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Chapter 4
WHEN I had been about three weeks in the line a contingent of twenty or
thirty men, sent out from England by the I.L.P., arrived at Alcubierre, and in
order to keep the English on this front together Williams and I were sent to
join them. Our new position was at Monte Oscuro, several miles farther west and
within sight of Zaragoza.
The position was perched on a sort of razor-back of limestone with dug-outs
driven horizontally into the cliff like sand-martins' nests. They went into the
ground for prodigious distances, and inside they were pitch dark and so low that
you could not even kneel in them, let alone stand. On the peaks to the left of
us there were two more P.O.U.M. positions, one of them an object of fascination
to every man in the line, because there were three militiawomen there who did
the cooking. These women were not exactly beautiful, but it was found necessary
to put the position out of bounds to men of other companies. Five hundred yards
to our right there was a P.S.U.C. post at the bend of the Alcubierre road. It
was just here that the road changed hands. At night you could watch the lamps of
our supply-lorries winding out from Alcubierre and, simultaneously, those of the
Fascists coming from Zaragoza. You could see Zaragoza itself, a thin string of
lights like the lighted portholes of a ship, twelve miles south-westward. The
Government troops had gazed at it from that distance since August 1936, and they
are gazing at it still.
There were about thirty of ourselves, including one Spaniard (Ramon,
Williams's brother-in-law), and there were a dozen Spanish machine--gunners.
Apart from the one or two inevitable nuisances--for, as everyone knows, war
attracts riff-raff--the English were an exceptionally good crowd, both
physically and mentally. Perhaps the best of the bunch was Bob Smillie--the
grandson of the famous miners' leader--who afterwards died such an evil and
meaningless death in Valencia. It says a lot for the Spanish character that the
English and the Spaniards always got on well together, in spite of the language
difficulty. All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was
'O.K., baby', the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their
dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print
it.
Once again there was nothing happening all along the line: only the random
crack of bullets and, very rarely, the crash of a Fascist mortar that sent
everyone running to the top trench to see which hill the shells were bursting
on. The enemy was somewhat closer to us here, perhaps three or four hundred
yards away. Their nearest position was exactly opposite ours, with a machine-gun
nest whose loopholes constantly tempted one to waste cartridges. The Fascists
seldom bothered with rifle-shots, but sent bursts of accurate machine-gun fire
at anyone who exposed himself. Nevertheless it was ten days or more before we
had our first casualty. The troops opposite us were Spaniards, but according to
the deserters there were a few German N.C.O.S. among them. At some time in the
past there had also been Moors there--poor devils, how they must have felt the
cold!--for out in no man's land there was a dead Moor who was one of the sights
of the locality. A mile or two to the left of us the line ceased to be
continuous and there was a tract of country, lower-lying and thickly wooded,
which belonged neither to the Fascists nor ourselves. Both we and they used to
make daylight patrols there. It was not bad fun in a Boy Scoutish way, though I
never saw a Fascist patrol nearer than several hundred yards. By a lot of
crawling on your belly you could work your way partly through the Fascist lines
and could even see the farm-house flying the monarchist flag, which was the
local Fascist headquarters. Occasionally we gave it a rifle-volley and then
slipped into cover before the machine-guns could locate us. I hope we broke a
few windows, but it was a good eight hundred metres away, and with our rifles
you could not make sure of hitting even a house at that range.
The weather was mostly clear and cold; sometimes sunny at midday, but always
cold. Here and there in the soil of the hill-sides you found the green beaks of
wild crocuses or irises poking through; evidently spring was coming, but coming
very slowly. The nights were colder than ever. Coming off guard in the small
hours we used to rake together what was left of the cook-house fire and then
stand in the red-hot embers. It was bad for your boots, but it was very good for
your feet. But there were mornings when the sight of the dawn among the
mountain--tops made it almost worth while to be out of bed at godless hours. I
hate mountains, even from a spectacular point of view. But sometimes the dawn
breaking behind the hill-tops in our rear, the first narrow streaks of gold,
like swords slitting the darkness, and then the growing light and the seas of
carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were worth watching
even when you had been up all night, when your legs were numb from the knees
down, and you were sullenly reflecting that there was no hope of food for
another three hours. I saw the dawn oftener during this campaign than during the
rest of my life put together--or during the part that is to come, I hope.
