# Chapter 3, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Audiobook (Bonus)

An episode of [George Orwell - 1984](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1795219843), 12 Sep 2026, 31 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75090946/chapter_3_homage_to_catalonia_george_orwell.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Chapter 3 of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. This
[0:04] Speaker 1: Legamus recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.
[0:10] Speaker 1: Read by a fine voice. In trench warfare five things
[0:14] Speaker 1: are important. Firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy. In
[0:21] Speaker 1: winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order,
[0:24] Speaker 1: with the enemy a bad last. Except at night when
[0:29] Speaker 1: a surprise attack was always conceivable. Nobody bothered about the enemy.
[0:34] Speaker 1: They were simply remote black insects whom one occasionally saw
[0:37] Speaker 1: hopping to and fro. The real preoccupation of both armies
[0:42] Speaker 1: was trying to keep warm. I ought to say in
[0:45] Speaker 1: passing that all the time I was in Spain, I
[0:48] Speaker 1: saw very little fighting. I was on the Aragon front
[0:51] Speaker 1: from January to May, and between January and late March,
[0:55] Speaker 1: little or nothing happened on that front, except at Teruel.
[1:00] Speaker 1: In March there was heavy fighting around Huesca, but I
[1:03] Speaker 1: personally played only a minor part in it. Later, in June,
[1:08] Speaker 1: there was the disastrous attack on Huesca in which several
[1:11] Speaker 1: thousand men were killed in a single day, but I
[1:14] Speaker 1: had been wounded and disabled before that happened. The things
[1:18] Speaker 1: that one normally thinks of as the horrors of war
[1:21] Speaker 1: seldom happened to me. No aeroplane ever dropped a bomb
[1:25] Speaker 1: anywhere near me, I do not think a shell ever
[1:28] Speaker 1: exploded within 50 yards of me, and I was only
[1:31] Speaker 1: in hand-to-hand fighting once. Once is once too often, I
[1:35] Speaker 1: may say. Of course, I was often under heavy machine-gun fire,
[1:40] Speaker 1: but usually at longish ranges. Even at Huesca, you were
[1:44] Speaker 1: generally safe enough if you took reasonable precautions. Up here,
[1:49] Speaker 1: in the hills round Zaragoza, it was simply the mingled
[1:53] Speaker 1: boredom and discomfort of stationary warfare. A life as uneventful
[1:58] Speaker 1: as a city clerk's and almost as regular. Sentry go, patrols, digging. Digging, patrols,
[2:06] Speaker 1: sentry go. On every hilltop, fascist or loyalist, a knot
[2:12] Speaker 1: of ragged dirty men shivering round their flag and trying
[2:16] Speaker 1: to keep warm. And all day and night the meaningless
[2:19] Speaker 1: bullets wandering across the empty valleys and only by some
[2:23] Speaker 1: rare improbable chance getting home. on a human body. Often
[2:28] Speaker 1: I used to gaze round the wintry landscape and marvel
[2:30] Speaker 1: at the futility of it all, the inconclusiveness of such
[2:34] Speaker 1: a kind of war. Earlier, about October, there had been
[2:38] Speaker 1: savage fighting for all these hills. Then, because the lack
[2:42] Speaker 1: of men and arms, especially artillery, made any large-scale operation impossible,
[2:48] Speaker 1: each army had dug itself in and settled down on
[2:50] Speaker 1: the hilltops it had won. Over to our right there
[2:54] Speaker 1: was a small outpost, also P-O-U-M, and on the spur
[2:58] Speaker 1: to our left, at seven o'clock of us, a P-S-U-C
[3:02] Speaker 1: position faced a taller spur, with several small fascist posts
[3:07] Speaker 1: dotted on its peaks. The so-called line zigzagged to and
[3:12] Speaker 1: fro in a pattern that would have been quite unintelligible
[3:15] Speaker 1: if every position had not flown a flag. The P-O-U-M
[3:19] Speaker 1: and P-S-U-C flags were red, those of the anarchists red
[3:24] Speaker 1: and black, The fascists generally flew the monarchist flag. Red, yellow, red.
[3:31] Speaker 1: But occasionally they flew the flag of the Republic. Red, yellow, purple.
[3:36] Speaker 1: The scenery was stupendous. If you could forget that every
[3:40] Speaker 1: mountaintop was occupied by troops and was therefore littered with
[3:44] Speaker 1: tin cans and crusted with dung. To the right of us,
[3:47] Speaker 1: the Sierra bent south-eastwards and made way for the wide-veined
[3:51] Speaker 1: valley that stretched across to Huesca. In the middle of
[3:55] Speaker 1: the plain, a few tiny cubes sprawled like a throw
[3:58] Speaker 1: of dice. This was the town of Roberez, which was
[4:02] Speaker 1: in loyalist possession. Often in the mornings, the valley was
[4:05] Speaker 1: hidden under seas of cloud, out of which the hills
[4:08] Speaker 1: rose flat and blue, giving the landscape a strange resemblance
[4:13] Speaker 1: to a photographic negative. Beyond Huesca, there were more hills
[4:17] Speaker 1: of the same formation as our own, streaked with a
[4:20] Speaker 1: pattern of snow, which altered day by day. In the
[4:24] Speaker 1: far distance, The monstrous peaks of the Pyrenees, where the
[4:27] Speaker 1: snow never melts, seemed to float upon nothing. Even down
[4:32] Speaker 1: in the plain everything looked dead and bare. The hills
[4:35] Speaker 1: opposite us were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants.
