# Chapter 2, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Audiobook (Bonus)

An episode of [George Orwell - 1984](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1795219843), 12 Sep 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75090945/chapter_2_homage_to_catalonia_george_orwell.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Chapter 2 of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. This
[0:05] Speaker 1: Legamas recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.
[0:11] Speaker 1: Read by a fine voice. Barbastro, though a long way
[0:16] Speaker 1: from the front line, looked bleak and chipped. Swarms of
[0:20] Speaker 1: militiamen in shabby uniforms wandered up and down the streets,
[0:24] Speaker 1: trying to keep warm. On a ruinous wall I came
[0:27] Speaker 1: upon a poster, dating from the previous year, and announcing
[0:31] Speaker 1: that six handsome bulls would be killed in the arena
[0:34] Speaker 1: on such and such a date. How forlorn its faded
[0:38] Speaker 1: colours looked! Where were the handsome bulls and the handsome
[0:41] Speaker 1: bullfighters now? It appeared that even in Barcelona there were
[0:46] Speaker 1: hardly any bullfights nowadays. For some reason, all the best
[0:51] Speaker 1: matadors were fascists. They sent my company by lorry to Sietamo,
[0:57] Speaker 1: then westward to Alcubierre, which was just behind the line
[1:01] Speaker 1: fronting Zaragoza. Sietamo had been fought over three times before
[1:06] Speaker 1: the anarchists finally took it in October, and parts of
[1:10] Speaker 1: it were smashed to pieces by shellfire, and most of
[1:13] Speaker 1: the houses pockmarked by rifle bullets. We were 1,500 feet
[1:18] Speaker 1: above sea level now. It was beastly cold with dense
[1:21] Speaker 1: mists that came swirling up from nowhere. Between Sietamo and Alcubierre,
[1:28] Speaker 1: the lorry driver lost his way, This was one of
[1:31] Speaker 1: the regular features of the war. And we were wandering
[1:34] Speaker 1: for hours in the mist. It was late at night
[1:37] Speaker 1: when we reached Alcubierre. Somebody shepherded us through morasses of
[1:41] Speaker 1: mud into a mule stable, where we dug ourselves down
[1:45] Speaker 1: into the chaff and promptly fell asleep. Chaff is not
[1:50] Speaker 1: bad to sleep in when it is clean. Not so
[1:52] Speaker 1: good as hay, but better than straw. It was only
[1:57] Speaker 1: in the morning light that I discovered... that the chaff
[2:00] Speaker 1: was full of bread crusts, torn newspapers, bones, dead rats
[2:05] Speaker 1: and jagged milk tins. We were near the front line now,
[2:10] Speaker 1: near enough to smell the characteristic smell of war. In
[2:13] Speaker 1: my experience, a smell of excrement and decaying food. Alcubierre
[2:18] Speaker 1: had never been shelled and was in a better state
[2:21] Speaker 1: than most of the villages immediately behind the line. Yet
[2:25] Speaker 1: I believe that even in peacetime you could not travel
[2:28] Speaker 1: in that part of Spain without being struck by the
[2:31] Speaker 1: peculiar squalid misery of the Aragonese villages. They are built
[2:35] Speaker 1: like fortresses, a mass of mean little houses of mud
[2:39] Speaker 1: and stone huddling round the church, and even in spring
[2:43] Speaker 1: you see hardly a flower anywhere. The houses have no gardens,
[2:48] Speaker 1: only backyards where ragged fowls skate over the beds of
[2:51] Speaker 1: mule dung. It was vile weather, with alternate mist and rain.
[2:56] Speaker 1: The narrow earth roads had been churned into a sea
[2:59] Speaker 1: of mud, in places two feet deep, through which the
[3:02] Speaker 1: lorries struggled with racing wheels, and the peasants led their
[3:06] Speaker 1: clumsy carts, which were pulled by strings of mules, sometimes
[3:11] Speaker 1: as many as six in a string, always pulling tandem.
