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The Real Band of Brothers: First-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War
Max Arthur
Personal stories from the men and women who volunteered to fight for a cause they passionately believed in.The Spanish Civil War, which raged from 1936-9, was a brutal and intense war which claimed well over 500,000 lives. Rightly predicting that the rise of Fascism in Spain could develop into a more global conflict, almost 2500 British volunteers travelled to Spain under the banner of the International Brigade to fight for the Spanish Republic in an attempt to stem the tide.Acclaimed oral historian Max Arthur has tracked down the last eight survivors of this conflict, and interviewed them for their unique perspective, their memories of their time fighting and the motives which compelled them to fight.Theirs is a unique story, of men and women volunteering to lay down their lives for a cause, believing passionately that the Spanish Republic's fight was their fight too.From Union leader to nurse, Egyptologist to IRA activist, these survivors have incredible, compelling and sometimes harrowing tales to tell of their experiences, revealing their ideologies, pride, regrets, and feelings about the legacy of the actions they took."For most young people there was a feeling of frustration, but some were determined to do anything that seemed possible, even if it meant death, to try to stop the spread of Fascism. It was real, and it had to be stopped."Jack Jones - who fought at the Battle of the Ebro, now aged 96
THE REAL BAND
OF BROTHERS
First-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War
MAX ARTHUR
This book is dedicated to the 2,500 British and Irish
volunteers who fought alongside the Spanish people in
their heroic struggle against Fascism from 1936 to 1939.
And, in particular, to the 526 who lost their lives.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page (#u70903c5f-c1e0-52c7-9ec3-62f78b7a999a)
Dedication (#u54361c2c-a5e5-58c3-bf33-5b19d7768788)
Map (#u7d75e41a-0874-5e54-ab3f-301117edc668)
PREFACE (#u2f98e225-ced1-5a62-97ae-19fbf0373fe7)
LOU KENTON (#uc59eb252-d3c4-5f8d-9f38-c06638d8dad0)
PENNY FEIWEL (#uc81f7284-c4af-50ea-a699-6afdc8724602)
JACK JONES (#litres_trial_promo)
JACK EDWARDS (#litres_trial_promo)
BOB DOYLE (#litres_trial_promo)
SAM LESSER (#litres_trial_promo)
LES GIBSON (#litres_trial_promo)
PADDY COCHRANE (#litres_trial_promo)
TIMELINE OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR (#litres_trial_promo)
LA PASIONARIAS SPEECH (#litres_trial_promo)
INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PREFACE (#ulink_aa73d3aa-d380-5a31-8bd5-a4ce34644e57)
The Real Band of Brothers stems from a chance meeting with the actor Alison Steadman in 2003 at the launch of my book Forgotten Voices of the Great War, where she read the moving words of Kitty Eckersley, whose husband had died on the Western Front. I met Alison again five years later and she introduced me to her friend, Marlene Sidaway, also an actor. Marlene lived for many years with David Marshall, one of the earliest British volunteers in the International Brigades, and was also the Secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. In this role, she told me, she was in close touch with the last British survivors of the Brigade—and, from that meeting, the book began to take shape.
To many people in the UK today, the Spanish Civil War remains something of a grey area—a conflict in which British troops were not engaged, and one that was eclipsed in the public perception by the Second World War. But the Spanish Civil War was a vicious and prolonged battle, the repercussions of which still reverberate through that country today. Many towns were destroyed and their populations massacred; the lives of half a million men, women and children were lost. Furthermore, while the British Government did not support the democratically elected Republican regime in Spain, individuals from the UK and other nations across Europe, incensed by the injustice of the Spanish struggle, volunteered their services to fight for democracy.
In July 1936, the army generals including General Franco led a savage military coup to depose Spain’s elected government—a left-wing coalition of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the Republican left, the Communists and various regional nationalist groups. This Fascist aggression was not isolated in Spain; in the early 1930s, extreme right-wing movements were also growing under Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany and, to the alarm of left-wing parties there, under Oswald Mosley in Britain.
Supported by his Blackshirts, Mosley tried to impose his authoritarian philosophies on the working-class population of London’s East End, and his political meetings often ended in violence. Eventually, in a well-orchestrated show of strength, groups of trade unionists, Communists and Jews joined forces to denounce Mosley’s racist ideology and prevent his jackbooted thugs from marching through their streets—it was a stand-off that became known as the infamous Battle of Cable Street.