We were short-handed here, which meant longer guards and more fatigues. I was
beginning to suffer a little from the lack of sleep which is inevitable even in
the quietest kind of war. Apart from guard-duties and patrols there were
constant night-alarms and stand--to's, and in any case you can't sleep properly
in a beastly hole in the ground with your feet aching with the cold. In my first
three or four months in the line I do not suppose I had more than a dozen
periods of twenty-four hours that were completely without sleep; on the other
hand I certainly did not have a dozen nights of full sleep. Twenty or thirty
hours' sleep in a week was quite a normal amount. The effects of this were not
so bad as might be expected; one grew very stupid, and the job of climbing up
and down the hills grew harder instead of easier, but one felt well and one was
constantly hungry--heavens, how hungry! All food seemed good, even the eternal
haricot beans which everyone in Spain finally learned to hate the sight of. Our
water, what there was of it, came from miles away, on the backs of mules or
little persecuted donkeys. For some reason the Aragon peasants treated their
mules well but their donkeys abominably. If a donkey refused to go it was quite
usual to kick him in the testicles. The issue of candles had ceased, and matches
were running short. The Spaniards taught us how to make olive oil lamps out of a
condensed milk tin, a cartridge-clip, and a bit of rag. When you had any olive
oil, which was not often, these things would burn with a smoky flicker, about a
quarter candle power, just enough to find your rifle by.
There seemed no hope of any real fighting. When we left Monte Pocero I had
counted my cartridges and found that in nearly three weeks I had fired just
three shots at the enemy. They say it takes a thousand bullets to kill a man,
and at this rate it would be twenty years before I killed my first Fascist. At
Monte Oscuro the lines were closer and one fired oftener, but I am reasonably
certain that I never hit anyone. As a matter of fact, on this front and at this
period of the war the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being
unable to kill your enemy you shouted at him instead. This method of warfare is
so extraordinary that it needs explaining.
Wherever the lines were within hailing distance of one another there was
always a good deal of shouting from trench to trench. From ourselves: 'Fascistas
--maricones!' From the Fascists: ''Viva Espana! Viva Franco!'--or, when they
knew that there were English opposite them: 'Go home, you English! We don't want
foreigners here!' On the Government side, in the party militias, the shouting of
propaganda to undermine the enemy morale had been developed into a regular
technique. In every suitable position men, usually machine-gunners, were told
off for shouting-duty and provided with megaphones. Generally they shouted a
set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist
soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that
they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come
over to our side. This was repeated over and over by relays of men; sometimes it
continued almost the whole night. There is very little doubt that it had its
effect; everyone agreed that the trickle of Fascist deserters was partly caused
by it. If one comes to think of it, when some poor devil of a sentry--very
likely a Socialist or Anarchist trade union member who has been conscripted
against his will--is freezing at his post, the slogan 'Don't fight against your
own class!' ringing again and again through the darkness is bound to make an
impression on him. It might make just the difference between deserting and not
deserting. Of course such a proceeding does not fit in with the English
conception of war. I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it
done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him! I now
think that from any point of view it was a legitimate manoeuvre. In ordinary
trench warfare, when there is no artillery, it is extremely difficult to inflict
casualties on the enemy without receiving an equal number yourself. If you can
immobilize a certain number of men by making them desert, so much the better;
deserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can give
information. But at the beginning it dismayed all of us; it made us fed that the
Spaniards were not taking this war of theirs sufficiently seriously. The man who
did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the
job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the
Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the
Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative.' Buttered toast!'--you
could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down
to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt
that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but
in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a Fascist mouth
watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.