[3:15] Speaker 1: The constant come and go of troops had reduced the
[3:18] Speaker 1: village to a state of unspeakable filth, It did not
[3:22] Speaker 1: possess and never had possessed such a thing as a
[3:25] Speaker 1: lavatory or a drain of any kind, and there was
[3:28] Speaker 1: not a square yard anywhere where you could tread without
[3:31] Speaker 1: watching your step. The church had long been used as
[3:34] Speaker 1: a latrine, so had all the fields for a quarter
[3:37] Speaker 1: of a mile round. I never think of my first
[3:41] Speaker 1: two months at war without thinking of wintry stubble fields
[3:45] Speaker 1: whose edges are crusted with dung. Two days passed and
[3:49] Speaker 1: no rifles were issued to us. When you had been
[3:53] Speaker 1: to the Comite de Guerra and inspected the row of
[3:55] Speaker 1: holes in the wall, holes made by rifle volleys, various
[4:00] Speaker 1: fascists having been executed there, you had seen all the
[4:04] Speaker 1: sites that Alcubierre contained. Up in the front line, things
[4:09] Speaker 1: were obviously quiet. Very few wounded were coming in. The
[4:14] Speaker 1: chief excitement was the arrival of fascist deserters, who were
[4:17] Speaker 1: brought under guard from the front line. Many of the
[4:21] Speaker 1: troops opposite us on this part of the line were
[4:23] Speaker 1: not fascists at all, merely wretched conscripts who had been
[4:27] Speaker 1: doing their military service at the time when war broke out,
[4:31] Speaker 1: and were only too anxious to escape. Occasionally small batches
[4:36] Speaker 1: of them took the risk of slipping across to our lines.
[4:39] Speaker 1: No doubt more would have done so if their relatives
[4:42] Speaker 1: had not been in fascist territory. These deserters were the
[4:46] Speaker 1: first real fascists I had ever seen, It struck me
[4:50] Speaker 1: that they were indistinguishable from ourselves, except that they wore
[4:54] Speaker 1: khaki overalls. They were always ravenously hungry when they arrived,
[5:00] Speaker 1: natural enough after a day or two of dodging about
[5:02] Speaker 1: in no man's land, but it was always triumphantly pointed
[5:06] Speaker 1: to as a proof that the fascist troops were starving.
[5:10] Speaker 1: I watched one of them being fed in a peasant's house.
[5:13] Speaker 1: It was somehow rather a pitiful sight. A tall boy
[5:17] Speaker 1: of twenty, deeply windburnt, with his clothes in rags, crouched
[5:21] Speaker 1: over the fire, shoveling a pannikin full of stew into
[5:25] Speaker 1: himself at desperate speed, and all the while his eyes
[5:29] Speaker 1: flitted nervously round the ring of militiamen who stood watching him.
[5:34] Speaker 1: I think he still half believed that we were bloodthirsty
[5:36] Speaker 1: rats and were going to shoot him as soon as
[5:38] Speaker 1: he had finished his meal. The armed man who guarded
[5:42] Speaker 1: him kept stroking his shoulder and making reassuring noises. On
[5:47] Speaker 1: one memorable day, 15 deserters arrived in a single batch.
[5:52] Speaker 1: They were led through the village in triumph, with a
[5:54] Speaker 1: man riding in front of them on a white horse.
[5:58] Speaker 1: I managed to take a rather blurry photograph, which was
[6:01] Speaker 1: stolen from me later. On our third morning in El Cubierre,
[6:06] Speaker 1: the rifles arrived. A sergeant with a coarse dark yellow
[6:09] Speaker 1: face was handing them out in the mule stable. I
[6:13] Speaker 1: got a shock of dismay when I saw the thing
[6:15] Speaker 1: they gave me, It was a German Mauser, dated 1896,
[6:21] Speaker 1: more than 40 years old. It was rusty, the bolt
[6:25] Speaker 1: was stiff, the wooden barrel guard was split. One glance
[6:30] Speaker 1: down the muzzle showed that it was corroded and passed
[6:32] Speaker 1: praying for. Most of the rifles were equally bad, some
[6:37] Speaker 1: of them even worse, and no attempt was made to
[6:39] Speaker 1: give the best weapons to the men who knew how
[6:41] Speaker 1: to use them. The best rifle of the lot, only
[6:45] Speaker 1: 10 years old, was given to a half-witted little beast
[6:48] Speaker 1: of 15, known to everyone as the Marie Coon, Nancy Boy.