[4:39] Speaker 1: Almost always the sky was empty of birds. I do
[4:42] Speaker 1: not think I have ever seen a country where there
[4:44] Speaker 1: were so few birds. The only birds one saw at
[4:48] Speaker 1: any time were a kind of magpie, and the cubbies
[4:51] Speaker 1: of partridges that startled one at night with their sudden
[4:54] Speaker 1: whirring and very rarely the flights of eagles that drifted
[4:58] Speaker 1: slowly over, generally followed by rifle shots, which they did
[5:02] Speaker 1: not deign to notice. At night and in misty weather,
[5:06] Speaker 1: patrols were sent out in the valley between ourselves and
[5:09] Speaker 1: the fascists. The job was not popular. It was too
[5:13] Speaker 1: cold and too easy to get lost, and I soon
[5:16] Speaker 1: found that I could get leave to go out on
[5:17] Speaker 1: patrol as often as I wished. In the huge, jagged ravines,
[5:22] Speaker 1: there were no paths or tracks of any kind, You
[5:25] Speaker 1: could only find your way about by making successive journeys
[5:28] Speaker 1: and noting fresh landmarks each time. As the bullet flies,
[5:33] Speaker 1: the nearest fascist post was 700 metres from our own,
[5:36] Speaker 1: but it was a mile and a half by the
[5:38] Speaker 1: only practicable route. It was rather fun wandering about the
[5:42] Speaker 1: dark valleys, with the stray bullets flying high overhead like
[5:45] Speaker 1: redshanks whistling. Better than nighttimes were the heavy mists, which
[5:50] Speaker 1: often lasted all day and which had a habit of
[5:52] Speaker 1: clinging round the hilltops and leaving the valleys clear. When
[5:57] Speaker 1: you were anywhere near the fascist lines you had to
[5:59] Speaker 1: creep at a snail's pace. It was very difficult to
[6:02] Speaker 1: move quietly on those hillsides, among the crackling shrubs and
[6:06] Speaker 1: tinkling limestones. It was only at the third or fourth
[6:10] Speaker 1: attempt that I managed to find my way to the
[6:12] Speaker 1: fascist lines. The mist was very thick and I crept
[6:15] Speaker 1: up to the barbed wire to listen. I could hear
[6:18] Speaker 1: the fascists talking and singing inside. Then to my alarm
[6:22] Speaker 1: I heard several of them coming down the hill towards me.
[6:26] Speaker 1: I cowered behind a bush that suddenly seemed very small
[6:29] Speaker 1: and tried to cock my rifle without noise. However, they
[6:33] Speaker 1: branched off and did not come within sight of me.
[6:36] Speaker 1: Behind the bush where I was hiding I came upon
[6:39] Speaker 1: various relics of the earlier fighting. A pile of empty
[6:42] Speaker 1: cartridge cases, a leather cap with a bullet hole in
[6:45] Speaker 1: it and a red flag, obviously one of our own.
[6:49] Speaker 1: I took it back to the position where it was
[6:51] Speaker 1: unsentimentally torn up for cleaning rags. I had been made
[6:55] Speaker 1: a corporal, or cabo, as it was called, as soon
[6:59] Speaker 1: as we reached the front, and was in command of
[7:01] Speaker 1: a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure, especially
[7:05] Speaker 1: at first. The Centuria was an untrained mob, composed mostly
[7:10] Speaker 1: of boys in their teens. Here and there in the
[7:13] Speaker 1: militia you came across children as young as eleven or twelve,
[7:16] Speaker 1: usually refugees from fascist territory. who had been enlisted as
[7:20] Speaker 1: militiamen as the easiest way of providing for them. As
[7:24] Speaker 1: a rule, they were employed on light work in the rear,
[7:27] Speaker 1: but sometimes they managed to worm their way to the
[7:29] Speaker 1: front line, where they were a public menace. I remember
[7:33] Speaker 1: one little brute throwing a hand grenade into the dugout
[7:36] Speaker 1: fire for a joke. At Monte Potero, I do not
[7:40] Speaker 1: think there was anyone younger than 15, but the average
[7:43] Speaker 1: age must have been well under 20. Boys of this
[7:47] Speaker 1: age ought never to be used in the front line,
[7:50] Speaker 1: because they cannot stand the lack of sleep, which is
[7:52] Speaker 1: inseparable from trench warfare. At the beginning it was almost
[7:56] Speaker 1: impossible to keep our position properly guarded at night. The
[8:00] Speaker 1: wretched children of my section could only be roused by
[8:03] Speaker 1: dragging them out of their dugouts, feet foremost, and as
[8:07] Speaker 1: soon as your back was turned they left their posts
[8:09] Speaker 1: and slipped into shelter, or they would even, in spite
[8:13] Speaker 1: of the frightful cold, lean up against the wall of
[8:15] Speaker 1: the trench and fall fast asleep. Luckily, the enemy were
[8:19] Speaker 1: very unenterprising. There were nights when it seemed to me
[8:23] Speaker 1: that our position could be stormed by 20 Boy Scouts
[8:26] Speaker 1: armed with air guns, or 20 Girl Guides armed with
[8:29] Speaker 1: battle doors, for that matter. At this time, and until
[8:32] Speaker 1: much later, the Catalan militias were still on the same
[8:35] Speaker 1: basis as they had been at the beginning of the war.
