The Escola Militar at Tudela de Segre. Merce Lluveras, Claudia Honefeld, Jordi Marti & Alan Warren
LAST UPDATED 25th May 2012
Welcome to the trial internet presence of the co-operative initiative “Porta de la Historia”. In time there will be a more substantial website but to begin with we have started this so that we are at the least active on the web. See the TOURS page for latest activities. For further information on any items included in this blog please write to pdlhistoria@gmail.com or hill705@gmail.com Porta de la Historia is a co-operative initiative of four individuals living in Catalunya who have a fascination in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 and the social struggles that initiated and followed that conflict in not only Catalunya but also Spain and the World, especially in connection with the International Brigades who supported the Spanish Republic during that time. Alan Warren, Claudia Honefeld, Jordi Marti and Merce Lluveras have started this group with the intention to provide a variety of initiatives and activities in order to raise awareness of Catalunya’s history in this important period and to allow individuals, groups and schools to explore the events and places in Catalunya and Spain. The history of Catalunya and its future are of course linked and we feel that the time is now right to explain that history to both its inhabitants and to visitors from abroad. In addition Catalunya is a beautiful country with traditions, architecture, cuisine and natural history to explore as an added bonus. Being a group of Catalan, German and British individuals our combined skills, abilities and enthusiasm allow us to explain and explore Catalunya and Spain to those who wish to know more. Either as a curious individual with a passing interest in the subject or to those who wish to delve deeper into the history of the Spanish Civil War, “Porta de la Historia” are able to offer tours lasting from just half a day exploring the presence of George Orwell in Barcelona or the bombing of Barcelona to a week or more exploring the battlefields from Jarama to the Ebro depending on what is desired by our clients. We can assure you of a tour quite unlike any other you may have experienced (and we mean that in a positive way!). Please explore this blog as we develop our plans and please contact us for further details or to offer us suggestions as to what you would like to discover. Alan Warren, Claudia Honefeld, Jordi Marti and Merce Lluveras _________________________________________________________
NEWS 24th May 2012
Belchite, September 1937
75th anniversary commemoration of the Battles of Quinto and Belchite. September 1st and 2nd 2012
This is an advanced announcement to let readers know that the weekend of September 1st and 2nd 2012 there will be the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Battles of Quinto and Belchite to be held principally in the town of Quinto.
Quinto will be commemorated on Saturday 1st of September with a visit to Purburrel Hill and the church and an explanation of the Battle. In the evening there will be the showing of the film “With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain” by Henri Cartier Bresson and places located in the film close to Quinto will also be visited.
Sunday 2nd September will be devoted to the Battle of Belchite.
This event will open to all who wish to attend. There is a train station at Quinto and train times and connections can be given from either Barcelona or Madrid. We recommend that visitors come to Quinto on the 31st August and leave either Sunday night or Monday morning. A coach will take visitors to the locations around Quinto and Belchite on both days. Please be warned that Purburrel Hill is not easy for older people to climb, however. But that would be the only caveat. There will be a small charge for the coach and people are welcome to make their own way to the event. If people require assistence in booking and accommodation then please contact me. Spaces may be limited on the coach if reservations are not made soon enough. Accommodation in the town can also be reserved on request.
To find out more information about the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Battles of Quinto and Belchite on 1st and 2nd September, please write to Alan Warren onpdlhistoria@gmail.com
We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on 1st and 2nd September in Quinto.
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75th Anniversary of the sinking of the Ciudad de Barcelona, 30th May 1937- 2012
It is with great pleasure that Malgrat de Mar ajuntament are arranging a significant event to commemorate the sinking of the merchant ship Ciudad de Barcelona by an Italian submarine seventy five years ago.
To find out more about the sinking go to www.ciudaddebarcelona1937.wordpress.com
All are welcome. it promises to be a very interesting day!
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24th May 2012
75th Anniversary of George Orwell’s wounding with Georges Kopp’s son and members of the Orwell Society. 19th to 20th May 2012.
Over the past couple of months I have been working with the newly formed Orwell Society (www.orwellsociety.com) to arrange a visit to Barcelona and the Aragon Front to show members of the Society the places that Orwell so vividly describes in “Homage to Catalonia”. The original plan was to have George Orwell’s adopted son, Richard Blair and Georges Kopp’s son, Quentin Kopp, but sadly family matters prevented Richard and his wife from being able to attend. But we will repeat this weekend with them both at a later date.
In Placa Catalunya.
“In the window near the last O but one in the huge “Hotel Colon” that sprawled across its face they had a machine gun that could sweep the square with deadly effect.”
Hotel Colon in 1937
Quentin Kopp and his wife, Liz, joined Canadian Sylvia Topp on Friday 18th May in Barcelona. Sylvia Topp is writing a biography on George Orwell’s wife, Eileen Blair. We met eight Catalan and Spanish at the Café Zurich on the Saturday morning and visited the various locations described in “Homage to Catalonia”.
(l to r) Fernando Casal, publisher of the beautiful new Spanish edition of “Homage to Catalonia” with Manu, a member of the Fundacio Andreu Nin whose name I have forgotten (Sorry!) and Quentin Kopp
“I turned round and saw some youths, with rifles in their hands and the red and black hand kerchiefs of the Anarchists round their throats, edging up a side street that ran off the Ramblas northward. They were evidently exchanging shots with someone in a tall octagonal tower- a church, I think- that commanded a side street.”
The Hotel Falcon
“”Come on, we must get down to the Hotel Falcon…. “The POUM chaps will be meeting there. The trouble’s starting. We must hang together.”"
The group in the Teatro Principal
“I went across to the Comité Local of the POUM, which was almost opposite. Upstairs in the room where the militiamen normally went to draw their pay, another crowd was seething”
“I went up to the Hotel Continental, made sure that all was well, washed my face…”
“…and then went to the POUM Executive Building (it was about a hundred yards down the street).”
After a late lunch the four of us then drove to Lecinena to stay in the beautiful hotel Magallon.
Hotel Magallon near Lecinena
Alcubierre
“When you had been to the Comité de Guerra and inspected the holes in the wall-holes made by rifle volleys, various fascists having been executed there-you had seen all the sights that Alcubierre contained.”
The view from Monte Irazo (wrongly named Monte Trazo by Orwell).
“”"Buttered toast!”- you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley-We’re just sitting down to hot buttered toast here! Lovely slices of hot buttered toast!”"
On the Sunday morning we were met by the former director of the Ruta Orwell, Victor Pardo, and were kindly invited into La Granja near Huesca by the owners.
“La Granja, our store and cookhouse, had possibly at one time been a convent.”
The little church that adjoined it, its walls perforated with shell holes,”
“had its floor inches deep in dung.”
“in the great courtyard where the cooks ladled out the rations the litter of rusty tins, mud, mule dung, and decaying food was revolting.”
We talked with the locals in Montflorite and we may have identified the hospital where Orwell had a sceptic wound on his hand lanced.
Montflorite
“The church had been badly knocked about but was used as a store.”
“I had to go into hospital, but it was not worth sending me to Sietamo for such a petty injury, so I stayed in the so-called hospital at Montflorite, which was merely a casualty clearing station.”
The yellow building on the left was the hospital, according to local knowledge
Finally we visited the Ermita Salas just outside Huesca where the sniper who shot Orwell on the 20th May 1937, may have fired on him from,
Ermita Salas, 175 yards away from the front line outside Huesca
“Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion.”
Needless to say, we had not only a coffee in Huesca on the 75th anniversary of Orwell’s wounding but also a nice lunch.
Victor Pardo, Quentin Kopp, Sylvia Topp and Liz Kopp in Huesca
Georges Kopp in 1937
“”This is not a war,” he used to say, “it is a comic opera with an occasional death.”
After lunch, as time was against us a bit, we had a choice to either visit Sietamo and Barbastro where Orwell was taken to after being wounded, or to the Interpretation Centre at Robres. We decided on Robres and spent the afternoon there before driving back to Barcelona and allowing Quentin. Liz and Sylvia to sleep a night in the Hotel Continental.
The trip was a great success. We discussed improvements on the way back and will now offer a trip from Thursday to Monday for Orwell Society members. This will allow a less hectic visit to absorb all there is to see in both Barcelona and on the Aragon Front.
For those interested in George Orwell, have a look at the excellent Orwell Society website on www.orwellsociety.com
We plan to hold a similar weekend event next year on the closest weekend to May 20th 2013 and maybe make it a regular yearly event. But anyone can come at whatever time they choose with enough notice. I already do 3 hour tours of Orwell’s Barcelona as it is. What I would really like to do is to bring students to Barcelona to explore Orwell (and the nightlife!) and then to the Aragon Front (to explore the real Spain) over a long weekend from Thursday to Monday. I want to engage the young people in educational visits and activities here in Spain and I feel that Orwell is a writer who can appeal to many students if approached in the right way. Any teachers out there interested in working on a trip for a small group of their students? If so, please contact me on pdlhistoria@gmail.com.
Many thanks to Quentin and Liz Kopp and Sylvia Topp and the committee of the Orwell Society in setting this trip for their members. More wish to come, but the lateness of organising the trip made it impossible for all those who would have liked to have come difficult to arrange in time.
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BATTLE OF BRUNETE 75th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMMORATION 29th and 30th JUNE 2012
This year the Brunete commemoration does not clash with the International Brigade Memorial Trust’s annual event at the London Eye. So we hope to welcome many British to Brunete this year. Gerda Taro, Robert Capa’s lover and fellow photographer, will be remembered this year with the showing of Trisha Ziff’s excellent film “The Mexican Suitcase” at the Ateneu on Friday June 29th. Coaches are available to take individuals out. The March will start from Brunete to the river below Mosquito Crest. Picnic lunches are the order of the day to bring and share. The river by the Ford where the XV Brigade had its Estado Mayor is a beautful place. As described by Charles Orr in “The Book of the XV International Brigade, “It would be a lovely spot for a picnic” (page 153). So we will be having a picnic there seventy five years later to talk, sing and enjoy the company of others keen to remember the Battle and its legacy.
Gerda Taro
We will also be remembering XV Brigade Chief of Staff George Nathan who was killed in the last days of the Battle of Brunete. Sadly, his biography by Melody Buckley (“A Temporary Gentleman. The Life and Times of George Nathan”) is not complete yet, but we hope to have a short resume of George’s life written by Melody to read on the March or later at his new discovered burial place at Torredolones.
We hope that British people will be able to join us this year for the 75th anniversary of this important Battle.
George Nathan
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“Hemingway and Gellhorn” to be released on US Television on May 28th by HBO
Ernest Hemingway at Ambite Mill, November 7th (?) 1937
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1353.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
The new HBO film “Hemingway and Gellhorn” will be released on US cable television on May 28th. Here is a link to the trailer. Despite the slightly later T34 tank in the background of the scene of the two them on a truck, I hope the film does justice to Hemingway and Gellhorn aswell as a reasonable representation of the Spanish Civil War!
Here is an extended trailer:
http://www.filmofilia.com/hemingway-gellhorn-trailer-starring-clive-owen-and-nicole-kidman-89478/
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13th April 2012
After a lot of scratching of heads I have decided that this blog needs organising! Too much information and not enough order.
So with this in mind you will see various pages to the right with different subject headings. Over the next couple of weeks I will transfer the articles already done and hopefully you will be able to study the reports connected with each theatre of the Spanish Civil War.
There is nothing there yet, so please have patience as I work on this.
This weekend I am going to Cuevas Labradas to work with friends there to cut a path to the railway tunnel used by the XV Brigade as a shelter during the battle of Teruel, and to visit the hospital there described by James Neugass in his excellent book ”War is Beautiful”. Also, to give a talk on the Battle of Teruel to a group of students using Neugass’ book as text. Lets see what happens. A report next week.
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c____ “The Last Hero of the Battle of the Ebro” Meet “Charlie.”
“Charlie” (Photo: CSID)
Last Thursday morning on the first day of excavations on the fortfifications of La Fatarella not just half an hour after the first cut was started than the skeleton of one of the Republican defenders was unearthed. Lying awkwardly in one of the trenches with two Polish made hand grenades close to him and spent cartidges from a Russian Moison Nagant rifle beneath him, a hand grenade had exploded, mortally wounding him. Hastily covered up after the fighting, he has lain here since November 15th, 1938 when the XV Brigada Mixta (formerly the XV International Brigade) held this line for 48 hours to allow the rest of the Republican Army to safely withdraw across the River Ebro at Flix. 
The excavated trenches close to where “Charlie”was found.
The last resting place of “Charlie”
The group of excavators from the University of Barcelona alongside Associacio Lo Riu have called him “Charlie”, on the basis that his height of 1.8metres makes him quite tall for a native born Spaniard and that he may have been an “Internacional” who was not withdrawn on September 23rd 1938, but might have elected to stay with his comrades to the bitter end. It is known that many Germans of the XI Brigade and Poles of the XIII Brigade aswell as other International Brigaders who were unable to return to their home countries because of the current situation at that time rejoined the Republican Army in “The Second Call” of January 1939 near the French frontier, but perhaps this man could have been an International who stayed on? The XV Brigada Mixta were part of the 35th Division that held this are a with the XI and XIII Brigada Mixtas for a short period before a successful withdrawal across theEbro. Hopefully in time more evidence on the provenance of this man will come apparent, but the excavators have named him Charlie in honour of the American contribution to the XV International Brigade whose members might have known this man who died and until now had been forgotten after his tragic death in the cold month of November 1938. 
Joan Sambro explaining Bunker No. 7 of the second line of Fortifications held by the XV Brigada Mixta in November 1938 above La Fatarella.
Impact of a heavy gun shell on the inside of Bunker No. 8 close by Bunker No 7.
The unexcavated tunnel leading to the third line of defenses where “Charlie” was found about 80 metres behind.
This discovery is creating quite a stir in Spain and maybe more coverage will be forthcoming. Here is Sunday’s report from El Pais and others as of 28th September 2011. http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/ultimo/heroe/batalla/Ebro/elpepuespcat/20110925elpcat_1/Tes http://guerraenlauniversidad.blogspot.com/
We were able to visit the excavations late in the afternoon on Sunday 25th September and to see where the body of Charlie had been discovered. The two new bunkers, Nos 7 and 8, that have been excavated in front of the excavated trenches where Charlie was found are impressive and include the impact of a heavy projectile on the inside of one of the bunkers. Tunnels lead off to the rear from these bunkers but it will take time to safely excavate them. It seems as if Lo Riu has a wonderful chance to recover the historical memory here with further fortifications to excavate. Joan Sambro of Lo Riu reckons that there is at least five year’s more work here to complete the task. 
A view towards the Front Line above La Fatarella with many Wind Turbines already in place.
Friend Oleguer and his son Vincens beside one of the Wind Turbine towers!
_____________________________________________________________ My 50th Birthday! Yesterday my partner Merce drove me down to the River Ebro supposedly to go for a walk of her own choosing but really to meet friends and family to celebrate my 50th birthday (which is really on September 28th, so you still have time to wish me Happy Birthday!). This was a wonderful surprise as we were able to canoe down the Ebro from where the XV Brigade crossed on July 25th 1938, down to Mora del Ebro. The experience was sublime with over 20 canoes in the river and the various screams and cries of pleasure from the many people who took part. After a shared lunch back at the crossing point the children enjoyed themselves jumping into the River and eventually I was also thrown into the River for good measure! It was very pleasant to stand and watch the children and adults playing and jumping into the river and seemed somewhat healing when one considered the fear and terror that occurred here nearly seventy five years ago as the International Brigades of the Republican army tried to cross this same stretch on July 25th 1938. 
Crumbs! I do look like I am fifty!
Photos later of the canooing as I did not take my camera with me for fear of it (and me!) falling in the water. But here is afterwards at the place where the XV Brigade crossed. It all started so innocently……
Some of the parents watching from a safe distance….
Slowly the children kindly offer to look after my watch, glasses and mobile phone…… I am nearly fifty, you know!
Splosh! In I go!
Well, That was fun, but the current was very strong!
And I received a birthday present of a flight in a Zeppelin! (I have a thing about airships. Sorry). There is actually a Zeppelin museum on Lake Constance in Germany with a reproduction of the cabins and accommodation of the airship Graf Zeppelin which I said a while ago that I would dearly like to visit (www.zeppelinflug.de and http://www.zeppelin-museum.de/home_en.0.html) . And now I can! I am very grateful to all my friends for making this happen and keeping it as a surprise from me. And especially to my partner, Merce, for making this wonderful day happen. It is not every day that one celebrates one’s fiftieth birthday, and heaven knows where I will be for my one hundredth! __________________________________________________________________ 21st September 2011. A Tour with two children of British Brigaders from Teruel to the Ebro, 15th to 19th September 2011. I have just returned from a tour to show various places to Mary Greening and Duncan Longstaff, whose fathers served with the British battalion at various times between the battle of Teruel in January 1938 to the River Ebro following the Great Retreats of March and April 1938 . 
Leaving from Barcelona on Thursday afternoon, we took four hours to get to the Provincial capital of Teruel via the coast road and Valencia. A fast and pleasant journey. On Friday morning we visited the cliff face of Santa Barbarato the north of Teruel, where the British battalion attempted to send its companies down across the River Alfambra below to steady the front line below on the 19th January 1938. 
Duncan Longstaff and Mary Greening with the gulley down which the British Battalion came down from the Hill of Santa Barbara to cross the River Alfambra and hold the valley.
View from the River Alfambra of the British battalion machine gun positions on Santa Barbara Hill.
The Alfambra River. it was close to here that Frank Zamorra of No 1 Company, a second generation Basque, born in Abercrave in Wales was killed as the companies crossed on January 19th 1938. He acted as the battalion interpreter and it was said that his English was so bad that the British could not understand him and his Spanish so bad that the Spanish troops could not understand his Spanish either!
In the middle distance the two hills occupied by the British battalion on January 19th 1938
Later in the month a wooden plaque was set up on this hill to commemorate the 21 members of the British battalion who died on the hills below. 
The memorial from Volunteer for Liberty, Vol. 2, no 8.
We also visited the two hills held by the battalion and then later in the day to the earlier positions near Cuaevas Labradas in the stunning Alfambra valley to the north where they were based from January 1st to 15th.. On Saturday morning we met Alfonso Casas, the expert on the battle of Teruel and who kindly showed Mary and Duncan his magnificent collection of materiel connected to the battle. He also mentioned that a two day conference will be held in Teruel concerning the battle on October 24th and 25th with an exhibition and talks. I intend to visit the conference for the two days between the week long trip from Madrid to Barcelona to commemorate the International Brigades in Spain between October 20th and 29th2011. Anyone else want to come too?
Duncan Longstaff, Alfonso Casas & Mary Greening in front of the Teruel Bullring
The same place in January 1938.
Members of the XI Thaelmann Brigade by the Escalinata in Teruel. The Civil Guard barracks behind.
The same place today
El Muleton, where 1600 of the 2000 men of the German XI Thaelmann Brigade fell in the freezing cold of January 1938
There has been a rumour that 25 million euros had been earmarked to construct a museum on the Spanish Civil War in Teruel. There is a new building that was thought to be this new museum but turned out to be for Medieval Warfare, though interest is there but not possible in the present current economic downturn. However, we hope to raise awareness of this state of affairs by making a short report with Aragon Television on October 31st when a group of Americans and British come with me on a similar tour from 30th October to 7th November (See below for details of the trip. There are still some places available if you are interested. Contact Alan Warren on hill705@gmail.com for further information). I hope that we can persuade the Aragon Government and Teruel Ajuntamiento to eventually open the proposed museum, despite the turn to the right in recent elections and maybe more to come in the Spanish elections on 20th November this year. Perhaps it may encourage them to understand and learn about their recent past so as not to repeat it. There are many wounds still to heal but I hope that such a project does not only allow younger generations to understand this painful time, but also to encourage tourism to this beautiful, but quite remote, city. 
The railway tunnel in the Alfambra valley where the XV Brigade attempted to unsuccessfully shelter from the snow and freezing cold.
Yet in, and close to this quiet, remote city there are traces of the International Brigades. North of Teruel, following the Alfambra valley north, on the west side of this valley there are fragments of an unfinished railway line which the Americans called “The Great Teruel & Manyana Railway Line”! In one of the many unfinished and derelict stations there is a tiny fragment of the Lincoln Washington battalion. We will show our American visitors this unique piece of history in early November aswell as the railway tunnel where the XV Brigade tried to shelter from the freezing cold of January 1938, the coldest winter on record in Spain! In the meantime here are some photos of the graffiti left by American Brigaders. Alfonso Casas originally thought that it was British graffiti, but seeing as the Americans don’t know how to spell “Armoury” properly it was obvious to an English speaker that they were Yanks! (Sorry!). Does anyone know anything more about the Washington Com(m)onwealth Federation? Especially about any American Brigaders connected with this organisation? One of them wrote this on the wall! 
The railway line was first conceived on 22nd January 1926 to run 275 kilometres from Teruel to Alcaniz through Tortajada, Villalba Baja, Cuevas Labradas, Peralejos, Alfambra, Perales del Alfambra, Orrios, Fuentes Calientes, Cañada Vellida, Mezquita de Jarque, Valdeconejos, Escucha, Palomar de Arroyos, Cstel de Cabra, Cañizar del Olivar, Gargallo, Los Olmos, La Mata de los Olmos, Alcorisa, Foz Calanda, Calanda, Castelserás and Alcaniz. Bartolomé Esteban was the chief engineer. This barren area was important for coal from Utrillas and Escucha aswell as iron from Ojos Negros to the north. Work first stopped in 1930 and then restarted in 1932 after the election of the Republican government in April 1931. At one time over 2,000 workers were employed on the line’s construction, but by 1935 the work was again stopped and the line was never completed. Various reasons for its failure included problems for the new government working with Belgian, French and English private businesses in its construction who, it seems, were not always sympathetic to the new Republic and its stated aims. As one drives north one comes across tunnels, stations, bridges (with one having a silhouette of a train and carriage with people inside entitled “The Dream”) at various locations parallel to the road. Quite charming and there has been a plan to open up part of the track as a “Green Route” for bicycles. I hope it succeeds. And don’t worry, I am not a train spotter! 
Seguro de los Banos
We also visted Seguro de los Banos where the XV Brigade attempted to relieve Nationalist pressure on Teruel in mid February 1938. The Americans and Canadians attempted to take the hills of Atalaya and Pedregosa to the west of Seguro de los Banos whilst the British and Spanish battalions moved south down the valley to take the village of Vivel el Rio without success due to lack of resources. 
Vivel el Rio. Objective of the British battalion.
Saturday night we ended up in the village of Fuendetodos just west of Belchite. We were able to drive up to a prominent hill called “El Lobo”, or “The Wolf” to the south west of the town with a magnificent view of the Aragon landscape and two tunnels which housed six artillery pieces to bombard Belchite during the September 1937. It was here that La Pasionaria observed the fight for Belchite in the summer of 1937 and as we left the hill, I discovered a rusted Nationalist cartridge clip from the ground as a souvenir. It was probably left here after the hill was overrun by advancing Nationalist troops from the direction of Fuendetodos on March 10th 1938 during the Second Battle of Belchite. And so on the Sunday morning we started to follow the route of the Great Retreats from Belchite to Cherta on the River Ebro. A long journey which, in 1938, was under constant attack by massive Nationalist forces in a prototype blitzkrieg using tanks, artillery and aircraft. Large numbers of Brigaders just disappeared in the barren landscape of Aragon, many executed once they had surrendered. Their remains still lie unknown and unrecorded in this bleak landscape. The stories from survivors are confused and varied, but some accounts coincide and allow the route of the men to be followed with some certainty. Both Mary Greening’s father, Edwin Greening, and Duncan Longstaff’s father, John, were involved in this event, but John Longstaff’s account written almost fifty years after the events is by force of necessity very brief and confused. On the evening of March 10th he lost contact with the battalion as a runner and then teamed up with a Spanish unit during the first part of the Retreats. The next firm location in his memoirs is him running across the bridge over the River Ebro at Mora del Ebro being chased by Moorish cavalry just before it was blown up! Edwin Greening’s account, published in From Aberdare to Albacete (Warren & Pell Publishing, 2006), though based on his diaries written at the time, is also brief until after the initial period of the Retreat from Belchite to Hijar, then to Caspe and finally to Batea where the battalion was reformed, reinforced and rearmed from 17th to 30th March 1938. 
