For this year's Len Crome event, I discussed the difficulties involved in establishing the precise background and origins of the volunteers for Spain from Britain & Ireland and how the various national groups in the International Brigades got along while fighting in Spain.
The talk will be on the IBMT's Youtube channel and a precis appears in issue 45 of the IBMT magazine (2/2017).
On 12 June 2020 during Britain's Coronavirus lockdown, I was asked to contribute to Talk Radio's 'Home-Schooling' segment.
In the Sky News studio talking about the former International Brigader, Geoffrey Servante, who died on 22 April 2019, aged 99. He was almost certainly the last surviving British veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
Pictured here with the two speakers at the IBMT's 2019 Len Crome conference in Oxford: to my right, the researcher and author Daniel Gray, to my left historian and The Guardian's football correspondent, Sid Lowe. There are more images on the IBMT's Flickr account.
Full report in the May 2019 issue of ¡No Pasarán!
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.
On 31 May 2018 I joined the biographer and filmmaker, Jane Rogoyska, for a presentation at L.S.E.'s Cañada Blanch Centre, chaired by Professor Paul Preston. We were outlining our thoughts on the image that had recently appeared on social media: did it really show the celebrated photojournalist, Gerda Taro, on her death bed?
I was very happy to take part in a short six minute film produced by the Gill Parker Consultancy. The film was commissioned by the L.S.E. to showcase the expertise of LSE academics; in this instance Professor of Contemporary Spanish History, Paul Preston. In addition to myself, the film included interviews with former Basque child, Herminio Martínez; Professor of Spanish History, Helen Graham; and Spanish writer and journalist, Lala Isla.
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
In March 2006 Spanish police raided a number of homes and offices belonging to Jesus Gil, the mayor of Marbella and to Juan Antonio Roca, head of town planning. The police seized cash amounting to some 2.4 billion euros, much of it casually stuffed into bin-liners, plus staggering quantities of valuables: ‘boxes of jewellery, several luxury cars, 245 valuable paintings including one by Miró hanging in a bathroom, a helicopter, a pavilion full of hunting trophies in the form of stuffed elephants, zebras, giraffes and leopards and a stable of more than a hundred thoroughbred horses.’ On this occasion the culprits went to jail, but it is just one of many examples of the astounding levels of corruption to have dogged Spain for centuries, laid out starkly in Paul Preston’s new history of the country, A People Betrayed.
Preston is, of course, the world’s foremost authority on contemporary Spanish history and this study – running to 565 pages with a further 134 of references – draws on some fifty years of research. Fortunately, his elegant and engaging narrative style make it eminently readable, enjoyable even, despite the subject matter. While the book follows a traditional chronological structure, it concentrates on a number of themes; as the author explains, ‘it is the central thesis of this book that the violence, corruption and incompetence of the political class have betrayed the population.’ Spain is hardly unique in this, of course, and Preston is quick to discount the popular caricatures and stereotypes of Spain and its people, the so called ‘black legend’. Nevertheless, it is striking how brazen the venality and sleaze appear to be. As Preston argues, public service in Spain has always been a route to private profit for some, and it should perhaps come as no surprise, therefore, that many people view it as an unsurprising, normal part of politics.
A People Betrayed begins in 1874, with the demise of Spain’s first republic and the foundations of the nineteenth century electoral stitch-up known as the turno pacifico, when ‘politics became an exclusive minuet danced by a small privileged majority.’ Subsequent chapters discuss Spain’s loss of empire in 1898, the ’tragic week’ of 1909 and the country’s missed opportunities during the first world war. All are typically thorough, though it the chapters on Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship from 1923 to 1930 which many will find particularly interesting. Preston recounts how, ushered in on the spirit of ‘regenerationism’ that pledged to make Spain great again, Primo’s regime instead sank to outrageous levels of incompetence and corruption. Monopolies were given to friends and cronies in banking, petroleum, telecommunications, even rodent eradication. Meanwhile four million pesetas were ‘donated’ by the populace to pay for the dictator’s family home.
As the descriptions of the dictator’s outrageous corruption and excesses are laid out, it gradually dawns that perhaps twentieth century Spain is not the only issue on the author’s mind. History often tells us as much about the present as the past, as the arguments currently raging over statues and memorialisation amply demonstrate. The author’s descriptions of Primo de Rivera’s boastful, thin-skinned demeanour and his pathetic yarns of macho womanising are strongly reminiscent of a more recent vainglorious blowhard. This parallel is made explicit when Preston notes how the dictator’s tendency to put out triumphalist announcements resonates in Trumps’ midnight twitter tirades. Perhaps Primo’s swift fall from power – with the country in chaos, blaming those around him for his personal and political failings – will find another contemporary echo.
IBMT readers will no doubt be on familiar ground when the author turns to the second Spanish republic, the military coup and civil war. However, there is plenty of new material here and, as ever, it’s elegantly done, explaining clearly how the fledgling democratic government faced myriad problems and bitter foes, all at a time of global economic meltdown. Returning to the theme of corruption, Preston reveals how the unscrupulous Mallorcan multi-millionaire Juan March, ‘the sultan of Spain’, utterly perverted the 1933 elections. The ensuing government was so notoriously corrupt that a roulette-fixing scandal directly involving the P.M. Alejandro Lerroux provided the Spanish language with a new term for the black market: el estraperlo.
As the author states, it’s obvious that the Republican army was militarily outclassed during the civil war; hardly surprising, given the colossal assistance provided by Mussolini and Hitler. However, Preston reiterates the view of many brigaders (and many others) that the British and French policy of non-intervention played a significant part in the Republicans’ defeat. As Preston argues, ‘More than the losses on the battlefield, the greatest defeat was Munich.’
While corruption, blunders and war profiteering were hardly unknown within the Republican camp, Preston remains sympathetic to the government’s plight, particularly to the efforts of ‘the brilliant’ Juan Negrín (whatever can it be that the author finds to admire in the larger-than-life, liberal, gourmet, university professor?). However, it will come as a surprise to no one that within Franco’s zone, hatred, incompetence and profit ruled. As Franco himself admitted in 1942: ‘our crusade is the only struggle in which the rich who took part in the war emerged richer.’ Once again Juan March’s money played its part, funding not just Captain Bebb’s infamous Dragon Rapide, but as much as ten per cent of the cost of the Nacionales’ war effort. Naturally, March was amply rewarded during Franco’s ‘kleptocratic state’ which followed. This state sanctioned corruption was, Preston argues, utterly deliberate. Franco ‘turned a blind eye to venality’, because it gave him leverage and kept people loyal. Meanwhile the dictator, who clearly drew no distinction between himself and the country, built up a huge personal fortune, including property, cash, and multiple investments. His family all gorged from the same trough and the avarice of his wife, Doña Carmen, was legendary; Preston recounts how Madrid jewellers shut up shop in panic when they saw her coming.