[8:39] Speaker 1: In the early days of Franco's revolt, the militias had
[8:42] Speaker 1: been hurriedly raised by the various trade unions and political parties,
[8:46] Speaker 1: Each was essentially a political organisation, owing allegiance to its
[8:50] Speaker 1: party as much as to the central government. When the
[8:54] Speaker 1: Popular Army, which was a non-political army, organised on more
[8:58] Speaker 1: or less ordinary lines, was raised at the beginning of 1937,
[9:01] Speaker 1: the party militias were theoretically incorporated in it. But for
[9:07] Speaker 1: a long time, the only changes that occurred were on paper.
[9:11] Speaker 1: The new Popular Army troops did not reach the Aragon
[9:14] Speaker 1: Front in any numbers till June, and until that time
[9:18] Speaker 1: the militia system remained unchanged. The essential point of the
[9:22] Speaker 1: system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone, from
[9:27] Speaker 1: general to private, drew the same pay, ate the same food,
[9:31] Speaker 1: wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality.
[9:36] Speaker 1: If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division
[9:39] Speaker 1: on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you
[9:41] Speaker 1: could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory,
[9:46] Speaker 1: at any rate, each militia was a democracy and not
[9:48] Speaker 1: a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed,
[9:53] Speaker 1: but it was also understood that when you gave an order,
[9:55] Speaker 1: you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as
[9:58] Speaker 1: superior to inferior. There were officers and NCOs, but there
[10:03] Speaker 1: was no military rank in the ordinary sense, no titles,
[10:07] Speaker 1: no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to
[10:12] Speaker 1: produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model
[10:15] Speaker 1: of the classless society. Of course, there was no perfect equality.
[10:20] Speaker 1: but there was a nearer approach to it than I
[10:22] Speaker 1: had ever seen or than I would have thought conceivable
[10:25] Speaker 1: in time of war. But I admit that at first
[10:28] Speaker 1: sight the state of affairs at the front horrified me.
[10:32] Speaker 1: How on earth could the war be won by an
[10:33] Speaker 1: army of this type? It was what everyone was saying
[10:37] Speaker 1: at the time, and though it was true, it was
[10:39] Speaker 1: also unreasonable. For in the circumstances, the militias could not
[10:43] Speaker 1: have been much better than they were. A modern mechanised
[10:47] Speaker 1: army does not spring up out of the ground, and
[10:49] Speaker 1: if the government had waited until it had trained troops
[10:52] Speaker 1: at its disposal, Franco would never have been resisted. Later
[10:56] Speaker 1: it became the fashion to decry the militias, and therefore
[11:00] Speaker 1: to pretend that the faults which were due to lack
[11:02] Speaker 1: of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually,
[11:07] Speaker 1: a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob,
[11:12] Speaker 1: not because the officers called the private comrade, but because
[11:16] Speaker 1: raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. In practice, the democratic,
[11:21] Speaker 1: revolutionary type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected.
[11:25] Speaker 1: In a worker's army, discipline is theoretically voluntary. It is
[11:29] Speaker 1: based on class loyalty, whereas the discipline of a bourgeois
[11:33] Speaker 1: conscript army is based ultimately on fear. The popular army
[11:38] Speaker 1: that replaced the militias was midway between the two types.
[11:42] Speaker 1: In the militias, the bullying and abuse that go on
[11:45] Speaker 1: in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for
[11:48] Speaker 1: a moment. The normal military punishments existed, but they were
[11:52] Speaker 1: only invoked for very serious offences. When a man refused
[11:57] Speaker 1: to obey an order, you did not immediately get him punished.
[12:00] Speaker 1: You first appealed to him in the name of comradeship.