Some of the men and women who had seen off Mosley on that fateful day later volunteered to fight in Spain in what became known as the International Brigades. Much to the fury of these volunteers, the British Government of the day had adopted a policy of non-intervention. Not only would there be no British military support for the Spanish against Franco’s forces, there would be no official medical or material aid either. Although news from the Spanish war was sparse in any but the left-wing press, a growing number of people travelled to London to sign up with the Communist Party, and, in defiance of French laws against partisan military groups, made their way across the Channel, through France and over the Pyrenees to support the Spanish Republican army. Some were motivated by their political beliefs; others by their horror at the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Spain. The working people, already poor and living from hand to mouth, were facing starvation and disease, and many British doctors and nurses set out for Spain to offer their skills in order to alleviate the suffering their consciences could not ignore.
In the three-year conflict—which has been dubbed the first battle of the Second World War—many of those volunteers lost their lives. To all who freely offered their services, for whom the cause was indeed just and one they were prepared to die for, the war was a life-changing experience—and one that none would regret, despite the consequences.
As I started working on The Real Band of Brothers, just eight veterans of the International Brigades remained in Britain and, together with the award-winning documentary maker Matt Richards, I travelled across the country to interview and film these remarkable characters. The oldest, Lou Kenton, turned 100 in September 2008, and former nurse Penny Feiwel’s hundredth birthday is in April 2009. She is still full of vigour—and still cursing Franco for inflicting the terrible injuries on innocent children that she witnessed. Archaeology student Sam Lesser fought for two years to hold the City University of Madrid. Paddy Cochrane, who at seven had seen his father shot by the Black and Tans in Dublin, believed that he himself would suffer a violent death in Spain. Bob Doyle, who, after being held prisoner by the Fascists, returned years later to stamp and swear on Franco’s grave. Jack Jones would later become leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and fought fearlessly at the Ebro in the last battle of the war. Les Gibson, a founder of the Young Communist League in west London, fought through Jarama, Brunete and the Ebro, and survived life-threatening colitis to return to the action. Jack Edwards, at home a very active union member and political activist, returned from the war with his determination to fight Fascism undiminished; within months he joined the RAF to continue the battle against Hitler.
Over a number of weeks I had the great pleasure of interviewing these eight extraordinary survivors in their own homes. Matt Richards recorded their testimonies on film and tape, and has subsequently written a script based on the interviews, which was commissioned as a two-part documentary for the History Channel—The Brits Who Fought for Spain.
All these old ‘Brigaders’ had endured an extremely tough Edwardian childhood, but retained an extraordinary vitality and a clear perspective on how the war had changed their lives forever. I am in awe of their still-vibrant sense of anger and defiance. Now, as I write this preface, I have just learned with great sadness of the passing of Bob Doyle—he was an indomitable spirit to the last and I was privileged to have visited him again just days before his death.
Some had told their story before, but others were opening up after a lifetime in which they had avoided talking about the war. Their testimonies are in their own words but allowance must be made for the age and frailty of their memories. Wherever possible I have checked the historical details, but sometimes the facts are buried in time. Bob Doyle and Jack Jones kindly gave me permission to use additional extracts from their respective books, Brigadista and Union Man.
It is now 70 years since the end of the Spanish Civil War, in which over 500 of the 2,500 British volunteers for the International Brigades were killed. All the survivors, however, were united in the one belief—that they were fighting against the evil of Fascism, and that it was no less than their duty to do their bit. As more than one speculated, if other European governments had supported the Spanish Republic and quashed the Fascist threat in its infancy, the course of history might have been different, and perhaps there would even have been no Second World War.
Whatever their sense of the role of the Spanish Civil War in a historical context, all are personally bound by the values of comradeship and deep loyalty. They fought for a cause, asked for no payment, and saw many friends die. But every one agreed that they would do it all again.
These are their words—I have been but a catalyst.
Max Arthur
London
January 2009
LOU KENTON (#ulink_548e9458-e4f3-5497-a977-b8f83707add9)
Born 1 September 1908 in Stepney, east London
I was born in a block of flats—a tenement—in the East End, in Stepney, in Adler Street, which doesn’t exist any more. I had eight brothers altogether, but some died. I was the first one to be born in England (my family was originally from Ukraine). My father died of TB when I was fourteen—he was working in a sweatshop for a tailor. I missed my bar mitzvah because he’d just died.