“Going to the Botaja Front, April 1938″.
(Actually March 30th 1938 and going to the BATEA Front)
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-0327.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
On the morning of Wednesday 30th March 1938, the battalion was ordered forward from Corbera to reinforce the defensive lines held by Lister’s 11th Division. Edwin Greening was detached from the main body and writes of his experiences: Then one day the rumble grew louder. On 30th March, 1938, at about 10 pm, Lt. Morris Davies awakened his section. He led us out of Corbera on what became a 10-mile march through a chilly starlit night. At dawn we were in the village of Villalba de los Arcos. We ensconced ourselves in the strongly built, stone municipal weighing machine. From it we could see down a long, straight, and slightly sloping road that ran between olive trees and vineyards into the distance. 
Mary Greening in front of the weighing machine in Vilalba dels Arcs (Catalan spelling)
Jock McLean and I were ordered to go forward into the distance and take up a position about 600 yards ahead. We lay behind a rock, talked quietly about what we should do, and kept alert for the enemy. All the morning, refugees came up the road, their mule-carts piled with their possessions. Across to the west we heard the artillery and tanks firing. Lt. Morris Davies came down with two men. They stayed and we went back with him to the weighing machine. There, 10 men rested while the others were scattered in pairs among the trees. About midday, Lt. Davies ordered two Scots, Lever and Brown, to go back to Corbera to ask for orders about our position in this village. These two young men darted off at a cracking pace. Lt. Morris Davies ordered Jock McLean and me to follow him. We went amid the trees and he told us, “If we get no orders from Corbera, we leave here by dark”. Lt. Davies, always smiling, walked about and among the men under the trees with McLean and me. He told them, “If you are fired on, come back opposite the weighing machine. We are going back to Corbera at dusk. Be ready!” The long, anxious morning and afternoon passed away, but about an hour before dusk Lt. Walter Gregory and a pillion passenger arrived. He told us that the British Battalion had been ambushed and severely battered that morning at Calaceite, about 10 miles south-west of us. We had to get back to Corbera at once. We ran around the olive trees shouting for the men. They came at the double and we marched at a steady pace towards Corbera. At a crossroads, Lt. Davies met 15th Brigade officers he knew well. They directed us to the town of Gandesa that was 4 miles south-west of the village of Corbera. At Gandesa we descended into a well-lit air raid shelter, which was crowded with military and refugees. We were fed and we slept until nearly dawn.
Mary at the crossroads
(I think it was Duncan who forced Mary to march all the way to Gandesa as her father did?)
At dawn the military paraded outside the air raid shelter. We were a mixed bunch of the 15th Brigade, about 80 men including officers, I reckoned. We were each given a small loaf and a small tin of corned beef. We boarded four Russian lorries and drove off towards the sound of battle. A signpost pointed to a place called Batea. About three miles from Gandesa, at an unposted crossroads, they stopped and the lorries went back. A Spanish major was in charge. He spoke to Lt. Davies and Lt. Fred Morris of Richards Terrace, Maerdy, Rhondda. He had joined us at Gandesa. Lt. Davies placed his 26 men on a wooded ridge overlooking a shallow, olive-groved vineyard valley of terraced walls. I was posted with Tom Howell Jones, Jock McLean and Bill Thompson. Lts. Morris Davies and Fred Morris came down the terrace wall crouching low, pistols in hands, giving firing orders: “Keep alert. Don’t fire until we tell you. There may be Canadians coming back from Batea.” Some Canadians did come back in the late afternoon of an exhausting nerve-wracking, weary day. Then a massive artillery barrage fell on our ridge. Up the road and among the trees came tanks. We were ordered to fire on the infantry that took cover whilst the tanks continued to fire their machine guns. After about a half-hour of this, Lt. Morris Davies came running, and said “Everybody back! Follow me!” Keeping low we ran back among the vines and olive trees down the terraced valley until we came to a stone barn. We were now only Lts. Davies and Morris, Tom Howell Jones and I. I said, “What about the others, Morris?” He answered, “They must have gone with Lt. Gregory.” Suddenly around the barn came two soldiers with rifles. On being challenged they were Jim Skinner, a Welsh Canadian, and John Oliver of Blackwood, Gwent. Then a tank shell hit the barn followed by the sound of approaching tanks. Lt. Morris Davies said, “Let’s get back to Gandesa.” ……..On being told that Gandesa had fallen, we all turned off the road and followed a goat-path that led over a mountain range called the Sierra Pandols. We struggled along pathways over precipitous mountains of grey limestone, keeping below the skyline. We drank water at bubbling rivulets. We left the Italians and made our way down a valley, very narrow like a gorge. Suddenly, shells burst on this little valley with a deafening roar. We trotted down the little valley and met an old peasant and two little children cowering under a ledge of rock. He directed us to an abandoned railway, about a mile down this gorge-like valley. We crossed a crystal clear, meandering stream and came struggling up a high embankment and there was the railway, no sleepers, no rails, just the rail bed. We marched smartly along the rail bed walking through many short tunnels where we could see the daylight shining at the furthest end. 
Mary following in her father’s footsteps….
One of the many railway tunnels…
Eventually, we came to a broader valley, with a good tarmac road. This road was crowded with retreating troops and some refugees. We joined the moving throng. Suddenly, from the air there burst a rain of machine gun bullets. The bombs and the roar of planes above made a terrifying scene. I lay stiffly down. The planes went. I found near me a thick, woollen poncho, the pockets of which were full of nuts. Nobody claimed it so it was a welcome addition to my scanty wardrobe. We four, Lts. Davies and Morris and Tom Howell Jones and I, managed to get across the dust-covered valley and marched along with the retreating troops toward the sea and the town of Tortosa at the mouth of the River Ebro. It was thirty miles from Batea to Tortosa, thirty miles of precipitous mountains with no food except for a dixie of soup and a slice of bread given to us by a retreating Spanish unit on the 3rd April 1938. Then, on the 5th April, in the river town of Cherta, we met organized resistance by the Spanish Republican Army. There were tanks, artillery and masses of infantry. Military police stopped us and we told them who we were. We were given food, and an old man ferried us across the River Ebro to the town of Tuvisia (Tivissa). The ferryman kept asking us for tobacco, tobacco. (Greening, 2006, p. 72) 
The River Ebro at Cherta
Edwin Greening was not present with the battalion when it was bussed up from Corbera to the XV Brigade Estado Mayor near the junction to Batea just west of Gandesa. The battalion had then marched 17 kilometres during the night towards Calaceite on the main road to Alcaniz. It was here, in the early dawn of April 1st that the battalion met a flying column of CTV Italian whippet tanks and infantry just outside the village to the west and over 140 men were captured. 
The site at Calaceite where the British battalion was ambushed. Note the stone to the right on the ridge….
Duncan with the British battalion badge fixed to the stone visible in the previous photograph.
The survivors of the battalion retreated in small groups back to Gandesa where they briefly held a position for a day and a night before retiring and eventually crossing over the River Ebro at Cherta to safety on April 3rd. Out of the 650 men who marched out of Corbera on the morning of March 30th, Edwin Greening writes after reforming at Darmos: One morning about the 10th April, before we went to our “foxholes” to sleep, we were paraded for photographs. At that time, about 10 days after the massacre of the battalion at Calaceite on the 31st of March, there were no more than sixty to eighty men with the HQ of the battalion; the rest were dead, prisoners, wounded or scattered over Catalonia (ibid. p. 77). 
Right. Darmos, April 10th, 1938.Domingo Morales Garcia, Holding flag, Morris Davies, with glasses behind the flag, Edwin Greening; holding flag on the right, Glyn “Taff” Evans.
And so we ended this journey by the Ebro in relative comfort. How the Brigaders felt as they reached the other side of the Ebroone dares not think about. Each individual story of escape and if they were lucky, capture and imprisonment at San Pedro de Cardena, are epic tales in themselves. But to actually follow the route through the vast expanse of the Aragon and the hills of Catalonia one can get a glimpse of the horrors that occurred here and appreciate their adventures and survival to eventually face the horrific Battle of the Ebro on 25th July 1938. __________________________________________________________________ 7th September 2011. Updated tours for October and November.
With the announcement yesterday of the 75th Anniversary event at the Prison at San Pedro de Cardena near Burgos, I have added to the trip covering Teruel and the Great Retreats from 30th October to 4th November the option to include at the end a visit to the Event to be held at San Pedro de Cardena over the weekend of November 4th to 7th. Details are below. There are some places still available on the Teruel trip but please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to come on either or both trips. Details below. Any questions, please ask me on either hill705@gmail.com or pdlhistoria@gmail.com.
TERUEL & THE GREAT RETREATS
&
THE SAN PEDRO DE CARDENA CONFERENCE AND MEMORIAL 4th to 6th November
Sunday 30th October to Friday 4th November 2011
TRIP A: TERUEL & THE GREAT RETREATS. 30th October to 4th November 2011.
Sunday 30th October, 2011. 0900. Meet inBarcelona. Drive to Teruel via Tudela de Segre to visit the Escola Militar. Visit the T26 tank at Vilanova de la Barca. Drive to the Hotel Orient in Teruel. Lunch on the way at the beautiful village of Montsonis. Sleep at Hotel Orient, Teruel (beside the famous Teruel Bullring). Monday 31st October. Visit Teruel and explain some of the places connected with the International Brigades and the Battle of Teruel. Visit the American positions at the North Pole. Mackenzie Papineau positions near Mas del Chantre. Visit the Doomed Lovers of Teruel and the church tower that was used as an observation post to warn against enemy aviation. Drive to Cuevas Labradas to see the hospital used by James Neugass (See the book “War is Beautiful” by James Neugass), the American graffiti in the nearby railway station and the railway tunnel used as shelter by the XV Brigade during the cold weather. During these two days meet Alfonso Casas, head of ABATE, the Association for the Battle of Teruel and view his collection of SCW related materiel at his home. Sleep at Hotel Orient. Tuesday 1st November. Leave Teruel and then drive towards Seguro de los Banos where Bill Titus was killed and is buried in the mass grave in the cemetery. Drive to Fuendetodos and visit the Goya Museumand collection of etchings. Sleep at Hotel Capricho de Goya in Fuendetodos. Wednesday 2nd November. Visit Belchite to explore the Great Retreats. Examine the locations of the Mackenzie Papineau battalion at Azuara and El Lobo, an artillery position with grand views of the area. It was here that La Pasionara observed the Battle of Belchite in the summer of 1937. Follow the route of the Great Retreat towards Hijar, Alcariz, Caspe and Batea, including Vilalba dels Arcs and Corbera. Visit the old synagogue in Hijar to be shown the project to rejuvenate the Jewish Call in the village. Sleep at Casa Ecologica, La Fatarella. Thursday 3rd November . Follow the route of the Retreat from Batea to Gandesa. Visit the locations where Robert Merriman and members of the Lincoln Washington battalion were ambushed on April 2nd 1938. Examine new evidence concerning the fate of Merriman. Visit the village of Darmos where the Lincoln Washingtons regrouped after the Great Retreats of March and April 1938. Sleep at Casa Ecologica, La Fatarella. Friday 4th November. Return to Barcelona to drop off those people who are not going to attend the San Pedro de Cardena event near Burgos. END OF TRIP A. COST OF TRIP A: Five nights accommodation, all meals, transport, souvenir booklet and guidance. 900 euros per person based on shared twin with en suite bathroom (20% extra for individual rooms). Fifty percent deposit to reserve the trip. Fully refundable if Alan Warren is unable to guide the tour. If participants are unable to make the trip another person can take part instead. TRIP B: THE SAN PEDRO DE CARDENA CONFERENCE AND MEMORIAL 4th to 6th November. Friday 4th November. Leave Barcelona at midday to attend the San Pedro de Cardena event near Burgos. This will be a long journey of 6 hours. LECTURE. At the Salon de actos de edificio de sindicatos, C/San Pablo8, at 2000. Luis Castro, author of the book “Burgos: Capital de la Cruzada” & “the Jaily News” blogger Nacho García, will talk about the International Brigades, about the situation in Burgos from 1936 to 1939 and also about San Pedro’s Concentration Camp. The event will start with the showing of the documentary “Prisioneros de Guerra”. Sleep in or near the village of San Pedro de Cardena. Saturday 5th November. Rest and/or visit the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardena and visit the Exhibition at Espacio Tangente, C/Valentín Jalón 10. (Opening hours to be given on the weekend). Sleep in or near the village of San Pedro de Cardena. Sunday 6th November. Memorial unveiling at the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardena, 1200. Lunch. Sleep in or near the village of San Pedro de Cardena. Monday 7th November. Return by minibus toBarcelona. Arrive late afternoon. COST OF TRIP B: Three nights accommodation, all meals and transport. 400 euros per person based on shared twin with en suite bathroom (20% extra for individual rooms). Fifty percent deposit to reserve the trip. Fully refundable if Alan Warren is unable to guide the tour. If participants are unable to make the trip another person can take part instead. COST OF TRIPs A & B TOGETHER: 1200 euros. PLEASE BOOK EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT AS PLACES ARE LIMITED:
TWO DAY TRIPS BEFORE THE MADRID TO BARCELONA INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE TRIP 22nd to 29th OCTOBER
Thursday 20th October.
A VISIT TO VILLA PAZ HOSPITAL
This day trip, leaving from Hotel Agumar in Madrid at 10.00 will visit the private palace where the American Villa Paz Hospitalwas based. In addition a trip to the American hospital at Tarancon will be made and a visit to the Hospital Inglese at Huete. This will be an intensive day focusing on the Medical Services of the International Brigades and will include film taken by Henri Cartier Bresson “Return to Life” and will include researchers from the newly formed Republican Hospitals Research Group (www.hospitalesdesangrerepublicanosgce.blogspot.com) under the guidance of Ernesto Vinas who will facilitate the visit to the hospital and a reception by the alcadesa of Saelices. Lunch will be included.
Price will be 65 euros per person with limited spaces. Please book early to avoid disappointment.
Friday 21st October.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HEMINGWAY
A day trip to Ambite, Mondejar and Albares.
This day trip, leaving from Hotel Agumar in Madrid at 10.00 will visit the recently identified Old Mill near Ambite where photographs of Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Herbert Matthews were taken in September 1937 around the time of the battle of Belchite. In addition a visit to the location of film and photographs of the predominantly British anti-tank battery in the village will also be made. The trip will then visit Mondejar where film and photographs of the British battalion receiving their Battalion banner on November 30th1937 were taken, followed by a visit to the village of Albares where the Lincoln Washington battalion was based between the end of Jarama and December 1937 (“Ibanez” in Steve Nelson’s book “The Volunteers”). It is hoped that the group will be able to meet Marie Luz, the Lincoln Washington battalion mascot (“little Maria, of the long curls and the enormous eyes, was elected sweetheart of the battalion”. Nelson, p 126). Price will be 65 euros per person with limited spaces. Please book early to avoid disappointment.
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Conference and Memorial at San Pedro de Cardena, 4th to 6th November, 2011 
Nacho Eli Garcia, historian and expert on San Pedro de Cardena prison, where International Brigaders were held (He is also the creator of the excellent blog “The Jaily News”), has just announced that over the weekend of November 4th to 6th an International conference, exhibition and memorialisation will be held at the former prison of San Pedro de Cardeña. This event is the weekend after the end of the week-long series of events commemorating the creation of the International Brigades (Madrid and Barcelona, Oct. 22-29). A group of individuals will be staying on after the end of this trip to visit Teruel with me and to follow the route of the Great Retreats from October 30th to November 4th. We will then drive to San Pedro de Cardeña for this event via Barcelona if others wish to attend. If anyone wishes to join the tour or to be picked up in Barcelona on the morning of Friday November 4th and return in the afternoon of Monday November 7th then please contact me as soon as possible as there are only a few seats still available. For further information if you wish to make your own way there, please contact Nacho on nachoyeli@hotmail.fr for further information. Remembering Paddy McAllister. 9th September 2011 Over the past few months I have been working with a group from Ireland to remember Paddy McAllister, an Irishman originally from Lincoln Street in the LowerFalls, who emigrated to Canada in 1928 and who subsequently served with the Canadian Mackenzie Papineau battalion and who was with them both during the Great Retreats and at the Battle of the Ebro. A group of twenty one people came over under the steady leadership of Roddy Hassan and we met in Salou on Friday September 9th to take them on a day trip to the Ebro battlefield to explore the battlefield and to place a plaque to remember Paddy McAllister on Hill 609 which the Mac Paps held in the Sierra Pandols and where Paddy fought between August 16th and 25th 1938. Most of the group bravely walked along towards the enemy held Hill 666 (there are two Hill 666s!) and where for the past few years a lonely Republican flag has bravely fluttered and been tattered by the strong winds that blast over the steep ridge of the Sierra Pandols. 
Only recently on July 2nd this year, a plaque has been quietly placed there to remember the Lincoln Washington battalion who held the other Hill 666 by Catalan friends of Welsh International Brigade medic Alun Menai Williams. Alun was a sanitario, or as he was called by the Americans,“the Limey Doc”, with the Washington battalion at Brunete, the Lincoln Washington battalion at Belchite, Teruel and the Great Retreats before transferring to the British battalion for the Battle of the Ebro. It was a very pleasant surprise to discover this memorial and it is one of many that are quietly placed by individuals in the landscape to remember the Brigaders. Those who placed it know who they are and on behalf on those in Paddy McAllister’s group who were privileged to see it, and from myself especially, thank you very much to those individuals for doing this. It is there for those who wish to find it. Slowly, after much silence, various groups and individuals are now understanding the landscape from the memories and written and photographic history available. 
The plaque set up on the Nationalist-held Hill 666 on July 2nd 2011, the 5th anniversary of the death of Alun Menai Williams
Eventually the group successfully reached Hill 609 (the coach driver, Jose Maria, came as far as the American held Hill 666, but then reluctantly returned to his coach muttering something about mad Irishmen!). The ragged group reformed and speeches were made and the plaque remembering Paddy McAllister placed and then partially hidden for the Lo Riu Associacio and us to permanently place it later on a spot on Hill 609.
The group starting the march to Hill 609 from below Hill 705
Hill 705 in the distance from Hill 666 where the Lincoln Washington battalion were positioned.
The group reforms on Hill 609
The plaque was positioned…
and speeches were made…
and then we made our way back to the coach!
We then returned to the coach and the decision was made that a visit to a pub or bar was in order. So the thirsty group descended to Corbera and there the group of 21 Irish relieved the bar La Parada of 96 bottles of beer in very short order. The owners, Maria and Jose, were astounded not so much by the amount of beer drunk, but probably more by the fact that they were paid as the bottles were passed over the counter which is not usually done here until when the people have drunk up and leave! The group eventually left at about nine o’clock in the evening for their hotel in Salou, but three of the group, Laura, Conor and Cieran, stayed on till the following day in order to be shown some places that would have been impossible for the whole group to visit. One of the three, Laura, is a post graduate archaeologist from University College Dublin, and we were later able to introduce her to the Lo Riu Associacio in La Fatarella, who will be excavating starting next week the partially discovered and excavated “City in theForest” where 10,000 soldiers were located during the autumn of 1938. The idea was discussed over lunch on the Friday to possibly consider a number of archaeologists from UCD to come in the autumn of 2012 to work with the University of Barcelona and to assist and develop contacts with both universities and help build links with future excavations and projects involving fossa communes in the area beginning next year. 
Joan Sambro of Lo Riu explaining the “City in the Forest”
The extensive fortifications and dugouts above La Fatarella were an attempt to hold a pocket on the enemy held part of the Ebro over the winter of 1938 and 1939 before a possible new offensive by the Republican Army for the Spring of 1939. This was not carried out, but a large network of fortified lines and accommodation was built and subsequently held and successfully evacuated between November 15th and16th 1938 when the 35th Division comprised of the XI, XIII and XV Brigada Mixtas defended these fortifications before being the last units of the retreating Army of the Ebro across the bridge at Flix before it was blown up. Ironically, these same Brigades were composed of the Spanish and Catalans troops who had served alongside the International Brigaders before they had been withdrawn on 23rd September 1938 in an attempt by the Republican government to persuade the Nationalists to also withdraw their foreign troops, It is not a well-known fact that the Nationalists also withdrew a similar number of 10,000 Italian CTV troops at the same time as the International Brigades, but it was just a tiny fraction of their total number but done so nonetheless. 
Just a very small excavated section of the “City in the Forest”
The view from a higher level of the” City”
Far below is Asco and the River Ebro where the XV Brigade crossed on July 25th 1938.
And above the “City” are many wind turbines.
A plan of what has so far been excavated….
The extensive fortifications and support lines above La Fatarella were recorded and published by the Italian Corps Trupo Voluntario but then almost forgotten about until by chance in 2005, local historians identified some of the concrete bunkers and trenches from photographs taken after the fighting and held in the Avila Military Archives. The group Lo Riu Associacio began to excavate the remains, and on the seventieth anniversary of the evacuation on 16th November 2008, Lo Riu invited the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Taguena, the commander of the 35th Division aswell as the daughter of Julian Henriquez Caubin, Chief of Staff and the son of Teodoro Gonzalez, Chief Engineer of the same Division to raise awareness of their discoveries. Since then, much work has been done and over 16 kilometres of trenches along with masses of concrete bunkers and over 60 fortified shelters and refugis are yet to be uncovered. It is thought that perhaps 5 or 6 years of excavations are yet to be made in this area and it is hoped that some sort of joint project can be developed in this area. 
Cieran, Laura, Conor and Joan above the “City in the Forest”
It was also possible to show Laura and Conor and Cieran a just a few places connected with Paddy McAllister and the XV International Brigade before we met the lo Riu Associacio at la Fatarella on the Saturday afternoon, including the XV Brigade memorial in the Sierra Pandols. Conor had earlier bought himself a leather wineskin from the Gandesa wine co-operative and we decided to practice drinking from it beside the memorial. They also signed their names and left them in the metal tube set close to the memorial after having read the information about the names and the memorial that has been left there. There are a lot of names written there now! 
The XV Brigade memorial in the Sierra Pandols constructed in late August 1938 with the names of 35 officers of the XV Brigade inscribed on it.
Conor practicing with his wineskin!
l to r. Cieran, Conor, Alan and Laura at the XV Brigade memorial
On the route up to the memorial these boulders were caused by Nationalist artillery hitting the edge of the cliff above to intedict the supply line up to the Sierra Pandols.
A new memorial to the 35th Division behind and above the International Brigade memorial in Corbera. Hill 287 is one of the two hills east of Corbera, held by the Lincoln Washington battalion on 23rd September 1938, their last day of action.
Hopefully a group of archaeologists and supervisors from University College Dublin will be able to take part in this project next year and to work on the excavations and to learn more about the Spanish Civil War and to visit the important sites of the Battle of the Ebro. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 14th July 2011 Filming for A Song For Carlos. Just to let you know that I am now showing Michelle Mason, grandaughter of Canadian brigader Charles Cowie or “Carlos Covic” as the Spanish called him, around Spain for the purposes of her making of a documentary to discover a lost painting made by her grandfather that was once displayed in the church at Tarazona de la Mancha. . On Saturday we leave for Madrid and Tarazona de la Mancha and visit places in the Aragon on the way down. It should be fun!. Sadly, Michelle-s travel blog just didnt develop as to how she hoped to do it . I quite understand what with the stresses and strains of looking after a film crew, filming and her son, but for the record, here is the blog address. www.aSongForCarlos.com ________________________________________________________ 9th July 2011 “THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE BELGIAN”. GEORGES KOPP. GEORGE ORWELL’S COMMANDER. 