Unfortunately, there is no happy ending to this tale. Preston maintains that, despite the return to democracy in 1977, ‘Forty years of brainwashing guaranteed that Francoist attitudes would survive for decades.’ Incompetence and scandal also persisted: ‘Spain was bedevilled by a level of corruption that involved virtually every institution in the country.’ To this day, political and financial scandals feature regularly in the Spanish media, embroiling politicians of all colours and even the royal family. Sadly the author doesn’t seem optimistic that this will end any time soon; he titles the final chapter, ‘the triumph of corruption and incompetence.’
The observant among you will notice that the book’s cover bears an image taken by the acclaimed Hungarian photographer, Andre Friedmann, better known as Robert Capa. It shows a long line of defeated Spanish Republican soldiers being marched off, not to freedom, nor even safety, but to be incarcerated in grim internment – dare I say concentration – camps in the south of France. Surrounded by barbed wire on three sides and the sea on the other, lacking basic food and shelter, thousands of the Spanish refugees perished. A People Betrayed indeed.
This review first appeared in ¡No Pasaran! 3-2020, pp. 18-19.
It’s widely known that within the American Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades that served in the Spanish Civil War there were a number of African Americans. Most famously the Texan military veteran and Communist, Oliver Law, became the first Black American to command white troops in battle; when he was tragically killed at Brunete in July 1937, he had risen to the rank of commander of the American volunteers. What is much less known is that there was a black British volunteer serving in the British Battalion. His name was Charlie Hutchison [his name usually appears, erroneously, as Hutchinson].
It’s perhaps not surprising that little known about Charlie for, apart from a small file held within the Comintern archives in Moscow, few details of his time in Spain remain and, sadly, no photographs. While it would be a stretch to discuss wider issues of race and prejudice within the International Brigades based on the record of one volunteer, his experiences do tell us much about the difficulties many Britons encountered when they wanted to go home. As one Scottish member of the battalion later explained, ‘while you could volunteer in, you couldn’t volunteer out.’Interview with John Tunnah, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive no. 840, reel 1.
We know that Charles William R. Hutchinson was born in Witney, Oxfordshire, on 10 May 1918. His mother, whose maiden name was Harper, was presumably not in a position to raise him, for Hutchison tells of growing grew up in the National Children’s Home and Orphanage in London. In the spring of 1936, Hutchinson, who had just turned 18 years of age, was living in Fulham and working as a lorry driver. He was also Branch Chair of the local Young Communist League and it seems clear, from remarks he made later, that he had become personally involved in the battle against Mosley’s Blackshirts. In the late summer of 1936 this led him, like nearly 2500 from Britain and Ireland, to volunteer to go to Spain and personally take the fight to Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. As he explained: ‘’I am half black. I grew up in the National Children’s Home and Orphanage. Fascism meant hunger and war.’ Charles Hutchison cited in M.J. Hynes, ‘The British Battalion of the XVth International Brigade’, unpublished B.A. dissertation, University of Manchester, 1985, p. 40. For Charlie, as for the numerous Jewish volunteers, fascism was a real and personal threat, beyond any theoretical abstraction.
He left Britain in either late November or early December 1936 and was recorded by Special Branch as having ‘left for Spain to serve as machine gunner with Govt. Forces’. National Archives KV 5/112, p. 7. At this time the British Battalion had not yet been formed, so once in Spain he joined the British and Irish dominated Number One Company of the Marseillaise Battalion of the 14th International Brigade.He served in a section of Number One Company commanded by Joseph Kavanagh, a long-time member of the Communist Party from London. RGASPI 545/6/150, p. 92. He was with the unit when it was sent to contain a Rebel breakthrough at Lopera, on the Cordóba front in southern Spain. There, outnumbered and at the mercy of the Rebels’ overwhelming air dominance, the British and Irish company was cut to pieces. Charlie Hutchison was wounded and a great number of his comrades – including Charles Darwin’s great-grandson, John Cornford – were killed.
Having recuperated from his wounds, Charlie was informed that he was going to be sent home due to his age, but he refused to leave. Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty, p. 73. So, rather than being sent to join his compatriots in the British Battalion then fighting on the Jarama front, he was transferred away from the line, assigned to be an ambulance driver with the 5th Republican Army Corps. However, while Charlie seemingly wanted to remain in Spain, his mother (from whom it seems he was no longer estranged) was of a different mind and she wrote in April 1937, citing his young age and pleading that he be sent home. This seem to have rather changed Charles’ feelings about leaving, partly because he was becoming worried about his step-father, who had been hospitalised with serious gastric problems.
Over the next few months, Charlie made a number of appeals to his superiors, garnering much support, but little success. The following June, he wrote a worried note explaining that he hadn’t received a letter from his parents for ten months, leading him to assume that they must be facing dire circumstances. Yet, rather than asking to be permanently repatriated, Hutchinson asked only that he might be granted a temporary leave of absence to deal with his family problems. ‘I have been in Spain since Nov 25th 1936’, he pleaded, ‘When I came to Spain I was 18½ yrs and not on one occasion have I use[d] my age for an excuse.’ Furthermore, Charlie was himself now suffering from health problems, so was becoming increasingly desperate.RGASPI 545/6/150, pp. 93-4.
Assessments by his superiors make it manifestly clear that the lack of progress was not as a result of any failure on Hutchinson’s part. Jim Ruskin, a Captain in Brigade Transmissions, recounted that both Hutchison’s political views and his work were ‘Good [and] for his age quite developed.’ ibid Likewise, Charlie’s senior officer in the Motorised Company of the 15th Army Corps, Harry Evans, described Hutchinson as ‘a hard and capable worker’. RGASPI, 545/6/150, p. 90.
Finally, in August 1938, an order was given that Hutchison should be repatriated due to his young age and exemplary period of service. On the 27th of that month the Italian Communist, Luigi Longo, one of the most senior and powerful commanders of the International Brigades (known in Spain as ‘Gallo’), wrote to a Comrade Fusimaña, the Commissar of the XV Army Corps, on Hutchinson’s behalf:
Te ruego intervengas para que este Camarada obtenga un permiso de acuerdo con las ultimas disposiciones del Excmo. Senor Presidente del Consejo Ministros, Dr. NEGRIN.RGASPI 545/6/150, p. 83.
[I ask you to intervene so that this Comrade obtains a permit in accordance with the last dispositions of the Hon. Mr. President of the Ministers Council, Dr. Negrín.]
Despite this, nothing seems to have happened, for on 2 September 1938, Charlie sent another personal appeal, complaining that ‘I was 18 when I came to Spain and I feel it is just to[o] bad if the I.B. can release a kid of 20 y[ea]rs after nearly two years of good service.’ RGASPI 545/6/150, p. 95.
