The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  16th September 1941, Minsk

  Pablito says there’s a compound outside town where the Russian prisoners are kept. They ‘re given no food. The locals throw what they can over the fence and are shot at for their trouble. Pablito is happy — his panienka has turned up in Minsk. I’m happy because the chickpeas and olive oil arrived yesterday.

  Already cold. Autumn chill in the air.

  9th October 1941, Novo Sokol’niki

  We’re stalled outside Velikje Luki — rail lines blown up by partisans. We forage in town and end up roasting dead horses over charcoal pits in the rail yard, singing songs, drinking potato vodka. Pablito, lovesick for Anna, sings very well. Flamenco on the steppe.

  10th October 1941, Dno

  Off-loaded here on to different gauge trains. Old woman hanging from a lamppost. Partisan. Guripas shocked. ‘What is this war?’ one of them asks, as if he didn’t know what had happened in his own country three years ago.

  Next stop Novgorod and the front. We’re on combat pay from now on. Reds rule the skies. Supplies low. Few spares. Partisans. No Pablito — he didn’t show up for evening Mass.

  11 October 1941, Dno

  Occupation measures in force here so I have to accompany the German patrol on a house-to-house search for Pablito. We don’t find him. In one house I’m astonished to see Anna, his panienka, working with some Russian civilians. I can’t think how she could have got so far. Outside in the street I tell the German NCO and two men go in and haul her out. The other women start screaming and the Germans beat them down with rifle butts. They force Anna to her knees in the street and ask about Pablito. She denies everything but knows why she’s been chosen. The NCO, a colossal brute, takes his glove off and gives her four savage slaps to her face that leave her head hanging like a torn doll. They take her to a burnt-out building across the street. Anna’s scarf comes loose and her blonde hair falls down. The men murmur. The NCO has a face like tank armour plates. The grey afternoon turns bleaker. The temperature drops. More questions asked, more denials follow. They strip her naked. She is blue white underneath. She sobs from the cold and fear. They twist her arms up behind her back and lift her off the floor. She screams. The NCO asks for a bayonet and uses the blade to flick her hardened nipples and that does it. The terror of cold steel. She tells how she was forced to lead Pablito into a trap for the partisans. They let her dress again. The patrol takes all the women away. I return and make my report to Major Pérez Pérez.

  12th October 1941, Dno

  In the morning Lt Martínez orders me to put together an eleven-man firing squad. Two male communist partisans and Pablito’s panienka have been delivered to us for execution. We put them against the wall in the freight yard. The girl cannot stand and there are no posts to tie her to. Lt Martínez tells the two men to hold her up between them. They arrange themselves like a family photograph. Lt. Martínez walks back to our line and shouts ‘Carguen!’, ‘Apunten’, and on the word ‘Fuego’ she looks up. I shoot her in the mouth.

  A patrol found Pablito later that day, hanging by some wire from a tree. He’d been stripped naked, his eyes had been gouged out and his genitals cut off. We had a funeral Mass for him, our first casualty. Pablito, the anti-communist, who died without firing a shot.

  13th October 1941, Podberez’e

  We left the train under heavy artillery fire and deployed south of the town along the river Volkhov. There’s thick forest behind us, full of partisans. Across the Volkhov are the Russians. Thick mud all around, known as the rasputitsa, difficult to move. Frost at night.

  30th October 1941, Sitno

  We’ve been withdrawn after a fierce week and some bad losses. This war is less understandable by the moment. We attacked Dubrovka the other day. We thought to outflank the Russian defences and come at them from behind. As soon as we reformed south of the town we were hit by artillery and in getting out of the sector found ourselves in a minefield. What was a minefield doing there? There were bodies everywhere. García with his left leg missing and holding his crotch, shouting, ‘A mí la Legión!’ We closed ranks and attacked the Russians. We went mad when we got to them and would have hacked them all to death if we had not been so exhausted. Lt Martínez tells us that the Russian units all have political officers whose job it is to maintain discipline. They sow mines behind their front-line troops to stop them from retreating. Who are we fighting here? Not the local people. As soon as we take prisoners they become as useful to us as our own men.