Georges Kopp
The view that Orwell saw when he was stationed at Monte Irazo in early 1937 (or Trazo as he mispelt it!)
“Where are the enemy?“ Benjamin waved his hand expansively. “Over zere.” (Benjamin spoke English-terrible English.). “But where?” (Orwell, p 20)
Last weekend I had the pleasure of showing Marc Wildemeersch (http://www.marcwildemeersch.be/2010/09/de-man-die-belg-wilde-worden/), Belgian author of a recent book published in the Netherlands on the mysterious life of Georges Kopp, George Orwell’s commander. This man is a complete mystery, yet his presence in Orwell’s classic book “Homage to Catalonia” makes him come alive. His outrageous claims, his attraction to women (“the nurses here are mostly brunette”) his life as a double agent after the Spanish Civil War in France and his fraught relationship with Orwell after having sold him a dodgy lorry during his “gentleman farmer” period of his life after the Second World War deserve retelling and Marc’s excellent book does this very well. Warren & Pell Publishing intend to publish an English translation of Marc’s book next May 20th (the anniversary of the wounding of George Orwell on the Aragon Front) in Barcelona, hopefully at the unveiling of a plaque to George Orwell at the recently identified Sanatori Maurin. Early days yet, but here are some photos of our trip last weekend to the Ruta Orwell. We will keep you posted as to developments. 
We stayed at the Albergue Monegros near Lecinena (www.alberguemonegros.com) which is situated in a reformed monastery and is quite charming place to stay. Originally taken by Republican militiamen in the summer of 1936, it finally fell to the Nationalists in October 1936. Javier, the manager, kindly showed us some Nationalist cartoons hidden away in the rooms (below). 
And then to the Ruta Orwell….. 
“As we neared the line the boys round the red flag in front began to utter shouts of “Visca POUM!” “Fascistas-maricones!” and so forth- shouts which were meant to be war-like and menacing, but which, from those childish throats, sounded as pathetic as the cries of kittens.” (Orwell. p 18)
Marc Wildermeersch (left) and Victor Pardo, director of the Ruta Orwell
Alcubierre church. “The church had been used as a latrine; so had all the fields for a quarter of a mile around” (Orwell. p 15)
Alan & Victor talking about the new 6 part series on Aragon televison, “La Guerra en Aragon”.
“When you had been to the Comité de Guerra and inspected the rows of holes in the wall- holes made by rifle-volleys, various fascists having been executed there-you had seen all the sights that Alcubierre contained.” (Orwell, p 15)
“La Granja, our store and cookhouse, had possibly at one time been a convent. It had huge courtyards and outhouses, covering an acre or more….every room that was not in use had been turned into a latrine- a frightful shambles of smashed furniture and excrement.” (Orwell, p 54)
“The little church that adjoined it, its wall peforated by shell-holes, had its floors inches deep in dung.” (Orwell, p 54)
I now understand better the reasons for the description by Orwell of the desecration of such churches. Perhaps the well known Spanish phrase,”Caga en Dios!” (“I shit on God!”) may explain this?
We spent some time on the Estercho Quinto above Huesca to look at the impressive Castell Monte Aragon and later to Sietamo to identify some film taken in the Plaza Mayor during the fighting.
Castell Monte Aragon
And finally, Marc and I slipped into Huesca for that obligatory cup of coffee!
______________________________________________________________
2nd July 2011 The Fifth Annual Brunete March 2nd July 2011 
Dawn, July 2nd 2011
This year the usual march was organised by the Research Group Brunete el la Memoria (www.brunetelenlamemoria.com) with the expertise of Ernesto Vinas and Angel Rodriguez. The founder of these Marches, Seve Montero, who along with Brigader Bob Doyle, this year allowed Ernesto and Angel to take some of the responsibilities and hard work that these events take off his shoulders and the result of the joint efforts of both Brunete en la Memoria and AABI made this year’s march a great success. Over 100 people both young and old, made the march in the boiling heat. 
Almudena bravely marching towards the Front Line
My colleague, Almudena Cros and I decided to walk the 12 kilometres from her home to the start point of the march and we left early on the morning of Saturday July 2nd. She carrying an Italian flag (her expertise and passion is Italian Renaissance Art and she has lived and studied for her doctorate in Italy) and myself carrying a Republican flag. We made an empirical study afterwards and reckoned that we received about twelve positive honks from passing cars and vans and two or three negative blasts (well, maybe one was to tell us to get off the road?) aswell. Four to one sounds quite positive for this area! 
Marco, spokesperson for the Italian group ANPI
Having made the start point of the march a large group of Italians from Madrid who are members of ANPI had joined the March. These people are part of a large group remembering the anti fascist fighters in Italy during and after World War Two with over 130,000 members in Italy and they had a film crew who produced the following short film of the March. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ETQTUbnbE 
The March begins….
A disagreement of the locations of the Battle? Ernesto Vinas, facing away from the camera, describing the Battle, pointing one way while others point in the opposite direction!.
The group sheltering from the sweltering sun under pine trees as Ernesto Vinas explains the battlefield of Brunete
A view of the battlefield with an airstrip and an airship parked there! I am fascinated by old airships like the Graf Zeppelin and the R100 and R101 etc. and I just wanted to put this photo in!
Marco of ANPI and Seve Montero of AABI paying homage to the Italian Brigaders and announcing next year’s March at Guadalajara.
At the end of the March after Marco and Seve had made their speeches I publicly asked Seve if AABI had any plans to commemorate the battle of Guadalajara in March 2012 on the 75th anniversary of the battle. He replied that AABI would be working together with the Italian International Brigade Group to make a visit to the battlefield and to remember the Italian Brigaders who fought there. Sadly, however, Seve also mentioned that, because of the work on the forthcoming October event to commemorate the arrival of the International Brigades to save Madrid in November 1936 and the work involved in organising theGuadalajara event next march that AABI would not be active in setting up the Annual March for Jarama next year. However, whilst we were having our picnic by the Command post, Rory O’Brian and I chewed the fat with Seve and from these discussions Rory has kindly offered to organise an event for February next year to commemorate the Battle of Jarama and the involvement of the British and American battalions. Rory is now in touch with Jim Jump, secretary of the IBMT ( www.international-brigades.org.uk) and an appropriate event will be organised for visitors keen to visit the battlefield around the time of this important battle. I mentioned earlier in the blog that in February this year, the mass graves of British and American dead from the battle have been recently located and we hope to visit the sites during the March aswell as to visit the position of the British Machine Gun Company to view Suicide Hill and perhaps to have both Americans and British there (aswell as heaps of Spanish!) over the same weekend to do two separate walks to their own respective “Suicide Hills”. More information, confirmed dates etc will be passed down through Jim Jump and the IBMT as Rory starts to work with Seve and AABI to make this event a significant commemoration on the 75th anniversary for those who wish to come. It will be good. 
A better photo of Ernesto Vinas holding a Soviet 75mm anti aircraft shell that he suddenly discovered above Casa Palatas, the Command Post of the 10th Republican Division and advanced position of the XVIII Army Corps!
Irish and Italian participants walking back down the hill from Casa Palatas
Casa Palatas, the Command Post of the 10th Republican Division and advanced position of the XVIII Army Corps.
And speaking of Jarama, a new book on the battle has just been published by Osprey Publishing. “They shall not Pass!” by Ben Hughes is not the usual Osprey format, but a completely new format as a hardback with 272 pages and two blocks of photos bound in to the book. I have yet to finish the book, but I hope that with Osprey’s marketing skills and distribution network that the book will sell well and raise interest and awareness in the International Brigades and the British battalion. I will review it here once I have read it completely soon.. But if you cannot wait, here is the link to buy a copy: http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/They-Shall-Not-Pass_9781849085496 But if you look up the National Archives bookshop in London you may be in for a pleasant surprise! http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop/searchresult.aspx?k=they%20shall%20not%20pass Next year will, of course, be the 75th anniversary of the battle of Brunete. Both AABI Brunete en la Memoria will be working together to make this a significant event. It is just a pity that the IBMT Annual event at the London Eye now clashes on the same weekend with the Brunete march, but such is life. ________________________________________________________ 3rd July 2011. IN SEARCH OF HEMINGWAY AND WE FIND THE ANTI-TANK BATTERY TOO!. 
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1354.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
There are two photos of Ernest Hemingway, Marta Gellhorn and Herbert Matthews with officers of the XV International Brigade in the Tamiment Collection. The title reads “Ernest Hemingway with other American visitors to 15th International Brigade, Azaila, 14th September 1937”. Over the past year I have been looking around Azaila close to Belchite on the Aragon Front to try and find the location of this photo, but a few months ago I suddenly realised that I was looking in the wrong area! The photo below shows “Major Modesto at 15th Brigade Headquarters, Ambite, November 1937” and if one studies it closely one can see one of the metal supports of the canopy which is identical to the photo taken with Hemingway which was supposedly taken at Azaila. 
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1080.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
So with these photographs in hand an intrepid group of us drove out to Ambite to explore the village on Sunday 3rd July. Last year, Irish historian Harry Owens and I had interviewed a number of people in the neighbouring villages of Mondejar, where the British battalion was based in 1937 and Albares, where the Lincoln and Lincoln Washington battalions were based after the battle of Jarama in June 1937 and up to December 9th, 1937 when they returned permanently to the Aragon Front, never to return. With Almudena and two Italians who we met on the Brunete march and who kindly offered to drive us and join us in this quest, Elizabeth Donatello and Riccardo Micco, we spent the afternoon exploring Ambite and made discoveries beyond belief. But let us start with Hemingway. Well, we have successfully discovered the Old Mill where these photos were taken. It soon became apparent that this building was also the venue for a number of other very important photos that we have also identified. The only problem is that the building is now used as a Rehabilitation centre for Drug Addiction and we were asked not to take photos without first asking the Charity that owns the building. This will be possible, but we had to respect the wishes of Mario, the manager of the Centre, though it was so tempting being able to see the canopy which has not changed in over 70 years! But we will return soon and with permission from the owners make comparison photos for the benefit of the blog. Please have patience. It is there, and it is not going to go away! The Anti-tank battery. However, an even greater surprise awaited us after we visited a bar in Ambite. This is the usual place to go for Harry Owens and I. Not because we are alcoholics, but that it is the best place to start talking with locals and from then on one starts to meet local people. We duly sat down and started talking with some of the locals and within ten minutes we were introduced to Julian, an eighty year old man who was in the bar and who can remember selling milk to the “Russos” (This is the blanket term used in many of the villages when referring to the International Brigades!).
During the interview an old lady came in. She refused to be interviewed, but later took us up to a large building at the top of the village to meet the caretaker as it was common knowledge that the International Brigades had been based there too. To our surprise the owners were also there and we were invited to meet them and talk about our visit. The owners were at first very formal and uncertain as to why we had come. However, the caretaker, Maria, knew that the International Brigades had been there and we were shown some photos that had been taken in the grounds of the Palace. Whilst there we were shown an old, rusted French Adrian helmet that they had kept and which was obviously from the time that the XV International Brigade was based here. We were told that the helmet had later been used to feed the chickens. My mind started thinking of swords into ploughshares, but helmets into chicken feeders just doesn’t have the same emotive power of description! 
The French Adrian helmet probably left by the International Brigades after having occupied the house in 1937
And then the bomb (figuratively speaking!) hit us. We were idly looking though photos when Maria suddenly pointed at one particular photo and said, “That is here!” And here it is below:
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1796.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
The same spot today
This is a very significant photograph as it is one of a series of photos and film that shows the crew of the Anti-tank Battery. The most famous one has Miles Tomalin playing his flute. But this photograph was taken at the same time but from a different angle and plainly shows behind them the huge tree. You may also have seen stock footage in many International Brigade films (“The Good Fight” immediately comes to mind) of the anti tank guns being run up a hill by the crew and then practice firing taking place. Well, this is the very same location! We have discovered where these iconic photos were taken and can give a date of between 2nd November and 9th December 1937. The photo below shows the gun team dragging up one of the guns to the level area where they were doing a practice shoot. If you can get a copy of the film “The Good Fight” you will recognise the same location in the contemporary film used. 
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1233.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
Looking up from almost the same position as the photo above
I cannot say how lucky we were to meet these kind people and to identify the location of these significant photographs. I would like to thank Maria for identifying the photograph and for her interest in the International Brigade having been there and also all those who we met. Finally I would also like to thanks Almudena for coming with us, and most importantly Elizabeth and Riccardo for driving out with us. We were very happy to have made these discoveries and now can share them with you.
I am now planning a day trip for those interested to see not just the places we discovered in Ambite, but also Mondejar and Albares. The plan is to bring a group of people to these villages whilst the IB conference in Madrid is on. Sadly, there will be no simultaneous translation of the papers and so I would like to invite interested (ie. non Spanish speaking!) parties to come out for the day to visit these places. There will be a small charge to include a lunch and transport from Madrid and back, but the day trip will take place on Friday 21st October 2011. Places will be very limited and it will be first come, first served. But if groups of you wish to band together to share the cost of a hire car others are more than welcome to join us. I cannot promise a visit to the place where the anti tank battery photographs and film were taken. And also please remember that the location is private property and I would kindly ask individuals to respect their privacy and not to blunder up there on the off chance that you can visit! We are also negotiating a visit on the same day to the Old Mill in Ambite where the XV Brigade HQ was based and show people the location where the Hemingway photographs were taken, and this will be very likely. If you would like to join us, please register an interest by contacting Alan on hill705@gmail.com to provisionally reserve a place. A cost will be worked out and passed on soon. Finally I add a photo of Alumdena, Elizabeth and Riccardo which I took at Mondejar. This village housed the British battalion and in the square behind the British battalion on November 30th 1937, was presented with their XV Brigade banner and pennant which had been presented to them at the Calderon Theatre in Madrid (now the Haagen Daaz building on Calle Atocha!) on October 31st 1937. The British battalion banner that had been made by the women of Battersea was also presented here and where, a week later on December 6th 1937, Clemet Attlee reviewed the British battalion. It seems that as he drove into the Square the battalion was singing “God save the King” by torchlight! I would like to thank them for sharing this adventure and discovering the hidden history of the Spanish Civil War that is present in this beautiful landscape!
Almudena, Elizabeth and Riccardo in Mondejar Plaza Mayor.
Sam Wild leading the Colour Party at the Presentation of the Banners in Mondejar Plaza Mayor, 30th November 1937.
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22nd June 2011. THE MEXICAN SUITCASE COMING TO BARCELONA IN OCTOBER: Just to let you all know that the “Mexican suitcase” of hidden photos by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and other previously unknown photos from the Spanish Civil War will be on display in Barcelona beginning this October until January 2012. www.mnac.cat/exposicions/exp_futures.jsp?lan=003
The location of the photos taken by Robert Capa near Fraga on 7th November 1938 that are covered in this Exhibition have been recently located (they are not exactly at Fraga), and for those interested it could be possible to visit the location in early November for visitors who attend the week-long trip being organised from Madrid to Barcelona? See http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/gallery_capa.html for the photographs. Contact me on pdlhistoria@gmail.com for further details of the proposed trip beginning on Sunday October 30th after the International Brigade trip from Madrid to Barcelona finishes. The trip will drive down to Teruel and then back to Barcelona on the afternoon of Thursday November 3rd. We will follow the footsteps of the XV International Brigade from Teruel, Seguro de los Banos, Belchite & the Great Retreats via Hijar, Caspe and Batea through the unknown and hidden landscape of the Aragon. Places are very limited for this unique journey.
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22nd June 2011 Fifth Brunete Annual March, 2nd July 2011. It is with great pleasure to announce that AABI and Brunete en la Memoria have jointly organised the Fifth Annual Brunete March. Please contact Ernesto Vinas on the e mail address on the poster (click below to see it) for further information. I will be there and look forward to meeting friends and colleagues who attend the event.
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18th June 2011 A visit to the Estado Mayors of the XV International Brigade and the Lincoln Washington battalion in the Sierra Pandols.
Photograph taken by an Italian aircraft of the Sierra Pandols during the battle
New discoveries in the Sierra Pandols and an increased interest in such work was the result of last Saturday’s walk with 29 people up into the Sierra Pandols on the Ebro battlefield. Extensive fieldwalking over the past year and a chance find in April 2010 of a hidden cave by retired Englishman, Len Codlin, then living in Catalonia, on one of our walks trying to follow the routes of the Brigaders from the Gandesa to Pinell de Brai road up to Hill 666, has opened up new avenues of research in this hitherto silent and hidden landscape…. “After supper we were ordered to move to the Pandols (August 15th 1938). That night we slept at the foothills of the Sierra Pandols. At dawn we started to climb to the top of the hill. Our position was to be the highest point of the sierra, a 3000 foot high precipice of sheer granite. We went to a huge cave which was to serve as our Brigade Headquarters. It was ideal protection against air and artillery attack. after a short rest, we again started to climb the sierra, sometimes going on all fours like goats so as not to fall. We finally made it to the crest. We could not dig in as there was no earth to dig, so we gathered stones and small chunks of granite to create a defensive position. Three thousand feet below, at the curve of the road, we could see our tanks in action. We did not have a protected spot for our battalion Headquarters so Wolff ordered a couple of runners to find a suitable spot. They found a place about 500 yards behind the summit, so we went and established our Headquarters there. The cave was not big enough for all the staff but it had a protective overhang in case of aerial bombing or shelling. I created a little foxhole for myself by piling rocks around under the overhang. The ground was not even, so that when I lay down to sleep or rest, my legs were inclined towards the road. In order not to slide down, I placed some big rocks below my feet so I was held in a safe position. The only flat spot was an area inside the cave, but that was only just big enough for the long legs of Wolff and his small political commissar. I was just outside the cave under the overhang. D.P. (Pat) Stephens. A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War. An Armenian-Canadian in the Lincoln Battalion. Newfoundland University Press, 2000. p105 Let me try and explain the landscape….. We marched, in all, for twelve kilometres, reaching and passing the small town of Pinell, and then the road wound steeply uphill, bounded on one side by a precipitous gorge out of which came the sudden sickly smell of the dead, and on the other by towering peaks and crags that would have been fantastic even in the daytime. There was one rock-peak shaped like the prow of a great ocean liner, steep and sheared to a point, that menaced the road with its bulk and its shadow, and the men toiling up the grade. Then we walked off the main road onto a goat path that led into the hills. Alvah Bessie, Men in Battle. 1954, p 271 
“..shaped like the prow of a great ocean liner…”
Just beyond this peak the path veers up to the left and from here the Cave that was used as the Estado Mayor (Headquarters) of the XV Brigade is easily visible from the road (we have all guessed it as having been there) but not easily got to! Over the past few months the local research Group Lo Riu, had cleared a path to make it more easy to visit.
British Brigader Fred Thomas wrote in his diary:
The Brigade HQ is right high up in a cave, an almost impregnable position…..I was up by the munitions store, right by the road….”
Fred Thomas. To Tilt at Windmills. 1996. p131
XV Brigade Cave Estado Mayor to the right behind the tree line and the munition store building below.
The main aim of this walk was to show visitors the places that have been identified from the Tamiment Collection at New York University. Associacio Lo Riu from La Fatarella (www.loriuassociacio.blogspot.com) and ourselves have spent the past year working together in locating the various photos that were taken by Harry Randall with great success, but there are still more to locate especially of those taken at the British battalion positions in the Sierra Pandols. We wait in hope.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1712.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
Geoff Cowling, Merce Lluveras and Claudia from Chile in the same spot in November 2010.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1714.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
The group in the same cave on June 18th 2011
For fun, some of the group had dressed up in uniforms of the period and took this photo at the same spot in the cave:
(Left photo) The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1078.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
And so we continued up the hills, examining a cave (above) on the way that had been used during the battle as a hospital halfway up the route to the XV Brigade memorial.
At the XV Brigade memorial, which was at that time a field dressing station and which had been built between 19th and 25th August 1938 by zapadores of the XV Brigade in memory of their commander, Egan Schmidt from Latvia, who was mortally wounded by the same shell that killed Maurice( or Morris) Miller from Hull on 19th August 1938.
Welsh Brigader Billy Griffiths wrote:
I got caught twice, but each time was fortunate to be near a shallow slit trench. Morris (Miller) was not so lucky as he was killed outright! So also was the Chief of Fortifications for the Brigade, who, with his staff, was caught in a barrage not far from Brigade HQ. He and three of his staff were killed and a number wounded.
Billy Griffiths. Unpublished memoirs, University of Swansea.
Percy Ludwig, who built the monument wrote:
We buried our captain (Egan Schmidt) on the spot where he lay, and we made a concrete slab over his grave with his name, age and place of birth engraved on it. Next to the grave we built a small mausoleum on which we engraved the names of the men of the 15th International Brigade who had fallen in the Ebro operation.
Percy Ludwig.Notes from a Muscovite.Unpublished memoirs held in the Marx Memorial Library, London.
The memorial has inscribed on it the names of 35 Spanish and International officers of the XV Brigade who were killed in the fighting, not just at the Ebro but others who were killed earlier during Teruel and the Great Retreats. David Leach’s excellent film “Voices from a Mountain” examines the British dead inscribed on this small but impressive memorial- Lewis Clive, David Guest, Maurice Miller, Wally Tapsell and Harry Dobson.
Visitors signing their names on a sheet held in a small metal tube beside the memorial & a small floral offering left on top.
A photo of the newly completed memorial taken in August 1938 and in front the grave of Egan Schmidt.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1751.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
Then the hard walk up to the Lincoln Washington battalion Estado Mayor. This cave was originally discovered by Len Codlin, a retired British soldier who used to live in Catalonia in April 2010 when a small group of Catalans and British were trying to identify the route from the front line on hill 666 down to the XV memorial. The moment Anna Marti and I stood in the hollow of the cave and looked out that we realised that two photos taken by Harry Randall were taken at this exact position. Such discoveries are just one of the of the wonderful things about this sort of fieldwalking!
As we walked up to the cave we passed an observation position with a clear view of Hill 609 (where the Mac Paps were positioned), Hill 666 ( the Lincoln Washington battalion position) and Hill 641 to the rear. I am sure that observers were here keeping the Brigade HQ informed of activity there with cables leading down to the HQ far below.
Angel Sola from Lo Riu pointing out the rock shelter observatory with a view from left to right of Hills 609, 666 and 641. The rest of the group moving up to the cave….
The remains of a dugout and trench system
The group still marching up!
As we walked further across the ridge, the cave was clearly visible over the rock ledge. a long way down.
The cave in the middle distance.
And then we made it and were able to compare the views and the photos taken from the same spot in August 1938.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1745.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
The same view with the two children sitting on the same rock visible in the shadow!
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1747.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
But another very pleasant surprise awaited us as we discussed the site. I had copies of the photos taken by Harry Randall and I was idly looking at them when I saw one stating that it showed the Mac Paps, which would have been found directly behind Hill 609. However, the more I looked at one corner of the cave, the more I wondered if it was taken there. But the Mac Paps were much more to the front behind Hill 609 (their stone parapets are still there). I passed it round the group and after much discussion and closer examination, we all agreed that it was the same location.
A discussion takes place……
The group were very happy to have identified a photo there and then. It took a while for everyone to leave, but as they did, Angel Sola lay down in the same corner and I quickly took some photos of him before we left to return down the hill.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-0112.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
“Commissar” Angel Sola resting before the journey back down.
One of Angel’s abilities is to merge photos taken over 70 years ago with ones taken today. The effect is quite ghostly.