His appeal was answered personally by Alonso ‘Lon’ Elliot, a former Cambridge University languages student, who worked under Luigi Longo in the Political Commissars’ headquarters in Madrid and in the Foreign Cadres Commission of the Spanish Communist Party in Barcelona. Elliott assured Charlie that he was taking a personal interest in his case and apologised that it still hadn’t been resolved. ‘For my part’, he wrote, ‘I will see that comrade Gallo is reminded of your case, and can assure you that everything that can be done from the Barcelona end will be done to help you. Best of luck, yours fraternally, AME.’ However, somewhat unhelpfully, he suggested that Charlie should raise the matter once again with his immediate superiors.Alonzo Elliott to Charles Hutchison, 10 September 1938. RGASPI 545/6/150, p. 85.
After all these efforts on Hutchinson’s behalf, one might assume that he would have been repatriated with the other British volunteers, following their withdrawal from the front in September. However, when the survivors of the British Battalion crossed the border into France on 6 December 1938, the unfortunate Hutchinson was not among them. Only on 19 December, nearly two weeks later, was he finally released from service and repatriated.On 15 December 1938, Hutchison was at Ripoll, in northern Spain, still awaiting repatriation. RGASPI 545/6/150, p. 78.
That a request to repatriate one British volunteer should thwart the efforts of several senior figures in the International Brigades rather flies in the face of the view that the Brigades were a highly-disciplined, strictly-hierarchical organisation, where commanders, such as Longo, held absolute power and could act with impunity. While that could certainly be the case on occasion, it is important to recognise the corrosive effect the war had on the Republicans’ political and military efficacy. As Paddy O’Daire, one of several Irish commanders of the British Battalion accurately observed, ‘all war’s a muddle.’ Interview with Harry Fraser, Manchester History Archive, tape 241, reel 1, side 2.
As yet, little evidence can be found of Hutchison’s later life. We do know that Charlie was one of a number of veterans to take part in Clive Branson’s ‘International Brigade Convoy’, a nationwide tour of 20 British veterans which raised over £5000 for the Spanish Republic (equivalent to over £300 000 today). MML SC/IBA/5/3/3 We also know that he was one of the first of the Spanish veterans to volunteer for service in the British Army in the Second World War. He served for a time in Iran, before being transferred to France in 1944, just after D-Day. Volunteer for Liberty, Vol. 6, No. 3, July 1945, p. 7. And in early 1947, a Charles W. Hutchinson was married to a Patricia L. Holloway and the same individual reappears in the electoral register of 1958, living at 11 Argyll Mansions, Fulham, London. Records suggest that he later moved to Bournemouth, where he died in March 1993, aged 74. Many thanks to John Halstead for the details gleaned from census and registry files.
Charlie Hutchison occupies a unique position as the only mixed-race volunteer among the British volunteers in Spain, so it would be fitting if more details could be found about his life. However, there is one small detail that remains to tell: in 1985, while helping M.J. Hynes with his research for an undergraduate dissertation, Charlie Hutchinson (along with 65 other British International Brigaders) completed a questionnaire on his experiences as a volunteer in Spain. Whether the questionnaires themselves survived is unknown, but one snippet remains, allowing Charlie to have the last word on why he believed so many people from around the world joined him in choosing to risk their lives on behalf of the Spanish Republic:
The Brigaders came out of the working class; they came out of the battle of Cable Street, they came out of the struggles on the side turnings … they weren’t Communist, they weren’t Socialists, but they were anti-fascist. Charles Hutchison, cited in Hynes, pp. 25-6.
When General Franco died in November 1975, he was convinced that his regime would continue after him, that ‘everything is tied down and well tied down’ (todo está atado y bien atado). Yet within three years, Spain had – surprisingly peacefully – been transformed into a democracy. This transition, however, demanded a huge sacrifice from the victims of Francoism, asking them to set aside their grievances and sign up to el pacto del olvido, the pact of forgetting. Fearful of sliding back into dictatorship, Spaniards kept the pact, though two generations later the consensus has essentially broken down. Grandchildren of the victims, far removed from the years of civil war and dictatorship, are proving to be less restrained than their parents and are demanding answers. For them, difficult and painful memories, like the thousands of unmarked graves by Spanish roadsides, are something to be unearthed, not forgotten.
Unsurprisingly, efforts to establish the truth behind the murder and persecution of thousands of victims has encountered considerable resistance from certain quarters in Spain. Consequently, battles over very different historical interpretations, the so-called ‘memory wars’, are currently being heatedly fought out within Spanish culture and society. It is onto this battlefield that Sebastiaan Faber, co-editor of ALBA’s excellent magazine, The Volunteer, and author of Anglo-American Hispanists of the Spanish Civil War has bravely ventured.
Laid out in five main sections, Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War is an attempt to find answers to three key questions: How have fiction and photography shaped memory? How has democratic Spain dealt with the legacy of the civil war, the dictatorship and the transition and, finally, how have media producers and academics engaged with the process of ensuring that Spain progresses as a unified functioning democracy?
Sebastiaan begins an erudite, wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion with a re-examination of the work and impact of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour (Chim), and the great Catalan photographer Agustí Centells. He amply demonstrates how the meaning of an image changed dramatically during the war, depending on its use and its context within a photographic montage. However, the author is no doubt correct when he argues that fascinating though they are, the images are unlikely to actually change historians’ view of the civil war.
The second section of the book tackles the central theme of historical memory and the conflicting narratives that exist in Spain, the argument between the value of recovering historical memory and the dangers of reopening of old wounds. As the author states, witnesses to the past, including historians, can also be witnesses in a trial of Francoism. Books such as Paul Preston’s Spanish Holocaust certainly provide ample evidence for the prosecution.
Alongside Helen Graham, Angel Viñas, Gabriel Jackson, and Pablo Sánchez León, Paul Preston appears in the third section, an examination of how current historians are interpreting, or ‘reframing’ the past. As you’d expect from this stellar collection of voices, there’s much of interest here. Angel Viñas is in typically bombastic form and I enjoyed Helen Graham’s optimistic assertion that history ‘is the ultimate antidote to any kind of over-simplification.’ While all historians choose the stories they want to write about, that doesn’t necessarily prevent them from doing so fairly and – relatively – objectively.
After a discussion of the contribution of three Spanish intellectuals, the book’s final section examines the role of fiction. It concludes with a look at some of the work of Javier Cercas, who has been widely translated into English. Cercas offers good advice, noting that ‘the first thing to do when reading a novel is to distrust the narrator.’ The same could be said of history itself, of course, where the eminent E.H. Carr famously advised students to ‘study the historian before you begin to study the facts.’
This book should prove to be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of (the history of) Spain and provides ample evidence that artists and writers are not neutral bystanders in these contemporary ‘memory wars’. It also asks intelligent questions of historians and academics: What is their role in all of this? Should they just comment from afar? Or should they positively engage? Sebastiaan Faber’s involvement with the Contratiempo collective and the open-access Universidad del Barrio in Madrid show his views clearly enough and will, I suspect, chime with many members of the IBMT. As the author states, ‘fields like history and politics are not just too important to leave to the experts; they are fields that should be of interest to everyone because they are everyone’s concern.’