  1st November 1941, Sitno

  I know heat. I understand heat. I’ve seen what it does to men. I’ve seen men die from drinking water. But cold, I don’t know cold. The landscape has hardened around us. The trees are brittle with frost. The ground beneath the drifting powdery snow is like iron. Our boots ring against it. A pick makes no impression. We have to use explosives to dig ourselves in. My piss turns instantly to ice as it hits the ground. And our Russian prisoners tell us that it is not yet cold.

  8th November 1941

  There’s ice on the Volkhov. It’s difficult to believe that it will freeze one-metre solid and completely change the strategy of this little war. Already soldiers can cross the river on planks. They tried to move horses as well, but one came off the planks and fell through the ice. In its frenzy it tore the reins from its handler, who watched as the terrified animal tried to clamber out. It was surprising how short a time it took for such a large beast to succumb to the cold. Within a minute its back legs ceased to operate. In two minutes its forelegs were still. By afternoon ice had formed around its middle and the animal was frozen solid, still with the terror moment alive in its eyes. It has become a monument to horror. No sculptor could have done better given the task by some mad municipality. The guripas new to the front can’t take their eyes off it. Some look back to the west bank of the river and realize that civilization is behind them and that beyond the Ice Horse there won’t be the expected glory, the passionate cause, but rather a blood-slackening sight of the coldest chamber of the human heart.

  9th November 1941

  In Nikltkino I came across a scene from the Middle Ages. A Russian prisoner with a hammer was moving among the ranks of his dead comrades, breaking their fingers, which still clutched their weapons. None of them wore boots. They’d all been stolen. With the fingers and arms broken and the weapons removed, their furs and quilted jackets can be taken. I now look like the Wolf Man and have recently acquired a bearskin hat. The front is now extended to include Otonskii and Posad.

  18th November 1941, Dubrovka

  The Russians have counterattacked the limits of our new front. Posad hit with everything — mortar, anti-tank and artillery. We got it the next day, followed by a full charge from the Reds. They started with a resounding ‘Urrah!’ and something else which, when they got closer, we heard as: ‘Ispanskii kaput!’ Our artillery broke them up; we mowed down the rest like wheat — which was how the Russians charged, standing upright, never crouched. Perhaps they thought it unmanly. They regrouped and hit us again at night and we met them on the snow-covered plain under the slow-falling flares, the woods black behind them. Unreal. The night so silent before the mayhem. We threw grenades and followed up with a bayonet charge. The Reds dispersed. As they merged back into the woods we heard our new recruits, who’d just experienced their first charge, shout after them: ‘Otro toro! Otro toro!’

  5th December 1941

  I am back at the front after a flesh wound sent me to the field hospital. I never want to see that place again. Not even the cold could suppress the stench; rather it has frozen it into my nostrils permanently.

  The cold has reached a new dimension: -35°C. When men die from heat they go mad, they start jabbering, their brain in a rage. In the cold a man just drifts away. One moment he is there, perhaps even drawing on a cigarette and the next he is gone. Men are dying from the cerebral fluid freezing in their heads under their steel helmets. I’m glad of my fur hat. With the drop in temperature the Russians have started talki
ng to us in Spanish, using Republicans to translate. They promise warmth, food and entertainment. We tell them to fuck their whore mothers.

  28th December 1941

  Christmas Eve in profound cold. The men recite poetry and sing about Spain — the heat, the pine trees, mother’s cooking and women. The Russians are ruthless and attack on Christmas Day. The numbers they throw at us are appalling. We’ve heard of their punishment battalions. Political undesirables are sent to run at our guns. They fall three or four deep and the real soldiers come running over the top of them, using the bodies as a ramp. We are in the most Godless place on earth with barely any daylight and death all around. Atrocity reported in Udarnik in the north of our sector — guripas found nailed to the ground by icepicks. Our rage peters out with the cold and hunger.