[12:03] Speaker 1: Cynical people with no experience of handling men will say
[12:06] Speaker 1: instantly that this would never work. But as a matter
[12:10] Speaker 1: of fact, it does work in the long run. The
[12:13] Speaker 1: discipline of even the worst drafts of militia visibly improved
[12:17] Speaker 1: as time went on. In January, the job of keeping
[12:20] Speaker 1: a dozen raw recruits up to the mark almost turned
[12:23] Speaker 1: my hair grey. In May, for a short while, I
[12:27] Speaker 1: was acting lieutenant in command of about 30 men, English
[12:30] Speaker 1: and Spanish. We had all been under fire for months
[12:34] Speaker 1: and I never had the slightest difficulty in getting an
[12:36] Speaker 1: order obeyed or in getting men to volunteer for a
[12:39] Speaker 1: dangerous job. Revolutionary discipline depends on political consciousness, on an
[12:45] Speaker 1: understanding of why orders must be obeyed. It takes time
[12:49] Speaker 1: to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill
[12:52] Speaker 1: a man into an automaton on the barrack square. The
[12:56] Speaker 1: journalists who sneered at the militia system seldom remembered that
[12:59] Speaker 1: the militias had to hold the line while the popular
[13:02] Speaker 1: army was training in the rear. And it is a
[13:05] Speaker 1: tribute to the strength of revolutionary discipline that the militias
[13:09] Speaker 1: stayed in the field at all, for until about June
[13:12] Speaker 1: 1937 there was nothing to keep them there except class loyalty.
[13:17] Speaker 1: Individual deserters could be shot, were shot occasionally, but if
[13:22] Speaker 1: a thousand men had decided to walk out of the
[13:24] Speaker 1: line together, there was no force to stop them. A
[13:27] Speaker 1: conscript army in the same circumstances, with its battle police removed,
[13:32] Speaker 1: would have melted away. Yet the militias held the line,
[13:35] Speaker 1: though God knows they won very few victories, and even
[13:39] Speaker 1: individual desertions were not common. In four or five months
[13:43] Speaker 1: in the POUM militia, I only heard of four men deserting,
[13:47] Speaker 1: and two of those were fairly certainly spies who had
[13:50] Speaker 1: enlisted to obtain information. At the beginning, the apparent chaos,
[13:54] Speaker 1: the general lack of training, the fact that you often
[13:57] Speaker 1: had to argue for five minutes before you could get
[13:59] Speaker 1: an order obeyed, appalled and infuriated me. I had British
[14:04] Speaker 1: Army ideas, and certainly the Spanish militias were very unlike
[14:08] Speaker 1: the British Army, but considering the circumstances, they were better
[14:13] Speaker 1: troops than one had any right to expect. Meanwhile, Firewood.
[14:18] Speaker 1: Always firewood. Throughout that period there is probably no entry
[14:22] Speaker 1: in my diary that does not mention firewood, or rather
[14:26] Speaker 1: the lack of it. We were between two and three
[14:28] Speaker 1: thousand feet above sea level. It was midwinter and the
[14:32] Speaker 1: cold was unspeakable. The temperature was not exceptionally low. On
[14:37] Speaker 1: many nights it did not even freeze, and the wintry
[14:40] Speaker 1: sun often shone for an hour in the middle of
[14:42] Speaker 1: the day. But even if it was not really cold,
[14:45] Speaker 1: I assure you that it seemed so, Sometimes there were
[14:49] Speaker 1: shrieking winds that tore your cap off and twisted your
[14:52] Speaker 1: hair in all directions. Sometimes there were mists that poured
[14:55] Speaker 1: into the trench like a liquid and seemed to penetrate
[14:58] Speaker 1: your bones. Frequently it rained, and even a quarter of
[15:02] Speaker 1: an hour's rain was enough to make conditions intolerable. The
[15:06] Speaker 1: thick skin of earth over the limestone turned promptly into
[15:09] Speaker 1: a slippery grease, and as you were always walking on
[15:12] Speaker 1: a slope, it was impossible to keep your footing. On
[15:15] Speaker 1: dark nights I have often fallen half a dozen times
[15:18] Speaker 1: in twenty yards, and this was dangerous, because it meant
[15:22] Speaker 1: that the lock of one's rifle became jammed with mud.
[15:25] Speaker 1: For days together, clothes, boots, blankets and rifles were more
[15:29] Speaker 1: or less coated with mud. I had brought as many
[15:32] Speaker 1: thick clothes as I could carry, but many of the
[15:35] Speaker 1: men were terribly underclad. For the whole garrison, about a
[15:38] Speaker 1: hundred men, there were only twelve greatcoats, which had to
[15:42] Speaker 1: be handed from sentry to sentry, and most of the
[15:45] Speaker 1: men had only one blanket. One icy night I made
[15:48] Speaker 1: a list in my diary of the clothes I was wearing.
