Pleased, as for quite a few years, to have taken part in today’s annual commemoration at Camposines Memorial to the Missing of the Battle of the Ebro which takes place on the Sunday closest to the 16th of November, the last day of the Battle of Ebro. Being the 85th anniversary of the Battle, I was privileged to represent Jim Lardner’s family.
The whole event is incredibly moving. Last year, we accompanied Amber Lea Schwartzkopf and Chris Schwartzkopf along with the family of Liam McGregor to add their names.
Their names were read out by the alcalde of La Fatarella, Jordi Rius, and a round of applause was given for them.
It was also a pleasure to be accompanied by Josep Maria who last year showed Jim Lardner’s nephew where he disappeared on the last day of fighting.
Here is a video that his nephew, also called Jim, made after meeting Josep Maria:
With Jim’s name now on the Memorial, it is very appropriate to present it. Thank you, Jim.
left to right: Claudia Honefeld (PdlH), Jeremi Muñoz (from the Polish IB Association) & Jordi Marti of Memorial Democratic. Jordi handed out carnations to those attending. A vitally important job!
Jeremi Muñoz, Josep Munté of No Jubilem la Memoria and Claudia Honefeld of PdlH.
Jeremi Muñoz being interviewed by Catalan TV21.
Jeremi appears towards the end of this news report:
Jeremi’s group is called “Stowarzyszenie Ochotnicy Wolności”, or “Volunteers of Freedom”. Their Facebook page can be found here:
People queuing to leave carnations by the two new plaques.
Each participant was given a commemorative card listing all the names on the new plaques:
What moved me was the impromptu singing of Els Segadors at the end. I thanked the man who began it as I walked back to the car. Pel de la galina! Everyone stood up and sang it, followed by many shouts of “Visca la Republica!”. The Catalans know their History, and, thanks to Memòria Demòcratica, also their future!
Hurray! The Catalan Generalitat has registered Porta de la Història as a Co-operative! It will display the abbreviation SCCL (Societat Cooperativa Catalana Limitada).
What a day! Very moving and important for us all. The donation of Harry Owen’s 40 year collection of tapes of interviews of Spanish Civil War survivors. Thank you to El Pavello and Lourdes Prades for accepting them with the intention of digitalising them and making them available for future research.
The collection will be called the “Owens-FIBI (Friends of the International Brigades Ireland) Archive”.
And many thanks to Joe Mooney for making this possible and for bringing Harry over. And to Alicia García López , Claudia Honefeld of Porta de la Historia to act as guardians of the collection on behalf of Harry and FIBI, and especially Andy Ollett, grandson of Dave Goodman, who joined us for the day and for a visit to Calaceite where his grandfather was captured. Harry’s good friend, Bob Doyle, and Dave Goodman, were captured on March 31st 1938 there.
I am very happy that this has happened. Thank you very much Harry for putting your trust in us to secure your hard work for future generations to try to understand the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War through those who were there. And also many thanks to El Pavello and Universitat de Barcelona for accepting them.
The second day of Lo Riu and KFSR’s annual homage to the International Brigades around La Fatarella. To see where the 15th Brigada Mixta (formerly the XV International Brigade before the International brigaders were withdrawn) held the fortified bunker system above La Fatarella for 24 hours to allow the rest of the Republican Army to escape back across the iron bridge at Flix before blowing it up on November 16th, 1938.
We remembered “Charley”, whose remains were found here when the trenches and bunkers were excavated in 2010 (?). Very moving. Out of the 1000 volunteers of 15BM, 500 still lie in the forward trench systems.
I also had the pleasure of meeting Elsa Yaskovskaya and her compañero, Peter! Elsa’s grandfather served in the XI Brigade. And to my surprise, he is none other than Paul Fösterling, who Peter Verburgh identified the other week as “the German Captain” who built the Observatory at Figuera! A small World! Elsa and Peter kindly showed me a book about her grandfather. It seems that KFSR published a limited number, but I was introduced to Andree, who can send me a copy.
Many thanks to Lo Riu and KFSR for organising this important and moving event. It continues till November 14th.
Hello everyone! I fear that I have constantly made promises to add news to this blog and have failed miserably! Deepest apologies! If truth be told, I add a lot of news items on our Porta de la Historia Facebook page, but that is no excuse! Please let me start again!
Today, Claudia Honefeld and I attended Lo Riu’s annual dedication of new plaques of those men and women who fought against Fascism in their Forest of Memory above La Fatarella. Begun in 2018, mostly members of the German IB group KFSR take part. But AICVAS from Italy aswell as other groups now attend. I enjoyed the event, but it is a long way from La Fatarella! I would like to go next year, too.
Here are some photos from the event with close ups of some of the new plaques added.
I had heard about this rather unique and special find through the grapevine. I am glad to see this report in “Jorn Nou” for April 2023, the local magazine for Batea. It probably belonged to a member of the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion (Janette Higgins, Father, in his autobiography, “Fighting for Democracy”, vividly describes the fighting in this area. A mass grave of ten Mac-Paps was excavated quite a few years ago beside the old road east of Caseres going back towards Gandesa). Further to the west, before the River Algars, is the wall of the building where Carl Geiser and Jules Pavio, along with other captured brigaders, were lined up to be shot before a CTV Staff car drove up and luckily stopped the execution (see “Prisoners of the Good Fight” by Carl Geiser, for a vivid description).