[6:54] Speaker 1: The sergeant gave us five minutes instruction, which consisted in
[6:58] Speaker 1: explaining how you loaded a rifle and how you took
[7:01] Speaker 1: the bolt to pieces. Many of the militiamen had never
[7:05] Speaker 1: had a gun in their hands before, and very few,
[7:07] Speaker 1: I imagine, knew what the sights were for. Cartridges were
[7:11] Speaker 1: handed out, 50 to a man, and then the ranks
[7:15] Speaker 1: were formed and we strapped our kits on our backs
[7:18] Speaker 1: and set out for the front line, about three miles away.
[7:23] Speaker 1: The Centuria, 80 men and several dogs, wound raggedly up
[7:27] Speaker 1: the road. Every militia column had at least one dog
[7:31] Speaker 1: attached to it as a mascot. One wretched brute that
[7:35] Speaker 1: marched with us had had P.O.U.M. branded on it in
[7:39] Speaker 1: huge letters and slunk along as though conscious, that there
[7:43] Speaker 1: was something wrong with its appearance. At the head of
[7:47] Speaker 1: the column beside the red flag, Georges Copp, the stout
[7:51] Speaker 1: Belgian commandant, was riding a black horse. A little way ahead,
[7:55] Speaker 1: a youth from the brigand-like militia cavalry pranced to and fro,
[8:01] Speaker 1: galloping up every piece of rising ground and posing himself
[8:04] Speaker 1: in picturesque attitudes at the summit. The splendid horses of
[8:09] Speaker 1: the Spanish cavalry had been captured in large numbers during
[8:12] Speaker 1: the revolution and handed over to the militia, who, of course,
[8:16] Speaker 1: were busy riding them to death. The road wound between
[8:21] Speaker 1: yellow infertile fields, untouched since last year's harvest. Ahead of
[8:26] Speaker 1: us was the low Sierra that lies between Alcubierre and Zaragoza.
[8:32] Speaker 1: We were getting near the front line now, near the bombs,
[8:35] Speaker 1: the machine guns and the mud. In secret I was frightened.
[8:39] Speaker 1: I knew the line was quiet at present, but unlike
[8:42] Speaker 1: most of the men about me, I was old enough
[8:45] Speaker 1: to remember the Great War, though not old enough to
[8:48] Speaker 1: have fought in it. War to me meant roaring projectiles
[8:52] Speaker 1: and skipping shards of steel. Above all it meant mud, lice,
[8:57] Speaker 1: hunger and cold. It is curious, but I dreaded the
[9:01] Speaker 1: cold much more than I dreaded the enemy. The thought
[9:05] Speaker 1: of it had been haunting me all the time I
[9:06] Speaker 1: was in Barcelona. I had even lain awake at nights,
[9:11] Speaker 1: thinking of the cold in the trenches, the stand-tos in
[9:14] Speaker 1: the grisly dawns, the long hours on Centrigo with a
[9:17] Speaker 1: frosted rifle, the icy mud that would slop over my boot-tops.
[9:22] Speaker 1: I admit, too, that I felt a kind of horror
[9:25] Speaker 1: as I looked at the people I was marching among.
[9:28] Speaker 1: You cannot possibly conceive what a rabble we looked. We
[9:32] Speaker 1: straggled along with far less cohesion than a flock of sheep,
[9:36] Speaker 1: Before we had gone two miles the rear of the
[9:38] Speaker 1: column was out of sight, and quite half of the
[9:41] Speaker 1: so-called men were children, but I mean literally children of
[9:45] Speaker 1: sixteen years old at the very most. Yet they were
[9:49] Speaker 1: all happy and excited at the prospect of getting to
[9:52] Speaker 1: the front at last. As we neared the line the
[9:55] Speaker 1: boys round the red flag in front began to utter
[9:58] Speaker 1: shouts of, and so forth, shouts which were meant to
[10:08] Speaker 1: be warlike and menacing, but which from those childish throats
[10:12] Speaker 1: sounded as pathetic as the cries of kittens. It seemed
[10:16] Speaker 1: dreadful that the defenders of the Republic should be this
[10:18] Speaker 1: mob of ragged children, carrying worn-out rifles which they did
[10:23] Speaker 1: not know how to use. I remember wondering what would
[10:26] Speaker 1: happen if a fascist aeroplane passed our way, whether the
[10:30] Speaker 1: airman would even bother to dive down and give us
[10:32] Speaker 1: a burst from his machine gun. Surely even from the
[10:36] Speaker 1: air he could see that we were not real soldiers.