The same spot.
Some of the group in the Lincoln Washington battalion Estado Mayor (Many thanks to Antonio Lopez Fernandez for this photo).
From this position looking all the way down to the left is the road towards Gandesa and just visible behind the Hill of Sant Marcos (its name was changed to “The Hill of (Karl) Marx when the Republicans took it!) one can just see the bare rock of Hill 481 which in the first stages of the Ebro Offensive the British battalion had tried to take. At the time when the XV Brigade was fighting in the Sierra Pandols the German XI Brigade was trying to take Hill 481 from nearly the same positions.
Hill 481 far right just behind the Hill of Sant Marcos/Marx.
The view down to the road below.
Harry Fisher wrote:
One day a car stopped at the foot of the hill. Bullets flew all around it. Two men got out of the car and started running up the hill. They climbed frantically and laboriously until they reached our resting place; they were exhausted. The two men were Herbert Matthews and Ernest Hemingway. I admired them, coming into this dangerous part of the world, risking their lives to get a story.
Harry Fisher. Comrades.1998. p154.
Sadly the group decided to walk down to the road rather than up to Hill 666. But this can be done another day. The result of a 3 page report in La Vanguardia the day before had generated a great deal of interest to the point that a second trip is planned for those who were unable to come on the first trip (it was limited to 29 people in total). Next week Catalan TV3 are being taken up to the caves for a report. This should be interesting. And it is planned for another group to go up to the Lincoln Washington cave to try and determine at what time the photograph with the shadow on the stone was taken on the weekend of August 20th to 21st, probably the same dates as when these photos were taken (certainly between August 19th and 25th). So if anyone wishes to join this group please contact us. We think that it was taken at about 0900 in the morning?
This walk is not easy but also not impossible. I could take interested people here but only after being sure that they could cope with the walk. Thanks to these photos we are now building up a far greater understanding of the fighting up in the Sierra Pandols and certainly with such accounts as by D. P. (Pat) Stephens this has greatly helped us to locate and identify the two caves used by the XV Brigade & Lincoln Washington battalion as their headquarters.
Many thanks to Angel Sola and Alex and Joan Sambro of Lo Riu for organising this trip and for the fieldwalking. Though Len Codlin had independently discovered the Lincoln Washington cave in April 2010 (Anna Marti and I have decided to informally call it “Len’s cave”!), they were able to successfully identify the XV Brigade HQ by their extensive fieldwalking. This is a fine example of various groups working together to discover this hidden history in the landscape here.
And also a heartfelt thanks from us all to Harry Randall who is still alive in the USA and who took these incredible photos and saved them for posterity. All of us cannot thank you enough, Harry.
Harry Randall (in the officer’s cap) directing the taking photos of a meeting with John Gollan and the British battalion in Darmos in early May 1938. (Communist Party of Spain)
Here are the pages from La Vanguardia in Catalan:
Finally, just to give you an idea of the horrific conditions that the men of the XV Brigade endured on Hill 666 and the Sierra Pandols, I leave this brief description by Alvah Bessie:
“We streamed with sweat and lay snuggled among the hot broken rocks, flattening ourselves to the earth as much as possible. We did not talk much; some men ate their sardines and bread, others merely stared at their toes…. At first it was far over, and we watched the shells with a speculative interest, bursting far below us down the mountain side. “That´s where the British are in reserve” said Nat and we both laughed…we watched, since we had not been told to move, as the shell bursts came closer to us, crawling slowly up the slopes. We looked around for a runner, who should have come up about that time and told us to scatter, but no runner was in sight. We looked around at the hundreds of other men, calmly lying there as the fire crept slowly back up the mountain side towards us; they did not move, they were cleaning their guns or eating or lying on their sides talking, or trying to catch a few winks of sleep. It was getting too close for comfort, and now we were as flat as we could be. They were falling a few hundred metres below us; I was watching two men carrying a stretcher (it was empty), I just happened to be watching them, and then they were not there. The shrapnel whined viciously over our heads, slapping against the stone of the hillside, whirring away into the middle distance……” Alvah Bessie. Men in Battle. 1954.
As an aside from having mentioned Ernest Hemingway earlier, over the first weekend in July whilst I am in Madrid for the Fifth Brunete March (see above), I will try and locate some photos of Hemingway taken with officers of the XV Brigade in September 1937. More news later.
_________________________________________________ 14th June 2011 Some News…. A couple of things to mention. Firstly, I will be taking 50 American students to the Ebro for a very brief day trip on Friday June 17th. This should be interesting to see if any of the students may become inspired to know more about the 3,000 Americans who came to fight in Spain. On Saturday June 18th a walk is being planned by Lo Riu Associacio to the newly discovered Command Posts of the XV International Brigade and the Lincoln Washington battalion high up in the Sierra Pandols on the Ebro. Thanks to the enthusiasm of members of Lo Riu we have been able tosuccessfully identify the two positions from photographs held in the Tamiment Collection. We will also visit the XV Brigade memorial and for the hardy (or foolhardy?) some will follow the original route of the Brigaders up to the Lincoln Washington Command Post and then to the front line positions of the Americans on the dreaded Hill 666 and to visit the still standing stone parapets of the Mackenzie Papineau battalion on adjoining Hill 609. And it will be pretty hot! I will report back next week to let you know how the trip went. But for your interest here are two articles in Catalan concerning the walk. Look up this Friday’s La Vanguardia (now daily in Catalan and Spanish!) for a further article. http://www.diaridetarragona.com/56636 http://www.elpunt.cat/noticia/article/5-cultura/19-cultura/420985-retrobar-els-espais-de-la-batalla.htmlAlso during the month of July Michelle Mason , the grandaughter of Canadian brigader Charles Cowie or “Carlos”, is coming to Spain with a film crew to explore the International Brigades and to try and find a painting made by her grandfather in Tarazona de la Mancha. that once hung inside the church there. Below are two links to the project. We look forward to meeting Michelle, and her son Nick, in Perpignan to walk over the Pyrenees to La Vajol and then to the huge Castle of Sant Ferrand in Figueras where her grandfather would have been enrolled into the International Brigades and finally to Barcelona to meet the film crew on July 11th. But it will be bloody hot!
____________________________________________________________________ 22nd May 2011. THE ARAGON FRONT ON THE SEGRE AND AT HUESCA.
Igor & Chris in front of a T26 tank at Vilanova de la Barca
On May 13thI had the pleasure of taking two Australians Igor Demianenko and his partner Chris on a five day tour of various places connected with the Spanish Civil War. We headed west from Barcelona to visit the Escola Militar at Tudela de Segre, passing the T26 tank at Vilanova de la Barca (above). We also visited the reconstructed trench network at El Merengue near the Balaguer River.
Alan & Chris at the entrance to the Escola Militar with Sara Hamill, our guide, in the doorway
Propaganda Wall Art at the Escola Militar at Tudela de Segre…
….and Wall Lesson Plans for Chemical Warfare!
A bomb casing acts as a bell for the village church
Alan & Chris in the reconstructed trenches at nearby El Merengue. It was here in May 1938 that the Quinta de Biberons of the 122nd and 123rd Brigada Mixtas of the 27th Division (Baby bottle troops) many aged only 16 and 17 years old, were ordered to take this hill with the officer shouting: “Come on, boys! We will take this hill as if we were eating a merengue!” Over 500 of them were killed…..
THE RUTA ORWELL
Santuario de Nuestra Señora de de Magallón near Lecineña
A scenic tour north towards Tremp and then down to Lecineña to stay overnight in a reformed monastery (and in which the manager, Javier, kindly showed us bits of hidden Nationalist graffiti hidden in the building) took us most of the day, but on the 14th we visited a number of sites connected with the Ruta Orwell around Robres and Alcubierre. The excellent Interpretation Centre on the Spanish Civil War in Robres aswell as the reconstructed trenches at Monte Irazo (Monte Trazo as written by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia. Maybe a typographical error?) close by and the trenches and observation point at the Hermitage of Santa Quiteria above Tardienta make this a fascinating yet quite unknown place to visit concerning the Spanish Civil War, the early militia columns and, of course, Orwell. 
Reconstructed trenches at the Ruta Orwell near Alcubierre
Chris & Alan beside a 75mm Trubia artillery piece outside the Spanish Civil War Interpretation Centre in Robres.
Detail of the artillery piece
AGNES HODGSON AT POLEÑINO Our particular mission was to locate the Hospital at Poleñino where Australian nurse Agnes Hodgson was stationed in 1937. We were not disappointed. The Last Mile to Huesca by Judith Keene (New South Wales University Press, 1988) analyses the diaries of Agnes Hodgson when she was stationed first at a hospital at Grañen (now demolished) and later at Poleñino. We were able to identify the Casa Launa as the hospital and were pleased to see that repairs are being done on the building. It was easy to imagine the place in 1937. 
March 1937. Back row:Dr Pila y Plá, Dr González Aguiló, Patience Darton, Margaret Powell, Paolino, Fábregas, Patingón, Masillo. Front row: Marcelino, Anne Murray, Antonino.
The Hospital in Poleñino
The Hospital today
The original photos below were taken from the balcony above
Doctor González Aguiló June 1937
Agnes & Patience Darton playing handball on the terrace
(I have just been told that by Alfonso Lopez, curator of the International Brigade graffiti at Castelledfels that they are actually playing badminton!)
For a glimpse at what is at Castelledfels go to:
http://www.castelldefels.org/es/doc_generica.asp?dogid=1569
Back row: Margaret Powell, Susan Murray, Anne Murray, Patience Darton. Front row: Agnes Hodgson & Mary Slater.
TARDIENTA 
Igor and I were able to locate the photo below which has men from the Thaelmann Centuria below the impressive aqueduct that runs past Tardienta in 1936. The photo above is sadly not George Orwell, but also of the Thaelmann Centuria in the late summer of 1936 in the same area. 
View of Tardienta from the reconstructed trenches at Santa Quiteria.
TORRALBA DE ARAGON 
In November 1937 the XI International Brigade was based for a time near Huesca in reserve. Jo Stein Moen, author of Tusen Dagen. Norge og den Spanske Borgerkrigen 1936-1939 (Glydendal, Oslo, 2009), visited the village of Torralba de Aragon last year with a relation of a Norwegian Brigader for the purposes of a television programme following in the footsteps of her relation. Jo had mentioned that they had been shown some wall propaganda still visible in one of the barns. We easily found it (but one has to drag a pallet across to see it behind the barn door) and we felt very pleased with ourselves. 
However, as we drove back into the village from the barn I had a sudden feeling of déjà vu and took the photo below. To my great surprise they correspond with two photos from Brigadistas : el archivo fotográfico del General Walter by Jesús González de Miguel, Gabriel Jackson & Ángel Rojo Rincón (Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales. 2005). 
General Walter was standing on the extreme left hand balcony of the cream coloured building.
These two photographs of General Walter (Karol Swierczewski), Commander of the 35th Division were taken in Torralba de Aragon at the XI Brigade Estado Mayor on 7th November 1937. It seems that this was the day when the XI International Brigade flags that were presented at the Calderon Theatre in Madrid on 31st October was presented to the Brigade. It was a bitterly cold day with a strong wind and the new flags fluttering from the Staff Building. But at the “Klubhaus”in the village later, wine and beer were given at a party with a gramophone playing the “Himno de Riego” and the Catalan hymn “Els Segadors”. It was not going to be long before the XI Brigade would be thrown in to the maelstrom of Teruel at El Muleton. A number of other places on this tour were located, but it would not be fair to give you too much in one go. Please have patience. But just to intrigue you, here is Len who joined us on Monday 16th May. Can you guess why he is looking so pleased? More soon….. 
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19th to 20th April 2011 NEW DISCOVERIES ON THE ARAGON FRONT Over Easter a Catalan friend, Dani Llop and I met Kelvin and Barbara Ling to travel around the Aragon Front armed with a copy of James Neugass’ book War is Beautiful and an undated (April 1938?), but very detailed report by Edward Cecil Smith, commander of the Mackenzie Papineau battalion, covering the Great Retreats of March 1938 from Belchite to Batea. We were lucky enough to discover a number of new and exciting places on our trip and also to correct a couple of errors in Cecil Smith’s otherwise excellent report concerning the battle of Caspe. ALCORISA A number of photographs were taken in Alcorisa by the XV International Brigade Photographic Unit and which are now held in the Tamiment Collection of New York University. We were introduced by a mutual friend in Alcorisa to local historian, Roberto Alquézar, who has identified the location of a number of shots and also given us the name of the unidentified anarchist in one of the photos! However, one piece of gossip between us concerned the banner of the Mackenzie Papineau battalion that is shown in the unique colour film Defenders of the Faith by Russell Palmer. According to Roberto in passing conversation he mentioned that the Mac Pap flag had been captured in Alcorisa by the 4th Navarre Division on 18th March 1938! He passed on to us a copy of the reference from a book published in 1941 which was of great interest. 
The Mackenzie Papineau flag in Mas de las Matas, Christmas 1937
I give below a link to the section of this incredible film on YOUTUBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74WEibaxVVQwhich at 6’, 23’’ shows not only the Mac Pap banner but also the British battalion banner that were captured in the Great Retreats of March 1938! There is also just visible with the British battalion banner a triangular International Brigade pennant hanging down on the left of the picture but we are not sure which pennant that is. The XV Brigade pennant is shown on a photo with Frank West and Andrew Flanagan holding each end when photos and film were taken of the survivors of the British battalion in Darmos on 10th April 1938, so it is unlikely to be that.
Darmos, 10th April 1938. Frank West (l) & Andrew Flanagan (r) hold the XV Brigade pennant.
The capture of the Mac Pap banner was confirmed by a reference from a Nationalist book published in 1941 by Javier de Ybarra y Bergé, concerning the War Operations of the 4thNavarre Division. It states: “ 18 de marzo- ALCORISA. Cojimos como trofeo en Alcorisa, el dia que ocupamos esta localidad dos banderas, una republicana con la inscripcion “15 Brigada Internacional” y otra que sobre fondo rojo, llevaba el puño cerrado en medio, y escrito lo siguiente:
Canada’s
Mackenzie Papineau Battalion
1837 1937
15th Brigade I.B.
“Fascism shall be destroyed”
Which translates into English; “March 18-Alcorisa. We took as a trophy in Alcorisa, the day we occupied this town, two flags, a Republican flag with the inscription “15 Brigade” and the other on a red background, had a fist in the middle, and written as follows:
Canada’s
Mackenzie Papineau Battalion
1838 1937
15th Brigade I.B.
“Fascism shall be destroyed”
The mention of the 15 Brigade flag is probably the large rectangular flag which each of the five International Brigades had been given along with an identical triangular pennant, at the Calderon Theatre in Madrid on 31st October 1937. If these flags still survive they are probably now held in private collections of ex 4th Navarre Division soldiers. A recent book, Navarra en Guerra. Banderas, Trofeos de Guerra y otros Recuerdos de los Tercios de Requetés y Divisions de Navarra en la Guerra Civil Española by Iñigo Pérez de Rada (Museo de Tabar, Navarra, 2004), makes no mention of these banners but mentions the Banner of the 44th Republican Division and other Republican flags and pennants that were captured and that are now on display at the Requete Museum in Tabar near Pamplona. It would be fascinating to find if they still exist! Lets keep looking as we now have some contacts in this matter. 
XV Brigade Hospital Corps, Alcorisa, December 1937. Far left, Annie Taft; Second left, Rose Freed; Fourth left, Dr Oscar Weissman; Far right, Rose Goldblatt
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-0999.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
The same place today
Intendencia boys hauling oranges. Alcorisa, February 1938
(Behind the lorry is the Cine Progreso)
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1056. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Elmer Holmes Bobst Library 70 Washington Square South New York,NY10012,New York University Libraries
The same place today
Group from Base Estado Mayor, Alcorisa, February 1938.
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1057. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Elmer Holmes Bobst Library 70 Washington Square South New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries 
The same place today (Cine Progreso was a CNT cinema)
Aragonese anarchist in Alcorisa, December 1937
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-1091. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Elmer Holmes Bobst Library 70 Washington Square South New York,NY10012,New York University Libraries Rufino “El Pipa” Alcorisa historian Roberto Alquézar has identified the one legged anarchist as Rufino “El Pipa” (“The Pipe”) and has discovered some information about him: “Versatile, ready as they come, good fortune never accompanied him. Adopted as a child from a Foundling Hospital, by one of many poor families living in Alcorisa at that time. His step father, “Tio Pipa” was the undertaker of the town. Despite his handicap, Rufino was a man with strong arms and his wooden leg did not prevent hard work. The amputation of his right leg was the result of a bet in a race up and down Mount St Christobal. His leg was injured in the race and became septic causing its amputation. Rufino, was very studious but also a worker, from his youth working with great effort, to take his family forward. This did not however, stop his greatest passion, music. A passionate trumpet player and pupil at the Alcorisa School of Music, he became a virtuoso of this instrument. Tailor, cook, clerk, poet and farmer. In the various prisons that he passed through, he was always winning the favour of the prison officers, who often exempted him with preferential treatment unlike the rest of the group. Whilst incarcerated atMontjuicCastle, he had only spent four days there before Rufino was in contact with the prisoners who were also musicians.” From La Quinta de Los Pielesby Roberto Alquézar & David Alloza (Amarga Memoria, Gobierno de Aragon, 2011).
Roberto Alquézar at the same spot as Rufino “El Pipa”
Many thanks to Roberto Alquézar for sharing this information with us and for showing us the locations of the photographs in Alcorisa. We will investigate further concerning the flags and their possible survival and location. What may be of interest is that in the film linked to above, mention is made of American Brigadier General Henry J. Reilly who accompanied Russell Palmer to look at the captured materiel. It seems that Reilly was a correspondent for some American newspapers during the War on the Nationalist side and maybe he mentions also seeing these flags which, by observing the sequence of the film, might be possible. Does anyone in the US know of an Archive of Reilly’s newspaper reporting that might mention this? Finally, here is a curious piece of graffiti from the period inscribed on the lead lined doorway of Alcorisa cemetery: 
THE GREAT RETREATS OF MARCH 1938 One of our plans was to follow the Retreat of the XV Brigade from Belchite to Batea between 10th and 21st March 1938 by using an undated report by Edward Cecil Smith, the Mackenzie Papineau commander. The report was probably written as he recovered in Valls hospital in April 1938 and is a valuable document. The transcription as cited in Canadian Volunteers in Spain 1936-1939 by William C. Beeching,University of Regina, 1989, has some typos (eg. The Albacete road should be the Albalate road!) and Cecil Smith’s account of the fighting at Cemetery Hill to the south east of Caspe confuses the fighting on Reservoir Hill to the north west of the town (though he admits errors). But when one travels the distances involved one gains the greatest respect for these men during this uncertain and frightening time. When given the order to move Battalion 60 (Mackenzie Papineau) to Letux from Hijar, about March 6th, I was informed that a strong enemy push was expected to develop in the next few days, coming from the west and attempting to come between Albaton and Belchite, the swinging south. Brigade 95 (Marineros) was to counter-attack, catching the fascist column in the right flank as it moved east, and the XV Brigade was to be held in reserve in the towns of Letux, Belchite and Lecera. The enemy attack began on the morning of March 9th in the vicinity of Fuendetodos. By about ten am. Our patrol on the Letux-Fuendetodos road reported bodies of men retreating towards Letux. Most of these were from Brigade 153. early in the afternoon troops were retreating along the Azuara-Letux road and were stopped by our patrols about 2 kilometres from the latter town. These were from the 24th Division, 153 and 95 Brigades, and from attached artillery units. In almost all cases the highest ranking officers with the men were sargentos. The exception was an artillery unit which marched with two lieutenants, a quartermaster and one 2nd lieutenant-subaltern, carrying with them the breech blocks of their guns. Under the reported circumstances, I was called to Brigade headquarters in the afternoon and ordered to move the battalion north of Azuara. First, orders were to the effect that our forces from the Brigade at Azuara would consist of Battalions 59 (Spanish) and 60, one anti-tank gun and a company of engineers, with attached transmission services, etc. Verbal operation orders were to the effect that the enemy had taken large sections of first and second line trenches and had isolated about two battalions of the 95 Brigade on two positions each side of the Fuendetodos-Azuara road; that tanks had been seen within three kilometres of Azuara, to the rear of the above mentioned heights and that upward of 100 camions had been observed moving down the highway towards Azuara and about six kilometres distant Battalions 59 and 60 were to move north from Azuara in the darkness, contact the enemy, counterattack him and drive him back and form a line connecting the two heights held by the 95th Brigade. In the meantime, one company of our battalion (Company One) had been placed in position in unoccupied trenches about two kilometres north-west of Letux, when it became obvious to us that no organised line existed. Between Letux and the rapidly advancing enemy. Their position (approximately) was later taken up by the Brigade machine-gun company, although this company took position a little behind those previously held by Company One. One section of Company Three had also been sent for the afternoon to discover what the situation was to the west of Azuara. When recalled, they reported that out troops still held lines around Herrera, although the line to the north of that seemed to have folded up. Later, orders from Brigade were to the effect that battalion 60 would advance north from Azuara and build a line from two to three kilometres from the town, while battalion 59 occupied a position south west of the town on the other side of the river. Just as positions were being taken up, the Battalion commander was called to headquarters of Brigade 95, where Major Merriman informed him that the orders had come through to the effect that Battalion 59, the anti-tank gun and the engineers were ordered to move at once to Belchite and that undoubtedly orders to move Battalion 60 would come through soon. Meanwhile runners were sent to call in Company One, which was about six kilometres to our right and the battalion was ordered, on instructions from Major Merriman, to rest until telephonic orders came from the Brigade. At about four am. Captain Kamy called from Brigade to say that the expected orders had not come and that the positions should be taken up. So positions were chosen and the battalion began to dig in about five am. In a semi circle about five kilometres from town. No further communications were possible with Brigade as early in the morning the telephone central of Division moved our without warning our transmissionists. Before seven am. The enemy avions made their appearance and within a half hour artillery fire was opened on our positions and on those of the remaining forces on our right flank. A company or so of the 95 Brigade also still held an advanced position on a hill near the road 200 metres ahead of the line. The enemy attack lasted without slackening. In fact it intensified almost continuously until nightfall, after seven pm. All day forces were leaving the line to our right-no enlace (runner) was ever made to our left, although we sent out at least three kilometres in that direction. When we stopped troops passing through Azuara and crossing the bridge, they made a detour and crossed the river at a ford about one kilometre to our right. By the middle of the afternoon (about 2.30pm) I was informed by the (lieutenant-colonel) commanding Brigade 95 that he had been ordered to retire his troops across the river to the south of Azuara, and that he would take up positions on the ridge behind the river. He also stated that three entire Brigades had retired from our right, thus leaving no troops between us and Belchite, and also that the left flank had retired over the river. At about the same time engineers belonging to a unit which I am unable to name, attempted to blow the bridge which connected us with the rear positions. Three large explosions took place but, fortunately, the structure was not completely demolished, but enough room was left to cross it. Only one battalion commander of the 95th remained on the north of the river with us. In consultation with us, he stated that he was willing to stay so long as we did. However, his men were leaving and, although he shot four or five of them, he was unable to stop the retreat. At nightfall, only he and about half-a-dozen of his officers remained. They were placed on our right flank with one of our machine-guns. Our losses this day were ten killed and 29 wounded. The only communications we had with outside was with our kitchen in Letux. This was contrived by the transmissions who cut in on the civil line at both ends. After nightfall we held a conference of officers where I reported on the situation. I informed the comrades that we had received no orders to retire and all that I knew of the situation. In view of the fact that the battalion of the XIII Brigade which was promised as coming to our assistance had not shown up, and that the patrol we sent down the Letux road to guide them in did not report (they never did report, although we waited until about two am. They must have been taken prisoner), and also because the Brigade machine-gun company joined us, not only without machine-guns but also without rifles, I ordered that the battalion move back over the river and take up position with the 95th Brigade on the high cliff in the rear. This decision was also based on the knowledge that the enemy had infiltrated across the river on our left flank, climbed the cliff and just as dusk fell was already firing into the rear of our position with machine-guns. We lost two men from this fire. About 9.30pm comrade Joe Gibbons phoned our kitchen to say that he had encountered General Walter on the road and that I was to report to Divisional Headquarters to make a report. In preparation for moving across the river we collected all the wounded comrades and placed them in a commanded truck and with a small guard of Brigade scouts and others we took the truck along the Letuz highway. We encountered no enemy. Neither di we meet our patrol. Later at Divisional Headquarters, General Walter was not free to speak to me until nearly four am. At this time I received orders to move the battalion to a position at kilometre eight on the Belchite-Lecera road to act as a reserve unit. I decided to move the battalion via Samper de Sals but, not knowing the exact route, we had to go, using the kitchen truck (the kitchen had by now been moved to Lecera) and explore the road. It was just breaking dawn when I arrived at the battalion position on the heights behind Azuara. Already the enemy artillery was firing and our machine-guns were engaging the enemy who were entering the town. When we searched for the 95th Brigade to inform them of our order to move out, we discovered that they had entirely disappeared during the night. The result was that one of our machine guns and its crew, aswell as about eight other comrades were cut off from the rest of the battalion by the enemy. 