One day in February we saw a Fascist aeroplane approaching. As usual, a
machine-gun was dragged into the open and its barrel cocked up, and everyone lay
on his back to get a good aim. Our isolated positions were not worth bombing,
and as a rule the few Fascist aeroplanes that passed our way circled round to
avoid machine-gun fire. This time the aeroplane came straight over, too high up
to be worth shooting at, and out of it came tumbling not bombs but white
glittering things that turned over and over in the air. A few fluttered down
into the position. They were copies of a Fascist newspaper, the Heraldo de
Aragon, announcing the fall of Malaga.
That night the Fascists made a sort of abortive attack. I was just getting
down into kip, half dead with sleep, when there was a heavy stream of bullets
overhead and someone shouted into the dug-out: 'They're attacking!' I grabbed my
rifle and slithered up to my post, which was at the top of the position, beside
the machine-gun. There was utter darkness and diabolical noise. The fire of, I
think five machine-guns was pouring upon us, and there was a series of heavy
crashes caused by the Fascists flinging bombs over their own parapet in the most
idiotic manner. It was intensely dark. Down in the valley to the left of us I
could see the greenish flash of rifles where a small party of Fascists, probably
a patrol, were chipping in. The bullets were flying round us in the darkness,
crack-zip-crack. A few shells came whistling over, but they fell nowhere near us
and (as usual in this war) most of them failed to explode. I had a bad moment
when yet another machine-gun opened fire from the hill-top in our rear--
actually a gun that had been brought up to support us, but at the time it looked
as though we were surrounded. .Presently our own machine-gun jammed, as it
always did jam with those vile cartridges, and the ramrod was lost in the
impenetrable darkness. Apparently there was nothing that one could do except
stand still and be shot at. The Spanish machine-gunners disdained to take cover,
in fact exposed themselves deliberately, so I had to do likewise. Petty though
it was, the whole experience was very interesting. It was the first time that I
had been properly speaking under fire, and to my humiliation I found that I was
horribly frightened. You always, I notice, feel the same when you are under
heavy fire--not so much afraid of being hit as afraid because you don't know
where you will be hit. You are wondering all the while just where the bullet
will nip you, and it gives your whole body a most unpleasant sensitiveness.
After an hour or two the firing slowed down and died away. Meanwhile we had
had only one casualty. The Fascists had advanced a couple of machine-guns into
no man's land, but they had kept a safe distance and made no attempt to storm
our parapet. They were in fact not attacking, merely wasting cartridges and
making a cheerful noise to celebrate the fall of Malaga. The chief importance of
the affair was that it taught me to read the war news in the papers with a more
disbelieving eye. A day or two later the newspapers and the radio published
reports of a tremendous attack with cavalry and tanks (up a perpendicular hill--
side!) which had been beaten off by the heroic English.
When the Fascists told us that Malaga had fallen we set it down as a lie, but
next day there were more convincing rumours, and it must have been a day or two
later that it was admitted officially. By degrees the whole disgraceful story
leaked out--how the town had been evacuated without firing a shot, and how the
fury of the Italians had fallen not upon the troops, who were gone, but upon the
wretched civilian population, some of whom were pursued and machine-gunned for a
hundred miles. The news sent a sort of chill all along the line, for, whatever
the truth may have been, every man in the militia believed that the loss of
Malaga was due to treachery. It was the first talk I had heard of treachery or
divided aims. It set up in my mind the first vague doubts about this war in
which, hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.
In mid February we left Monte Oscuro and were sent, together with all the
P.O.U.M. troops in this sector, to make a part of the army besieging Huesca. It
was a fifty-mile lorry journey across the wintry plain, where the clipped vines
were not yet budding and the blades of the winter barley were just poking
through the lumpy soil. Four kilometres from our new trenches Huesca glittered
small and clear like a city of dolls' houses. Months earlier, when Sietamo was
taken, the general commanding the Government troops had said gaily: 'Tomorrow
we'll have coffee in Huesca.' It turned out that he was mistaken. There had been
bloody attacks, but the town did not fall, and 'Tomorrow we'll have coffee in
Huesca' had become a standing joke throughout the army. If I ever go back to
Spain I shall make a point of having a cup of coffee in Huesca.
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