I joined the Communist Party in 1929, because it was the only party that was fighting Fascism. I met my first wife, who came from Austria, and together we were both in the Communist Party, although she wasn’t very active—she was a masseuse and spent her lifetime working.
We all had a political dislike for the Fascists. Mosley was the leader of the Fascists in Britain and he was anti-Labour—and anti-Communist, of course—and we often had fights when they tried to break up our meetings—and we did the same to them. We hated Mosley and there were always battles going on in the East End. The headquarters of the Fascists were in Bethnal Green, and we, the Communist Party, were mostly in Stepney.
At that time London was a much-divided place—in the east there were lots of trade unions, factories and the tailoring was mostly Communist. The first big encounter was when Mosley announced that he was going to march through the East End of London on 4 October 1936. His main slogan was ‘down with the Jews’. We had enough notice to run a campaign against the march. Until then Mosley had had setbacks, but was going from strength to strength. The point we tried to bring to public attention was that this was not just a provocation of the Jews: this march was an attack on the people of Britain as a whole. We tried to win the support of all sections of the population, which indeed we did. Not only the local trade council, but trade union branches from all over London and other parts of the country, supported the campaign to stop Mosley marching through east London. Of course, the Jewish population was on our side, although the official view of the Jewish Board of Deputies was ‘Don’t make trouble—just be quiet’. But we were able to get the majority of the Jewish population of east London on our side, as well as the dockers—they were the main big sections. Every grouping also had a job to do in the organisation of the whole of what has now become known as the Battle of Cable Street. My job was to organise my own Party branch of Holborn, which included the print workers, to occupy the ground around Aldgate Station. Mosley was going to march from the Minories (around Tower Hill), where he had assembled with the help of the police, through Aldgate, along Whitechapel Road, into Bethnal Green, where he had a certain amount of support. I had two jobs, firstly for my branch to be the first line of defence in Aldgate. What we were supposed to do I don’t know—there were only about thirty or forty of us and we didn’t know how big the crowd would be. We imagined that we would hold the Mosley crowd for even a few minutes, while the rest of the crowd would rally. In the event, the crowd was great: it stretched right along the Whitechapel Road, Commercial Road, Gardiner’s Corner, right up towards Aldgate Station itself. The crowd was so thick that you couldn’t move. There were a number of trams in the area and they were stuck in the middle of the crowd. You can imagine the sight—something like half a million people with these trams stuck all over the place. Of course, the word got to Mosley, and to the police, that they couldn’t possibly go through Aldgate.
They tried to redirect the march the other way, down Leman Street from the Minories into Cable Street, making a detour of Whitechapel Road. I had a motorbike at the time and was able to whizz around the periphery of the crowd, going from section to section to warn them what was going on. We had a number of people watching the Fascists and quickly telling the crowd what was happening. We were able to get word to the majority of the crowd in Commercial Road, which was some way from Cable Street, of what was happening. The dockers themselves were manning Cable Street and had thrown up barricades. As soon as the word got around that Mosley was on the way towards Cable Street, within minutes thousands of people were there. Although hundreds of police and the Mosley crowd tried to break through, they were stopped. Mosley then had to go back to the Minories and finally the police chief said there was no possibility of them going through the East End. They turned round and went the other way, towards the City, to the Embankment, and dispersed. That was really the great Battle of Cable Street: a major historic event and the first real defeat of Mosley.
Can you imagine the celebration throughout the East End that day? People were dancing in the streets, hugging each other. They had defeated Mosley—defeated Fascism. And although people had not yet fully realised what Fascism was, they could see what the Fascists’ intentions were.
I was married to Lilian at the time and we were living in Holborn and we were both very active. I was in Holborn at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the branch, being more or less in the centre of London, helped to steward the big meetings taking place in Conway Hall, Farringdon Hall and Kingsway Hall. Appeals were made for money, food and support—they were very enthusiastic meetings.