[15:51] Speaker 1: It is of some interest, as showing the amount of
[15:54] Speaker 1: clothes the human body can carry. I was wearing a
[15:58] Speaker 1: thick vest and pants, a flannel shirt, two pullovers, a
[16:03] Speaker 1: woolen jacket, a pigskin jacket, corduroy breeches, puttees, thick socks, boots,
[16:10] Speaker 1: a stout trench coat, a muffler, lined leather gloves, and
[16:14] Speaker 1: a woolen cap. Nevertheless, I was shivering like a jelly.
[16:19] Speaker 1: But I admit I am unusually sensitive to cold. Firewood
[16:23] Speaker 1: was the one thing that really mattered. The point about
[16:26] Speaker 1: the firewood was that there was practically no firewood to
[16:29] Speaker 1: be had. Our miserable mountain had not even at its
[16:32] Speaker 1: best much vegetation, and for months it had been ranged
[16:36] Speaker 1: over by freezing militiamen, with the result that everything thicker
[16:40] Speaker 1: than one's finger had long since been burnt. When we
[16:44] Speaker 1: were not eating, sleeping, on guard or on fatigue duty,
[16:48] Speaker 1: we were in the valley behind the position, scrounging for fuel.
[16:52] Speaker 1: All my memories of that time are memories of scrambling
[16:55] Speaker 1: up and down the almost perpendicular slopes, over the jagged
[16:58] Speaker 1: limestone that knocked one's boots to pieces, pouncing eagerly on
[17:03] Speaker 1: tiny twigs of wood. Three people searching for a couple
[17:06] Speaker 1: of hours could collect enough fuel to keep the dugout
[17:09] Speaker 1: fire alight for about an hour. The eagerness of our
[17:13] Speaker 1: search for firewood turned us all into botanists. We classified,
[17:17] Speaker 1: according to their burning qualities, every plant that grew on
[17:20] Speaker 1: the mountainside. The various heaths and grasses that were good
[17:24] Speaker 1: to start a fire with, but burnt out in a
[17:26] Speaker 1: few minutes. The wild rosemary and the tiny wind bushes
[17:30] Speaker 1: that would burn when the fire was well alight. The
[17:33] Speaker 1: stunted oak tree, smaller than a gooseberry bush, that was
[17:37] Speaker 1: practically unburnable. There was a kind of dried-up reed that
[17:41] Speaker 1: was very good for starting fires with, but these grew
[17:44] Speaker 1: only on the hilltop to the left of the position,
[17:47] Speaker 1: and you had to go under fire to get them.
[17:50] Speaker 1: If the fascist machine-gunners saw you, they gave you a
[17:52] Speaker 1: drum of ammunition all to yourself. Generally their aim was high,
[17:57] Speaker 1: and the bullets sang overhead like birds, but sometime they
[18:01] Speaker 1: crackled and chipped the limestone uncomfortably close, whereupon you flung
[18:05] Speaker 1: yourself on your face. You went on gathering reeds, however.
[18:10] Speaker 1: Nothing mattered in comparison with firewood. Beside the cold, the
[18:14] Speaker 1: other discomforts seemed petty. Of course, all of us were
[18:17] Speaker 1: permanently dirty. Our water, like our food, came on muleback
[18:21] Speaker 1: from Alcubierre, and each man's share worked out at about
[18:25] Speaker 1: a quart a day. It was beastly water, hardly more
[18:30] Speaker 1: transparent than milk. Theoretically, it was for drinking only, but
[18:34] Speaker 1: I always stole a panikinful for washing in the mornings.
[18:38] Speaker 1: I used to wash one day and shave the next.
[18:40] Speaker 1: There was never enough water for both. The position stank abominably,
[18:45] Speaker 1: and outside the little enclosure of the barricade there was
[18:48] Speaker 1: excrement everywhere. Some of the militiamen habitually defecated in the trench,
[18:53] Speaker 1: a disgusting thing when one had to walk around it
[18:56] Speaker 1: in the darkness. But the dirt never worried me. Dirt
[19:00] Speaker 1: is the thing people make too much fuss about. It
[19:03] Speaker 1: is astonishing how quickly you get used to doing without
[19:06] Speaker 1: a handkerchief and to eating out of the tin panikin
[19:09] Speaker 1: in which you also wash. nor was sleeping in one's
[19:12] Speaker 1: clothes any hardship after a day or two. It was
[19:16] Speaker 1: of course impossible to take one's clothes and especially one's
[19:19] Speaker 1: boots off at night. One had to be ready to
[19:21] Speaker 1: turn out instantly in case of an attack. In 80
[19:25] Speaker 1: nights I only took my clothes off three times, though
[19:28] Speaker 1: I did occasionally manage to get them off in the daytime.
[19:31] Speaker 1: It was too cold for lice as yet, but rats
[19:34] Speaker 1: and mice abounded. It is often said that you don't
[19:37] Speaker 1: find rats and mice in the same place. but you
[19:40] Speaker 1: do when there is enough food for them. In other
[19:43] Speaker 1: ways we were not badly off. The food was good
[19:46] Speaker 1: enough and there was plenty of wine. Cigarettes were still
[19:49] Speaker 1: being issued. at the rate of a packet a day.