This review first appeared in ¡No Pasarán! 2:2018, pp. 19-20.
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 event was a Radio 3 Proms extra, presented by Clemency Burton-Hill and produced by Karen Holden.
LINE-UP OF EXTRACTS
You Who Stand at Your Doors – Randolph Swingler (CE)
George Orwell – On what the International Brigades were fighting for (CE)
Why Go to Spain? – Explanation by London volunteer, Jason Gurney (CE)
Dance of Death – W.H. Auden (CE)
The Volunteer – Cecil Day-Lewis (CE)
Excited to arrive in Spain – Nottingham volunteer Walter Gregory (CE)
General Emilio Mola – On the Rebels’ deliberate use of terror (CE)
No Pasarán – Speech by Dolores Ibárruri (YV)
Poem (Heart of the heartless world) – John Cornford to Margot Heinemann (JB)
Farewell to the International Brigades – Passage from Dolores Ibárruri’s famous speech in October 1938 (YV)
George Orwell – On the horror of war (CE)
In addition to being a historian, I am the Chair of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, a charity which keeps alive the memory and spirit of the men and women who volunteered to fight fascism – and those who supported them – during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.
The trust, made up of family members, friends, supporters and historians, organises events around the country, including the forthcoming national commemoration on 1 July in Jubilee Gardens on London’s South Bank. We provide assistance to those researching the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War and promote the preservation of archives. Through our magazine, our eNewsletter, website and social media feeds, we keep our members and the wider public informed about developments concerning the memory and legacy of the International Brigades.
And, of course, we ensure that the more than 100 memorials to the volunteers located around the British Isles are maintained in good order. Where we can, we help new ones to be erected, such as this wonderful new monument. But all of this takes time and, more importantly, money. Please support us. If you are not yet a member, join. If you are a member, give generously. It really is money well spent.
For members of the Trust, the enduring significance of the International Brigades’ fight is not open to doubt. The recent, tragic events in Manchester and London are just the latest examples of the intolerance, bigotry and hatred – which we all know as fascism – that the International Brigades were determined to confront. The words of General Emilio Mola, the organiser of the Spanish military coup, could just as easily have come from those attacking democracy and pluralism today: ‘It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do.’
It was this kind of murderous ideology that spurred the 35 000 men and women from more than 52 countries from around the world to leave their homes, families and friends and volunteer to join the fight in Spain. The International Brigades fought in all the major battles in the civil war, from the last-ditch defence of Madrid in the autumn and winter of 1936-37, to the final, desperate Republican offensive across the River Ebro, in July 1938. Of 2500 to leave from the British Isles, more than 500 of them never returned.
The shattered remnants of the Brigades were withdrawn from the front in September 1938 and the following month in Barcelona, a huge farewell parade was held in their honour, famous for the speech by La Pasionaria, in which she invited the departing volunteers to return to Spain, ‘when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves, entwined with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory’. It would be a long wait.
The tragedy of the Spanish Civil War is that despite the volunteers’ sacrifice, they – and the Republican Army in which they fought – were unable to defeat Franco and his German and Italian allies in Spain. Just as the volunteers had feared and prophesised, this led the way to six years of world war and the death of 60 million people.
It also led to more than thirty years of dictatorship in Spain. Only with the death of Franco in November 1975 could a democratic Spain emerge, which did not forget the gratitude conveyed by La Pasionaria so many years earlier. Efforts to express this by awarding Spanish nationality to the veterans of the International Brigades took some time to materialise, but in 2009, at a poignant ceremony in London, seven surviving British and Irish veterans were presented with Spanish passports. Anyone fortunate enough to be present that day will never forget the sight of the 94 year old Sam Lesser delivering an emotional thank you speech in fluent Castilian. The Spanish Ambassador to Britain, Carles Casajuana, responded graciously, assuring the handful of elderly survivors that:
Your efforts were not in vain. Your ideals are part of the foundations of our democracy in Spain today.
The volunteers were, to some extent, a paradoxical group of men and women: both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. They were right to feel pride and we are right to feel pride in them. I would like to leave you today with the words of the popular London volunteer, Fred Thomas, who expressed his feelings with characteristic eloquence:
There were no medals to be won in Spain. But I believe that no man, not even that band of brothers who fought upon St. Crispin’s Day, nor that later Few of 1940, justly honoured though they may be, was ever prouder of his part than we who were of the International Brigade.
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 |
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.
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.
This lecture was originally given as part of the Charlie Donnelly memorial weekend in Madrid in 2010. It outlines the role of the (so-called) British Battalion in the three days of desperate and bloody fighting that occurred between the 12th and 14th February 1937.
Established just after Christmas 1936, the 16th ‘British’ Battalion was formed mainly from volunteers from Britain and Ireland, though it also included those from a number of other countries, including Cyprus, South Africa, and Australia. The majority of its numbers had arrived in the large influx during December 1936, but during January it also incorporated those that had already been in Spain fighting with the various militia units, with the International Brigades in Madrid and, most recently, as part of the mainly English-speaking company of the French 14th International Brigade at Lopera near Cordoba in the south and at Las Rozas to the west of the Spanish capital.
By the beginning of January 1937, the English-speaking group at the battalion’s training base at Madrigueras – just to the north of Albacete – numbered around 450. However, the battalion suffered a major setback in mid-January, when a number of the Irish volunteers, already unhappy with British officers’ tendency not to make any distinction between British and Irish volunteers, discovered that two senior British figures in Spain had played a part in British covert activities in Ireland.[1] Following a stormy meeting, the Irish group decided to leave the British Battalion and instead joined the American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion who were training at nearby Villanueva de la Jara. Despite this setback, an influx of new arrivals brought the number in the battalion up to approximately five to six hundred by mid-February and the battalion was considered to be of sufficient strength and readiness for front-line action. Alongside the Yugoslav Dimitrovs, the Franco-Belge and the American Lincolns (who were still training), they comprised the 15 International Brigade, which was commanded by an unpopular Hungarian, under the name of Gal.[2] The 15th Brigade political commissar was the Yugoslavian Vladimir Copic, who would later replace Gal as Brigade commander.[3]
At this stage, the British Battalion was commanded by a Scottish journalist, Wilf McCartney, who had previously served 10 years in Parkhurst prison for spying for Russia.[4] He was assisted by Tom Wintringham, an influential British Communist and The Party’s specialist in military matters. The battalion political commissar, working alongside McCartney, was Dave Springhall, who had studied at the Lenin School in Moscow, the finishing school for the Party’s elite.[5]
The battalion itself was divided up into four companies, one machine-gun company, plus three of infantry. All but one of its commanders from company level upwards had some level of military experience. The only company commander without was Bill Briskey, a political activist from London, who had already shown himself to be a talented and innovative company commander.[6] Thus, the battalion appeared to be in a fairly healthy state.