I remember clearly, when the revolt started, how immediately the whole of the left-wing movement rallied in support of Spain. The majority of the people, however, didn’t take much interest and a good many were influenced by the press of the time, which condemned it as a Bolshevik, anti-Christian revolution. On our side we got to know early on about the real issues in Spain. The formation of the International Brigades gave it a personal interest, as people we knew began to make their way there. Very quickly we began to know the background to the Spanish struggle and the campaign in support of the Spanish Government grew in strength. Soon after the start of the civil war, Mussolini and Hitler sent Italian and German armies and air force over to help Franco. The Spanish Government, the legitimate government of the day, tried to buy arms. Britain and France were able to win the support of the League of Nations on a policy of so-called ‘non-intervention’. The reality of non-intervention meant that the Spanish Government was unable to buy arms, while the Fascists were free to buy what they wanted. The Spaniards were only able to get arms from Russia in a limited quantity, and from Mexico. Right through the war the army of the Spanish Government was far worse equipped than the Fascist side.
In Britain the movement grew in a number of ways. An organisation called British Medical Aid had been set up to raise money for ambulances. Very soon they opened first one and then another hospital in Spain. British doctors and nurses went to service these and other front-line hospitals. There was a great campaign to raise money and whole lorryloads of food were sent. There were also the youth food ships for Spain, which brought regular supplies. The British navy blockaded the coast and tried to stop the food ships, but several got through the blockade. Then, very soon, the refugees from the Basque country came over—we had several hundred Basque children in Britain who were looked after mostly in and around London. I think hardly a week went by without demonstrations and meetings taking place. Gradually the movement grew and became a very powerful crusade.
While this was happening individuals were going to Spain, isolated from each other, and joining one of the Republican units when they got there. Then the call went out throughout the whole world for volunteers to form the International Brigades.
One evening myself and Lilian and my dear friend Ben Glazer walked along the Embankment. We walked—stopped at many coffee stalls—talking, wondering what it would be like in Spain. We didn’t finally decide until we reached a coffee stall at Westminster Bridge, opposite the House of Commons. I think we had already decided to go, but didn’t say so in as many words. I think we were deeply fearful in our hearts, but none of us wanted to show our fears. What would it be like? Would we ever come back? What if we were captured? And when we decided—how we embraced! Lilian kissed us both. We linked arms and walked almost cheerfully down Whitehall to the all-night Lyons Corner House just off Trafalgar Square for more coffee and eggs and bacon. From there we decided that tomorrow morning we would go and volunteer.
Lilian and Ben both went off the next day. It was the last time I was to see Ben.
I was accepted, but the Party asked me to hold fire for three or four weeks while I cleared up the work that I was involved in as secretary. When I got to work next day I handed in my notice, and the Father of Chapel in charge of the print said, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just walk out, jobs are very precious.’ But I said, ‘I’m going to Spain.’ In those days an apprenticeship was so important—if you got a job you’d got it for life.
While Lilian went with the British Medical Aid Committee, Ben and the others had to make their own way to Paris, then through the Pyrenees. If you went through the British Medical Aid you could get your passport and the visa for Spain—but you also had to sign a document at the Foreign Office saying that if you were in trouble you wouldn’t call on the British Ambassador. That was fine. Lilian and I sold our home and gave our stuff away. I went to live in a room with Phil Piratin in east London, pending the time when I was ready to go. When I went along, blow me, they had changed the arrangements and they no longer, at least at that particular time, accepted anybody without military experience.
What to do? I went to the British Medical Aid and they said, ‘Yes, we will have you, if you can drive a lorry and service it.’ Again, what to do? So I went along to a garage in Walworth Road, offered my services free if I could be taught how to change wheels, change tyres, drive a lorry, etc. I went every evening after work and worked there for seven or eight hours. After about three or four weeks I felt competent enough to drive a lorry, went back to the Medical Aid and said I was ready to go on my motorbike but could also drive an ambulance or a lorry. I went off three or four days later.
My mother knew that Lilian had gone and kept asking, ‘Are you going?’ and ‘Must you go?’ and all the things a mother would say. I was anxious not to upset her, and, in the clumsy way most young people deal with these matters, I said that, if she was going to cry every time I came round before leaving, I wouldn’t come again—just go off. An awful thing to say!
I asked a friend to be present when I said goodbye. There was I, all packed, equipped with a new pair of leather leggings, leather gloves, leather jacket—which I had never had before. I kissed my mother goodbye, turned around the top of the road and waved. Later I was told she didn’t cry until I had gone, and then she broke down.