[19:52] Speaker 1: Matches were issued every other day and there was even
[19:55] Speaker 1: an issue of candles. They were very thin candles, like
[19:59] Speaker 1: those on a Christmas cake, and were popularly supposed to
[20:02] Speaker 1: have been looted from churches. Every dugout was issued daily
[20:06] Speaker 1: with three inches of candle. which would burn for about
[20:09] Speaker 1: 20 minutes. At that time it was still possible to
[20:12] Speaker 1: buy candles, and I had brought several pounds of them
[20:15] Speaker 1: with me. Later on, the famine of matches and candles
[20:19] Speaker 1: made life a misery. You do not realise the importance
[20:22] Speaker 1: of these things until you lack them. In a night alarm,
[20:26] Speaker 1: for instance, when everyone in the dugout is scrambling for
[20:29] Speaker 1: his rifle and treading on everybody else's face, being able
[20:33] Speaker 1: to strike a light may make the difference between life
[20:35] Speaker 1: and death. Every militiaman possessed a tinder lighter and several
[20:40] Speaker 1: yards of yellow wick. Next to his rifle it was
[20:43] Speaker 1: his most important possession. The tinder lighters had the great
[20:47] Speaker 1: advantage that they could be struck in a wind but
[20:50] Speaker 1: they would only smoulder so that they were no use
[20:52] Speaker 1: for lighting a fire. When the match famine was at
[20:55] Speaker 1: its worst our only way of producing a flame was
[20:58] Speaker 1: to pull the bullet out of a cartridge and touch
[21:00] Speaker 1: the cordite off with a tinder lighter. It was an
[21:04] Speaker 1: extraordinary life that we were living. an extraordinary way to
[21:07] Speaker 1: be at war, if you could call it war. The
[21:11] Speaker 1: whole militia chafed against the inaction and clamoured constantly to
[21:15] Speaker 1: know why we were not allowed to attack, but it
[21:18] Speaker 1: was perfectly obvious that there would be no battle for
[21:20] Speaker 1: a long while yet, unless the enemy started it. Georges Copp,
[21:24] Speaker 1: on his periodical tours of inspection, was quite frank with us.
[21:29] Speaker 1: This is not a war, he used to say, it
[21:31] Speaker 1: is a comic opera with an occasional death. As a
[21:35] Speaker 1: matter of fact, the stagnation on the Aragon front had
[21:38] Speaker 1: political causes of which I knew nothing at that time,
[21:42] Speaker 1: but the purely military difficulties, quite apart from the lack
[21:45] Speaker 1: of reserves of men, were obvious to anybody. To begin with,
[21:49] Speaker 1: there was the nature of the country. The front line,
[21:52] Speaker 1: ours and the fascists, lay in positions of immense natural strength, which,
[21:58] Speaker 1: as a rule, could only be approached from one side.
[22:01] Speaker 1: Provided a few trenches have been dug, Such places cannot
[22:04] Speaker 1: be taken by infantry, except in overwhelming numbers. In our
[22:09] Speaker 1: own position, or most of those round us, a dozen
[22:12] Speaker 1: men with two machine guns could have held off a battalion.
[22:16] Speaker 1: Perched on the hilltops as we were, we should have
[22:19] Speaker 1: made lovely marks for artillery, but there was no artillery.
[22:23] Speaker 1: Sometimes I used to gaze round the landscape and long,
[22:26] Speaker 1: oh how passionately, for a couple of batteries of guns.
[22:30] Speaker 1: One could have destroyed the enemy positions one after another,
[22:33] Speaker 1: as easily as smashing nuts with a hammer. But on
[22:36] Speaker 1: our side, the guns simply did not exist. The fascists
[22:40] Speaker 1: did occasionally manage to bring a gun or two from
[22:42] Speaker 1: Zaragoza and fire a very few shells, so few that
[22:47] Speaker 1: they never even found the range, and the shells plunged
[22:50] Speaker 1: harmlessly into the empty ravines. Against machine guns and without artillery,
[22:55] Speaker 1: there are only three things you can do. Dig yourself
[22:58] Speaker 1: in at a safe distance, 400 yards, say. advance across
[23:03] Speaker 1: the open and be massacred, or make small-scale night attacks
[23:07] Speaker 1: that will not alter the general situation. Practically the alternatives
[23:12] Speaker 1: are stagnation or suicide. And beyond this there was the
[23:16] Speaker 1: complete lack of war materials of every description. It needs
[23:20] Speaker 1: an effort to realise how badly the militias were armed
[23:23] Speaker 1: at this time. Any public school OTC in England is
[23:27] Speaker 1: far more like a modern army than we were. The
[23:30] Speaker 1: badness of our weapons was so astonishing that it is
[23:34] Speaker 1: worth recording in detail. For this sector of the front,
[23:38] Speaker 1: the entire artillery consisted of four trench mortars, with 15
[23:42] Speaker 1: rounds for each gun. Of course they were far too
[23:45] Speaker 1: precious to be fired, and the mortars were kept in Alcubierre.