  18th January 1942, Novgorod

  The Russians smell our weakness and, just when we think it is so cold that we’ll never move again, they attack. We’re sent to Teremets to help the Germans. We try to dissuade the endless waves of Russians by using some of our old African tricks. We strip prisoners of all useful clothing, cut off their trigger fingers, split their noses, cut off an ear and send them back. It has no effect. The next day they ‘re running at us again with clubs and bayonets. I was lucky to get out of Teremets alive and only made it back because I was sent to the rear with a broken leg.

  17th June 1942, Riga

  Complications set in with the leg after a bout of pneumonia. I was too weak to move and missed the return battalion in the spring. They reset the leg. I caught typhus. The wound wouldn’t heal. I hardly knew what was happening to me for five months. I had a visit from the new commander of 269, Lt Col Cabrera, who has asked me to go back up to the front with the newly manned ‘Tía Bernarda’, as my unit is nicknamed. The war has gone better for the Germans recently and they are back in control of all territory west of the Volkhov and are beginning to turn the screw on Leningrad.

  9th February 1943

  A Ukrainian deserter came over today and told us more than we wanted to know about what was happening in Kolpino. Huge numbers of batteries were being brought up behind the town, hundreds of trucks unloading shells. The enemy were ready to attack tomorrow. After all this waiting we didn’t believe him, but he showed us his clean underwear and that was enough. The Russians always issue clean underwear before an attack. It means you ‘re going to die, but you can do it with dignity. It was why he had deserted. But why, with all that firepower behind him, did he come over to us, who are about to receive it? Vodka does something to the Slavic brain.

  The big Kolpino guns started lobbing shells at our positions south. The infantry blew up their minefields in front of their lines. Our own pathetic artillery started up and the Russian got the psychology just right … they didn’t even dignify it with a reply.

  Night came at five in the afternoon. The cold crept inside our bones. We’re all scared, but the inevitability brings out the determination. The Reds’ tank engines started up in unison with a deafening roar. The motors run all night, the Russians worried they’ll freeze.

  ‘Tomorrow the bulls will run,’ says one of the sergeants. I go out to check the sentries. The cold makes them slack. As I chat to the men, the pine trees in front of the peat bogs bristle where thousands of soldiers rush through the woods to take up their positions for tomorrow’s attack.

  10th February 1943

  Nothing the Ukrainian deserter told us prepared us for this. At 6.45 the Kolpino guns opened fire on us. One thousand pieces of artillery fired at once. The devastation, in a matter of minutes, was as complete as after an earthquake. Whole hillsides came away, erupted, as if under volcanic pressure. The frost-brittle pine trees burst into flame. The snow around us instantly melted. Heavily fortified positions behind us disappeared into smoking earth. We were cut off. No phones and no visibility as the air filled with black smoke and the stink of peat. We crouched under a torrent of earth, planks, barbed wire, lumps of ice and then the limbs. Arms, legs, helmeted heads, a half-roasted torso. It was the opening statement. It said: ‘You will not survive.’

  Some of the men were sobbing, but not through fear, just unable to contain their shock. We waited. The inevitable Urrah! and the Reds charged. They hurled themselves into our minefields and after ten metres they were all down. The next wave followed. Another ten metres and they were all down. As they reached the edge of the minefield we opened fire and mowed down line after line of them. The corpses were five deep and still they came. We blasted away, our machine-gun barrels glowing dull red even in the deep cold of the morning.

  The Reds sent their new KV-1 tanks towards their objective — the Sinevino heights. Our 37mm shells bounced off the armour.

  We were cut off to our left and rear. They pounded our position. Our Captain was hit in the arm. The smaller T-34 tanks smashed through our line, infantry behind, which we mowed down, blood streaking across their white capes. They hit us with anti-tank and mortar until we couldn’t think. We had no machine guns by the end of it. No automatic rifles. Any Russian who got close enough was dragged in and stabbed. More mortar fire. I wanted to laugh, our position was so desperate. The Captain was hit in the leg. He hopped around, exhorting us to stand firm. ‘Arriba España! Viva la muerte!’ We were stupid with battle. Our faces were all blackened, apart from the eye sockets, which were white. We slept where we stood. The Captain started a final rousing speech: ‘Spain is proud of you. I am proud of you, it is completely my privilege to have commanded you in today’s battle … ‘ He was interrupted by twenty Russian rifles pointing down into our trench.