Came the day when I was going, word got round. I belonged to a club, the YCL (Young Communist League), and some dockers all came to the top of the street, Adler Street, between Whitechapel and Commercial Road, to see me off. There must have been several hundred, because I was still one of the first. I got on my bike, waved to them and started off. You won’t believe this: I didn’t have a map. I had no idea which way to go. All I knew was to get to the Elephant and Castle and head for Dover. I had my passport, visa and signed documents from the Foreign Office and knew I had to make my way to Barcelona. I can’t remember how I ever got there. I vaguely remember going right across France, making my way to the south.
I used to sleep by the roadside every night—I didn’t have money for lodgings. I had to get to Perpignan [to enter Spain] and how on earth I got there I don’t know. I had just a little money the crowd in London had collected for me so I could eat on the road. When I got to Perpignan I thought, ‘at last, Spain’. I looked and I couldn’t see any signs but I saw a crowd of workers having a cup of tea in a café. I went up to them and asked which was the way to Spain. They couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Spanish, so I said, ‘Me, Spain, “Boom Boom!”.’ So when they stopped laughing they gathered round me, gave me a meal, and showed me the road to España, the first time I’d ever seen the sign for España.
My first real recollection of Spain was arriving at a great castle at Figueres—an enormous place—and outside the gates were two men on sentry duty. I stopped and asked them where to go. They spoke a little English and opened the gate. I rode in through this gate and the square of the castle was like a fort—as big as Trafalgar Square—hundreds if not thousands of men sitting around talking. I later learnt that was the first staging post for the people who had climbed the Pyrenees. I was the first one who had arrived on a motorbike. I think it was an American who first said to me, ‘If you want to keep that bike, never leave it, even to go to the bog—because there are so many people who would like to have your bike.’
There were literally hundreds who had found their way to the castle at Figueres. They’d walked over the mountains and they had their feet seen to and were given food. Each group from the different countries gathered together. There was a group from Britain and I went and joined them, and they were very keen to see a bloke with a motorbike. Several asked me if they could travel with me on the bike, but I said no—I was going to pick my wife up.
I went to Barcelona where the offices of the Brigade were. Remembering what the American had said, I saw a policeman and tried to explain to him—though of course he didn’t speak a word of English. I somehow managed to persuade him to look after my bike while I was in the office and he nodded. He straddled the bike and with his hand on his revolver he was going to shoot anybody who’d try and pinch it. I got my instructions to go to a little town called Benicasim. I slept in the office that night. The next morning I went by bike from Barcelona to the HQ in Valencia, where there was a convalescent home for the British Battalion. I didn’t know at the time, but, looking back later, I realise that I had arrived in Spain at the end of the Battle of Jarama in February 1937, which was the great turning point of the war. Until then the Fascists were advancing very rapidly; they were right in front of Madrid. If Madrid had fallen in those days, less than a year after the start of the war, it would have been the end. And the call went out, ‘Everything for Madrid—save Madrid’. The British Battalion had been building up and training as a unit. They hadn’t yet quite had their full training, but, because of the urgency of the situation, were thrown into the front line.
I wasn’t there, but I have heard stories of how they marched through Madrid. People in their thousands were ready to fight and build barricades in front of Madrid. Here, for the first time, an organised unit marched into action, and the emotion that it aroused among the people of Madrid can only be imagined.
Before I got to Valencia I found the place where wounded Brigaders were convalescing after the Battle of Jarama and that was where Lilian had been sent. It was wonderful to see her. We lost more than half of our battalion, killed and wounded, in that battle. It wasn’t just a convalescent home—it was also being used as a hospital. There were a number of wounded; several nurses had been in Jarama and they told me that it was very, very serious, very tense. One nurse from the north had had a nervous breakdown and said to me, ‘You mustn’t come out here, young man. You should go back home. We don’t stand a chance.’ Another nurse who had been with her tried to calm her and said to me, ‘It is tough, but you knew what you were coming to, anyway.’ Very soon, those who were well enough to travel went to a proper convalescent home which was run by British-speaking volunteers, at Benicasim. The others either went back to the front, or to one of the hospitals for further treatment. I was told to report to one of the British hospitals in a place called Valdeganga. We had two hospitals—one in Valdeganga and one in a place called Cuenca. I reported and I spent the rest of my time in Spain based in Valdeganga. I took Lilian with me on the bike.