I wonder who it belonged to?
I was given one of these badges that was found on Hill 481, quite a few years ago. One of at least three that have been discovered there and which was once worn by a British brigader who stormed “The Pimple” in late July and early August, 1938. How it got there let’s one imagination sometimes run wild! It always brings a lump to my throat when I sometimes show people it.
“A SINGULAR FIND AT FORT DE MILLET (CASERES, TERRA ALTA): A BADGE OF THE BRIGADERS’ MEDAL TRANSFORMED INTO A RING*
By Josep Maria Pérez Suñé & Pere Rams Folch, with the collaboration of Míriam Llop Plana.
*Communication presented at the II International Congress “The Civil War in the Terres de l’Ebre (1936-1939), Gandesa-Móra d’Ebre, 3, 4 & 5 March 2023.
Introduction.
The Fort de Millet constitutes one of the most spectacular military engineering ensembles of the Catalan Defensive Belt known as the Cinca Fortified Line, which was conceived as the second line of resistance against a possible failure of the Aragon front, which extended from the foothills of the Pyrenees of Huesca to the province of Teruel. Paying attention to the quantity and diversity of the documented structures, but especially to their extraordinary state of conservation, the Memorial Consortium of the Spaces of the Battle of the Ebro (COMEBE) and the Caseres City Council financed an archaeological intervention in 2022 which had as its purpose the achievement of four objectives: to preserve the ensemble, to disseminate it in order to encourage visits to it; to claim the importance of the Catalan section of the Cinca fortified line, and deepen the historiographical knowledge of the role played by these structures during the Retreat from the Aragon front between March and April 1938.
II. The recovery of the ring during the archaeological intervention.
What is popularly known as the Fort de Millet corresponds to position G-2-6, called Estaquets in the military documentation of the time, the main one of the Caseres sub-sector in the Gandesa sector of the Fortified Line of the Cinca.
The set of offensive and defensive structures of the G-2-6 position is located on a hill in the Sierra de Borja (les Puntes de Millet), very close to the road from Alcaniz to Gandesa (N-420), between km 787 & 788 (former km 294-295), to the north-east of the urban area of Caseres, a municipality located in the west of the region of Terra Alta, right on the border between the provinces of Tarragona and Teruel.
The archaeological intervention to excavate, document, conserve and place the Fort de Millet in it’s heritage value was planned and executed in two phases following a conventional methodology that combines mechanical and manual means: the first, to move the large accumulation of earth that fully or partially covered the structures; and the second, to remove the sediments from inside the structures until reaching the original circulation level.
In the first phase, the set of structures for offensive action were recovered: the casemates and the artillery observatory, oriented to the west and located on the western side of the hill, which we will discuss in future issues.
The second phase focused on the structures of protection or passive defence: the shelters, excavated on the eastern side of the hill with the function of providing protection to the people assigned to the service of the artillery casemates.
(Above, western slope with the offensive structures).
(Below, eastern slope with the passive defence structures, the shelters.)
Specifically, three shelters excavated in a mine gallery were located. In the sections of the gallery where the ground was not consistent with the rock, the side walls were reinforced by means of concrete formwork linings. The three shelters have two entrances with protective walls to prevent the direct entry of projectiles or shrapnel or to dampen the effects of the blast wave. Two of the three shelters were not completed in 1937, as they lacked the necessary structural reinforcements of concrete formwork and Shelter 3, nor were the two mouths connected. For security reasons, only the only shelter that was completely finished was excavated, specifically the so-called Shelter 2, located between the other two.
Unlike Shelters 1 and 3, which in plan have a simple inverted U-shaped structure, Shelter 2 has a complex structure. Having two entrances with a protective front wall. Through the northern mouth you can access a mine gallery 4.3 metres long by 2 metres wide, which connects on the left with a transverse gallery (15 metres long) that joins the perpendicular branch that originates at the southern mouth. Halfway through the transversal gallery, towards the east, a perpendicular branch opens (3 metres long), while the branch originating in the southern mouth (15.5 metres long) is extended towards the east and, halfway through, with a left turn it connects with a fifth transverse branch (8 metres long) heading south.
The excellent interior finish is surprising, with longitudinal benches and cupboards built into the side walls. The roof is the natural rock slab and only has formwork cladding in certain sections of some of the sections. The side walls are also covered with formwork,
(Access port 2 to refuge 2).
(Plan of refuge 2 of the Millet Fort).
(Interior of shelter 2.)
and some sections have a perfectly smooth finish, which is where the spectacular graffiti assemblage has been documented.
Of the archaeological material documented in the second phase, we highlight a ring of an International brigader inside shelter 2 and a cartridge clip of six unfired Italian bullets in one of the two entrances to Shelter 1.