  12th February 1943, Sablino

  The first question from the Reds was: ‘Who’s got a watch?’ Our two remaining officers had their watches taken. Four of our wounded were bayonetted where they lay. They marched us down the Moscow-Leningrad road. The scene of devastation was so immense, the Russian casualties so thick on the ground, that it was understandable that every Red we met should be blind drunk. Some of our guards drifted off to various drinking parties on the way. As we reached the river two of the Russians escorted the Captain away for interrogation. That left four men to take us to the barbed-wire corral at Ian Izhora. We didn’t fancy a night out in the open. We talked it through in Spanish and at the signal hit them. A single punch to the throat of the guard nearest me and I was off the log road and running for the peat bog, zig-zagging over the ground. Their aim was wild. We made it to an old anti-tank ditch and ran along it to where our own lines had been. We saw only drunk and sleeping Russians. We made it back to the main road where we heard the words, ‘Alto! ¿Quién vive?’ We replied, ‘España’, and fell into waiting arms.

  13th February 1943

  What I saw a few days ago has diminished me. I am less human after what I have seen and done. Glory in battle is a thing of the past. Individual heroics disappear in the miasma of modern warfare, where thundering machines annihilate and vaporize. One is brave and should feel glorious to have even entered the arena. I have and I have survived, and I have never felt more lonely. Even after I ran away from home I was never as lonely as I am now. I know no one and no one knows me. I am cold, but from the inside out. In my wolf-fur coat and bearskin hat I am a lone animal, with no pack, out on the snow plain where the horizon has merged with the landscape so that there is no beginning and no end. I am tired with a tiredness that crushes my bones, so that I only wish to sleep with dreams as white as the snow and in a cold that I know will carry me away painlessly.

  9th September 1943

  I haven’t written a word since Krasni Bor and now that I read it back I know why. I am gathered under Return Battalion 14 and that gives me the strength to face the page again. Today the Russians told us that the Italians had capitulated. They put up a poster in huge red letters: ‘Españoles, Italia ha capitulado! Uníos a nosotros.’ Some guripas slipped under the wire and tore down the sign and put up their own: ‘No somos Italianos.’ For once the Germans agreed.

  My mind is set on ho
me, except I have no home. All I want is to go back to Spain, to sit in the dry heat of Andalusia with a glass of tinto. I decide that I will go to Seville and Seville will be my home.

  14th September 1943

  We marched away from the front to Volosovo, about 60 km. I expected to be happy, most of the guripas were singing. I am still plagued by fatigue. I hoped that moving away from the front would help, but my spirit has darkened and I can barely speak. I sweat at night, my pillow is sodden even though it is not hot. I never slip into sleep. My dropping off is a series of jolts, of body spasms that start in my middle and crack up into my head like a bullwhip. My left hand shakes and has a tendency to go spastic. I wake up with the feeling that my hands are not my own and I am terrified from the first moment.

  I look back through my drawings and it is not the Leningrad skyline with the dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral and the Admiralty spire, nor is it the portraits of my comrades and the Russian prisoners that move me. It is the winter landscapes. Sheets of white paper with the vague smudges of buildings, izbas or pine trees. They are an abstraction of a mental state. A frozen wilderness in which even the certainties have only a wavering presence. I show one to another veteran of the Russian front and he looks at it for some time and I think he’s seen in it what I have, but he hands it back with the words: ‘That’s a funny-looking wolf I am perplexed by this, but eventually it amuses me and it gives me my first glimmer of hope since February.

  7th October 1943, Madrid

  Today I officially left the Legion after twelve years service. I have a kit bag and a satchel of my books and drawings. I have enough money to last me a year. I am going to Andalucía, to the autumnal light, the piercing blue skies and the sensual heat. I will draw and paint for a year and see what comes of it. I am going to drink wine and learn to be lazy.