On the hill to the right in this photo, taken from Azuara bridge, a Finnish machine gun section was emplaced to cover the Mac Paps´retreat across the river under Kauko Nihtila with Hekki Jokinen (Company runner), Eskel Dahl (stretcher bearer), Otto Suomela & Sauli Hyppa (machine gunners), Sergeant Major Hjamar Sankari and Political Commissar Aarne Mytinnen (Our Boys in Spain, p39. K.E. Heikkinen, 1939). In addition Frank Whitfield, Arthur Rose, Leo Gordon and Percy (or Perry) Hilton were helping to defend this impossible position. Despite frantic efforts by Nilio Makela and Paul Wellman to warn them with shouts and pistol shots from the road, they were unable to escape. Rose was shot as he tried to give first aid to Leo Gordon and Whitfield was killed as he and Hilton tried to escape. After Hilton was captured his captors amused themselves standing the tall Hilton against a short Nationalist soldier. Their anger abated, Hilton was spared but he was told later by a Nationalist officer that the other survivors had been taken prisoner, lined up and shot, perhaps because the fair haired Finns were considered to be Russians. Cecil Smith continues…… Leaving a small detail to try to contact them, I ordered the remainder of the battalion to leave for Lecera. Wounded were again evacuated in the truck we had brought. Our armoury truck sent out the night before carrying a number of trench mortars and machine guns left behind by the 24th Division never got through and must have fallen into the hands of the enemy. Expecting that the fascists would open fire on us with shrapnel from the several batteries of 75s which they were using against us, I ordered the troops to move in open march of approach formation. The fact that enemy aviation did not show up for several hours, and that enemy infantry must have mistaken us for their own troops, we were not fired on until we reached Samper. Just before reaching Samper, about five kilometres from Azuara, we passed positions already occupied by enemy troops, but continued without engaging them as our mission was to arrive at a certain point at the earliest possible moment. We arrived in Lecera about noon and reported to Brigade Headquarters for further orders, but it was evident that considerable changes had already taken place in our front since the night before. About two pm. We received our first orders to the effect that the Division was moving down the Albalate road a few kilometres and that we should place the battalion across the left flank of the line of march, protecting the troops from an attack from the north. Within fifteen minutes we received three different orders. The last of these was that we should march along the road about 500 metres north of the highway, take up a position near a village called Picon, or something of the sort, and at once contact Brigade on the main road. Just as the battalion was about to move off, Divisional officers arrived with different orders again. Take up positions on the south side of the road and to the north, protecting both sides for a distance of about two kilometres from town. This we did. Enemy forces then advanced on Lecera from the south. We engaged several of his tanks and fired on infantry which had occupied a rise to the south of the town. While we were actually engaged in this fight, about 150 metres south of the highway a captain from Division staff arrived with orders to take up position across a barranco running in a north easterly direction about three kilometres from where we were. When I pointed out that we were already fighting off an enemy attack from the south, he insisted that the tanks were ours and that the infantry was the XIII Brigade. This latter information we knew to be wrong as the XIII were on high ground about a kilometre to our left flank. The staff captain would consider no variation of his orders, and produced a map which indicated that various units of the Divisions were in position in a circle around the town. These included battalions we had seen move off in the Albalate direction several hours previously. Following orders, we withdrew our forces from their positions. Two companies and several machine-guns went up the barranco. One company remained in reserve and the other company stayed close to the highway for contingencies. As we were moving across, the fascists attacked the town from the south, undoubtedly assisted by the fact that they no longer faced the fire from our battalion. Some time later I was approached by a Mexican captain who introduced himself as the commanding officer of three battalions of the XIII Brigade in the vicinity. The captain stated that he wished to counter-attack Lecera and wished us to act as his reserve. I explained to the comrade what my mission was as given to me by Division, but agreed that I could protect his right flank and also use one company as a reserve for him. The counter-attack failed. About 10.30 at night we learned from teniente James Ruskin of Brogade transmissions that the British battalion was still in position north of Lecera. At once we sent a patrol of about seven men to contact this battalion and inform them of the fall of Lecera, suggesting a route for their withdrawal. Orders for our withdrawal to Albalate arrived about 11.00pm. Our patrol found that the British battalion had already left. We marched down the road some distance behind the XIII Brigade battalions, supplying rear and flank guards for the column. (March 11th). Our losses for the day were not very great. The heaviest loss was the machine gunners at Azuara who were either captured or killed. About eight or nine am. We arrived at our positions (1.5) kilometres north of Albalate, where the Brigade was supposed to reorganise. While we were eating lunch the machine-gun and mortar company of the XI Army Corps who were supposed to protect Albalate from the south, passed through our lined very rapidly, stating that the town had been captured by the fascists. We had heard no shots fired, but I sent runners to the companies to prepare for orders. Just at this time comrade Nikolai came through the camp and gave me verbal orders to take the battalion via Hijar to Alcañiz. We formed on the highway and commenced to march. The battalion staff marched with our Third Company, then under the command of Captain Brage. A panic developed on the highway. Tanks, trucks, ambulances and our cavalry tore through the infantry. Drivers and occupants leaned out and shouted to the soldiers that the fascists were on their heels. The infantry was thrown into confusion and many of the units lost their cohesion. We lost contact with one of the companies of the battalion as other units crowded between us. A mounted courier came up with orders to go first to Alcañiz and then to Caspe. Just outside of Hijar enemy cavalry units cut the rear of our column off, mounting machine guns on the highway. In order to lighten our machine gunners for the long march, the company commander had ordered them to place their guns on a truck which he thought belonged to the Brigade. I later learned from a comrade in the Rakosi battalion that the truck was theirs. Many of us were then forced to cross the river and make our way overland to Alcañiz. Owing to the fact that our forces were from now on split and in several places at the same time, it is impossible to state what the casualties were. During the night of March 12th, part of our battalion patrolled Hijar keeping the fascists from getting across the river. Later we formed a line a (few) kilometres east of Hijar on a ridge (km 71). These positions we held all day not taking a great deal of part of the action of the day. During the late afternoon a patrol from Company three reported having seen enemy forces occupying the town of Samper de Calandas (sic). At night we learned that we were to move again towards Alcañiz as a flanking attack was expected. However, the Brigades did not move off until early daylight. Again we supplied the rear guard. In the course of this march again the various units became mixed together. Not only did various battalions of on Brigade mix in, but the same was true of various Brigades. No orders were given as to where we were actually going. Just orders to march towards Alcañiz. Owing to the fact that my battalion was spilt into two, with the rearguard company to the back, I utilised the ambulance as a means to control the troops.
Retreat from Hijar to Caspe March, 1938
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-0073. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Elmer Holmes Bobst Library 70 Washington Square South New York,NY10012,New York University Libraries
The same bridge today
The enemy cut up from Andorra and cut the road just west of Alcañiz. From what I have heard since, Brigade staff was in a position to know this fairly early, but they failed to notify our battalion of the fact. As a result, one company was left off and marched away with another Brigade (the XII, I think) as this Brigade seemed to be moving in an orderly manner. As for our ambulance, the failure to notify the troops in the rear resulted in our driving right into enemy positions where they straddled the road Several machine-guns and a tank gun opened fire on us from point-blank range, about 50 metres when they started up, but we saw them before they opened fire and had swung rapidly onto a cart road running to the left. This led behind a large fabrica and we were able to escape on foot. The ambulance had to be abandoned because a small lake completely surrounded us on three sides, the fourth being towards the enemy. We escaped on foot still under fire from the machine guns and tank cannon. A practicante (first-aid man) was killed, and I became separated from the doctor, Lieutenant Dagar. He went into Alcañiz that evening and found the place full of Moorish and Reqeite troops. This was on March 14th. Those who were near the front of the Brigade column, many of them were later picked up by btuck and taken to Caspe. Those of us at the rear, however, made over the mountains for Maella. Next morning, on orders from the local commandancia which insisted that Caspe was taken and evacuating Maella, we moved back to Batea where we set up a camp. By next day, upward of 200 men of the Brigade were collected there. On the morning of March 15th, there passed through camp several ambulances making for the battle reported in the vicinity of Escuatron. Leaving Captain Brage in charge of the camp, I rode north on an ambulance. In Caspe that part of the battalion there was occupying the cemetery hill to the left of the town. In an effort to counter-attack the enemy’s advance on to a hill overlooking point. We held this point against enemy infantry and tanks until evening. At this time the hill was held by such forces as the XV Brigade had in Caspe, that is, besides about (1.5) companies of Mac-Pap, also smaller units from the Lincoln-Washington and British, each under their own commanders. I do not recollect precisely at what time and in what terms the orders came for us all to retire. My memory is that it came from Major Merriman. We then, as dusk fell, took positions between town and the cemetery, about 500 metres from the crossroads occupied by Brigade headquarters. These, and other positions in the vicinity, we held for several hours. Then, in the early morning, under orders from comrade Doran who then assumed command of the Brigade, we mounted a night attack against the cemetery (Reservoir Hill). The Lincoln-Washington were elsewhere. Only a bare handful of British were able to take part, and three companies of the XIV Brigade supposed to assist us, refused to move because “their captain-adjutant had gone back to town”, about a kilometre to the rear. So, with the aid of fire from our tanks which was very effective, although it wounded several of our men, we took the (Reservoir) hill. It was fortified by the enemy while he held it. Three heavy machine-guns were taken, fifty or sixty rifles, more than thirty prisoners, ten mules and other supplies, including a range finder. This attack was made with little more than one hundred men with two light machine guns and no hand grenades. It naturally took a long time, nearly three hours, to take the hill since the Rakosi battalion, which we were told would make a flanking movement, never showed up, and we made only a frontal attack. Possibly because of the failure of other units to move as planned in the night attack, the enemy, during this time, was able to advance rapidly on both our flanks, taking positions on the right in the railroad station and church steeple, and other houses in that part of town. On our left, they placed machine-guns in the olive groves and had either a light tank or an armoured car on a cart road hidden partly by the olives. 
“…taking positions on the right in the railroad station and church steeple”.
View of the church steeple and Caspe railway station facing west.
View from below Reservoir Hill to the left towards the “little red casa on the railroad track”
Side view of the “little red casa” from the railroad track
Far side of the “little red casa” with evidence of enemy fire.
Just as dawn broke, the British patrol reported that they had been driven out of a little red casa (house) on the railroad track which protected our long line of communication back to Caspe. I sent a runner back to Brigade, but, owing to the distance, it took a great deal of time for an answer to arrive. When it did, it merely repeated the information I had previously sent in with respect to our situation. Meantime the companies of the XIV Brigade, which we had placed to guard the roads and flanks, were seen to be retiring, whether under orders or not I do not know. But, in half an hour, they had completely moved away. As the enemy fire from our rear was growing stronger, I sent a runner to Brigade asking for assistance in the destruction of these positions, either by gun fire or assault. Otherwise, with men tired and somewhat upset, I felt we could not hold our position. Fortunately we had sent in our prisoners, captured guns and mules to town just before daybreak. As the runner was so long in returning, we were not sure that he had gotten through the very heavy machine-gun and rifle fire covering the open field between us and town. Therefore, I ordered certain sections to cover the retreat of the remainder and informed the British of my decision, advising Captain Wild to leave with us, which he did. No officer had been named as in command of either the attack or holding of the hill, except Comrade Chapeyev and, as he never showed up, I assumed responsibility, seeing we were so far from the Brigade and the rest of our troops. Crossing the railroad cut, the river, and open fields under machine-gun fire cost us a number of lives and resulted in considerable disorganisation of the units. 
The approach to the “railroad cut”
Don’t look down!
Just as we reached the lines of the XII Brigade, a full kilometre behind our previous positions, I met a runner returning with orders to hold the hill. By that time I had lost control of the men and was not able to regain it again as, of course, comrade Wild and I were amongst the last of those retiring. This was the last actual action the battalion was in, although during the day and night of March 16th we held various positions on the road between Caspe and Maella and were strafed and bombed by enemy planes. On March 17th, about four am., we received orders to move back to a point between Maella and Batea, where the Brigade was reorganised. Without referring to reports previously made to the Brigade at that time, I cannot state the number of dead, wounded or missing. These were compiled at Batea and were not finished until I left for Valls (hospital) a few days later. Our records were lost in the subsequent action. But I recollect that, on March 20th, we had gathered together just over 250 from the old battalion, besides new recruits who came up. Also that we had turned in two machine-guns and a Dektyarov (Soviet machine gun) and 135 rifles. From Canadian Volunteers in Spain 1936-1939 by William C. Beeching,University ofRegina “JUST LOOK AT MY BATTLE” (Dave Doran at his Command Post in Caspe). The Battle for Caspe. 15th to17th March 1938 
Hopefully the map above when expanded will give readers an idea of the places mentioned in Cecil Smith’s report that are in Caspe. What is clear is that Cecil Smith has mistaken Reservoir Hill for Cemetery Hill, as there is no way that he could have seen the enemy taking positions on the right in the railroad station and church steeple from Cemetery Hill. We had a lot of fun in Caspe. Firstly, Reservoir Hill, where Nilo Makela was mortally wounded still has a reservoir on the top but more recent industrial buildings now spoil the view. 
Reservoir Hill from the positions where the Brigaders attacked
The railroad station and the church steeple (actually a convent) still stand and to the east is the warehouse where Milton Wolff, Joe Bianca, Sam Grant, Bill Martinelli and Al Kaufman set up a machine gun and watered down the sacks of flour with wine (p246, Another Hill, Milton Wolff. University of Illinois Press). 
Possible location of Milton Wolff’s machine gun position in the warehouse by Caspe station at the far left on the third floor
Bullet holes on the station building above.
Bullet holes on the facing side of Caspe station are still just visible. Sadly a modern building now stands between the station and the warehouse but in 1938 the view was clear. Of particular interest to the south of Reservoir Hill was the little red casa (house) on the railroad track” (See photos above). The building still stands in a forlorn state and has windows on three sides. One can see why the British battalion patrol was pushed out of the building as there is only one aperture on the far side from which to observe and fire from! The far wall is also peppered with heavy machine gun bullets now rendered. The loss of this building exposed the flank of the Brigaders trying to hold Reservoir Hill and forced them to retire. The open space to the railway bridge over which they retreated across the river is frightening. With no cover but the only way out there must have been many men killed in this desperate escape.
View of Caspe from Dave Doran’s Command Post
Close up of the Caspe railroad bridge and below the stone road bridge at km 1, which was the regrouping point for the Brigade after they retreated, according to Bob Cooney.
THANK YOU, JAMES NEUGASS Over the past few months I have been reading the diaries of James Neugass entitled War is Beautiful edited by Peter Carroll & Peter Glazer. (New Press, New York, 2008). I cannot state how useful this book has been in locating some of the places that he describes. His account of the Hospital at Cuevas Labradas during the battle of Teruel is one such matter that we discovered there last November on a recent tour and our new work on Vila Paz Hospital will bear fruit later in July when we have been invited to visit the privately owned former hospital to identify shots from Cartier Bresson’s film Victoire de la Vie. However on this occasion we decided to locate the Divisional Hospital near Urrea de Gaen aswell as Kilometre 46. The location of the Hospital is exactly as Neugass describes it. A beautiful and peaceful place. A true “Paradise Valley”. Here is how Neugass describes the Hospital: March 10th. Urrea de Gaen. Near Hijar. Hospital Camp. After a short trip found Divisional Hospital-four camouflaged tents pitched in an olive grove a quarter of a mile off the road between two steep hills and a canal on whose bank canes grow fifteen feet high. There is a barranco for each of our cars. Nice place. Big planes but small bombs. Scatter stuff, just to warm up the griddle. Big stuff and concentration come later. Tomorrow or next day my guess…. Afternoon. Our camp, complete to “Please Do Not Use Branches of Olive Trees For Camouflage- It Destroys The Tree” sign, over the signature of the camp commander, is a model of efficiency, beauty and repose. The surgical tent with its two waiting tables has now been wired to our generator. Beds in wards are sumptuously made up, the office tent echoes typewriters. The triaje tent has been laid out with scrubbed but still bloodstained stretchers. The ground has been swept in and outside of all four tents. The seventy five of us will take care of the wounded of eight to ten thousand. The dead take care of themselves. All up the cliffs that rise on both sides of the narrow little valley grove, groups of staff sit at the mouths of their dugouts, reading, talking, sewing. The cook-shack among the reeds of the canal, better camouflaged than any of the tents, is busy and clean- but no tremendous amount of organisation or of cooking ability is necessary to produce the rice, beans and olive oil dishes, the bread and jam, coffee and wine on which we live and work. The huge portable drinking water tank has been filled to the brim by our water truck. Nailed to the tress which shades the tank is our mailbox. The first two wounded from the Lincoln Washingtons have arrived from Belchite. On of them, a stretcher bearer, had the luckiest wound of the war. The stray which hit him which we picked out of his arm will some day make a good watch fob, if the stretcher bearer’s luck holds. A big evacuation amb(ulance) slowly comes off the road into our valley at belly case speed. Later. The wounded come in, all night…. March 11th. Worked in the O.R. last night hauling stretchers and lifting patients on and off the table. Held one etherised guy on his side while edges of what looked like a tiger bite were being trimmed, probed, swabbed with iodine, peroxide and ether….. Almost every operation is a laparotomy or exploration. The knife follows crisscross blotched trails marked by black metallic smudges. No sense sewing up a guy’s chest if there’s a hole in the liver. Since livers will hold no stitches, almost all the boys nicked in this organ die. They do not die fast enough to be buried in the hospital camp, but in the Rear, after we have spent much bandage and adhesive, drugs and gasoline on them…. Hijar and its fascist population are getting hell four, six, eight times a day. Railhead hospital on the Pueblo de Hijar hilltop, in one of whose wards I spent my first night out of Villa Paz, was destroyed yesterday. A hundred and five wounded were killed in their beds…. Later, Major Len Crome, a doctor on the Divisional staff, had commandeered Neugass’ ambulance and they searched near Lecera for the commander of the 35th Division, General Walter. And so to Kilometre 46 between Lecera and Albalate. Here is a photo of km 46 with oddly enough part of the original road still existent! No evidence of the emplacements for the gun batteries, however. But one can easily imagine the scene as described by Neugass: After half and hour of searching the empty roads and hillsides, we came upon General Walter’s long , black Chrysler limousine parked in a meadow next to six cavalrymen and a motorcycle. The General’s car was famous because it was the only vehicle at the Front which was not camouflaged. The nickel on its hood and the windows were as prettily polished as if Walter were going to be married that day, or drive down Fifth Avenue on an Easter Sunday.
General Walter examining a rifle, December 1937
The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection ; ALBA Photo 011-0855.Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY10012, New York University Libraries
We found the General seated among his staff in a cleft in the dry hills. All seven officers were freshly shaven. The creases in their trousers were perfect, boots shined and khaki uniforms unspotted. Four sappers stood at one side with picks and shovels. Two of them carried officers’ boots and pistols. I imagine that the shoes were still warm from the bodies of the soldiers who had worn them. Dead, an officer represents a good pair of boots, a pistol, a wrist-watch and possibly a compass. On top of a hill, at our side, stood a Captain, field glasses in hand, searching the horizon. Every few seconds the General would look up from the map on which he was silently drawing red crayon lines and ask the two field telephone men if their machines were in order. No Republican troops were ahead of us. The General had stayed in order to be able to plan our next defensive positions. There was a little shelling but otherwise the afternoon was absolutely quiet, except for the usual machine-gun chatter. I could not understand why we were not being bombed. It later occurred to me that we had escaped their planes because we were so far back of enemy lines that we had been mistaken for fascists. “What do you see?” asked the Major of the Captain with the field glasses. “Nothing.” I was so nervous that I smoked my last cigarette. “Cavalry!” the Captain on the hill announced. “Near?” asked the General without looking up from his map. The officers all carried parabellums. These are Luger pistols which can be mounted on their gunstock-shaped holsters. They fire on the machine-gun principle and there is no breech cover to slide back and ruin your aim. If you have telescopic sights parabellums are almost as good as light automatic rifles, but ten of them are not enough to hold off Moorish cavalry. The staff officers were busy mounting their guns, inspecting their sights and testing the actions of their locks. I pulled out my 7.65 and slid a shell into its barrel. My eyes, mind and every thought were all fixed on the grenade which I kept in the springs of my front-seat cushion. “More Moors,” announced the voice under the field glasses. “A thousand metres.” I had been hearing the low roar of tank engines and could no longer contain myself. “Captain, do you hear tanks?” I asked. “Yes, I hear them. On our flanks.” The General put his map aside, stood up and said “Kilometre 46. We will set up a line of resistance at Kilometre 46. Has anyone got an orange?” Orders were transmitted through the field telephone and to the cavalry and motorcycle dispatch riders. The General and his staff idled down the hillside and loaded into the gleaming limousine and my own mud-smeared, scarred and scorched wagon. Air clicked into the vacuum left by the path of M-gun bullets, like the snapping of fingers. “Pluck-oo” sounds came over our shoulders…. KILOMETRE 46
Kilometre 46 facing east
When I arrived at Kilometre 46, the General had already arrived. He and his staff stood across the road, guns in hand. A truckload of men came along. One of the officers stopped it. The chofer said that he had other orders. “Is that so?” the officer announced. “Well, everybody get out” waving his gun a little…. The Franco-Belge battery had arrived; three guns on one side of the road and three on the other. Ahead was the full weight of Franco’s war machine. I was busy helping the gunners dig…. Behind the emplacements of the roadside Franco-Belge batteries, the new pine boards of shell-boxes glistened in the late afternoon sun. Ordinance officers were searching the horizon with the waving, mantis-like uplifted arms of their range finders and two four-barreled anti-aircraft machine-guns had arrived to protect the gunners. In open formation Polish companies of the Dombrowski Battalion were fanning out into the hills. I saw General Walter get into his limousine and gave him a can of carne I had been saving. Picked up Major Crome and we drove back towards camp. Passed families of peasants marching like queues of mourners behind carts loaded with all that was mortal of their destroyed homes….. 
Kelvin, Barbara & Dani near Urrea de Gaen after a lot of exploration!
There is a great deal more to write up about. I have just finished a tour with two Australians and over the next couple of weeks I will add more news. So much to discover! ___________________________________________________ 30th March 2011 Tarancon Hospital to be knocked down????? 
