Chapter 1







In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I

saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table.



He was a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or six, with reddish-yellow hair

and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye.

He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast, gazing with a puzzled

frown at a map which one of the officers had open on the table. Something in his

face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw

away his life for a friend--the kind efface you would expect in an Anarchist,

though as likely as not he was a Communist. There were both candour and ferocity

in it; also the pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their

supposed superiors. Obviously he could not make head or tail of the map;

obviously he regarded map-reading as a stupendous intellectual feat. I hardly

know why, but I have seldom seen anyone--any man, I mean--to whom I have taken

such an immediate liking. While they were talking round the table some remark

brought it out that I was a foreigner. The Italian raised his head and said

quickly:



'Italiano?'



I answered in my bad Spanish: 'No, Ingles. Y tu?'



'Italiano.'



As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard.

Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was as though his spirit

and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and

tradition and meeting in utter intimacy. I hoped he liked me as well as I liked

him. But I also knew that to retain my first impression of him I must not see

him again; and needless to say I never did see him again. One was always making

contacts of that kind in Spain.



I mention this Italian militiaman because he has stuck vividly in my memory.

With his shabby uniform and fierce pathetic face he typifies for me the special

atmosphere of that time. He is bound up with all my memories of that period of

the war--the red flags in Barcelona, the gaunt trains full of shabby soldiers

creeping to the front, the grey war-stricken towns farther up the line, the

muddy, ice-cold trenches in the mountains.



This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and

yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events

have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or

1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper

articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time

and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The

Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was

still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it

probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was

ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was

something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been

in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building

of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with

the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the

hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost

every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were

being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an

inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been

collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers

looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial

forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or

even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said

'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first

experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a

lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and

all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and

black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in

clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs

of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of

people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing

revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the

crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town

in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small

number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.

Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some

variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in

it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I

recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I

believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'

State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or

voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers

of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as

proletarians for the time being.



Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The

town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the

streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air--raids, the shops were mostly

shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there

was a shortage of coal, sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of

bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long.

Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was

no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very

few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gipsies. Above

all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having

suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying

to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the

barbers' shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists)

solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were

coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes. To anyone

from the hard-boiled, sneering civilization of the English--speaking races there

was something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic

Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution. At that time revolutionary

ballads of the naivest kind, all about proletarian brotherhood and the

wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold on the streets for a few centimes each.

I have often seen an illiterate militiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously

spell out the words, and then, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it

to an appropriate tune.



All this time I was at the Lenin Barracks, ostensibly in training for the

front. When I joined the militia I had been told that I should be sent to the

front the next day, but in fact I had to wait while a fresh centuria was got

ready. The workers' militias, hurriedly raised by the trade unions at the

beginning of the war, had not yet been organized on an ordinary army basis. The

units of command were the 'section', of about thirty men, the centuria, of about

a hundred men, and the 'column', which in practice meant any large number of

men. The Lenin Barracks was a block of splendid stone buildings with a riding--

school and enormous cobbled courtyards; it had been a cavalry barracks and had

been captured during the July fighting. My centuria slept in one of the stables,

under the stone mangers where the names of the cavalry chargers were still

inscribed. All the horses had been seized and sent to the front, but the whole

place still smelt of horse-piss and rotten oats. I was at the barracks about a

week. Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls (all our

buglers were amateurs--I first learned the Spanish bugle-calls by listening to

them outside the Fascist lines), the tramp-tramp of hobnailed boots in the

barrack yard, the long morning parades in the wintry sunshine, the wild games of

football, fifty a side, in the gravelled riding--school. There were perhaps a

thousand men at the barracks, and a score or so of women, apart from the

militiamen's wives who did the cooking. There were still women serving in the

militias, though not very many. In the early battles they had fought side by

side with the men as a matter of course. It is a thing that seems natural in

time of revolution. Ideas were changing already, however. The militiamen had to

be kept out of the riding-school while the women were drilling there because

they laughed at the women and put them off. A few months earlier no one would

have seen anything comic in a woman handling a gun.



The whole barracks was in the state of filth and chaos to which the militia

reduced every building they occupied and which seems to be one of the

by-products of revolution. In every comer you came upon piles of smashed

furniture, broken saddles, brass cavalry-helmets, empty sabre-scabbards, and

decaying food. There was frightful wastage of food, especially bread. From my

barrack-room alone a basketful of bread was thrown away at every meal--a

disgraceful thing when the civilian population was short of it. We ate at long

trestle-tables out of permanently greasy tin pannikins, and drank out of a

dreadful thing called a porron. A porron is a sort of glass bottle with a

pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up;

you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it

can be passed from hand to hand. I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as

soon as I saw a porron in use. To my eye the things were altogether too like

bed-bottles, especially when they were filled with white wine.