However, the wounding of the battalion commander Wilf Macartney in a freak accident – he was his replaced by Wintringham – plus the loss to illness of the experienced company commander, Jock Cunningham, caused some upheaval. Furthermore, the questionable quality of the training was causing real concern to many of the volunteers with military experience. So too, understandably, was the lack of any decent weaponry. As Jason Gurney, a sculptor from London later described:
Something over fifty of them had been in action on the Cordoba Front, and the remainder had received some sort of training in Madrigueras but had still not fired a shot from any of their weapons. Only one Company Commander had been in action, and that, only as the second in command of a platoon. We possessed an assortment of automatic weapons of doubtful value as well as the Russian rifles. The Commander of the Battalion was well intentioned but totally inexperienced. The other three battalions which formed the Brigade were not very much better off. Whether Gal and his staff knew any more than the rest of us, I cannot tell. But it is quite certain that the Brigade was not the well?armed, well?trained force that various people have pretended it to have been. There was no lack of courage or firm intent amongst the rank and file[,] but events were to prove that this was not enough.[7]
The battle began on the morning of 6 February 1937. Following the failure of the attempts on the west of Madrid in November and December 1936, Franco had prepared a new offensive to the south of the capital, aiming to cut the vital road that linked Madrid with Valencia, the seat of the Republican Government.[8]. Initially intended to be part of a combined operation with Italian troops to the east of the city, Franco decided to push ahead with the Jarama action despite the Italians having being delayed by heavy rain.
Colonel Varela, Franco’s field commander, had five brigades of six battalions at his disposal, plus eleven reserve battalions, totalling some 25 000 men – mostly elite Moroccan regulares and legionnaires – backed up by German armour.[9] The Republicans had a similar number of men available, who had been mustered for an impending Republican offensive in the same sector, which had also been delayed by the weather.
The Rebel offensive pressed forward quickly and by the evening of the 6th the Republicans had been pushed back to the Jarama River, and Rebel troops were within shelling distance of the Madrid-Valencia road. Over the next three days, Nationalists continued to force themselves forwards, despite the Republican commander, General Miaja, throwing the elite Spanish Lister, El Campesino and 11th International Brigades into the defence.
By 7 February, Rebel forces had reached the junction of Manzanares & Jarama rivers, and the following day they captured the bridge across the Manzanares just south of Vaciamadrid and threatened to reach the Madrid to Valencia Road. At the same time, despite desperate defensive efforts by the Republicans forces to the south, Nationalist troops managed to cross the Jarama and prepared themselves for an assault on the Pingarrón Heights, the imposing ridge in front of them. The 15th International Brigade was now thrown in to the defence. The 600 odd British in the battalion left their base at Madrigueras and were taken by train to the International Brigade base at Albacete, and then by lorry to Chinchón, about 25 km from Madrid and 15 km south-east of the site of the rebel advance.
Early in the morning of the 12th the British were transferred from Chinchón to the junction of the Morata to St. Martín de la Vega and Chinchón to Madrid roads, where they arrived at 5.30 a.m.[10] They were then ordered to move forward towards the Jarama River, which lay beyond the next ridge. Moving in single file, the volunteers in the battalion climbed upwards to a plateau overlooking the Jarama River, near a farmhouse where they quickly established a cookhouse.[11]
The battalion’s new commander, Tom Wintringham, was informed that a Spanish cavalry unit would be protecting their left flank and that half the Dimitrov battalion would be protecting their right. At this point, according to Wintringham, a Russian Engineers’ Officer, who was attempting to install a telephone link to 15th Brigade headquarters, ordered the battalion to advance beyond what later became known as Suicide Hill and attack the advancing Rebel forces, despite Wintringham’s opposition.[12]
The battalion therefore continued its advance, but with no maps and no knowledge of the position of the Nationalist forces they had no clear idea of when they would meet the enemy. They moved forward over the ridge then, after crossing a narrow sunken road, began to descend into the valley of the Jarama River, which lay in front of them. At this point, the volunteers began to come under fire from the Nationalist forces, which the Republican command did not realise had already crossed the Jarama river. For Albert Charlesworth, a metal-polisher from Oldham, it seemed at first to be a beautiful sunny day. It was a dream from which he would shortly be very rudely awakened:
I thought it was a glorious day actually. It was a nice day, beautiful day. There was the sun… it got really warm and the birds seemed to be singing very nicely to me. We weren’t being fired on although firing seemed to be taking place- I thought so anyway. But it wasn’t until eleven o’clock in the morning that I realised that the birds that were singing were bullets whistling past and there was a fierce battle going on.[13]
When they realised that the Rebels had already crossed the river, the battalion very rapidly pulled back to the top of the ridge and took up defensive positions: No. 3 Company to the left, No. 4 Company to the right, the Machine-Gun Company just behind them and Number 1 Company in reserve, much to the disgust of its commander, the ex-IRA man Kit Conway[14]. They then prepared to engage with the advancing Nationalist forces.[15]
The battalion was then subjected to a three hour artillery and machine-gun barrage, before being attacked by ‘at least three battalions’ of experienced Moroccan infantry. For many of the British volunteers, this was their first experience of action, and they faced the battle-hardened, elite regulars of Franco’s Army of Africa. The Moroccan troops were highly skilled soldiers, in their element when advancing across the open terrain of the Jarama Valley.[16] Jason Gurney described the absolute horror that the rapid advance of the North African troops had on the poorly trained volunteers, and he effectively summarised the inequality between the two opposing factions:
Nobody at Madrigueras had said anything about artillery fire or the genius of Moorish infantry to move across country without presenting a target for anyone but a highly-trained marksman- a category that included no one in our outfit…[The Moors] were professionals, backed by a mass of artillery and heavy machine-gun fire supplied by the German Condor legion. It was a formidable opposition to be faced by a collection of city-bred young men with no experience of war, no idea how to find cover on an open hillside, and no competence as marksmen.[17]
Their position worsened considerably when the members of the Machine-Gun Company discovered that their Maxim machine-guns had been given cartridge belts filled with the wrong ammunition.[18] Deprived of their machine-guns, Harold Fry’s No. 2 company was forced to resort to firing their rifles desperately at the enemy soldiers advancing rapidly towards them.
Both No. 3 and No. 4 Companies quickly began to sustain casualties due to the artillery barrage and machine-gun fire. No. 3 Company lost their commander, Bill Briskey, and his replacement, Ken Stalker, within a short time of each other. Meanwhile, No 4 Coy’s terrified commander was making little preparation to defend the company against the imminent assault.[19]
Wintringham had initially ordered No. 1 Company to hold in reserve, but due to the threat it was hastily moved up to a small bare hill to the right of the companies on the ridge. Under the ferocious Nationalist attack, the Franco-Belge Battalion further to the north of the British was forced to pull back, which brought the British companies and the battalion headquarters under lethal enfilading machine-gun fire which swept across them from their right. The British tried desperately to hold their ground, but were cut to pieces.