[10:40] Speaker 1: As the road struck into the Sierra, we branched off
[10:43] Speaker 1: to the right. and climbed a narrow mule track that
[10:46] Speaker 1: wound round the mountainside. The hills in that part of
[10:50] Speaker 1: Spain are of a queer formation, horseshoe-shaped with flattish tops
[10:55] Speaker 1: and very steep sides, running down into immense ravines. On
[11:00] Speaker 1: the higher slopes, nothing grows except stunted shrubs and heath,
[11:05] Speaker 1: with the white bones of the limestone sticking out everywhere.
[11:09] Speaker 1: The front line here was not a continuous line of trenches.
[11:12] Speaker 1: which would have been impossible in such mountainous country. It
[11:16] Speaker 1: was simply a chain of fortified posts, always known as positions,
[11:22] Speaker 1: perched on each hilltop. In the distance you could see
[11:26] Speaker 1: our position, at the crown of the horseshoe, a ragged
[11:30] Speaker 1: barricade of sandbags, a red flag fluttering, the smoke of
[11:35] Speaker 1: dug-out fires. A little nearer and you could smell a
[11:39] Speaker 1: sickening sweetish stink that lived in my nostrils for weeks afterwards.
[11:45] Speaker 1: Into the cleft, immediately behind the position, all the refuse
[11:48] Speaker 1: of months had been tipped. A deep, festering bed of
[11:52] Speaker 1: bread crusts, excrement and rusty tins. The company we were
[11:58] Speaker 1: relieving were getting their kits together. They had been three
[12:01] Speaker 1: months in the line. Their uniforms were caked with mud,
[12:05] Speaker 1: their boots falling to pieces, their faces mostly bearded. The
[12:11] Speaker 1: captain commanding the position, Lewinsky by name, but known to
[12:16] Speaker 1: everyone as Benjamin and by birth a Polish Jew, but
[12:20] Speaker 1: speaking French as his native language, crawled out of his
[12:24] Speaker 1: dugout and greeted us. He was a short youth of
[12:28] Speaker 1: about twenty-five with stiff black hair and a pale, eager face,
[12:32] Speaker 1: which at this period of the war was always very dirty.
[12:37] Speaker 1: A few stray bullets were cracking high overhead. The position
[12:41] Speaker 1: was a semicircular enclosure, about 50 yards across, with a
[12:45] Speaker 1: parapet that was partly sandbags and partly lumps of limestone.
[12:51] Speaker 1: There were 30 or 40 dugouts running into the ground
[12:53] Speaker 1: like rat holes. Williams, myself and Williams's Spanish brother-in-law, made
[12:59] Speaker 1: a swift dive for the nearest unoccupied dugout that looked habitable.
[13:05] Speaker 1: Somewhere in front an occasional rifle banged. making queer rolling
[13:10] Speaker 1: echoes among the stony hills. We had just dumped our
[13:14] Speaker 1: kits and were crawling out of the dugout when there
[13:17] Speaker 1: was another bang and one of the children of our
[13:19] Speaker 1: company rushed back from the parapet with his face pouring blood.
[13:24] Speaker 1: He had fired his rifle and had somehow managed to
[13:27] Speaker 1: blow out the bolt. His scalp was torn to ribbons
[13:31] Speaker 1: by the splinters of the burst cartridge case. It was
[13:34] Speaker 1: our first casualty and, characteristically, self-inflicted. In the afternoon we
[13:41] Speaker 1: did our first guard and Benjamin showed us round the position.
