. In fact, he was repatriated via France that December and lived long enough to be interviewed on 2 July 1970 by Hywell Francis for his book on the Welsh volunteers. Likewise, the Leeds volunteer Henry Carass was believed to have died during the Jarama bloodbath of February 1937, but as his son (who was born in 1941) confirms, Carass survived to continue his fight against fascism during the Second World War. At the same time, a number of people who died in Spain were not included in the various ‘Rolls of Honour’ which appeared in books and pamphlets dedicated to the British & Irish volunteers. For example, the London carpenter William Featherstone, who died in Vich Hospital in November 1938, is one of twelve known to have been killed in Spain who was not listed for years.
A full updated list appears on the International Brigades Memorial Trust website. It was complied by myself and the IBMT’s researcher and archivist, Jim Carmody, with the assistance of historians and family members too numerous to mention. Below is a table which breaks the list down, battle by battle. It is clear from the figures that Jarama, the first action of the British Battalion in Spain, justly earned its reputation as a bloodbath and baptism of fire. Likewise, both the battle of Brunete in July 1937 and the Republican Ebro Offensive a year later also proved terribly costly. However, the retreat through Aragon during the spring of 1938 also stands out as a time when the volunteers faced some of the toughest odds. As at Jarama, the British were desperately fighting to contain a colossal Rebel onslaught. But this time, outnumbered and outgunned, the Republican forces were unable to hold the line, as Francoist forces broke through reaching the Mediterranean and splitting the Republican zone into two. It was a blow from which the Republic would, I think, never really recover.
British & Irish casualties in Spain, by battle.
| Where killed | Number |
| Madrid (Casa de Campo etc.) | 5 |
| Boadilla del Monte | 9 |
| Lopera | 13 |
| Las Rozas | 8 |
| Jarama | 152 |
| Brunete offensive | 72 |
| Aragon offensive (Caspe, Belchite & Quinto) | 6 |
| Fuentes de Ebro | 6 |
| Teruel | 24 |
| The retreat through Aragon | 121 |
| Ebro offensive (Hills 481 & 666 and battalion’s last stand) | 84 |
| Other actions (Aragon, Chimorra etc.) | 12 |
| Died as a POW (various locations) | 10 |
| Other (non-battle casualties) | 18 |
| Total | 540 |
Help Spain!
A new updated edition of Antifascistas has been published in Spain, under the title, Help Spain! It features an introduction by Angel Viñas and considerable new material, including numerous images and a chapter on the awful experiences of British and Irish prisoners of war incarcerated in Franco Spain.
The book is available direct from the publishers, Pamiela, for €20, plus packing & postage.
Dare Devil Rides to Jarama
Set on a minimalist stage with a cast of two, Dare Devil Rides to Jarama is a surprisingly successful account of the International Speedway star from Oldham, Clem Beckett, during the economically and politically turbulent 1920s and ’30s. The play’s central story – and its climax – recounts his time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War alongside the writer, Christopher St. John Sprigg (more familiar under his nom de plume of Christopher Caudwell) with whom Beckett struck up a powerful friendship.
David Heywood makes a convincing Beckett and Neil Gore shows off his versatility by playing a number of parts from Sir Oswald Mosley to Christopher Caudwell. The play has some nice touches which (on the occasion that I was there) went down well, including a clever representation of the ‘wall of death’ with a puppet and a lusty sing-a-long to Euan McColl’s Manchester Rambler. There were many opportunities for audience participation (should you be in such a mind); such was the atmosphere, I even noticed a professor of history joining in. No mean feat.
It’s often difficult for historians at these events, particularly if (as is often the case) they are asked how accurate the production is. Often the answer is ‘not very’ though, of course, it should be remembered that the the constraints placed on fiction are rather less demanding than those placed on historical studies. It would be most unwise to take Shakespeare’s plays, John Ford’s westerns or George MacDonald Fraser’s historical novels too literally. To their credit, Townsend Productions‘ writer/actor Neil Gore and director Louise Townsend have clearly worked very hard to tell Beckett’s story as honestly and accurately as possible. I certainly think that the play does a remarkable job in explaining why so many men and women from Britain and Ireland (not to mention another 50 countries from around the globe) chose to leave their homes, families and friends to fight in a foreign civil war.