By degrees they were issuing the recruits with uniforms, and because this was

Spain everything was issued piecemeal, so that it was never quite certain who

had received what, and various of the things we most needed, such as belts and

cartridge-boxes, were not issued till the last moment, when the train was

actually waiting to take us to the front. I have spoken of the militia

'uniform', which probably gives a wrong impression. It was not exactly a

uniform. Perhaps a 'multiform' would be the proper name for it. Everyone's

clothes followed the same general plan, but they were never quite the same in

any two cases. Practically everyone in the army wore corduroy knee-breeches, but

there the uniformity ended. Some wore puttees, others corduroy gaiters, others

leather leggings or high boots. Everyone wore a zipper jacket, but some of the

jackets were of leather, others of wool and of every conceivable colour. The

kinds of cap were about as numerous as their wearers. It was usual to adorn the

front of your cap with a party badge, and in addition nearly every man. wore a

red or red and black handkerchief round his throat. A militia column at that

time was an extraordinary-looking rabble. But the clothes had to be issued as

this or that factory rushed them out, and they were not bad clothes considering

the circumstances. The shirts and socks were wretched cotton things, however,

quite useless against cold. I hate to think of what the militiamen must have

gone through in the earlier months before anything was organized. I remember

coming upon a newspaper of only about two months earlier in which one of the

P.O.U.M. leaders, after a visit to the front, said that he would try to see to

it that 'every militiaman had a blanket'. A phrase to make you shudder if you

have ever slept in a trench.



On my second day at the barracks there began what was comically called

'instruction'. At the beginning there were frightful scenes of chaos. The

recruits were mostly boys of sixteen or seventeen from the back streets of

Barcelona, full of revolutionary ardour but completely ignorant of the meaning

of war. It was impossible even to get them to stand in line. Discipline did not

exist; if a man disliked an order he would step out of the ranks and argue

fiercely with the officer. The lieutenant who instructed us was a stout,

fresh-faced, pleasant young man who had previously been a Regular Army officer,

and still looked like one, with his smart carriage and spick-and-span uniform.

Curiously enough he was a sincere and ardent Socialist. Even more than the men

themselves he insisted upon complete social equality between all ranks. I

remember his pained surprise when an ignorant recruit addressed him as 'Senor'.

'What! Senor? Who is that calling me Senor? Are we not all comrades?' I doubt

whether it made his job any easier. Meanwhile the raw recruits were getting no

military training that could be of the slightest use to them. I had been told

that foreigners were not obliged to attend 'instruction' (the Spaniards, I

noticed, had a pathetic belief that all foreigners knew more of military matters

than themselves), but naturally I turned out with the others. I was very anxious

to learn how to use a machine-gun; it was a weapon I had never had a chance to

handle. To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of

weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most

antiquated, stupid kind; right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at

attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense which I

had learned when I was fifteen years old. It was an extraordinary form for the

training of a guerilla army to take. Obviously if you have only a few days in

which to train a soldier, you must teach him the things he will most need; how

to take cover, how to advance across open ground, how to mount guards and build

a parapet--above all, how to use his weapons. Yet this mob of eager children,

who were going to be thrown into the front line in a few days' time, were not

even taught how to fire a rifle or pull the pin out of a bomb. At the time I did

not grasp that this was because there were no weapons to be had. In the P.O.U.M.

militia the shortage of rifles was so desperate that fresh troops reaching the

front always had to take their rifles from the troops they relieved in the line.

In the whole of the Lenin Barracks there were, I believe, no rifles except those

used by the sentries.



After a few days, though still a complete rabble by any ordinary standard, we

were considered fit to be seen in public, and in the mornings we were marched

out to the public gardens on the hill beyond the Plaza de Espana. This was the

common drill-ground of all the party militias, besides the Carabineros and the

first contingents of the newly formed Popular Army. Up in the public gardens it

was a strange and heartening sight. Down every path and alley-way, amid the

formal flower-beds, squads and companies of men marched stiffly to and fro,

throwing out their chests and trying desperately to look like soldiers. All of

them were unarmed and none completely in uniform, though on most of them the

militia uniform was breaking out in patches here and there. The procedure was

always very much the same. For three hours we strutted to and fro (the Spanish

marching step is very short and rapid), then we halted, broke the ranks, and

flocked thirstily to a little grocer's shop which was half-way down the hill and

was doing a roaring trade in cheap wine. Everyone was very friendly to me. As an

Englishman I was something of a curiosity, and the Carabinero officers made much

of me and stood me drinks. Meanwhile, whenever I could get our lieutenant into a

corner, I was clamouring to be instructed in the use of a machine-gun. I used to

drag my Hugo's dictionary out of my pocket and start on him in my villainous

Spanish:



'To se manejar fusil. Mo se manejar ametralladora. Quiero apprender

ametralladora. Quando vamos apprender ametralladora?'



The answer was always a harassed smile and a promise that there should be

machine-gun instruction manana. Needless to say manana never came. Several days

passed and the recruits learned to march in step and spring to attention almost

smartly, but if they knew which end of a rifle the bullet came out of, that was

all they knew. One day an armed Carabinero strolled up to us when we were

halting and allowed us to examine his rifle. It turned out that in the whole of

my section no one except myself even knew how to load the rifle, much less how

to take aim.



All this time I was having the usual struggles with the Spanish language.