Every day I was either on my motorcycle or driving an ambulance, picking up wounded from the base camps. Often I would go to different units of the battalion scattered around Spain with messages or parcels of medical equipment, where they were in short supply.
We knew the Fascists were killing and murdering all the trade unionists they could find, and I had an unhappy time out there for the first few months because I was on my own, going from hospital to hospital.
Everywhere I went, my memory of the warmth and friendship of the Spanish people is still very vivid. I didn’t speak any Spanish—well, very little. I could ask the way to a place, but I could never understand the answer. After a while I got into a habit that, if I came to a village, I would stop in the centre and people would look at me curiously from all around the square. After a while somebody would come and try and talk to me in Spanish, and I would explain that I was English, in the International Brigade. When they heard I was in the International Brigade, their hearts opened and I was taken in, often given food, though they had very little of it. There I first had a drink of anise—which nearly knocked my head off. This happened almost everywhere I went, in every village. From the hospital in Valdeganga I went to Madrid and several times to Barcelona, Valencia and Albacete, which was the base of the International Brigades. Generally, if I had to spend more than one night, I would stop and find the military controller of the area, and I was allowed to sleep there—but I never left my bike. I always made a point of bedding down beside the bike and resting my head on the wheel. They all thought it was very curious and very strange, but it was the only way I kept that bike. I lived on grapes growing by the roadside, for days on end.
I have one feeling of unease—whether I did the right thing or not I don’t know. On one occasion when I was at Albacete I met Wally Tapsall, who was the political commissar of the battalion, and Fred Copeman, who was a commander. When they saw me with the bike, they said, ‘Hey, we want you in the battalion—we could use you.’
I said, ‘OK—by all means. You just get in touch with the hospital.’
They said, ‘Oh no, it would take too long. You just come along and we will straighten it out later.’
I said I wasn’t prepared to do that, because I was attached to the hospital. I often wonder whether I did right. It is one of those things—you never know.
I remember when Harry Pollitt, who was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, came to speak to the battalion. He took a number of the wounded and members of the staff to hear him. It was a wonderful experience, because Harry was a well-known speaker. He had the art of speaking about what you felt in your own heart and on this occasion he spoke with such pride of the men who were there and pride in the fact that it was the Communist Party that inspired the formation of the Brigade.
I used to go to the village every day where the bakery woman had a young child of about ten or eleven, and she took to me. She would wait for my lorry to arrive, she would take me by the hand, lead me into the bakery and always insisted that I had something to eat or drink. Occasionally I would take her and her mother for a trip into the nearest town or to the hospital, and she loved it. Sometimes she would get all her friends to come for a trip on the lorry.
Occasionally in the hospital things were quiet, and then an ambulance would arrive with either wounded or people who had come from other hospitals for convalescence. Everybody would jump to action. The whole place was a hive of activity, getting their beds ready, looking after them, helping them to wash, finding new clothes for them, feeding them.
I don’t know how long I had been there before I had heard that Ben Glazer, my friend who went to Spain three or four weeks ahead of me, had been killed. Somehow I accepted it. Every time we heard of a friend or somebody in the Brigade who had been killed, somebody who we knew either by name or personally, there was never any—I won’t say sadness—but there wasn’t any great shock—almost as though we had always expected it. Looking back on my own feelings when I came to Spain, it was almost as though I was saying goodbye—almost as though I was expecting to be killed. After Jarama, and then later the Ebro [July-November 1938], when many of our people were killed, we almost began to accept it as inevitable. I don’t think we were callous—it was just part of life. We knew something of the murders and tortures, and the killings of the Republicans when the Franco forces overran a village or town, and we expected that to happen if the Fascists won.
When I had the lorry it was always a feature that, wherever you went, you would see somebody sitting on the roadside thumbing a lift. Of course we always did what we could, unless we happened to be in a hurry. The moment you stopped to pick up someone, within a matter of seconds ten or fifteen would appear with their goats, hens and chickens. This was a feature of any journey we made in an open lorry. On the ambulance, of course, it was different. Nobody ever tried to stop an ambulance, and with the motorbike it was altogether quite different because I was alone. I did have a pillion and there were occasions when I took passengers. On a long journey—I didn’t have a speedometer on the motorbike—to kill time I would either sing all the songs I knew, or try to count the telephone posts and guess how far I had gone, and work out the speed. I had a map then, but it wasn’t very clear.