“El Hospitalillo” in Tarancon
As mentioned earlier in this blog (22nd to 25th February) a group of us had the pleasure of visiting Tarancon just east of Madrid where three American Hospitals were based during the War. The main hospital had been knocked down, the second in good condition but inaccessible and the third, Hospital Santa Emilia or locally known as “El Hospitalillo”, a sad ruin inside and out. 
left to right: Jesus, Alan Warren, Harry Owens, Jesus Garrido Gallego & Geoff Cowling outside the hospital in Tarancon, 23rd February 2011
Last week we heard from the Municipal Archivist Jesus Garrido Gallego (jesus23460@hotmail.com) that the Hospital was going to be demolished and to ask for letters asking the Ajuntamiento to reconsider the plan. The meeting to present this was on Tuesday evening and we were only told over the weekend! Admittedly the plan is to demolish the building and to build there a Home for Old People, which is to be applauded, but some people in the town feel that the building could be preserved and used as a museum or other function to present and remember the history of the town.
View of the front gardens of the hospital
Thanks to the internet we were able to hurriedly pass round a letter to be presented to the Ajuntamiento and a number of e mails were sent to the ajuntamiento before the meeting.. Thanks to Ernesto Vinas of www.brunetenlamemoria.com (e mail evcos37@yahoo.es) and Seve Montero of AABI (seve.montero@gmail.com) we were able present a letter asking the ajuntamiento to reconsider the plan. Many thanks to Paul Preston and other academics who supported the letter so that we now have a breathing space to allow the local groups to present a proposal for the preservation of the hospital. This is a project for the townspeople of Tarancon, but the International interest and support has helped allow them time to have time to decide what to do. And many thanks to all who wrote. This newspaper article appeared on Wednesday in ABC: http://www.abc.es/agencias/noticia.asp?noticia=752857 Further details of our visit (in Spanish) can be found on Ernesto Vinas’ excellent website on the battle of Brunete at http://www.bruneteenlamemoria.com/tarancon.htm 
Sadly, squatters had used the building until recently
As of yesterday there has been a reaction and debate in the local newspaper, and the owners of “El Hospitalillo”, the Fundacion Lozano, have made a response to our request. The Fundacion Lozano considers that their remit does not include the use of the building for cultural purposes, but to stand by their purpose of “To care”. Understandably the presence of the International Brigade hospital for only three years out of its hundred year history is also a valid argument against using this as a request by us to preserve the building, but perhaps all the more reason to celebrate and remember it’s history( and that of the town) during its hundred years there by preserving the building, perhaps. Certainly the building needs to be used as it has just been left to crumble. The Fundacion Lozano state that current building regulations make it impossible to keep the original facade and build behind. However, Fundacion Lozano have offered the groups in Tarancon to present a counter proposal which is a move in the right direction. Below is the communique released by Fundacion Lozano which I leave in its original Spanish so as to avoid any misunderstandings in its translation. Those curious enough can google translate the piece below to get a very rough translation if needed. Tarancón, 30 de marzo de 2011 El Patronato de la Fundación Lozano reitera su voluntad unánime de construir una nueva residencia de ancianos Los miembros de esta entidad privada sin ánimo de lucro han manifestado a través de su Presidente que la Fundación no puede contradecir la voluntad de su creador ubicando en las instalaciones un museo o dependencias culturales, como han pedido varios investigadores de las Brigadas Internacionales. Los fines contemplados en los estatutos, señala el Presidente de esta institución, “Son asistenciales” El Patronato de la Fundación Lozano ha querido manifestarse hoy públicamente ante los últimos acontecimientos informativos que ha habido con respecto a la construcción de una residencia en el antiguo “Hospital Santa Emilia”, conocido popularmente como “Hospitalillo”. Varios de sus miembros han realizado declaraciones esta mañana en un medio de comunicación local, y su totalidad, los seis, han hablado a lo largo de hoy con el Alcalde para seguir retirándose en su postura unánime, manifestada hace algunos días por Raúl Amores, miembro y presidente de esta institución de ámbito privada. Recordemos que el Patronato está formado por los tres principales empresarios de la ciudad (Emilio Loriente, Francisco Manzanares y Librado Loriente); por el Párroco de Tarancón, Alberto Paños; y por el médico que atendía a los ancianos que estaban en el “Hospitalillo” durante sus últimos años como residencia, Enrique Blanch. Raúl Amores ha comparecido como representante del Patronato de la Fundación Lozano para aclarar diversas cuestiones que se han hecho públicas a través de la iniciativa de diferentes personas que reclamaban que el edificio se convirtiera en un espacio cultural. En primer lugar Amores ha respondido a Alan Warren que la fundación Lozano tiene la obligación de velar por su patrimonio en las condiciones que contempló su creador, el Doctor Jesús Lozano Soria, y que han sido plasmadas en los estatutos de la organización. “No figura en ningún lado que el edificio tenga fines culturales”, como solicitaba Warren, sino “asistenciales”, ha explicado el Presidente del Patronato. En cuanto a los estudiosos que se han pronunciado sobre la construcción de una residencia en el Hospital Santa Emilia, el Presidente de la Fundación Lozano ha querido dejar claro que “No desmerecemos la capacidad intelectual de todos lo que quieren investigar. Más aún, los hemos recibido con atención y cariño en nuestra localidad. Les hemos permitido como Presidente del Patronato el acceso a su espacio físico, que es el Hospitalillo. Además, les aportaremos la documentación que necesiten, pero magnificar que esto fue un gran centro de atención durante el periodo de la Guerra Civil de las Brigadas Internacionales, es una exageración y una injerencia sobre la propiedad privada que tiene la Fundación”. El Patronato lamenta que se magnifique un episodio de la historia del Hospital Santa Emilia que duró tres años, eclipsando el resto de su existencia, que se acerca al siglo de vida. “Hacer de este edificio un estandarte de las Brigadas Internacionales durante la campaña bélica, es querer hacer un símbolo sesgado de lo que ha sido este edificio, maximizar su importancia e ignorar otros lugares que hubo en Tarancón para la atención a los enfermos y heridos de guerra, así como olvidar los verdaderos emplazamientos referentes de evacuados de guerra”, ha señalado el presidente de la entidad. En el escrito remetido al Ayuntamiento Warren pedía textualmente que el patrimonio de la Fundación “Se dedique a un uso cultural, y de paso se pueda evitar perder un elemento de la memoria común que vincula a Tarancón con Europa, USA y otros centros sanitarios similares”. Esta afirmación es “Un brindis al sol”, dice el Patronato, ya que “no es Tarancón el referente de atención principal de esos heridos a lo largo de la ruta Valenciana. Recordamos el libro titulado La sanidad en las Brigadas Internacionales, editado por Manuel Requena y Rosa María Sepúlveda, donde Hans Landauer nos indicaba que en Tarancón había un “pequeño hospital de evacuación de las Brigadas Internacionales” y que en La guerra Civil española y las brigadas internacionales, de Manuel Espada y Manuel Requena (Universidad de Castilla-La mancha, 1998), no aparece citado en ningún momento”, añadía Raúl Amores. La pretensión de convertir el Hospital Santa Emilia en un museo o dependencias destinadas a la cultura o la historia, continuaba el Presidente del Patronato, “Es una injerencia sobre la Fundación, toda vez que como decimos, ni figura en sus Estatutos ni fue el objetivo de su fundador”. La Fundación Lozano emplaza a los colectivos que se han manifestado en contra de la construcción de una residencia de ancianos en ese espacio a que presenten un proyecto alternativo real y factible, acompañado por su correspondiente financiación, que permita salvaguardar el edificio tal cual está sin variar los fines que el Patronato está obligado a cumplir en virtud de los estatutos. Los miembros del Patronato de la Fundación Lozano también han querido responder a un escrito que Jesús Garrido, Presidente de la Asociación Manuel de la Ossa para la defensa del patrimonio, les envió por iniciativa personal, aunque firmando en representación del colectivo. Según Amores, no convocó la Asamblea preceptiva en la que se le debería haber dado cabida a la opinión del resto de los miembros. Para poder escuchar más puntos de vista de la asociación, el Presidente del Patronato de la Fundación Lozano se reunió ayer con Garrido, pero también con más miembros de “Manuel de la Ossa”. Entre esos socios se encuentran el propio Raúl Amores como miembro fundador de la asociación, y el concejal José Antonio Magro. “En el escrito que previamente manda Jesús Garrido de mutuo propio nos indica que le gustaría que fuese posible respetar el edificio y que en la parte de atrás se hiciera la residencia”, ha contado Raúl Amores. El Presidente del Patronato ha mostrado el plano del solar en el que se ubica el “Hospitalillo”, de 2.500 metros cuadrados, cuya edificación actual se extiende en la mitad del mismo, dejando libres 1.200 metros cuadrados. Como la residencia de ancianos necesita una superficie de 5.000 metros cuadrados para dar cabida a sus 120 plazas y cumplir con la normativa actual, la propuesta de Garrido “Es un imposible, tendríamos que tener al menos seis alturas. Primero, no nos lo permite la norma, y es una aberración que sobre un edificio que tenemos aquí de tres alturas detrás tengamos una pared de seis”, explicaba Raúl Amores. El Presidente del Patronato comunicó ayer a los miembros de la asociación Manuel de la Ossa que “Le hemos exigido a quien va a construir la residencia que la fachada sea igual que la que tiene el hospitalillo. Más aún, que los patios conserven una estética castellana y que nos quedemos con baja y dos alturas, que es lo que tiene la edificación actual. El patronato quiere mantener su patrimonio y su finalidad, y esta es asistencial y no cultural”. Raúl Amores ha asegurado que “Queremos mantener el apoyo a los que más lo necesitan”, en este caso se hará a través de una residencia de ancianos. En este mismo sentido se ha manifestado un miembro de la asociación Manuel de la Ossa esta misma mañana en un medio de comunicación local al ser preguntado por el tema, al igual que han hecho tres Patronos de la Fundación Lozano. El Presidente del Patronato de la Fundación Lozano ha señalado que cuando la empresa que compró el edificio de los Padres Somascos para hacer otra residencia propuso su derrumbe completo, y su posterior reconstrucción siguiendo el modelo original, Jesús Garrido en nombre de la Asociación Manuel de la Ossa se mostró a favor del proyecto. Por eso ahora los miembros de la Fundación Lozano se han sorprendido al comprobar la respuesta contraria a hacer lo mismo en el edificio del Hospital Santa Emilia. Las instalaciones “No tienen más que el valor sentimental, que no es poco”, pero la construcción de la residencia no lo mermará, sino que hará que perdure, dicen los Patronos de la Fundación Lozano, por su fachada, que será igual, y porque volverá a ser habitado por mayores que por fin podrán quedarse en su municipio gracias a que se ha construido una residencia. Sobre investigadores internacionales que algunos medios han asegurado que piden al Patronato que no se derribe el edificio, los patronos dicen que tras ver el escrito no queda nada claro que los nombres que aparecen al final de documento, sin firmas, lo hagan como muestra de su apoyo a su punto de vista o sean solo meras referencias.I hope that an appropriate solution can be made by the groups in Tarancon. Perhaps the air raid shelter can be conserved as a place to visit in connection with the bombing of civilian targets and maybe also an appropriate memorial remembering the International Brigade Hospital could also be plaved in the El Hospitalillo’s grounds? Let us hope that something good comes out of the discussion and debate.
The Infectious Diseases building (post war) to the side and front of the hospital
The rear of the hospital
The garden to the rear
Entrance to the Air Raid shelter in the back garden on the Hospital
There is a great deal to explore in this area concerning the International Brigade hospitals at Saelices/Villa Paz, el Casillejo, Huete and Ucles nearbye. Huete is already visitable with advanced notice with a book soon to be published in English on the beautifully situated Hospital in the old monastery of Santa Merced. El Castillejo and Villa Paz (which the alcadesa of Saelices has kindly offered to arrange visits to in the future) aswell as the quiet village of Saelices which are both shown on the Cartier Bresson film “Victoire de Vie” are also silent but beautiful witnesses to this time. The tourism potential for this area of Cuenca close to visit by car from Madrid in a day has great possibilities. __________________________________________________________ Sunday 27th March. Opening of the Anti Aircraft battery at Turó de la Rovira in Barcelona. It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the refurbished anti aircraft batteries above Barcelona have now been made into a place to study and better understand the air defences of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. The beautiful views from this hill over Barcelona are also worthwhile looking at and with public transport (no 28 bus) from Placa Catalunya in the centre of the city can get you easily up to the Hill. Sadly March 27th was a bit of a dull, wet and foggy day with nil visibility over the city below, but we returned later in the week to take some nicer photos which you can look at later in this article. Hitherto the battery had been a derelict and forgotten site with lots of graffiti, but after having spent 1 million euros the area is now quite clean and tidy (but for how long?????). During the day young and old now sit and talk whilst contemplating the beautiful views across the city. Numerous panels in Catalan, Spanish and in English explain not only the history of the anti aircraft battery, but also the post war shanty town of 110 buildings with 600 inhabitants (called “Els Canons” after the guns!) that were built here illegally to house immigrant workers. The area was not finally cleared until the early 1990s and tiled floors mingle with the old concrete emplacements in a strange but fascinating palimpsest of Barcelona’s Civil War and post war history combined. In May 1937 work was begun on the building of this structure and four Vickers 105mm guns were placed in the purpose built emplacements to defend Barcelona from aerial attack from the Balearics by Mussolini’s aircraft. With a range of between 7,000 and 13,000 metres the guns were a very important part of the Air Defences. By October 1937 the construction was complete. Between March 16th to 18th 1938 (the same time as the Great Retreats in the Aragon), Barcelona was subjected to a continuous bombardment. The photo below was taken on March 17th 1938 at 14.05 when a bomb landed on an ammunition truck close to the University. Initial reports thought that it was a new type of bomb because of the massive explosion and destruction. 
Refugi 307 near Montjuic is a good place to start a tour of the bombing of Barcelona (Only open on weekends with guided tours at 1100,1200,1300 and 1400. Contact Museu d’Historia de Barcelona to reserve a place. www.museuhistoria.bcn.cat) . Then to Plaza Sant Felip Neri to see the damage to the walls done on Sunday January 30th 1938 between 0855 and 1125 when at about 1000 a 250kg bomb, one of 36 bombs from six Savoia S79s fell in the Square and killed 42 people, the majority of them infants, in the guardaria of the church (Some local tourist guides say that this square was used for executions). Then to Carrer Cortes Catalanes to see the monument outside the Cinema Colliseum to the bombings and finally up to Turó de la Rovira over a weekend day. At present there is no bar at the Turó, so take a picnic with you! The following link has a clip from the 2008 film “Mirant al cel” (“Watching the sky”) by Jesus Garay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9yGy52V6RYe This is a short Catalan language news report with impressive clips from the film concerning the bombing of Barcelona on March 17th 1938. There is even a glimpse of the 105mm anti aircraft guns! The film is based on the fictional character of a Catalan woman whose grandfather was one of the crew of the Anti aircraft battery at Turó de la Rovira, and her chance meeting with an Italian academic visting Barcelona who was in the Italian Airforce during the war. Sadly, it is not yet available on dvd, but this clip hopefully gives you a good idea of just one of the many bombing raids on BCN that took place on March 17th 1938 (Though according to most sources there were five Savoia S 79s in the raid rather than four in the film). The bombs falling are quite beautiful and hypnotic, yet terrible to behold. Between 13th February 1937 and 25th January 1939 Barcelona suffered 385 bombing raids with 2,750 dead, over 7,000 wounded and over 1,800 buildings damaged. In a speech in June 1940, Churchill acknowledged the bravery of the people of Barcelona during this time. It was a taste of things to come in World War Two. The results of the bombings were analysed by experts in London to prepare for the future bombing of London under the innocuous title, “The Barcelona Effect”. Luckily they over estimated the casualties, but at least they were prepared to a certain extent for the Bombing of the United Kingdom in 1940. Below is a link to the first of three sections of the 1938 Propaganda film “Catalunya Martir” concerning the bombing of Barcelona. Made by Laya films, this version is in the original French with Catalan subtitles. Once you finish the first section it should guide you to the second and third parts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExvgQDIn5AU 
Italian Savoia S79s in flight.
The Opening on a rather foggy Sunday 27th March.
Some of the large group that attended the Opening.
A view from the Battery on a nicer day later in the week.
A view towards Montjuic (on the right) with Sagrada Familia in the centre..
Young and old enjoying the peace and the views from this impressive spot.
One of the four 105mm gun emplacements looking over Barcelona.
Behind the Battery one can see the “secret” of the International Brigade memorial in Carmel.
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5th March 2011 Benicassim/Benicasim 
Proposed street plaque on display at the Benicassim Event (but the road will not be ready in time for October 2011)
On Friday 4th March I had great pleasure in attending the 2nd Annual Weekend remembering the International Brigade Hospital and Villas at Benicassim. 
Historian Guillem Casañ in front of Villa del Mar
The tour of the villas was led by historian Guillem Casañ, the expert on the Spanish Civil War history of the coastal resort. He began by showing the 40 or so people who came on the evening walk some of the villas on the sea front and recounting the names of each villa.
Villa Ralph Fox
In total over 50 villas were used by over 7000 International Brigaders between December 1936 and April 1938. 
Domingo Casañ recounting his memories of the Brigaders at Benicassim. Hotel Voramar can be seen in the background.
Amogst those attending the event were Jean Paul and Soledina Chantereau from the French International Brigade group ACER. A discussion took place later in the evening at dinner hosted by the deputy alcalde Sebastián Esparducer Gargallo, about the possibility of the planned Madrid to Barcelona trip in October 2011 to include a night at Benicassim to be shown the villas. 
Villa Thaelmann
A short prototype film with clips from the Henri Cartier Bresson film Victoire de la Vieof Benicasim and a booklet on the hospitals for the event in English and Spanish were also considered. Finally the proposal for a music and poetry evening with contributions from the various national groups to take turns singing and reading poetry was also discussed (One of the locals can remember at a function which began with recitals and songs in all languages that the lights suddenly went out and a black man appeared with an incredible voice. The singer was Paul Robeson)
Villa Garibaldi
BENICASIM by Sylvia Townsend Warner Here for a little we pause. The air is heavy with sun and salt and colour. On palm and lemon-tree, on cactus and oleander a dust of dust and salt and pollen lies. And the bright villas sit in a row like perched macaws, and rigid and immediate yonder the mountains rise. And it seems to me we have come into a bright-painted landscape of Acheron. For along the strand in bleached cotton pyjamas, on rope-soled tread, wander the risen-from-the-dead, the wounded, the maimed, the halt. Or they lay bare their hazarded flesh to the salt air, the recaptured sun, or bathe in the tideless sea, or sit fingering the sand. But narrow is this place, narrow is this space of garlanded sun and leisure and colour, of return to life and release from living. Turn (Turn not!) sight inland: there, rigid as death and unforgiving, stand the mountains-and close at hand. From “Poems from Spain” edited by Jim Jump and published by Lawrence & Wishart (www.lwbooks.co.uk) 
The poem “Benicasim” read in Spanish by Victoria Montoliu
BENICÁSIM. Sylvia Townsend Warner Aquí descansamos un momento. El aire está cargando de sol y sal y color. Sobre la palmera y el limonero, sobre el cactus y la adelfa reposo un polvo con polvo y sal y polen. Y las briliantes casitas en fila como papagayos posados, y allá, rígida e inmediate, se cierne la montaña. Y me da la sensación de que hemos venido a un paisaje del Aqueronte luminosamente pintado. A lo largo de la playa con descoloridos pijamas de algodón, en alpagartas, deambulan los que se han levantado de la muerte, los heridos, los mutilados, los tullidos. O descansan desnudos, sus arriesgadas carnes al aire salado, al recobrado sol, o se bañan en este mar sin mareas, o se sientan a tocar le arena. Pero este lugar es estrecho, estrecho en este espacio engalanado de sol y ocio y calor, de regreso a la vida y al consuelo de los vivos. Tuerce (¡No tuerzas!) la vista hacia el interior: allí. Rígidas como la muerte e implacables, se alzan las montañas-y alcance de la mano. From “Hablando de leyendas. Poemas para España” by Jim Jump, Antonio Díez y David González. Ediciones Baile del Sol. (www.bailedesol.org) From Guillem Casañ’s research, a total of 59 people died in the Hospital up till April 8 1938, 30 of which were foreign. By nationality, the largest group was French (5), German (4), Polish (4), Italian (3), English (1), Scottish (1), Irish (1), Austrian (1), Belgian (1), Czechoslovakian (1), Danish (1), Finnish (1), Swedish (1), Dutch (1) and Lithuanian (1). Three were of unknown nationality.
The International Brigade memorial in Benicassim cemetery
Bodek, Joaquin, 43 years old, German, died 06/26/1937 Neuman, Erich, 27 years old, German, died 29/10/1937 Laschet, Franz, 29 years old, German, died 02/04/1938 Nordheim, Gimter, 29 years old, German, died 12/11/1937 Zuwetler, Josep, 23 years old, Austrian, died 02/18/1937 Elipome, Francois, 28 years old, Belgian, died 26/12/1937 Neveska, Francois, 45 years old, Czechoslovakian, died 07/26/1937 Hendriksen, Otto, 32 years old, Danish, died 09/09/1937 Wihela, Werner, no age, Finnish, died 9/3/1938 Ponteilla, Joan, 32 years old, French, died 03/11/1937 Bunel, Marcel Felix Eugene, 29 years old, French, died 19/08/1937 Rouge, Gabriel, 21 years old, French, died 27/01/1938 Bougade, Louis, 34 years old, French, died 03/29/1938 Lacombe, Fernand, no age, French, died 01/04/1938 Braut, Albert, 21 years old, Dutch, died 01/24/1938 Daly, Peter, no age, Irish, died 09/05/1937 Donaldson, William, aged 27, Scottish, died 27/01/1938 Batson, Percy, age 23, English, died 02/07/1938 Puggioni, Mario Giovanni, 30 years old, Italian, died 03/04/1937 Bini, André, 30 years old, Italian, died 28.6.1937 Noto, Luciano, 29 years old, Italian, 01/03/1938 Grogorovic, Frank, 34 years old, Lithuanian, 03.22.1938 Maggioni, Jean, 34 years old, no nationality, died 12/07/1937 Jusi, no age, no nationality, died 09/26/1937 Freber, Eric, 29 years old, no nationality, died 11/10/1937 Matuchosky, Andre, 43years old, Polish, died 29/07/1937 Chamrol, Leon, no age, Polish, died 11/07/1937 Sufco, Nicolas, 37 years old, Polish, died 03/25/1938 Zige, Stanislao, 32-year-old Polish, died 03/11/1937 Hendler, Max, no age, Swedish, died 09/23/1937 In March 1937 the hospital was made up of just 10 villas and the Hotel Voramar (the hospital) was then called General Miaja. The Henri Barbusse theatre was the present garage of the Hotel Voramar. The present Villa Beutel was the Club Azaña which had a library and coffee facilities. The Hospital library was located at the Maxim Gorky House of Culture (now the Villa Victoria) with more than 2,000 books in 15 languages. The number of occupants in each villa varied, depending on the size, but usually between 14 and 27 occupants, and their names were changed relative to each of the Brigades, such as Villa André Marty, Garibaldi, Largo Caballero and Passionaria, Ralph Fox and Thaelmann. French commissar Elie Duguet wrote: “I’ve never lived in such a beautiful place. A villa by the sea where I could sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves. I lay in my pyjamas. It was a luxury for me. My clothes were washed, ironed and the bed made every day.” All in all a productive and fascinating visit. I hope that the Madrid to Barcelona trip between October 21st and 28th later this year visits Benicassim. Many thanks to Guillem Casañ for providing the information above.
Alan Warren & Guillem Casañ
_______________________________________________________________________ The Fourth Annual Jarama March, 26th February 2011. 