Apart from myself there was only one Englishman at the barracks, and nobody even

among the officers spoke a word of French. Things were not made easier for me by

the fact that when my companions spoke to one another they generally spoke in

Catalan. The only way I could get along was to carry everywhere a small

dictionary which I whipped out of my pocket in moments of crisis. But I would

sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make

friends in Spain I Within a day or two there was a score of militiamen who

called me by my Christian name, showed me the ropes, and overwhelmed me with

hospitality. I am not writing a book of propaganda and I do not want to idealize

the P.O.U.M. militia. The whole militia--system had serious faults, and the men

themselves were a mixed lot, for by this time voluntary recruitment was falling

off and many of the best men were already at the front or dead. There was always

among us a certain percentage who were completely useless. Boys of fifteen were

being brought up for enlistment by their parents, quite openly for the sake of

the ten pesetas a day which was the militiaman's wage; also for the sake of the

bread which the militia received in plenty and could smuggle home to their

parents. But I defy anyone to be thrown as I was among the Spanish working class

--I ought perhaps to say the Catalan working class, for apart from a few

Aragonese and Andalusians I mixed only with Catalans--and not be struck by

their essential decency; above all, their straightforwardness and generosity. A

Spaniard's generosity, in the ordinary sense of the word, is at times almost

embarrassing. If you ask him for a cigarette he will force the whole packet upon

you. And beyond this there is generosity in a deeper sense, a real largeness of

spirit, which I have met with again and again in the most unpromising

circumstances. Some of the journalists and other foreigners who travelled in

Spain during the war have declared that in secret the Spaniards were bitterly

jealous of foreign aid. All I can say is that I never observed anything of the

kind. I remember that a few days before I left the barracks a group of men

returned on leave from the front. They were talking excitedly about their

experiences and were full of enthusiasm for some French troops who had been next

to them at Huesca. The French were very brave, they said; adding

enthusiastically: 'Mas valientes que nosotros'--'Braver than we are!' Of course

I demurred, whereupon they explained that the French knew more of the art of war

--were more expert with bombs, machine-guns, and so forth. Yet the remark was

significant. An Englishman would cut his hand off sooner than say a thing like

that.



Every foreigner who served in the militia spent his first few weeks in

learning to love the Spaniards and in being exasperated by certain of their

characteristics. In the front line my own exasperation sometimes reached the

pitch of fury. The Spaniards are good at many things, but not at making war. All

foreigners alike are appalled by their inefficiency, above all their maddening

unpunctuality. The one Spanish word that no foreigner can avoid learning is

manana--'tomorrow' (literally, 'the morning'). Whenever it is conceivably

possible, the business of today is put off until manana. This is so notorious

that even the Spaniards themselves make jokes about it. In Spain nothing, from a

meal to a battle, ever happens at the appointed time. As a general rule things

happen too late, but just occasionally--just so that you shan't even be able to

depend on their happening late--they happen too early. A train which is due to

leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps

once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leaves at half

past seven. Such things can be a little trying. In theory I rather admire the

Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share

it myself.



After endless rumours, mananas, and delays we were suddenly ordered to the

front at two hours' notice, when much of our equipment was still unissued. There

were terrible tumults in the quartermaster's store; in the end numbers of men

had to leave without their full equipment. The barracks had promptly filled with

women who seemed to have sprung up from the ground and were helping their

men-folk to roll their blankets and pack their kit-bags. It was rather

humiliating that I had to be shown how to put on my new leather cartridge-boxes

by a Spanish girl, the wife of Williams, the other English militiaman. She was a

gentle, dark-eyed, intensely feminine creature who looked as though her life--

work was to rock a cradle, but who as a matter of fact had fought bravely in the

street-battles of July. At this time she was carrying a baby which was born just

ten months after the outbreak of war and had perhaps been begotten behind a

barricade.



The train was due to leave at eight, and it was about ten past eight when the

harassed, sweating officers managed to marshal us in the barrack square. I

remember very vividly the torchlit scene--the uproar and excitement, the red

flags flapping in the torchlight, the massed ranks of militiamen with their

knapsacks on their backs and their rolled blankets worn bandolier-wise across

the shoulder; and the shouting and the clatter of boots and tin pannikins, and

then a tremendous and finally successful hissing for silence; and then some

political commissar standing beneath a huge rolling red banner and making us a

speech in Catalan. Finally they marched us to the station, taking the longest

route, three or four miles, so as to show us to the whole town. In the Ramblas

they halted us while a borrowed band played some revolutionary tune or other.

Once again the conquering-hero stuff--shouting and enthusiasm, red flags and

red and black flags everywhere, friendly crowds thronging the pavement to have a

look at us, women waving from the windows. How natural it all seemed then; how

remote and improbable now! The train was packed so tight with men that there was

barely room even on the floor, let alone on the seats. At the last moment

Williams's wife came rushing down the platform and gave us a bottle of wine and

a foot of that bright red sausage which tastes of soap and gives you diarrhoea.

The train crawled out of Catalonia and on to the plateau of Aragon at the normal

wartime speed of something under twenty kilometres an hour.



Forward >



