Kit Conway’s Company, mostly seasoned veterans, but reinforced by new recruits – many of whom had only a few days training – were forced to retreat back on to the ridge on the top of Suicide Hill. When Moroccan troops appeared on the knoll to the right, Conway withdrew his men back further still, but was hit and mortally wounded in the process.[20] With no form of communication with the company commanders apart from runners – perhaps the most dangerous job of all in the battalion- Tom Wintringham later described the confusion surrounding him at the time:
I did not know that casualties were mounting steadily and quickly; that Kit Conway, when I lost sight of him, was not lying down to seek cover, but was dying; that the section commanders in his company were either dead or wounded; that the thin grass and weeds on the crest of the hill was being slowly mown down, as if a gigantic scythe was passing and repassing, by bullets from the machine-rifles of the Moors and machine-guns of the Germans. I did not know that the wounded I could see were only a small proportion of those limping or lifted to the rear…I did not know that one of my company commanders was on the edge of panic and would come running back to find me.[21]
By the afternoon, the desperate position of the battalion and its mounting casualties left them with little option but to attempt an orderly retreat from Suicide Hill back to the battalion headquarters on the plateau, dragging their wounded comrades with them. But, as one volunteer remembered, ‘There weren’t many to go back.[22] As the dispirited British pulled back, Moroccan soldiers rushed forward over the top of Suicide Hill in order to occupy the positions relinquished by the retreating British.
At this point, the battalion experienced their first moment of good fortune. After a desperately frustrating day spent without ammunition for their machine-guns, the correct calibre bullets had at last appeared. Quickly, the machine-guns were brought into operation and used with devastating effect on the Moroccan soldiers who, for once, were caught out in the open and totally unawares. The Moroccan troops either dropped down out of sight and waited for the cover of darkness or, where they could, retreated out of range. This brought to an end the first day of the battle of Jarama.
Like other Republican units, the British Battalion had endured seven hours of extremely heavy losses: ‘Out of the 400 men in the rifle companies, only 125 were left. Altogether less than half the battalion remained’.[23] The remnants gathered at the headquarters on the sunken road, or the cookhouse next to the farm, desperate for food and water. After dark, Jason Gurney was asked by Tom Wintringham to reconnoitre the sunken road which ran across the plateau, near its forward edge. Here he made a horrifying discovery; about 50 injured men were lying on stretchers, where they had been left and forgotten in the chaotic and desperate times during the day. By the time he discovered them it was too late; most were dying or already dead.[24]
During the night a number of stragglers were discovered at the cookhouse by George Aitken, who had replaced Dave Springhall as battalion political commissar. Aitken attempted to cajole them back to the line but, as he freely admits, some volunteers were pressed back to the front under the threat of his gun.[25] Another group of men were found hiding in wine vaults in a farmhouse behind the lines. They were also marched back to the front. Coerced or not, the volunteers would be desperately needed on the frontline over the next two days.
The following day was to be no less terrifying for the shocked and traumatized survivors of the battalion. Morning began quietly, though the volunteers could hear a battle erupting to their right and see a huge amount of enemy activity in the valley below. Wintringham prepared his depleted forces as best he could. Harold Fry’s Machine-Gun Company were kept in a forward position, overlooking the valley and river below them. No. 4 Company, under Bert Overton, were placed to the right and No. 1 Company, now under André Diamant, were facing the open left flank. Early in the morning, Dave Springhall, now the assistant political commissar of the 15th International Brigade, brought orders from headquarters that the battalion was to attack the enemy forces directly front of them, in order to take pressure of the Thaelmanns and Dimitrovs to their right. Springhall assured Wintringham that the attack would be supported by aircraft, tanks and the elite Spanish Lister Brigade.
However, no tanks appeared and the air support turned out to be 3 little planes who quickly dropped their bombs and disappeared. This made little or no impression on the Rebel forces, who were well dug in, and had set up effective machine-gun positions. In addition, the nationalists launched another artillery barrage on the British Battalion’s positions. Faced with a suicidal 600 yard advance into enemy machine-guns, Wintringham ignored the order to go forward. The order was later repeated, and again Wintringham ignored it. This was a brave decision, for he must have been fully aware that it could have seen him executed for dereliction of duty.
When dawn broke, the members of Harold Fry’s No. 2 machine-gun company were able to see a number of rebel soldiers who had moved up in the night between the ridge and Suicide Hill and quickly drove them back with concentrated machine-gun fire.[26] But as the day progressed, the Franco-Belge and Dimitrov Battalions on the right were gradually pushed back and the Battalion found itself once again surrounded on three sides. By late afternoon Wintringham was aware that an assault on Fry’s position was imminent, as small groups of Moroccan troops could be seen working their way forward to Fry’s right, where Bert Overton’s No. 4 Company was situated. At this point the nervous Overton finally panicked, and withdrew his company right back to the sunken road, as he had been begging the Scottish political commissar George Aitken to allow him to do all day.[27] This left the Machine-Gun Company’s flank totally unprotected and rebel forces quickly took advantage of the situation and surrounded them. As many as 30 members of the Company, including its commander Harold Fry, and his assistant, Ted Dickenson, were captured. [28]
When Bert Overton realized what he had done, he tried to make amends by leading a charge of 40 men in a desperate attempt to retake the trenches recently occupied by Fry’s Machine-Gun Company. The Nationalists soldiers simply mowed them down with the machine-guns they just captured. Only six of the 40 men made it back to the British positions. In the mêlée Tom Wintringham sustained a leg wound, and George Aitken took temporary control of the battalion. By nightfall only 160 still remained in the line.[29] With Wintringham injured, Fry captured, and Overton in tatters, the British Battalion was in an unenviable position. So the return from his sickbed of the experienced and widely respected Jock Cunningham, came not a moment too soon.
The third day of the battle, on the 14 February, brought a new assault on the British Battalion’s lines by a fresh Nationalist brigade, supported by tanks. Under severe crossfire and without any specialised equipment to combat the tanks, Jock Cunningham had little choice but to withdraw the battalion away from the sunken road. One of battalion (‘OR’) later described their desperate retreat:
About 1 p.m. I heard the tanks on our left…At that moment, a tank shell burst a few yards away. Across to the left a big tank, bigger than any of ours, loomed up. Behind it swarmed Moors. Their main fire was on the Spanish Company on our left. Simultaneously, the din on the right became terrific. Nothing could live in the face of such fire…In those days we had no anti-tank guns, no grenades, no anti-tank material. The left flank broke, and the rout spread to the whole line. The slaughter was terrible. One would see five men running abreast, and four of them suddenly crumple up… Here and there, little groups rallied to stem the Fascist advance. Five or six times, a little bunch of Number 1 Company under André Diamint held up the Moors. Finally, they too, had to give up the unequal fight.[30]
The Irish leader, Frank Ryan, wrote:
Dispirited by heavy casualties, by defeat, by lack of food, worn out by three days of gruelling fighting, our men appeared to have reached the end of their resistance.