[23:49] Speaker 1: There were machine guns at the rate of approximately 1
[23:52] Speaker 1: to 50 men. They were oldish guns, but fairly accurate
[23:56] Speaker 1: up to 300 or 400 yards. Beyond this we had
[23:59] Speaker 1: only rifles, and the majority of the rifles were scrap iron.
[24:03] Speaker 1: There were three types of rifle in use. The first
[24:06] Speaker 1: was the long Mauser. These were seldom less than 20
[24:09] Speaker 1: years old. Their sights were about as much use as
[24:12] Speaker 1: a broken speedometer. And in most of them, the rifling
[24:16] Speaker 1: was hopelessly corroded. About one rifle in ten was not bad, however.
[24:21] Speaker 1: Then there was the short Mauser, or Mauskaton, really a
[24:25] Speaker 1: cavalry weapon. These were more popular than the others, because
[24:29] Speaker 1: they were lighter to carry and less nuisance in a trench.
[24:33] Speaker 1: Also because they were comparatively new and looked efficient. Actually,
[24:37] Speaker 1: they were almost useless. They were made out of reassembled parts.
[24:41] Speaker 1: No bolt belonged to its rifle and three-quarters of them
[24:44] Speaker 1: could be counted on to jam after five shots. There
[24:48] Speaker 1: were also a few Winchester rifles. These were nice to
[24:51] Speaker 1: shoot with, but they were wildly inaccurate and as their
[24:55] Speaker 1: cartridges had no clips, they could only be fired one
[24:58] Speaker 1: shot at a time. Ammunition was so scarce that each
[25:01] Speaker 1: man entering the line was only issued with 50 rounds
[25:05] Speaker 1: and most of it was exceedingly bad. The Spanish-made cartridges
[25:09] Speaker 1: were all refills and would jam even the best rifles.
[25:13] Speaker 1: The Mexican cartridges were better and were therefore reserved for
[25:16] Speaker 1: the machine guns. Best of all was the German-made ammunition
[25:20] Speaker 1: but as this came only from prisoners and deserters there
[25:23] Speaker 1: was not much of it. I always kept a clip
[25:26] Speaker 1: of German or Mexican ammunition in my pocket for use
[25:30] Speaker 1: in an emergency. But in practice, when the emergency came,
[25:34] Speaker 1: I seldom fired my rifle. I was too frightened of
[25:37] Speaker 1: that beastly thing jamming, and too anxious to reserve, at
[25:40] Speaker 1: any rate, one round that would go off. We had
[25:44] Speaker 1: no tin hats, no bayonets, hardly any revolvers or pistols,
[25:48] Speaker 1: and not more than one bomb between five or ten men.
[25:52] Speaker 1: The bomb in use at this time was a frightful
[25:54] Speaker 1: object known as the F.A.I. bomb, it having been produced
[25:58] Speaker 1: by the anarchists in the early days of the war.
[26:01] Speaker 1: It was on the principle of a mills bomb, but
[26:03] Speaker 1: the lever was held down, not by a pin, but
[26:06] Speaker 1: a piece of tape. You broke the tape and then
[26:09] Speaker 1: got rid of the bomb with the utmost possible speed.
[26:12] Speaker 1: It was said of these bombs that they were impartial.
[26:15] Speaker 1: They killed the man they were thrown at and the
[26:17] Speaker 1: man who threw them. There were several other types, even
[26:21] Speaker 1: more primitive, but probably a little less dangerous. To the thrower,
[26:25] Speaker 1: I mean. It was not till late March that I
[26:29] Speaker 1: saw a bomb worth throwing. And apart from weapons, there
[26:32] Speaker 1: was a shortage of all the minor necessities of war.
[26:35] Speaker 1: We had no maps or charts, for instance. Spain has
[26:39] Speaker 1: never been fully surveyed, and the only detailed maps of
[26:42] Speaker 1: this area were the old military ones, which were almost
[26:45] Speaker 1: all in the possession of the fascists. We had no rangefinders,
[26:49] Speaker 1: no telescopes, no periscopes, no field glasses, except for a
[26:54] Speaker 1: few privately owned pairs. No flares or variolites, no wire cutters,
[27:00] Speaker 1: no armour as tools, hardly even any cleaning materials. The
[27:05] Speaker 1: Spaniards seemed never to have heard of a pull-through, and
[27:08] Speaker 1: looked on in surprise when I constructed one. When you
[27:11] Speaker 1: wanted your rifle cleaned, you took it to the sergeant,
[27:14] Speaker 1: who possessed a long brass ramrod, which was invariably bent
[27:18] Speaker 1: and therefore scratched the rifling. There was not even any
[27:22] Speaker 1: gun oil. You greased your rifle with olive oil when
[27:25] Speaker 1: you could get hold of it, At different times I
[27:28] Speaker 1: have greased mine with Vaseline, with cold cream and even
[27:31] Speaker 1: with bacon fat. Moreover, there were no lanterns or electric torches.
