Review of Serge Alternês & Alec Wainman’s Live Souls
When the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936, many saw the conflict not as a remote war in a far-away country, but as the latest battlefield in an ongoing struggle between fascism and democracy. As the western powers sat on their hands, thousands became consumed with a burning need to act, to do something, in support of the beleaguered Spanish Republic. Famously, some 35 000 of them went as far as volunteering to fight in the International Brigades. Others, however, turned their efforts towards trying to help alleviate the suffering of those caught in the turmoil, either by collecting money for medical supplies or, in the case of more than 200 men and women from Britain and Ireland, by going to Spain to join the Republican medical services. One of these was a young Quaker from Northallerton in Yorkshire, called Alec Wainman. Lacking medical knowledge, but able to speak both Russian and Italian, Wainman volunteered to drive an ambulance in Spain, bluffing the recruiters that he was a qualified driver, fluent in Spanish…