III. The presence of International Brigaders in the Fort of Millet at the Command Post of the XIV International Brigade and probably also of the XV Brigade.
On the night of March 30 to 31, the Italian Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (CTV) advanced to Calaceite, which caused the Republicans to retreat in disorder. At the second line, in the Mudefes sector, near km 300 of the Calaceite-Gandesa road, the 59th Spanish battalion and three companies of the 60th Mackenzie-Papineau battalion of the XV Brigade were deployed, on the left and right respectively. On April 1, the Fiamme Nere-XXIII Marzo Division advanced along the Calaceit-Gandesa road and overwhelmed the Republican positions.
In the Third phase of the Battle of Aragon, specifically from March 26 to April 2, 1938, the fort of Millet, an important unarmed artillery position, was used as
One of those Brigade members, a veteran, between the end of March and the 2nd of April, lost a personal object, no doubt very dear (to him),
(On the left, the cover of the July 1937 edition of the magazine “Le Volontaire de la Liberté. Organe des Brigades Internationales”)
(On the right, the four medal models presented by artists to the Commissariat of the International Brigades.)
in truly dramatic circumstances due to the proximity of the advancing Italian forces without being able to stop them. For now, we cannot know which International volunteer had enough artistic sensibility to commission a Volunteer Medal lapel badge to be transformed into a silver-backed ring.
IV. The International Volunteer Medal.
In the edition of July 18, 1937 of the magazine “Le Volontaire de la Liberté, Organe des Brigades Internationales”, the news was published that the Commissariat of the International Brigades had decided to make the medal of the Volunteer, which would be given to all the International volunteers in order for them to have a memory of the Spanish War of Liberation. Carmelo Vicent, Joaquín Corral, José Ortella and Manuel Pascual, all members of the UGT Artists’ Union, presented four medal models, of which the Commission chose one.
The selected medal model, number 4, of 1.9 centimetres in diameter, was a composition divided into two overlapping fields surrounded by the inscription “VOLUNTARIOS INTERNACIONALES DE LA LIBERTAD”. The upper field is formed by the representation of the Iberian Peninsula, from which a closed fist rises; a barrel to the right and left of the wrist completes the image. In the lower field, a globe frames a red five-pointed star with the dates of 1936 and 1937 to the left and right respectively and two laurel branches below. One of the few examples of this medal is the one on display in the personal effects collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. It was granted to Hans Landesberg for having been a member of the International Brigades and having fought for the Republic during the Civil War. The medal was gifted to the Museum by Serene Feldman Werblood, niece of Hans Landesberg.
The symbolic meaning of the motifs represented is enormous. The plastic idea of an Iberian peninsula from which a closed fist is raised symbolizes the strength of
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Medal).
the unity of all the workers, the volunteers who arrived in Spain, to fight with weapons (cannons) for the freedom of the People; while the globe of the World framed by a five-pointed star symbolizes both the five fingers of the hand of the Proletariat and the five Continents, in clear allusion to the internationalism of the well-known Marxist slogan, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”, which ended the Communist Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which was published in London in German in February 1848.
V. Recovery of the ring with the badge of the Volunteer Medal.
Several specimens of the Volunteer Medal lapel badges are known, such as the one from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. However, the uniqueness of the exceptional find at Fort Millet lies in the personalization of a lapel badge of the Volunteer Medal into a possibly unique piece of craftsmanship in the field of goldsmithing: a ring of silver of 2 centimetres in diameter and 14.5 grams of weight, with the inlay of the Volunteer Medal insignia.
At the time of discovery, the ring was virtually unrecognizable because it had a strong concretion of soil particles that formed a solid, adherent mass that masked the incrustation.
Miriam Llop Plana found that the mass of concretions was not diluted. nor did it come off with just one wipe of superficial water under pressure. With professional judgment, she carried out the cleaning and recovery intervention that consisted of the following phases:
Starting to clean the piece with soap, hot water and a soft brush.
The piece was immersed in a container with degreasing salts and ice water for two hours, with a continuous review of the object.
Upon noticing the progressive colour change, it was ultrasonically treated with degreasing salts, but continuing with cold water, for approximately 20 minutes.
4 Observing that little by little the appearance of the piece was improving, the ultrasound was continued with the salts, but now with hot water for approximately 40 minutes.
Next, immersions of a few seconds were made in a container with pickling salts.
To finish, the piece, it was sanded: first with rough brown paste (for the arm, as it is silver) and later with paste to give it a shine.
We thank Miriam LLop for the extraordinary work done to recover a magnificent ring in an excellent state of preservation.
A unique piece that highlights the artistic sensibility of an anonymous International brigader who was on duty in the Fort of Millet during the dramatic days of the Withdrawal from the Aragon front.
The image of the Volunteer Medal was used in many publications (magazines, posters, flags, etc.) during the years of the Civil War and after, so that it has reached the present day, when we still find it in reproductions of such objects.
(Cover of the magazine Le Volontaire de la Liberté, Organe des Brigades Internationales, with a colour representation of the Medal of the Volunteers of Freedom.)”
Porta de la Historia's blog 