It was always very exciting to go to Albacete, the base of the International Brigades. Brigaders were arriving from all over the world and in the canteen you would hear every language imaginable. Again, I was always in the position where, if I wanted to go to the canteen, I would never do so unless I got my bike looked after by one of the guards or policemen. I wasn’t a good mechanic but I knew how to service the bike. There was one occasion—the bike was a twin Douglas—when one of the gaskets blew and there were some flames coming from one part. I must have been twenty or thirty miles away from the nearest town and I drove along with one leg in the air so it didn’t get burnt. I managed to limp into this place, and of course they didn’t have a gasket head or whatever it was and we had to improvise. Improvising was a very important part of the whole transport problem. I knew little but managed to service the lorry, the ambulance and the bike, and we kept them on the road all the time I was there.
I had one accident on the bike going round a sharp bend. I came off. There was a fairly deep drop the other side and I went rolling down with the bike on top of me. I managed to clear the bike, but my arm was badly hurt. I didn’t know whether it was broken or not—I didn’t have any feeling in it. I must have stayed there for two or three hours before somebody came along to help me. In the event I was OK—they managed to get the bike onto a lorry and get me back to the hospital, and I think it was two or three weeks before I could use it fully, and was able to drive again.
There was one woman in the hospital named Winifred Bates, the wife of Ralph Bates, the famous author of The Olive Field, 1936, among others. She used to do some reporting, and occasionally I would take her to different parts of Spain, Barcelona particularly, where she had to link up with people she was working for. She wrote a pamphlet about the British Medical Unit. Things were quiet at the time, and they asked me if I would go back to England with the pamphlet to get it printed and also to take part in the campaign in Fleet Street for the sending of a further ambulance from Fleet Street.
What always struck me was that, when men came into the hospital wounded, I can’t ever remember anybody feeling despair or wishing they hadn’t come. There was a feeling of confidence. We never thought we would ever lose the war because there was such massive support among the people of Spain. We all did our best to keep in touch with whatever organisations we were from, and letters from Britain were very widely circulated. We also got copies of the Daily Worker.
The roads in Spain were full of holes and one night we took some wounded to the hospital. I remember the men lying there, very badly wounded, screaming that I was a Fascist and trying to kill them by going over the ruts in the road. On that particular occasion we didn’t have any nurse or staff to accompany the wounded. I had to do what I could myself—but there was very little I could do. Anyway, we got them back safely and they all not only survived, but, within a matter of months, and sometimes weeks, they were back in the line.
I wrote fairly regularly to the Party branch and to individual members. I remember once writing to NATSOPA [National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants] and saying that we had certain shortages, like chocolate, soap, toilet rolls and cigarettes. Cigarettes were the thing we wanted most. One day a great big tea chest arrived for me. It was customary when anybody received a parcel that everybody gathered around because, whatever it was, we shared it. We were all agog—what could be in this big tea chest? When I opened it up, it was toilet rolls and soap—but a week or two later we got parcels of cigarettes and chocolate. The food we had through the whole of the period was inadequate, but we expected that. We lived on beans, I think more than anything else. I didn’t mind—I have always liked beans. But they were usually cooked in garlic and olive oil and there were some from the British Battalion who just couldn’t stomach it. There was one bloke who went for days on bread only. There were others like him who couldn’t manage the food. Lots of them were very inadequately fed and you could see it in their faces at times, but it never depressed them—it didn’t affect our morale. As I said, we never thought we would ever lose the war.
I remember how some of the members of the Brigade, as soon as they were fit enough to walk and get about, were always eager to go back to the unit—to the battalion. I remember the feeling of pride among the staff in the hospital when patients were able to walk and be mobile. Lilian, who worked as a masseuse and nurse, was faced with the problem of trying to help the soldiers to walk again. She designed a gadget that had three sides to it: people could lean on it and it would help them to stagger along.