My only small criticism is that I felt the play was a little unkind to Caudwell/Sprigg. His character was something of a caricature, a bumbling upper-class twit, with the voice of John le Mesurier, yet little of the knowing, ironic humour. In ‘Dare Devil’ Sprigg rather seems to have ended up in the International Brigades, influenced by the strength of character of Beckett, whereas my impression is that ‘Spriggie’ volunteered to fight in much the same way as the other 2500 British and Irish volunteers. Likewise, in the final scene [spoiler alert], Sprigg is nowhere to be seen as Beckett, his French machine-gun having typically jammed, meets his end on the Jarama battlefield. Yet accounts from other member of the battalion fighting that day in February 1937 suggest that Beckett and Caudwell fell side by side, as inseparable in death as they had become in life. To be fair, a cast of two – one of whom needs to be operating the lighting – does rather limit one’s options.
But don’t let this small gripe put you off. Dare Devil Rides to Jarama is a powerful, atmospheric production and you have the additional satisfaction of knowing that, by going, you are supporting the work of the IBMT, who helped fund it. The play is on tour around the country at the moment, with dates available up to March 2017. Catch it while you can.
Stan Hilton – the last of the last?
Sadly, we have now reached the end of an era. With the death of 98 year old Stan Hilton, there are no longer any British veterans of the International Brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 alive to tell their tale. Stan may well have been the last member of the entire English-speaking Fifteenth International Brigade. Jules Paivio, the last of the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, died in 2013 and the American, Delmer Berg, the final Lincoln, died earlier this year.
Over the course of the civil war more than 6000 international volunteers (1000 Canadians, 2500 British & Irish and 2800 Americans), served in the Fifteenth International Brigade, part of a 35 000 strong band of brothers – and sisters – from some 53 countries around the world. These anti-fascists volunteered to join the battle because, as one American from Mississippi put it simply, ‘I saw in the invaders of Spain the same people I’ve been fighting all my life.’ They believed that Spain’s struggle transcended national boundaries; arguing that fighting fascism in Spain would help the fight against fascism across Europe and conversely a victory for Franco would be, by extension, a victory for Hitler. The rapid and determined support for Franco’s Rebels by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy provided convincing evidence for a connection between the regimes.
While the International Brigades were only a small part of the Spanish Republican army, their arrival on the Madrid front eighty years ago this November was hugely significant. The international volunteers raised the morale of the defenders of the Spanish capital, whilst providing invaluable instruction in the use of weaponry such as machine-guns. However, the involvement of the International Brigades in the fighting around Madrid between November 1936 and the spring of 1937 was probably their high-water mark. As the war dragged on, their influence gradually waned. Outnumbered and outgunned, lacking crucial air cover, and consistently thrown into the heart of the fire, the foreign volunteers were, in the words of one senior Scottish volunteer, ‘cut to pieces’. Around a fifth of the 35 000 international volunteers were killed in Spain and the vast majority were wounded at some stage. As American historian Peter Carroll explained, raw courage and belief in the essential ‘rightness’ of the volunteers’ cause ‘could not overcome inexperience, poor coordination and superior military force’.
When nineteen year old Stan Hilton jumped ship in Alicante and volunteered to join the fight, he was convinced that ‘it was the right thing to do’. By this time, November 1937, the British Battalion had been fighting in Spain for almost a year. They had been having a very tough time of it: during the bloodbath at Jarama in February and in the ferocious heat of the Spanish summer at Brunete the British had been virtually annihilated. While some success had been seen on the Aragon front in the autumn, the target of the Republican offensive, Saragossa, had stubbornly remained in Rebel hands. With the battalion in reserve, Stan was sent for military training at the British Battalion’s headquarters in the village of Madrigueras, just to the north of the main International Brigades headquarters at Albacete. His period of training (such as it was) completed, Stan joined the battalion in early 1938, as the British volunteers fought as part of the Republican force desperately trying to hold on to the remote capital of Teruel. Conditions were horrendous: in freezing temperatures that sank to twenty below zero at night, more men died at Teruel from the cold than were killed in battle. For Stan, brought up on notions of ‘sunny Spain’, it was a brutal introduction to the realities of warfare: ‘It was freezing. I was always bloody cold,’ he later recalled.
Things were about to get much worse. Boosted by reinforcements, Franco’s forces recaptured Teruel before pressing home their advantage by launching a colossal offensive in the spring against the Republican forces in Aragon. Thirteen divisions, including Italians and the German Condor Legion, plus a huge number of tanks, artillery and anti-tank guns, backed up with over 900 aircraft, were massed for the push through to the Mediterranean. Much better armed and supplied, Franco’s forces outnumbered the defending Republicans by almost five to one. What began as a series of breakthroughs swiftly turned into a rout, as the Republican lines virtually collapsed. Franco’s soldiers successfully reached the Mediterranean in mid-April 1938, splitting the Republic’s territory in two.