[27:36] Speaker 1: At this time there was not, I believe, such a
[27:38] Speaker 1: thing as an electric torch throughout the whole of our
[27:41] Speaker 1: sector at the front, and you could not buy one
[27:43] Speaker 1: nearer than Barcelona, and only with difficulty even there. As
[27:48] Speaker 1: time went on and the desultory rifle fire rattled among
[27:51] Speaker 1: the hills, I began to wonder with increasing scepticism whether
[27:55] Speaker 1: whether anything would ever happen to bring a bit of life,
[27:58] Speaker 1: or rather a bit of death, into this cockeyed war.
[28:02] Speaker 1: It was pneumonia that we were fighting against, not against men.
[28:06] Speaker 1: When the trenches are more than 500 yards apart, no
[28:09] Speaker 1: one gets hit except by accident. Of course there were casualties,
[28:13] Speaker 1: but the majority of them were self-inflicted. If I remember rightly,
[28:17] Speaker 1: the first five men I saw wounded in Spain were
[28:20] Speaker 1: all wounded by our own weapons. I don't mean intentionally.
[28:24] Speaker 1: but owing to accident or carelessness. Our worn-out rifles were
[28:29] Speaker 1: a danger in themselves. Some of them had a nasty
[28:31] Speaker 1: trick of going off if the butt was tapped on
[28:34] Speaker 1: the ground. I saw a man shoot himself through the
[28:37] Speaker 1: hand owing to this, and in the darkness the raw
[28:40] Speaker 1: recruits were always firing at one another. One evening, when
[28:43] Speaker 1: it was barely even dusk, a sentry let fly at
[28:46] Speaker 1: me from a distance of twenty yards, but he missed
[28:49] Speaker 1: me by a yard. Goodness knows how many times the
[28:52] Speaker 1: Spanish standard of marksmanship has saved my life. Another time
[28:56] Speaker 1: I had gone out on patrol in the mist and
[28:59] Speaker 1: had carefully warned the guard commander beforehand. But in coming
[29:03] Speaker 1: back I stumbled against a bush. The startled sentry called
[29:06] Speaker 1: out that the fascists were coming and I had the
[29:08] Speaker 1: pleasure of hearing the guard commander order everyone to open
[29:11] Speaker 1: rapid fire in my direction. Of course I lay down
[29:15] Speaker 1: and the bullets went harmlessly over me. Nothing will convince
[29:19] Speaker 1: a Spaniard, at least a young Spaniard, that firearms are dangerous. Once,
[29:25] Speaker 1: rather later than this, I was photographing some machine gunners
[29:28] Speaker 1: with their gun, which was pointed directly towards me. Don't fire,
[29:33] Speaker 1: I said half-jokingly as I focused the camera. Oh no,
[29:36] Speaker 1: we won't fire. The next moment there was a frightful
[29:39] Speaker 1: roar and a stream of bullets tore past my face,
[29:42] Speaker 1: so close that my cheek was stung by grains of cordite.
[29:46] Speaker 1: It was unintentional, but the machine gunners considered it a
[29:49] Speaker 1: great joke. Yet only a few days earlier they had
[29:52] Speaker 1: seen a mule driver, accidentally shot by a political delegate,
[29:56] Speaker 1: who was playing the fool with an automatic pistol, and
[29:59] Speaker 1: had put five bullets in the mule driver's lungs. The
[30:02] Speaker 1: difficult passwords which the army was using at this time
[30:05] Speaker 1: were a minor source of danger. They were those tiresome
[30:09] Speaker 1: double passwords in which one word has to be answered
[30:11] Speaker 1: by another. Usually they were of an elevating and revolutionary nature,
[30:16] Speaker 1: such as cultura, progreso, or seremos, invencibles, and it was
[30:23] Speaker 1: often impossible to get illiterate sentries to remember these highfalutin words.
[30:28] Speaker 1: One night I remembered the password was Cataluna Eroica and
[30:33] Speaker 1: a moon-faced peasant lad named Chaim Domenech approached me, greatly puzzled,
[30:39] Speaker 1: and asked me to explain. Eroica? What does Eroica mean?
[30:44] Speaker 1: I told him that it meant the same as Valiente.
[30:48] Speaker 1: A little while later he was stumbling up the trench
[30:50] Speaker 1: in the darkness and the sentry challenged him. Alto, Cataluna. Valiente,
[30:55] Speaker 1: yelled Chaim, certain that he was saying the right thing Bang! However,
[31:00] Speaker 1: the sentry missed him. In this war, everyone always did
[31:04] Speaker 1: miss everyone else. When it was humanly possible. End of
[31:08] Speaker 1: chapter three.

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