Some were still straggling down the slopes from what had been, up to an hour ago, the front line. And now, there was no line, nothing between the Madrid road and the Fascists but disorganised groups of weary, war-wrecked men. After three days of terrific struggle, the superior numbers, the superior armaments of the Fascists had routed them. All, as they came back, had similar stories to tell: of comrades dead, of conditions that were more than flesh and blood could stand, of weariness they found hard to resist.[31]
With the British machine-guns crushed underneath the tanks, the desperately weakened British line finally broke and the volunteers retreated in small groups back down the slope towards the Chinchón road.
But here they were stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Gal, the commander of the 15 International Brigade. He explained to them that they were the only troops between the rebels and the Valencia Road.[32] Despite their physical and mental exhaustion, 140 volunteers marched back with Jock Cunningham and Frank Ryan to try to recapture their lost positions. Under no illusions about the situation they were walking into, the volunteers marched, singing the Internationale to bolster their spirits, and picking up stragglers on the way.[33]
Sounding suspiciously like a Comintern propaganda creation, the story of what became known as ‘the great rally’ is nevertheless corroborated by many witnesses. and has become an powerful image of the British Battalion’s involvement in Spain.[34] There is no doubt that, as Hugh Thomas admitted, ‘It was a brave performance’.[35] The volunteers’ courage, and the deception that enabled them to fool the rebel forces into thinking they were faced by more than a handful of men, held the line at a critical moment for the Republic. It was a lucky break for the battalion, as Tom Wintringham described:
There were no Republican forces to the south of the British Battalion to their left. However, this weakness was disguised by the stubborn defence of Suicide Hill. This is the justification, the achievement, of the defence of Suicide Hill. We held our own half-mile or more; we masked the utter weakness, emptiness, of the three miles south of us.[36]… A battalion that does not know how to be defeated deserves an occasional stroke of luck…The biggest and best organized drive that Franco had so far made had been stopped – within a few miles of its starting place. Arganda Bridge was ours. The Madrid-Valencia Road was ours. Madrid lived.[37]
The Nationalist forces, fooled into believing that fresh reinforcements had been brought up to the front, retreated back to their earlier positions. During the night of 14 to 15 February, Spanish units were brought up, and the gap in the line was finally plugged. Both sides dug defensive fortifications and a stalemate ensued, which neither side was able to overcome. The positions remained virtually static for the rest of the war.
However, it was not the end of the carnage, with men continuing to be killed, either by snipers, or in futile attempts to break the deadlock. One of the most costly came shortly after the arrival on the front of the American Lincoln Battalion, and who played a central role in the attack.
Almost two weeks after the end of the three day battle, on 27 February, Colonel Gal launched an attack on the strongly held front between San Martín and Pingarrón. Facing well-directed Nationalist machine-gun fire, many volunteers refused to advance and those who did were shot to pieces. This was the Americans’ first action and they suffered terribly, losing 120 killed and 175 wounded. Among the dead was the Irish poet Charlie Donnelly. Manchester volunteer Charles Morgan was also involved in the disastrous attack:
We were all in trenches, we were told on the morning that there would be air cover, there would be a bombardment. There was neither. We were just rushed over the top to face crossfire and machine-guns. It was a slaughter. We didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance! I saw lads, my comrades that I’d learnt to love, die and some of these boys never fired a bloody shot.[38]
As Jud Colman, a comrade of Morgan from the Manchester Young Communist League, explained, ‘Most of the attacks were almost suicidal, because there’s no way you can send men against machine-guns without losing some. It was just physically impossible’.[39]
Long portrayed by many supporters of the Brigades as a triumph, the battle in fact merely stemmed the fascist advance. It also provided a brutal wake-up call for those who believed that the rightness of their cause would ensure the Republic’s victory. As the French writer, author and philosopher Albert Camus later wrote:
It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward.
Yet, despite this, the international Brigades fought on. The Spanish Republic fought on. Indeed, the following month, the Republican army would score a stunning victory at Guadalajara, bringing hope that eventually right could triumph over might. Sadly, the next major action of the British Battalion in Spain, the battle of Brunete in the full heat of the Spanish summer, would suggest otherwise.
[1] Nathan had served, probably as an auxiliary, with the Black and Tans in Ireland in the 1920s and strong rumours linked him to involvement in a hit squad that murdered two prominent members of Sinn Fein; George Clancy, the former Lord Mayor of Limerick and George O’Callaghan, the ex-mayor in May 1921. See Richard Bennett, ‘Portrait of a Killer’, New Statesman, 24 March 1961 pp.471-472. According to Joe Monks, one of the Irish volunteers, Nathan admitted to having worked for British intelligence in Limerick. Interview with Joe Monks, IWMSA 11303/4/1. (However, as Kieron Punch points out, Irish hatred of Nathan has probably been exaggerated. During his time in Spain, Nathan gained the reputation as a brave, efficient and talented officer which, for most volunteers, probably more than compensated for his murky past. Kieron Punch, ‘Did Irish recoil from a ‘Black and Tan’ in the International Brigades?’ ALBA. On-line posting. http://forums.nyu.edu. 6 December, 2002). McCartney was also rumoured to have served in the Black and Tans in Ireland. Richard Bennett in The Black and Tans, London: Edward Hulton, 1959, p.147 states that the Black and Tan auxiliaries, ‘used the Long Bar at the Trocadero as their headquarters, where they were advised by their ringleader, who later achieved a certain notoriety as a Soviet agent, to threaten to ‘blow the gaff’ about conditions in Ireland’. This may be a reference to McCartney.
[2] Gal’s real name was actually Janos Galicz. He was a naturalised Russian, born in Austro-Hungary. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, pp.590-591 and Richardson, p.72.
[3] Walter Gregory states of ?opi? that, ‘As an intelligent man with a good appreciation of the tactics and strategy of warfare, ?opi? was ideally suited to take command of the brigade. His expertise, coupled with his popularity, assured him of our respect and admiration. Indeed, I cannot remember ?opi? being the subject of criticism.’ Gregory, p.58.
[4] Alexander, p.65.
[5] As John Halstead and Barry McGoughlin state, ‘Of the 11 battalion political commissars in the 57th, British Battalion of the 15th Brigade, nine, if not all, had been sent to the ILS [International Lenin School in Moscow] or had worked in the Comintern bureaucracy in Moscow. They were, in chronological order: Douglas Springhall, George Aitken, Bert Williams, George Coyle, Jack Roberts, Ernest Torrance, James Bourne, Eric Whalley, Harry Dobson, Walter Tapsell and Bob Cooney.’ John Halstead and Barry McLoughlin, ‘British and Irish Students at the International Lenin School, Moscow, 1926-37’, Conference Paper, Manchester, April 2001, p.3. Ralph Fox, the intellectual founder of the Left Review, with Tom Wintringham and Daily Worker journalist who was killed at Lopera in December 1936 and other senior party figures, such as the brigade commissar Peter Kerrigan, had also studied at Moscow.