The main reason to visit Madrid was to take part in the Annual March on the Battlefield of Jarama. This year the March covered the XI German International Brigade for the first time. I add some photos to give you an idea of this increasingly popular event. It was calculated that around 300 people attended the March this year. 
Here are links to photos and descriptions of the March in Spanish: http://www.nodo50.org/Cerca-de-300-personas-participan.html http://www.diagonalperiodico.net/Marcha-por-la-Memoria-de-la.html http://elola.blogia.com/2011/030101-iv-marcha-memorial-de-la-batalla-del-jarama.php https://picasaweb.google.com/geoquique/HomageToTheInternationalBrigadesJaramaFebrero2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMyb2onLytm9bw#slideshow/5579135627275937122 DISCOVERY OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN GRAVES AT JARAMA 
The recent discovery of three mass graves of British and American Brigaders who were killed at Jarama was discussed by a group of enthusiasts at the event in Meson El Cid after the Memorial March. I have now discovered the locations of the British dead and also the American dead from the first attack on February 23rd 1937. However, the American dead from the second attack on February 27th 1937 will come later. Here is a short account concerning the British battalion mass grave that has been recently identified. 
Mass grave of the 127 American dead from the February 27th attack.
Below are pages from the newspaper La Gaceta:
The second page below shows an aerial photograph with the Kit Conway memorial just visible to the west on the left of the map. One hundred metres to the east, beyond the sunken road, appears one of the mass grave as seen in the close up photo. This most likely contains at least twenty English dead mentioned in one of the newspaper links below and maybe more from the attacks of 12th and 13th February? The photo below has the names of 29 British but may be the same grave marker? 
.
The twenty dead from the first American attack at Jarama are very likely buried above the clenched fist memorial that was unveiled on June 30th 1938 by the 18 Brigada Mixta. The area above where this memorial once stood has the appearance of a cemetery with two sets of steps either side of where the memorial once stood rising up to a flat piece of ground which seems appropriate for a cemetery of some sort. The site is close enough to where the Americans attacked on February 23rd 1937 and where a first aid post that was sheltered may have been set up to treat the wounded. The inscription of the original memorial reads:
La 18 BRIGADA A LOS HEROES Y CAMARADAS INTERNACIONALES CAIDOS EN DEFENSA DE LA REPUBLICA
Fragment of the 1938 memorial
Here are some links to two newspaper articles on the discovery (in Spanish) http://www.larazon.es/noticia/4944-dos-bandos-una-sola-memoria http://www.intereconomia.com/noticias-gaceta/politica/mas-400-regulares-y-legionarios-yacen-dos-grandes-fosas-guerra-civil-201102 
The Kit Conway memorial at the British battalion machine gun positions at Jarama
Site of the “tumba de los brigadistas” behind the Kit Conway memorial and beside the sunken road.
Sunset over the British “Suicide Hill” from the site of the mass grave
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A TRIP AROUND MADRID. 22nd to 25th February 2011 The week before the Fourth Jarama march, Geoff Cowling, Harry Owens and myself made a journey of discovery to locate and identify two American hospitals east of Madrid- Tarancon and Villa Paz. We had been invited by Tarancon and Saelices ajuntamientos and our experiences there exceeded our expectations. Our final visit was Huete to explore the Hospital Inglese. TARANCON. “In a hospital in Tarancon, I saw a lovely Spanish girl, about twenty years of age, who had been struck by a fragment of such a bomb. It had cut off her right arm and breast as clean as a whistle. She lay there smiling, and the American doctor, Bush (sic. Dr. Irving Busch), told me that nothing could damp her ardour against Franco.” From “Pollitt visits Spain”, 1938. The American Hospital at Tarancon was in fact three hospitals, Una Wilson wrote on June 10th 1937, “Today, Theodore, one of the male nurses and I went astrolling about the village. First we visited Number 1 Hospital (the largest surgical and main hospital), No. 2 (medical) and No. 3 (infections).” On the morning of Tuesday 22ndFebruary we met historians Ernesto Vinas and Angel Rodriguez (www.bruneteenlamemoria.com) with film cameraman David Fonfria.
Geoff Cowling, Maximo Molina & Harry Owens outside Tarancon ajuntamiento.
We were welcomed by Maximo Molina, President of the Group Memoria Historica of Tarancon. He mentioned in passing that the son of Scotsman Allan Craig had visited the town some years ago trying to find where his father was buried. Records show that Allan Craig was wounded at Jarama and died at Tarancon on 22nd February 1937. We were met by the Town Archivist Jesus Garrido Gallego who gave us copies of Archive material connected to the the hospital but none connected with the International Brigade Hospital. We were then introduced to the alcalde of Tarancon, Raul Amores and councillor Jose Antonio Magro Bovilla. After this we were taken to one of the Hospitals. This was Hospital Number 3 (?) but was deserted and in a very sorry state. It had been abandoned in the 1970s and until recently had been occupied by squatters. We were also shown one of the air raid shelters behind the building which could hold 100 people. Ernesto and Angel went up into the attic and came down with two original pairs of bedsteads from the period of the American occupation! 
The Infection Hospital No. 3( ?)
Ernesto with one pair of Spanish Civil War period bedsteads that he discovered in the hospital attic! Note the Falangist graffiti on the wall behind him
We were then shown where Hospital No. 1 (?) was situated. Called by locals “The Stone Hospital”, a new building now occupies the site. Hospital No. 2 is around the corner and is in good shape but not open to the public. 
The “Stone Hospital” (No. 1?) on the right below the crane)
Hospital No. 2
Finally we were taken down one of the five air raid shelters of the town near the railway station. Tarancon had enough shelter for its pre war population of 5,000, but with refugees the population had increased to over 10,000. Mention was made of a forgotten store of ammunition in the town exploding in July 1949 causing many civilian casualties. 
Geoff Cowling bravely entering the Air Raid shelter beside Tarancon Railway Station.
Inside the Air Raid shelter
Remains of the lighting system in the Shelter
Rose Freed wrote: It is March 27th (1937) now, at 11.a.m.. I just got off duty and was told to go to the post office to get your registered letter. It made my morning pleasant. Last night it was Dr. Goland’s birthday. We made a party at the American Casa. I made rounds and came to see how things were going at the party. We were drinking champagne and had just given Dr. Goland his birthday present, which consisted of one dozen toothbrushes each in the center of a cupcake with the bristles exposed and blue ribbon bows tied to each other, when at twelve midnight the lights went out. We heard the roar of planes. There was a long silence in the room. I spoke. I said I was going to the hospital. Dr. Bloom shouted, “If you think anything of your life don’t go.” Dr. Barsky said he was going to the hospital 3 (?) on the Valencia Road, Dr. Barsky to hospital 1 and Dr. Odio to hospital 2. I stayed outside the door of the hospital searching the brilliantly studded starry sky for a sight of the planes, but they were too high and had no lights. They circled overhead many times, they came lower and lower and the sound of the motors became louder and louder. I ran into the hospital only to find some of the enfermos (patients) in hysterics. They could not be blamed, they who so many times have been terrorised by the lousy tactics of the fascists……They clung to me with an almost deadly grip, kissed me and dried their tears. The crash you cannot- never can anyone realise the horror of what seems like earth opening beneath you. The light of the magnesium flare bomb to see if it struck right- and then eight more crashes- then silence, too long, and the shrapnel flying in all directions. I ran to hospital 1, then to hospital 2, then back to my post where I found all crying silently………
Rose Freed with Langston Hughes (ALBA)
Rose’s letter confuses the Hospital numbers. It would make greater sense to number the Main Hospital on the Valencia Road Number 1, but she has it as Number 3. Close by was a derelict railway station building that had been built during the Second Republic. Sadly it is due to be demolished. Ernesto made the comment that if it had been in Britain it would have been made into a railway museum! 
After lunch we were interviewed by Cuenca Television and that evening appeared in the local newspaper and the ajuntamiento’s publicity.
Ernesto Vinas being interviewed by Cuenca TV
Below are two links to newspaper articles about our visit in Spanish:
http://eldiadigital.es/not/14831/el_patrimonio_historico_de_la_guerra_civil_objeto_de_estudio/ We then drove to Saelices, the village close to the American Hospital at Villa Paz. SAELICES (Letter from Rose Freed to her brother Lou. Villa Paz Hospital, January 19th 1938) “I think the saddest experience I suffered in the year I’ve been in Spain, was the death of Abe Schwartz. Abe died of Typhoid malignant malaria, military tuberculosis, and Lobar pneumonia…On Yom Kippur day he died. He was buried next day in Salacies (sic). I went to his funeral as most others did. Many Spanish villagers were present too, for Abe had endeared himself to all who met him…. Before the coffin was lowered, the Political Commissar spoke touchingly of his anti-fascist work. As the coffin was lowered the Spaniards sang the “Internationale” as I have never heard it sung before. Don’t ask me to describe the feeling with which they sang it, for I feel weepy when it comes back to me. As we turned away it started to rain. But it was hard leaving even though it was raining. It was an Anti-Fascists fighter, who had left his family and future 3000 miles behind to fight a battle here for Democracy that he might spare America the terrors and misery of the battle tomorrow. It rained heavier, and at last the few of us left were forced to go. Even the elements knew of our loss and sorrowed with us. It rained heavily all that day.” 
Saelices Church
We were eventually met by Esperansa Rubio Huelamo, the alcadesa of Saelices and Julian Sanchez Paris at the Ajuntamiento. We explained the reason for our journey and the alcadesa kindly allowed us to examine the registry of deaths from the hospital. Abe Schwartz’ death certificate was there aswell as 24 other deaths. We showed a short clip of film taken by Henri Cartier Bresson “Victoire de Vie”” of the Hospital at Villa Paz and a children’s fiesta which was held at Castillejo to celebrate the first anniversary of the opeing of the Hospital. Their ears pricked up when they saw this! 
David Fonfria, Alcadesa Esperansa Rubio Huelamo, Harry Owens & Julian Sanchez Paris outside Saelices Ajuntamiento
After saying thanks to Esperansa and Julian we drove to the ruined castle and could easily spot the castle in the background of the film where the fiesta took place.
The Castillejo between Saelices and Villa Paz which is shown in the Henri Cartier Bresson film “Victoire de Vie”. The children’s fiesta was held at this spot to celebrate the first anniversary of the hospital being set up at Villa Paz.
In a quiet and beautiful spot we were able to imagine the scene over seventy years ago. Julian mentioned that his father had gone to this fiesta and they wish to show the clip to the village at a later date to try and identify the many children in the film. We were able to identify one clip in the village of Saelices when the village cryer rings his cymbal to shout out the invitation to the village. 
The same spot in Henri Cartier Bresson’s film “Victoire de Vie” where the village cryer announces the children’s fiesta.
A Spanish version of the 2 dvd set with “Victoire de Vie”" on it costs 20 euros from Avalon Productions under the title “Henri Cartier Bresson”. Originally in French with Spanish subtitles.
As twilight fell Ernesto, Angel and David returned to Madrid whilst Geoff, Harry and I made our way to Huete.
Angel, Alan & Ernesto at Castillejo near Villa Paz (David Fonfria)
THE HOSPITAL INGLESE AT HUETE
Huete
“If I’m wounded again, I hope I’m taken to Huete.” It was a soldier who had been wounded at Brunete who was talking to me. He was well again and driving an ambulance. “Why?” I asked, never having been to Huete. “I like the spirit of the place,” he replied, “the comradeship is good. It’s big and there’s something fine about being there amongst so many men of all nationalities.” From the Frederika Martin Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University. Nan Green wrote: My destination was already arranged. Next morning I was given a salvo conducto, a sheet of paper entitling me to travel to it. Travel, how? At all exits to Barcelona there were guard posts which stopped every vehicle leaving the city and loaded them with passengers to wherever they were going – a kind of military hitch-hiking. After an hour or so of waiting, I was shoved on to an open lorry with about twenty others and we set off. After spending the night at the convalescent hospital in Benicassim, where I met Angela Guest. I went through the same process next morning and later in the same day found myself at Huete, in what was called `the English hospital’. To my profound astonishment. I found George there. Now, George had left for Spain with the firm intention of joining the International Brigade as soon as he had delivered his lorry, and I had only a vague idea that he was still retained in the medical service. (Letters were censored, and one sent the replies to a code address which did not indicate where the writer was). He had sent me some carefully guarded accounts of battles in which he had participated, of the death of Julian Bell and that of Izzy Kupchik and others we knew and a vivid though typically understated account of his first experience of aerial bombardment (`strafing’) in which he described how he lay in a ditch and experienced a sudden fondness’ for his hands – the hands. don’t forget, of a cellist. A little while before my arrival he had burned the skin of one arm by getting under his ambulance to examine a choked feed of petrol on a mountain road, and freezing petrol had run down his arm, taking off an area of skin. He had been sent to Huete for treatment and was almost recovered. Meanwhile he was appointed Political Commissar of the Hospital. It was pure chance and good fortune that brought us together now. I had not had the ridiculous idea that I was going to Spain to ‘join my husband’ and, though I had a deep-down hope that we would meet. I had no expectation of this incredible bonus. It was sheer unadulterated joy. George was a good Commissar. I shall later recount a couple of typical incidents to illustrate his qualities. Part of his job was to promote the welfare of patients and staff, and on this day lie had arranged a concert for such patients as could walk or be carried to the large ‘recreation hall’ – formerly, perhaps, a chapel in what had been a monastery. He had bought himself a cello; a Bavarian lad (Wille Remmel) with an injured leg played the violin (by ear), the village plumber was an excellent guitarist, though equally illiterate musically, and a Catalan patient, also with a leg injury, played the bandurrión (a sort of mandolin). George taught them tunes, and they already had quite a credible repertoire. A departing patient had left behind an accordion. Early in the afternoon George showed me this and said that I should play it with his orchestra that evening. ‘But I can’t play the accordion!’ I protested. `You will, by tonight,’ he replied firmly. The keyboard side was of course easy, since I had had piano lessons as a child. I learned a dozen or so chords during the afternoon and dutifully took my place in the orchestra that evening (it must have sounded dreadful).
George & Nan Green, Willi Remmel, Vladimiro Migullan & Valentin Munoz Sirodey (IWM)
The same place today
Next day I was introduced to my job: Assistant Secretary. The Chief Administrator was British, as were the surgeon in change, theatre sisters, ward sisters (who included three New Zealand nurses) and one or two ambulance drivers. Somewhat to my disillusionment, I found that there were wheels within political wheels, colouring the relations and actions of this collection of people. 
“The three New Zealand nurses“: Millicent Sharples, Rene Shadbolt & Isabel Dodds in Huete.
“Nurse” Cowling in the same spot
The nurse’s accommodation in Huete
The anti-Communism of the Conservatives and the Labour leadership had its reflection here, and I came to suspect (though never to prove) that the Foreign Office had its long finger in this and other pies. Nevertheless, tremendously devoted work was done and the Spanish people (patients – mostly peasants, staff and the villagers of Huete) were a glorious example and lesson to all. The training of village girls as nurses and wardmaids was speeded by their eagerness to learn and their devotion to the work, far out-running the expectations of our nurses. Like Cromwell’s men, they knew what they were fighting for, and loved what they knew. I have never forgotten an old grandmother to whose cavehouse (half of Huete’s houses consisted of caves hollowed out of the hillside in the village) I went, trying to recruit women for the hospital laundry and linen room. Her daughter; for whom I was searching, was out and she was surrounded by several grandchildren, one or two of whom were of school age. On the whitewashed wall of the cave were stuck some children’s drawings, done in coloured crayons. ‘Look,’ she said pointing proudly to there, ‘before the Republic there wasn’t a pencil in this village, and now all the children go to school. YES, My daughter will come and help! Those wounded men are fighting so that our children can learn.’ My principal workmate was Pere Barat, a gaunt, frail-looking Catalan about thirty years old who had TB. Like many Catalans he spoke French and Castilian as well as his mother tongue, which is to some extent a mixture of the other two. In the scanty intervals of our work of keeping the hospital records, he patiently taught me Castilian (using French, which at that time I knew better). For my first lessons in what later became almost a second language to me and contributed to my subsequent history, I thank Pere (Pedro) for the kind, patient, persistent, thorough grounding he gave me, supplemented by study of a huge Jesperson Grammar.”‘ I don’t want to exaggerate the political undercurrents. The British nurses were absolute models of efficiency and devotion and most of thorn entirely ‘non-political’, caring only for their healing mission. 1 shall never forget, as a single example, Dorothy Lowe, a sister who had served most of her nursing career in the British Army, who received in her ward three injured men who, because of negligence in another hospital, were near to death. hrough sheer nursing she brought all three back to life and health, cleaning up their disgraceful bedsores, tending their wounds, supervising their diet and scarcely leaving them day or night. And all this, remember, before antibiotics had been heard of, before M & B had emerged from the laboratories, in a chronic shortage of medical supplies of all kinds, when soap and water was often the only antiseptic available and even the supply of soap was terribly short. A history of the achievements of the British medical units in Spain is long overdue. I hope someone will write it. This is a chronicle of small beer. I can only tell what I saw and experienced. Here is the tale of some of the day to day problems wlich George, as Political Commissar, had to cope with. Our patients, reflecting the composition of the Spanish People’s Army, were mainly peasants. Their experience of hospitals had, in the main, been limited to such hospitals as were run by the Catholic Church, manned (or womaned) by nuns, who in the main (and in the old days) were more concerned with saving souls than with saving bodies. Rightly or wrongly, a good number of our patients were afraid of nuns. Now, some of the British nurses cherished, as was natural, their status, which was often indicated by details of their uniform (as it is today in such institutions as St Thomas’s Hospital where the difference between a blue belt and a white one is a Step in an upward direction). These nurses, having been Sisters at home, were proud to wear headgear consisting of a white square, folded into a triangle with the point hanging clown their backs. This head-dress terrified some of the patients, resembling as it did that of some nursing orders. It fell to George to persuade these British Sisters to forego their status symbols. It was difficult, but he succeeded. I watched him one day trying to shift an enormous cupboard with the aid of two very young stretcher-bearers, Spaniards. They pushed, pulled and heaved without making any difference. It is impossible, George,’ said one of the lads. `To Communists nothing is impossible,’ George replied. One more heave, and the cupboard moved … One night, someone came running for George. The hospital guard, an Irishman, had managed to get drunk and was behaving violently. I ran, with George, to the guard post. George looked on for a few moments and then said in his quiet voice: `Well, sorry Paddy, old man!’ and with one well-calculated punch to the jaw, laid him out and carried him carefully away. A fiesta was planned, I think it was to commemorate the October Revolution, in which the hospital invited the entire village to participate. In preparation for this, a bar was set up in what had been the crypt of the monastery and was now the garage for ambulances. To make an inspection pit, some flagstones had been removed, uncovering some human bones. An American artist (Edward Bowers), one of our patients, devised a banner to hang at the back of the bar, depicting caricatures of France, Hitler and Mussolini and, to point the lesson, had hung some of the hones beneath the banner.
Other artwork by Edward Bowers in the Hospital dining room (IWM).
The same room today
The point was raised, might this not antagonise the villagers, to whose ancestors maybe the bones belonged? In the aftermath of my personal repudiation of the Christian religion, I was vehemently in favour of leaving the bones there. `I don’t like finding myself on the opposite side to my wife,’ said George, and proceeded to remind us of the meaning of the Popular Front. The bones were taken down and re-interred, and I swallowed my lesson without too much difficulty. During that month (November 1937) George experienced a musical triumph. An invitation came to bring his ‘orchestra’ to Madrid and broadcast some music for England, as accompaniment to an appeal for medical supplies. George was to make the appeal. We rehearsed and rehearsed, and set off for Madrid in `a truck belonging to the hospital. The old fontanero, the village plumber/guitarist, who had been there once before in his life, croaked sadly and repeatedly as we drove through the darkened streets: ‘Madrid is not Madrid without lights!’ In an extremely Heath Rohinson sort of studio we played our tunes, gritting our teeth lest Bavarian Willi, as was his ineradicable habit, introduced an extra beat into his bar to the confusion of the rest. All went well to our enormous gratification, and we were visited early next morning by two chaps from the Radio, proposing that we should stay another night and make a world broadcast. Alas, our truck had to get back to Huete and we had to go with it. Extract from “A Chronicle of Small Beer” by Nan Green.pp 72 to 77. Trent Editions, 2004. ISBN9 781842 331057. I have been working on Huete Hospital for a couple of years now. Having assisted Manuel Olarte Madero in identifying photographs of the hospital held in the Imperial War Museum he has now at last published a book on the hospital. By using local memories, memoirs of International Brigaders and other sources he has produced the first book on such a hospital. At present the book is in Spanish but it is hoped that soon it will be published in English later this year. Manuel’s main inspiration was a visit a few years ago by Australian author Des Speight who left a copy of his book “Australia’s Spanish Knight” (Contact D.L. & K.L. Speight, 6 Pine Avenue, Seacliff, S.A. 5049, AUSTRALIA for copies). This book covers the life of Richard Bryant, a Tynesider who worked as an ambulance driver at this hospital. Further research by Manuel has produced this fascinating book on the hospital. For those wishing to purchase a copy of “Las Brigadas Internacionales. El “Hospital Ingles” de Huete” please contact the author, Manuel Olarte, on hospitalingles@huete.org The 158 page book with many illustrations costs 15 euros plus postage. If you are interested in a copy in English then please contact me and I will inform you when it is published later this year. This visit was very rewarding. The book was due to be released on Friday 25th February, but sadly we had to attend another event at the Ateneu in Madrid. We walked around the huge monastery which was once the hospital and by chance talked with Juanito Fernandez who introduced us to Maria Plaza, one of the nurses who had worked in the Hospital Ingelese. Harry Owens interviewed her in one of the sunny squares as she remembered the times when the English were here. She is 88 years old and her memories were quite vivid. 
Alan, Maria & Harry after the interview
Maria examinng & identifying people in the photographs in the new book. Geoff sat on the floor in front listening to her incredible stories from over seventy years ago.
Huete monastery is the largest building in Cuenca
A strange sight appeared while we were in Huete. Flocks of storks returning to Europe flew over us. A beautiful sight and something I have never seen before. Quite enchanting to behold.
DOES ANYONE IN NEW YORK WANT TO HELP WRITE A BOOK? The publication of the book on the Huete Hospital gives rise to the question as to whether a book could also be done on Tarancon and Villa Paz? Another project related to this is the American Field Hospital at Puebla de Hijar on the Aragon Front. We have three local historians who would like to produce such books. They have the local sources, records and memories from the people in these towns and villages. However, we know that there is a vast resource of materiel in the Tamiment Library in New York. And to make these projects come true we need help from enthusiasts in New York who can inspect the materiel at the Tamiment and send us copies of relevant materiel to allow us to make a book on each of the three hospitals in question. We think that such a project could also be an appropriate dissertation for a student. So we are asking readers to see if they can find either a friend or research student who could visit the Tamiment Collection in New York and send us material relevant to the hospitals at Tarancon, Vila Paz and Puebla de Hijar on the Aragon Front. Huete has been done, but these three hospitals need help! Can you help us? If so, you could get your name in a book when it is published! Contact Alan Warren on pdlhistoria@gmail.com to talk about our plans. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ (7th February 2011) Ripoll in the winter of 1938 Between October 27th and December 1st 1938, the remnants of the XV International Brigade were assembled in the Catalan town of Ripoll to be eventually returned to their home countries. Americans, English, Canadians and others were based there and with much time on their hands they attempted to occupy themselves as best they could. Various events were put on by the town and by the Brigaders themselves. In the Ripoll Archives there are a number of posters that have survived from this period including the announcement below for an event organised by the XV Brigade for the 22nd November 1938: 
However, American Archie Brown wrote home to friends giving an insight into the organisation of this particular event which I thought worth sharing:
Ripoll, 24th November 1938.