With the Republican army in disarray and communications having essentially broken down, Stan ended up having to undertake a dangerous swim across the fast-flowing River Ebro to evade being captured (or worse). Half-drowned, starving and exhausted, Stan decided that he had had enough of the Spanish war and headed for the Mediterranean coast. In March 1938, with the permission of the British ship’s captain, he boarded the SS Lake Lugano at Barcelona, and sailed for home.
During the Second World War Stan served in the British Merchant Navy and, after demobilisation, in 1956 he took the decision to emigrate to Australia with his young family. There he remained, mainly working as a tiler in the building trade, living a quiet life, his presence unknown to the UK’s International Brigade Memorial Trust. That is, until he was tracked down in an old people’s home in Yarrawonga, Australia, on the border between Victoria and New South Wales. A couple of years ago Stan was transferred from there to a nursing home in Ocean Grove, near Melbourne, in order to be closer to his family. It was there, on 21 October 2016, that Stan Hilton, tiler, merchant seaman and International Brigader finally died, aged 98. He was the last of the last, el último de la última.
This article originally appeared in The Spain Report on 28 October 2016.
Jarama, Brunete and the Valley of the Fallen
Having spent the last two summers exploring civil war battle sites in Aragon, this year saw the return of four historians, two from Ireland (Emmet O’Connor and Barry McGloughlin) and two from England (John Halstead and myself), to explore some of the sites around Madrid. Our trip was given added poignancy by the knowledge that Emmet’s father fought with the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Having arrived in Spain in December 1936, Peter O’Connor fought in the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 and at Brunete five months later, where he was wounded. Following pressure from Irish Republican leader Frank Ryan, O’Connor was repatriated shortly afterwards ‘for political reasons … with an excellent record’ (International Brigade Archive Box 39, file A/29).
Our first visit was to the site of the Battle of Brunete, though, sadly, not much evidence remains. You can get a good sense of the overall layout from a viewpoint just south of Valdemorillo, but both the village of Villanueva de la Cañada (where Falangist defenders held out, crucially delaying the Republican advance) and the ultimate objective of the 15 International Brigade, Mosquito Ridge, have been built up and developed.
Fortunately, the Jarama battlefield remains much as it was nearly 80 years ago. It’s easy to find, lying just off the M302, three kilometres west of Morata de Tajuña and is marked by the large monument to the battle (see image above). The sunken road, mentioned in many accounts of the battle, is roughly 500 metres further west of the monument and runs south-west off the M302 (though it’s not sunken any more). This leads you right to the site itself and the memorial to the Irish volunteer, Kit Conway, who commanded the British Battalion’s Number One Company and was killed on the first day of the battle. Walk through the olive groves and scrub, rich with the pungent smell of wild thyme, and you will see the positions that the British Battalion attempted to defend on 12 February 1937. The Knoll, Conical Hill and ‘Suicide Hill’ on which the ill-prepared and poorly-armed volunteers were cut to pieces can all be made out clearly. Sobering.
Our third visit was not to a battle site, nor to a memorial to the International Brigades; in fact, quite the opposite. Surprisingly none of us had ever previously visited Valle de los Caidos, the Valley of the Fallen, Franco’s monument to the Nationalist dead. Set underneath a 150 metre high cross, the memorial houses one of the world’s largest basilicas, dug out of solid rock, in which rest the tombs of Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, leader of the Spanish Fascist party. The monument bears all the hallmarks of fascists architecture: it’s huge, overbearing, pompous and dripping with pseudo-religious imagery and rhetoric. Thousands of Republican prisoners died during its construction and, to this day, debates rage over its future. Should it be pulled down, as was the case with Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, or should it be kept as a reminder of the brutal and murderous excesses of Franco’s regime? On balance I favour the latter, despite the monument’s undeniable grandiose ugliness.
The last stop was Calle de Toledo, which runs south from Madrid’s Plaza Mayor. Today, the attractive, narrow little street is lined with cafés and bars full of tourists enjoying a cooling drink or sampling tapas as people bustle past, fending off hawkers. However, in November 1936, it looked rather different, becoming the scene for one of the most famous photographs of the civil war. The banner hung across it by defiant Madrileños proclaimed that ‘Madrid will be the tomb of fascism!’ ¡No Pasarán! they declared, ‘They Shall Not Pass!’
The banner spoke true, of course, for Madrid was never conquered militarily, only being occupied following the Republic’s collapse, which brought the war to its sorry conclusion. From Franco’s first assault on the Spanish capital in November 1936 to the end of the civil war in March 1939, the Madrileños, supported by volunteers from around the world, held out. The fascists did not pass.
p.s. Despite having visited the Madrid battle sites before, I found David Matthieson’s book, Frontline Madrid, invaluable. It gives precise locations of places of interest, along with detailed, comprehensible directions on how to find them. Recommended.