[6] Wintringham, p.??
[7] Gurney, Crusade in Spain, p.85.
[8] The Republican Government had ‘divisively and controversially’ moved itself to Valencia on the 6 November 1936 when it looked at though the capital city might well fall to the rebels. Preston, Concise History, p.117.
[9] Beevor, The Battle for Spain, p.209.
[10] Interview with Patrick Curry, IWMSA 799/3/1 and Alexander, p.94.
[11] Gregory, p.44.
[12] Wintringham, English Captain, p.65.
[13] Ibid.
[14] No.1 Company was made up of a combination of those who had fought at Las Rozas, and new untrained volunteers who arrived shortly before the battle. According to Jud Colman who had fought with No. 1 Company at Lopera and Las Rozas, No 1 Company were mainly kept together and became the brigade guard charged with guarding the headquarters, and didn’t fight as much at Jarama as many other groups. ‘I was very relieved. I’m not that sort of a hero. I’d be a fool if I was.’ Interview with Julius Colman, IWMSA 14575/3/2.
[15] Tom Wintringham’s description of the engagement contains a useful sketch map of the positions during the morning of 12 February 1937. See Wintringham, p.62.
[16] As battle-hardened crack soldiers, the Moroccan soldiers were used as shock troops by the rebels, just as the International Brigades were for the Republicans. Many other volunteers refer to the terror of coming up against the Moors. See for example, interview with David Anderson, in MacDougall, p.94.
[17] Gurney, p.104 and p.108.
[18] The problem was a symptom of the Republican Army’s forced dependence on antiquated military supplies. The belts were the correct type for Maxim machine-guns, and the bullets were also for Maxims, but for guns of a more modern design than the German Maxims the British were equipped with. Wintringham, p.69.
[19] Gurney, p.107.
[20] Account by Frank Ryan from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.62.
[21] Wintringham, English Captain, pp.76-7.
[22] As Charlesworth retreated he also joined the long list of casualties when he was blown into the air by an artillery shell. After a spell in hospital he rejoined the battalion and became its postman. Interview with Albert Charlesworth, IWMSA 798/4/1.
[23] Alexander, p.97. Rust estimates that, including officers and members of the Machine-Gun Company, a total of 275 British were still in action by the end of the first day. Rust, p.46.
[24] Gurney, pp.113-114.
[25] Interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1. One disgruntled volunteer later wrote his memoirs anonymously and referred significantly to this event in an attempt to discredit the battalion. Anon, In Spain with the International Brigade: A personal narrative, London: Burns Oates and Washborne, 1938, p. 24.
[26] Rust, p.47.
[27] See written reports from members of the machine-gun company captured that day; Harold Fry, Bert Levy Donald Renton, Charles West and Basil Abrahams undated, NMLH Manchester, CP/IND/POLL/2/5-6. They are bitterly hostile and critical of Overton, describing how he withdrew his company after two shells had fallen to their right and claimed Overton had stated, ‘God Damn it! It is too bloody hot here; I am getting out of it.’ See also interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1. Aitken claims that it was later rumoured that Overton threw a Mills bomb into the company’s ammunition dump to justify the retreat.
Clearly Overton panicked at Jarama, but some responsibility must also lie with his commanders, for Overton’s weakness had been recognised before the battle. Tom Wintringham him described as ‘a fool, a romantic, a bluffer who wanted to be courageous but had lived too easily, too softly’ and went on to admit that, ‘Macartney, myself, Springhall- we had already to some extent seen through O. at Madrigueras.’ Wintringham, pp.109-110.
[28] There are discrepancies between differing accounts over the numbers captured at Jarama on 13 February 1937. Bill Alexander states that there were 30 captured (p.183), whereas James Maley- who was himself captured that day- states that the number was 28. Interview with James Waley, IWMSA 11947/3/2. My research support’s Alexander’s findings. Carl Geiser lists 27 of the 30 in his study of the American prisoners-of-war Prisoners of the Good Fight, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill, 1986, pp.270-271 note 7. The three he missed were a volunteer named Struthers or Stuhldeer, John Bruce from Alexandria and S. J. Giles from Liverpool. In addition, two volunteers, Jack Flynn and Fred Jones, were captured at the end of February.
[29] This total includes the remaining few remaining members of the Machine-Gun Company.
[30] Account by ‘O.R.’ from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.57.
[31] Account by Frank Ryan from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.58.
[32] Unknown to many of the British at the time, there were also no troops to their left, where a Spanish cavalry regiment was supposed to be. This made their desperate defence extremely critical for the Republic. ‘There were no troops to the south of the English…all our reserves were up to the north…It would have been impossible to stop a Fascist attack south of us. There was our weak spot.’ Gurney, pp.113-114. Fortunately for the British Battalion, and for the Spanish Republic, the rebel forces, ‘did not find this weak spot until February 14th or 15th, when it was no longer very weak’. As Tom Wintringham argues, ‘That is the justification, the achievement, of the defence of Suicide Hill. We held our own half-mile or more; we masked the utter weakness, emptiness, of the three miles south of us.’ Wintringham, p.82.
[33] Here too, George Aitken describes using his pistol to encourage a small number of reluctant volunteers back to the front. Interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1.
[34] An account by Frank Graham appears in his book on Jarama. It states: ‘The events which followed were some of the most glorious in British working-class history. As these men began to climb the hill again, they broke spontaneously into the Internationale. These soldiers who had previously left the front line and gone some distance stopped in surprise, and those who were sitting on the sides of the slope, jumped up to look at this strange band of men, bearded, dirty, ragged, covered with blood, who after three days’ hard fighting were proudly marching along. They broke into applause and they too began to sing. The whole mountainside echoed with their song, the song of struggle. More and more men began to join the marching column. It was a real regrouping!’ Frank Graham, p.24. Similar accounts of ‘The Great Rally’ appear in Rust, pp.51-54 and Ryan, pp.58-61.
[35] Thomas, Spanish Civil War, p.592. Robert Stradling agrees: ‘Although the British Battalion was neither significantly outnumbered nor outgunned by the forces actually facing it, its achievement was nonetheless an epic one. The assertion may ultimately be incapable of proof, but this writer is confident that its conduct- especially on 12 February- represents the greatest single contribution to the victory of Jarama, and thus to the survival of Madrid.’ Stradling, Irish and the Spanish Civil War, p. 166.
[36] Wintringham, English Captain, p.82.
[37] Wintringham, English Captain, p.117. As Wintringham notes, more significant than good fortune were the vigorous attacks of the Dimitrov battalion to the north of the British, who eventually pushed the Rebels back to the river valley gorge.
[38] Interview with Charles Morgan, IWMSA 10362/2/1.
[39] Interview with Jud Colman, IWMSA 14575/3/3.