[13:45] Speaker 1: In front of the parapet there ran a system of
[13:48] Speaker 1: narrow trenches, hewn out of the rock with extremely primitive
[13:52] Speaker 1: loopholes made of piles of limestone. There were twelve sentries,
[13:56] Speaker 1: placed at various points in the trench and behind the
[14:00] Speaker 1: inner parapet. In front of the trench was the barbed
[14:03] Speaker 1: wire and then the hillside slid down into a seemingly
[14:07] Speaker 1: bottomless ravine. Opposite were naked hills in places mere cliffs
[14:12] Speaker 1: of rock, all grey and wintry, with no life anywhere,
[14:16] Speaker 1: not even a bird. I peered cautiously through a loophole,
[14:20] Speaker 1: trying to find the fascist trench. Where are the enemy?
[14:25] Speaker 1: Benjamin waved his hand expansively. Over there! Benjamin spoke English,
[14:32] Speaker 1: terrible English. But where? According to my ideas of trench warfare,
[14:39] Speaker 1: the fascists would be fifty, or a hundred yards away.
[14:43] Speaker 1: I could see nothing, seemingly their trenches were very well concealed. Then,
[14:48] Speaker 1: with a shock of dismay, I saw where Benjamin was pointing.
[14:51] Speaker 1: On the opposite hilltop, beyond the ravine, 700 metres away
[14:56] Speaker 1: at the very least, the tiny outline of a parapet
[14:59] Speaker 1: and a red and yellow flag, the fascist position. I
[15:04] Speaker 1: was indescribably disappointed. We were nowhere near them. At that
[15:09] Speaker 1: range our rifles were completely useless, but at this moment
[15:13] Speaker 1: there was a shout of excitement. Two fascists, greyish figurines
[15:17] Speaker 1: in the distance, were scrambling up the naked hillside opposite.
[15:22] Speaker 1: Benjamin grabbed the nearest man's rifle, took aim and pulled
[15:26] Speaker 1: the trigger. Click. A dud cartridge. I thought it a
[15:31] Speaker 1: bad omen. The new sentries were no sooner in the
[15:35] Speaker 1: trench than they began firing a terrific fusillade at nothing
[15:38] Speaker 1: in particular. I could see the fascists, tiny as ants,
[15:43] Speaker 1: dodging to and fro behind their parapet, and sometimes a
[15:46] Speaker 1: black dot which was a head would pause for a moment,
[15:50] Speaker 1: impudently exposed. It was obviously no use firing. But presently
[15:55] Speaker 1: the sentry on my left, leaving his post in the
[15:58] Speaker 1: typical Spanish fashion, sidled up to me and began urging
[16:02] Speaker 1: me to fire. I tried to explain that at that
[16:05] Speaker 1: range and with these rifles... You could not hit a
[16:08] Speaker 1: man except by accident. But he was only a child
[16:12] Speaker 1: and he kept motioning with his rifle towards one of
[16:15] Speaker 1: the dots, grinning as eagerly as a dog that expects
[16:19] Speaker 1: a pebble to be thrown. Finally I put my sights
[16:22] Speaker 1: up to 700 and let fly. The dot disappeared. I
[16:27] Speaker 1: hope it went near enough to make him jump. It
[16:29] Speaker 1: was the first time in my life that I had
[16:31] Speaker 1: fired a gun at a human being. Now that I
[16:35] Speaker 1: had seen the front, I was profoundly disgusted. They called
[16:40] Speaker 1: this war, and we were hardly even in touch with
[16:43] Speaker 1: the enemy. I made no attempt to keep my head
[16:46] Speaker 1: below the level of the trench. A little while later, however,
[16:50] Speaker 1: a bullet shot past my ear with a vicious crack
[16:52] Speaker 1: and banged into the parados behind. Alas, I ducked. All
[16:57] Speaker 1: my life I had sworn that I would not duck
[16:59] Speaker 1: the first time a bullet passed over me. But the
[17:02] Speaker 1: movement appears to be instinctive, and almost everybody does it,
[17:06] Speaker 1: at least once. End of chapter 2

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