….“You may not know it, but I’ve become a producer. Yep, we put on the dangdest, whang-up production that you’ve ever seen and not once but twice. The gods cast the dice & decided that I become the chairman of the social, cultural entertainment & miscellaneous committee. Among our activities was building Finnish steam baths & convincing guys it was necessary to register their books when they took them out of the library-and to say “now comrade also the one under your sweater-if you please!” Then came the brainstorm-a Brigade Fiesta- to thank the people of the town for their hospitality and raise funds. Each company was asked to provide “turns” as the English call them. We had to negotiate for the theatre-but the manager had to see the committee & the committee after one deliberation would not consent to taking up the seats for a dance & there was the problem of holding the program in one place & the dance in another. So we got another place, but then the com. decided to take up the seats. Then we asked to get signs made & the comrade in charge said there was no paint. So we sent another comrade to the cooperative and another to the popular front-still no paint so we sent a comrade to Barcelona. He came back and said no paint unless the union sent it up. So we decided no signs. So Monday the paint arrived from Barcelona, the cooperative sent paint, the mayor brought over his private supply. At 12.30 the comrade in charge came to me breathless & said “I forgot all about it- we had some paint left over from the last time.” The signs looked fairly good. The English on Sat. said they had everything ready-the Ams. had four turns, the Cubans were not sure & the Canadians couldn’t be found. Sunday everybody was ready. So we put in for a leaflet which was to be ready Monday, but came out Tues. at 3pm. The signs scheduled the dance for Tues. 8pm, the leaflet at 10pm (the printer thought that the people would not respond at 8). The announcement at mess was for 9. The commissar in charge also thought it would be too early. At 8 the doors opened and in 15 min. the place was full-but the band leader also thought 8 was too early so he sent word he would come at 9 and arrived at 10. Meanwhile we put on the turns. The English led off with their trio-followed by the Negro chorus-& sundry numbers. The only difficulty was that all the entertainers had brought their friends, particularly the Spanish comrades, & they would hold last minute conferences & rehearsals. So you didn’t know whether the Rumba dancer was singing “Sewanee River” or telling droll stories. I finally posted a guard at the door-but the door swung inward. So after he got smacked in the face a couple of times he stepped to one side. The people would come thru the door, turn a questioning face at the guard’s challenge, get indignant and keep on walking. I said “Why don’t you stop them.” He said, “-I could shoot them if you wish-.” Not wanting blood on the floor we compromised-people came and went as they pleased. Somehow the hours passed and I remarked to Harry Bottcher ( a S.F. boy) “What a mess!” “If you would look out on the floor-or go out and dance you wouldn’t think so.” I took his advice and had a dance & sure enough everybody was having a good time. All the notables expressed their satisfaction & we danced till 2.a.m. Now I’m no longer in charge- I’ve been sent to the Mid-West-Pacific Coast Company. We have reorganised on a regional basis & I am busy helping to organise the activities of the company.”… The town of Ripoll is virtually unchanged from the winter of 1938 and many places where the Brigaders were quartered and slept can be seen. The Cinema Condal where this event took place still functions as a cinema, though the interior is now in a modern style. Further north is the French border where a number of monuments to the mass exodus of Catalans in January 1939 are visible. The stunning Pyrenees are close by and this whole area makes for an fascinating visit. 
Ripoll Cathedral
Interior of the Cathedral. Here the Brigaders were fed and on one occasion a fight broke out between American and Cuban Brigaders arguing over the quantity of food issued.
_______________________________________________________________________ (2nd February 2011) “The Kid from Spain” starring Eddie Cantor (1932)
Eddie Cantor in “The Kid from Spain”
Last week I was examining letters written by Welsh Brigader Alwyn Skinner in the Richard Burton archives at Swansea University. I made a note of one passage written on August 14th 1937 when Alwyn was based at Tarazona de la Mancha. He writes the following: ” One night this week we saw the film ‘A Kid from Spain” with Eddie Cantor & his scantily dressed girls. The showing was not so good, being in the open air, actually in the Bull Ring. And the talking and singing very indistinct.” The Bull Ring in Tarazona de la Mancha still stands almost unchanged and it is possible to visit it (when open) and to easily imagine this film being shown there. From various accounts by Brigaders it is known that there were a wide variety of films shown to the Brigaders including such propaganda as “Sailors of Kronstadt” “Chapaiev” etc (Alvah Bessie mentions in his Spanish Civil War Diaries on November 3rd 1938 in Ripoll watching “Our Daily Bread”, “Confessions of a Collegian”,”The Private Life of Henry the Eighth” and “The Brewery”). Out of curiosity today I searched and discovered a clip from “The Kid from Spain” on Youtube. I was quite shocked and surprised! Below is the link which I urge readers to watch. But please imagine yourself as a full blooded young American or Englishman (or Welshman!) watching this film miles from home. Personally I regard it as an awful form of mental torture watching the clip of, as Alwyn writes, these “scantily dressed girls”! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC5MxkNxEtMEnjoy the clip and just try to imagine yourself there nearly seventy five years ago!
Welshmen in the International Brigades, Brunete, August 1937. Back row, left to right: Alwyn Skinner, Fred Morris, Ben Davies, C.E. Palmer. Middle row: Archie Cook, Hector Manning, Harry Dobson, Arthur Williams. Front row: Jack Roberts, Ted Edwards, Morris Davies.
A contemporary newspaper cutting of the same photograph in Alwyn Skinner’s files at Swansea University states the following: “Sefton Delmer, Daily Express war reporter photographed this group of Welshmen during a three day visit to the English speaking contingent of the Spanish Government Army. The men are at Quinto near Albacete. Sgt Morgan Skinner; Lt. Davies, Newport; Captain H. Dobson; Captain Jack Roberts; Lt Ted Edwards; Lt Morris Davies; Ben ?????; A Cook; H. Manning and A. Williams.
———————————————————————————————————————————————— (17th January 2011) PdlH hits Teruel! Today Diario de Teruel reported on the visit organised by PdlH for three Americans in search of their relations who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in November 2010. The link to the blog is http://pdlhlincolnbrigadetour2010.wordpress.com/the-blog/ The newspaper article appeared with a large number of photos related to the Battle of Teruel. There is a long term plan to invest 25 million euros to make a museum at Teruel on the Spanish Civil War, and hopefully the more visitors to this unknown part of Spain the greater chance of this coming true. I have been asked to give an interview by the editor of Diario de Teruel to explore possibilities and the hidden history in this beautiful, but relatively unknown region for foreign visitors. 
Lincoln Washington headquarters kitchen, near Teruel, January 1938 (ALBA)
The same place in November 2010
The newspaper article (in Spanish) can be found here: http://www.diariodeteruel.es/teruel/9024-de-vuelta-al-polo-norte-de-celadas.html ———————————————————————————————————————————————- (15th January 2011) The niece of a Norwegian Brigader visits the Ebro. 
On Saturday 15th January I had the pleasure of taking four Norwegians to the Ebro battlefield in search of Norwegian Brigader Odd Olsen. The group included Randi Ronning, niece of Odd Olsen who was killed on September 7th 1938 during the Battle. Accompanying her was historian Jo Stein Moen, author of “Tusen Dager” (with Rolf Saether)- a recent book on the Norwegian participation in the Spanish Civil War which has been critically acclaimed in Norway. What Jo doesn’t know about the Norwegian participation in the Spanish Civil War is probably not worth knowing. Accompanying Jo and Randi were Harry Tiller, journalist for the Norwegian newspaper, Adressavisen, and cameraman Steinar Fugelsoy. The plan was to show Randi in one day the places where her uncle fought and was killed. Randi was born the same year that her uncle Odd Olsen died but knew nothing about him as her family never talked about him.. 
The Norwegians at Hill 565 close to where Odd Olsen was killed.
(l tor) Randy Fogelsoy, Randi Ronning (niece of Odd Olsen), Harry Tiller & Jo Stein Moen.
Thanks to Jo Stein Moen’s extensive research we were able to show Randi a number of places where her uncle would have been during the Battle of the Ebro. From the place where her uncle crossed at Asco in the 1st Georg Branting company of the the 43rd Thaelman battalion of the XI International Brigade to Corbera and then to Sierra de Lavall where the XI Brigade was fighting in September close to Hill 565 where Odd was killed. According to the letters and diaries of Einar Juul Peterson, Odd was probably killed on 7th September with 5 other Brigaders by a bomb, also wounding 6 others and leaving just one Norwegian (Peterson) left in the XI Brigade at that time. Sadly Einar Juul Peterson was killed on the last day of action of the International Brigades but by a miracle his fascinating letters and diary survived. In October 2010 a number of plaques with over 1000 names of those who have been recognised as having died during the Battle of the Ebro were set up at the Camposines memorial and included the name of Odd.
Randi Ronning being photgraphed by Steinar Fogelsoy as she saw her uncle’s name on one of the 27 plaques at the Camposines memorial.
Odd Olsen’s name amongst many others.
We also visited some reconstructed trenches at Els Barrancs north of Vilabla dels Arcs aswell as an old farmhouse that was used as a dressing station during the battle. The farmer’s wife told us that a month ago 12 Mossos (police) arrived at the farmhouse to remove the masses of unexploded bombs, shells and grenades that the farmer had collected over the past few years. This was probably a good idea seeing as this impressive collection of war materiel was situated right beside the barbecue!
Exploring the reconstructed trenches at els Barrancs
We also visited the village of Corbera before journeying up the valley of La Sierra del Lavall towards Hill 565 where the XI International Brigade fought in September 1938. 
Valley of Sierra del Lavall
On the rough track towards Hill 565 we passed an old Moorish signalling tower which was in actual fact the XI Brigade Estado Mayor during this part of the battle. Oddly enough, in the German book Brigada Internacional ist unser Ehrenname”, volume 2 (DDR, 1974), there is a photograph of this very tower with the caption “The last fighting position of the (XI) Brigade in the ruins of Miravet”!
La Torre. XI Brigade Estado Mayor in September 1938
Randi and Jo at Corbera
An eight page article on Randi’s search for her uncle will appear in the issue of Adresseavisenon Saturday 29th January. When I have a link to the article I will endeavour to add it to this article. ———————————————————————————————————————————————- (30th December, 2010)
Roma Marquez Santo.
6th November 1916-29th December 2010
This morning (29th December, 2010), Roma Marquez Santo, miliciano of the Columna Lenin and teniente of the Ejercito Popular passed away peacefully in Barcelona at the age of 94. Many IBMT members will have met Roma in the past few years at various events in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain in connection with the International Brigade Memorial Trust, especially at the London Eye in July 2007 and 2008. He also visited Manchester and ultimately in July 2009 to Dublin where he was a guest speaker at Trinity College, as a speaker at the Cervantes Institute with International Brigader Jack Edwards and guest of the Teachers’ Club. Roma was one of six children born to Josep Maria Márquez Gaya & Conception Santos Seguí., Born in Barcelona he began work in a Renault garage in Carre Córsega in 1935, being paid 12 pesetas a week. The family read a wide variety of books whenever they could find them including many Russian authors and were active in political life. On the 19th July 1936, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona, as a member of the UGT, Roma first went with his brother, Sergi, to the Sant Agustí Barracks in Carrer Comerc where the First Regiment of Mountain Artillery was based and was given a Mauser model 1925 with a package of 50 cartridges. He then went home and his older brother, “Tete”, took the same identification card (without a photograph) and received another rifle! On the 22nd July the three brothers went to the Palace Theatre in the Ramblas, which belonged to the POUM, to enlist in one of the militia columns. His youngest brother Raúl stayed at home, very annoyed, because he also wanted to come, but was only fourteen years old. He subsequently went to the Jaume I barracks. Raúl was very tall and told the recruiters that he was sixteen years old. He was enrolled and was sent to Madrid. He was in the battle of Madrid from November 7th 1936. On the 24th July the three brothers assembled at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona with 1.600 men. This was the Lenin Column. Though Roma was not a member of the POUM, the leaders suggested that if they wanted to make something of themselves that they should join, which they did after a few days. When Roma was at the front his eldest sister, Angels, was part of the invasion of Mallorca as a miliciana with the Bayo column. The first village that the Column entered in combat was Leciñena. Then the Column was sent to Huesca. Here the three brothers volunteered to man four 50mm mortars, each with a crew of five men. The column went to cut the road near the castle of Montearagón in September 1936. Wounded in the leg during this fighting Roma was evacuated to Barcelona and whilst recovering from the infected wound he attended the funeral of Durruti on 23rd November 1936. He returned to the Aragon Front over Christmas 1936. The column now had five 81 millímetre mortars. They were called “Valero” mortars each with a crew of ten men and were under the command of Josep Pla (see later). The Column was militarized in late April 1937 and subsequently formed the 29 Division with the 128 and the 129 Brigades. After the May Revolution in Barcelona, the 29 Division collapsed in bad way, being accused of being Fascists. Subsequently Roma and one of his brothers transferred to the 28th “Red & Black” Division on 25thAugust 1937. After attending officer training both brothers were gazetted in the official newspaper of the Republic on February of 17th 1938. Roma was appointed as a lieutenant in the Army of the South at Baza in the 147 Brigada Mixta. The end of the war saw Roma still serving on the Andalusian Front near Santiago de Calatrava at Espumadera de Sal. When the order came to surrender he went to his dugout and cried for all his friends and comrades who had been killed.
Roma at the Ruta Orwell, March 2009.
He was imprisoned in Jaen and then in July 1940 Roma was tried by a military court. The prosecution asked for twenty years and a day as he was ”a dangerous Marxist and follower of (Lluis) Companys”. After a delay he was eventually sentenced to twelve years and a day. He was released from Teruel prison in the winter of 1943. He served three years, seven months and fourteen days in prison. Returning to his mother in Barcelona he found employment as a builder at a weekly wage of 80 pesetas whilst constantly having to report to the Guardia Civil. Roma never married but he stated that he “did not live the life of a monk”. At the farmhouse in Andalusia, which was used as the officers’ mess behind the lines, there was a Catalan girl working there. Roma often used to sit and talk with her in Catalan during his moments off duty to try and assuage their mutual homesickness. However, his fellow officers believed that he had less innocent intentions! In March 2009 Roma returned to Huesca to visit the places where he fought. He was welcomed by the President of the Comarcal of Los Monegros and interviewed by the director of the Ruta Orwell Museum in nearbye Alcubierre. Roma stayed for the weekend with friends in the monastery of Magallon overlooking Lecinena where he first fought in the Lenin Column over seventy years ago. A newspaper report of his visit mentioned Josep Pla, the commander of his mortar battery and a couple of months later, Josep Pla’s son, who had by chance read the article, especially came from Santander to Barcelona in May last year to meet Roma in order for the son to discover more about his father (Josep Pla had been executed after the war when his son was just a baby). The son also brought his aunt, Amparu, who was 14 years old in 1936. It transpired that Roma had helped Josep Pla evacuate his family from their farmhouse whilst under heavy enemy fire near Huseca in September 1936. He had carried Amparu over his shoulder to safety whilst she was screaming to go back home as bullets flew past them scrambling across a river. Roma mentioned confidentially after their meeting that at the time she was quite a “big” girl and very difficult to carry! However, Amparu was able to thank her saviour and for her nephew to find out more about the father that he never knew from Roma after over seventy years.
Roma & Amparu meeting after seventy years. 13th May 2009.
Whilst outside Huesca in 1936 and 1937, Roma remembers his men laughing at Georges Kopp riding on a white horse plastered with mud. His mortars also provided the “artillery” support for George Orwell’s attack on Torre Fabian near La Granja on April 13th 1937. It was only in the last years of his life that Roma was able to freely talk about his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Over the past two years of his life he was interviewed from as far away as the United States and often gave talks to schools in the Barcelona area. He was due to be interviewed this week by Aragon Television for a forthcoming six part series on the Spanish Civil War in Aragon. His memory was a marvel to behold and his attitude was an inspiration to those who met him. Luckily his autobiography has been recently completed and will be available in Catalan shortly. He will be sorely missed by his many friends who he made through the International Brigade Memorial Trust and by those who knew him in Spain. Alan Warren (Below should be a link to the newspaper article in Spanish covering Roma’s return to Huesca in March 2009) 20090322123436068Roma Marquez Alto Aragon article
A coffee in Huesca for Roma in March 2009
———————————————————————————————————————————————- (27th December, 2010) Searching for Sam Levinger….. 
Hannah, Laurie & Josh Levinger beside the memorial to the Republican dead buried in the cemetery of Pueblo de Hijar (a better photo to follow)
Alan Warren had the pleasure of taking the family of Sam Levinger to Belchite and to the hospital at Pueblo de Hijar where Sam died and to the fossa commun where he is buried in the village. Sam’s niece, Laurie, and her two children, Josh & Hannah were able to pay their respects to Sam and left a small memorial to him beside the memorial to the Republican dead. It was a great pleasure to show Sam’s family round the area and to allow them to see where Sam was wounded , died and where he is buried after some fascinating research through various Spanish Archives. I hope to do more research on this Hospital in the Tamiment Collection in New York when I visit the USA to give some talks about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain in April 2011.
View down the Calle Major of Belchite from the Plaza de Goya
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(27th November 2010) A visit to the XV International Brigade Estado Mayor in the Sierra Pandols.
Cave of the Estado Mayor in the cliff face of the Sierra Pandols
After a great deal of fieldwalking, map studying and co-operation with Catalan friends we have been able to locate the former Estado Mayor of the XV International Brigade used between 15th and 26th August 1938. Quite a scramble up there but well worth the journey. We believe that the stone hut below the cave was used as the munitions store whilst the XV Brigade was up on Hill 666 (see Fred Thomas, To tilt at windmills, p. 131).
With a Columbian couchsurfer (Google Couchsurfing to find out more about this great project!) Claudia, and Geoff Cowling, who came for the weekend to observe the Catalan elections on November 28th, we took some photos of the cave entrance and I add the photos taken in August 1938 for comparison. Note the rock formations in the background of each photo. I would only take physically fit people here. It is on the way up to the XV Brigade memorial further up in the Sierra Pandols, but much more difficult to climb up and down the terraces to this cave!
Building cave room at Estado Mayor, Sierra Pandols (ALBA)
Geoff Cowling, Merce Lluveras & Claudia in front of the cave Estado Mayor.
Headquarters, Sierra Pandols (ALBA)
Geoff, Merce & Claudia peeping from behind Merce!
———————————————————————————————– (21st November 2010): Porta de Historia involved in BBC TV filming. Between November 18th & 19th Alan Warren of PdlH assisted and was interviewed with Jonathan Miller (second cousin of Morris Miller, who was killed at the battle of the Ebro on August 19th 1938) for a short programme covering the lives of Humberside men who fought in Spain. The programme will be shown in either January or February 2011 on BBC1 Leeds. For further information about Morris Miller see www.morrismiller.wordpress.com 
Jonathan Miller (right) being interviewed by BBC’s Paul Murphy at the XV Brigade memorial in the Sierra Pandols
———————————————————————————————– (16th November 2010): See the results of our latest exciting tour conducted over two weeks in October and November from Madrid to Barcelona at www.pdlhlincolnbrigadetour2010.wordpress.com/the-blog/ 
Lincoln Washington graffiti discovered in a railway station close to Teruel
Ruta Orwell, March 2009. (l to r) Sven Honefeld, Claudia Honefeld, Jordi Marti, Judit Marti, Roma Marquez, Merce Lluveras and Alan Warren.
Militiaman Roma Marquez (of the 29th POUM Division) beside the remains of a Russian T26 tank recovered from the River Segre in the 1980′s and now displayed as a memorial to the Spanish Civil War in Vilanova de la Barca.
Salud
Great to see your web site is started best of luck Our Dad, Sam, was a Commander of British Battalion in IB
Mike in Sheffield UK
Thank you Mike. I have just had confirmed the date of the Opening of the new COMEBE exhibition for March 27th. There is a photo of your Father with George Fletcher in it and if at least some of your family could come. (aswell as George’s children?) you would be welcomed by la Fatarella with open arms. See stop press article sent round Iinternational Brigade Memorial Trust members last week.
Thanks for your support and talk with your family about coming over for the weekend.
Alan
Congratulations to all of you for reliving scenes and events of the Internationals in the Spanish war. I had picked over most of the battlegrounds of the Lincolns back in the 1960s in researching my books on the Lincoln Brigade and am profoundly moved by your reconstructions and elan. Wonderful! Keep up the good work.
Many thanks Cecil,
Your work has at times been part of the inspiration for further research. Though I greatly admire Peter Carrol`s work more for his research on the post war trials and tribulations of the Lincoln Brigaders I also greatly appreciate your publications in trying to show some of the realities of their experiences here in Spain.
Thanks for that – great to see the memories being preserved
Thank you Nick. There is a great deal more to be discovered. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. And working with Spanish people keen to discover their history makes the work very rewarding for us all.
Alan
great stories and pics Alan
Thanks
Thankyou for such an informative web site. My Great Uncle, Werner Jalmar Wihela, is one of those buried and listed on the Memorial at the Benicassim Cemetery. Werner was born in Oulu, Bayfield County, Wisconsin, USA on 17 Febuary, 1911. His parents, Jacob and Johanna Wihela, immigrated to Wisconsin from Kalajoki Finland. He was the 5th born son of 9 boys and a non-surving sister. Werner was 10 years old when both his mother and baby sister passed. It states that his age is unknown on the Memorial. Werner was 27 years old, at the time of his death. I am proud for what he stood for, and am glad that he is honored for his efforts. I am proud of the fact that he has a respectful and honorable resting place.
Thankyou for all your efforts,
Donald Wihela
Dear Alan,
I guess I wouldn’t have known about this first rate website had I not got inadvertently embroiled over the possible demolition of the hospital at Tarancon. I have listed the website on my favourites and will try to keep in touch.
Despite the Memoria Historica and many others striving to counter the 40 years of false history pedalled by the Francoists, the truth of the civil war still remains a fragile entity.
Your commitment to keep the flame of truth about the war alive, and the involvement of the International Brigades recorded, does you great credit.
Salud
Colin Carritt
PS Love to Merce.
Thanks for the updates Alan , always really interesting. Stirring events in Spain at the moment! Our Antifascistas exhibition and events in July 2011 in Sheffield will alert a lot of people to IB and SCW
Yours
Mike
Hello Mike,
many thanks for the positive feedback. It seems that our cat had done some creative writing whilst I was out and by walking over the keyboard had altered the title! Thanks for pointing that out to me!
There are a great deal of developments going on. There is the huge tour in late October through Spain from Madrid via Albacete to Barcelona, a new 6 part tv programme on the War in Aragon about to go on Aragon tv on Sunday 29th May and numerous other activities and events for the next couple of years to remember the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War.
In June I have been asked to take 50 American students from the Universitat Pompeu Fabrera to the Ebro to show them where the Lincoln Washington battalion fought and on the 18th of June a local historical group (Lo Riu Associacio) will take a group up to the XV Brigade memorial and the newly discovered XV Brigade Estado Mayor located in the Sierra Pandols! Anyone want to come?
Fantastic job!
Honour forever to the heroes of the International Brigades!
I’m from Italy…. 12th Garibaldi’s friend
Hi,
I’ve just discovered your website and found it really interesting, I look forward to reading through it over the next few days.
I just started researching my fathers (Ron Barber) time in the Civil War, he died many years ago when I was 6 so I never got to hear his story from him.
I have had some valuable help from the IBMT.
One thing I do know is that he was on the Ciudad de Barcelona when it was sunk, he survived thanks to an American who pulled him out of the water when he was on the point of drowning. I guess I owe a lot to that American. I hope to visit the area where he eventually made shore (Malgrat) in May, the 75th anniversary.
Anyway a great website. Thanks,
Liam Barber