I remember how we coped with the cold. They say of the plain of Madrid that the wind is not strong enough to blow out a candle, yet strong enough to kill a man. Two or three times, when we went to Madrid or Albacete in the height of the winter period, it was so cold, unbelievably cold; I had never experienced anything like it. On one occasion we were on a lorry, going down a very steep hill. The wind was icy, and a whole number of lorries and ambulances had gone into a ditch. I had a spare driver with me, he drove in bottom gear and four of us tied a rope to the back of the lorry—walked down behind it, trying to keep the back of the lorry from sliding into the ditch, and we succeeded.
I remember the trip we had around Spain, trying to deliver the parcels which had been collected in England for Christmas of 1937, and the joy of people who were in isolated parts of the battlefront to get some goodies. Wherever we went, they were delighted to see us. The whole trip left a vague memory of various places, because, whenever we stopped, we had to see the mayor of the village or the town, and their kindness was always overwhelming. They were having a hard time themselves and yet they always tried to help us and feed us—although we avoided it as much as we could, knowing how short they were themselves.
It was September 1938 when I came back to raise funds for an ambulance—back to the East End. The Brigade had contacted the printers—they had an organisation, the Printers’ Anti-Fascist Movement, and raised money for an ambulance. To do that they went to all the Chapels—we even got some money from [press baron Lord] Beaverbrook. We had regular meetings with several wounded who had been returned.
We raised the money but by that time the war had changed and they wired us that they didn’t want an ambulance; they wanted a lorry, with as much medical equipment as we could get. So we gathered all the money we had and made another appeal to all the Chapels and got quite a lot more. Two other printers and I were going to take it over to Benicasim, to the headquarters of Medical Aid. But we were stuck at the border for a while, and that’s when we saw all these people flooding towards us. We arrived back at about the time the first refugees reached the Spanish border. They increased in numbers and, when they got to the French border, the French gendarmes made them lay down their arms, so they had great piles of arms—and they didn’t give them any help, any water or any food. They were near starving—there were hundreds and thousands of refugees with no food—so the reporters Bill Forrest and Tom Driberg telephoned London and reported about the way French authorities were treating refugees—which got front-page stories in the Daily Express and the News Chronicle.
They let them into France, but there were no facilities for them at all. The first wave were people who had been in hospital so we took them to nearby hospitals. We did two or three trips. We saw the wounded and children being carried. We saw photos used in the propaganda of women carrying babies that were already dead. We never saw that ourselves, but what we did see, and we stopped to photograph her, was a woman helping the Spanish women whose babies had died. By that time they were near starvation, and they’d been three or four days on the frontier without any food. The articles by Bill Forrest and Tom Driberg created quite a sensation. They reported that refugees needed food quickly, but the French sent the gendarmes to keep them down and wouldn’t allow any food to be brought in. We’d been given £50 each to live on while we were out there, and we went and bought loads of bread and chocolate—but they wouldn’t take any money. We started sharing out the chocolate—and we’d bought about five hundred loaves and we cut them in half and started giving them out. There was nearly a riot.
After the civil war there were all these Basque children who had been evacuated to the UK. I’d taken thirty to Hammersmith and the Committee arranged to put the children up in homes of the volunteers. After Barcelona and Madrid fell, the Fascists were cock-a-hoop—Franco got in touch with the United Nations demanding that the Basque children be returned. The Party said they’d send the first lot back and I was to take them. I took thirty of them back to the border, across the river. I was in charge with some Red Cross officials. I sent messages across the river to them about the children. They wanted to know when we’d be sending the children across. I took the decision that we weren’t going to unless we had a letter from each of their parents. All the children were talking and there was terrible sadness among them. These were the children who’d left when they were ten and eleven year olds and now were thirteen and fourteen and had come from peaceful England to a Fascist state. We absolutely refused to send them back unless we got a letter from their parents. They arrived back late in the day with the letters. Sometimes I cry when I think of it, the children hanging onto me, not wanting to go. It took all day. They all went back and we never saw any of them again.
When the last members of the battalion arrived at Victoria, there was such joy, the celebration, the tremendous enthusiasm of the crowd. Later on we went to a meeting somewhere in central London. It was after that that the depression set in for me, the realisation that we had lost the war—that Fascism had been victorious—and I thought of all the losses, the thousands of Brigaders and, of course, I thought of Spanish Republicans and what they were going through, the imprisonment, the torture and the killings.
