Guernica

by Dave Boling

  “Mariangeles and Miren?”

  “I promise . . . I promise . . . I’ll help you find them if you help me get these people.”

  A bomb had fallen on a boarding house, but as it collapsed, the wooden joists and beams jackstrawed in a way that allowed people to breathe but not escape. Legarreta knew that to go in and randomly hoist beams without cross-braces and supports would cause the structure to collapse on anyone who had survived.

  But when Justo crawled in and discovered a young woman with her head turned around on her neck and bones protruding from her cornflower-blue dress, he could not respect Legarreta’s urges of caution from just outside the building.

  “Help me,” another woman called with a fading voice. She was deeper in the pile, wedged beneath a tangle of crossbeams, her face covered in dust that had caked onto the blood tributaries seeping from a head gash.

  Justo recognized her; she was the baker’s wife. The debris was strewn like puzzle pieces, and Justo’s eyes moved upward from her trapped legs, tracing the pattern of load-bearing beams.

  “Don’t move anything yet, Justo, we’ve got to get in there and shore it—” Legarreta’s voice was muted by a bomb blast that shook down more dust and larger pieces of wood.

  “Help,” she called again, weaker, more urgent. “Justo . . . help.”

  An oak beam angling up from the pile was the key to her release. If he could pry that up even a few inches, it would raise the pile so she could pull herself free.

  He was made for this, he told himself as he backed in under the beam and tested for footing and leverage.

  Inflating himself mentally as he found purchase amid the tangle, Justo strained against the underside of the beam with his left shoulder, his head tilted far to the right, with his left arm wrapped around the upper side for grip.

  He pushed against it lightly at first, as a test, and he sensed it budge.

  I can do this, he thought. No one else can, but I can do this.

  With a scream, he thrust his legs and his back and shoulder muscles upward; the beam groaned and raised off the legs of the baker’s wife, and the creaking from behind him was replaced by a grinding above. A joist lying across the angled beam broke free and slid toward Justo as if greased.

  Justo never saw it ride down the beam with the weight of the building behind it, never slowing as it wrenched his arm off the top of the beam and left it hanging behind his head. He collapsed beneath the network of wood and concrete and bones.

  The bodies lay in parts and Guernica burned. The attack had been going on for almost two hours by six P.M., but the Condor Legion’s main bomber force was only now taking off. The largest squadron, almost two dozen Junkers, circled over the field at Vitoria before heading north.

  Messerschmitt fighters joined them again for their duties of rounding up the strays fleeing to the fields and forests. More of the Heinkel bombers returned at seven P.M. to complete the cycle of bomb-refuel-bomb. At seven thirty, more than three hours after the initial bomb fell, the fliers retired for the day.

  The bells of Santa María tolled eight P.M., ringing through smoke from the fires that consumed the town’s buildings.

  Bucket brigades stretching to the river were formed, and fire trucks and crews from Bilbao arrived. But bombs had gouged out the water mains, leaving no pressure for their hoses and limiting their contribution to standing and watching the blazes. They joined the line of bucket passers.

  By the time the buckets advanced through dozens of hands, only small sloshes of water remained in each, and the fires flamed at such temperatures that the last man in the line could not stand near enough for the small splashes of water he threw to touch the crumbling buildings. Those near the flames saw the absurdity of the endeavor, but they knew it helped the others in line feel as if they were putting up a fight, so they continued the charade until the fires had consumed all available fuel.

  Father Xabier moved between clusters of the suffering, offering comfort, manning stretchers for the wounded, and joining in rescue efforts. All the while, he shouted, “Justo!” searching for his brother and his family. He saw men respectfully aligning blackened figures, charred beyond identification. Others were engaged in the reconstruction of parts, attempting to find something, anything, that would help loved ones grieve the victims.

  He saw the vagaries of the attack. Most of the town was destroyed or aflame, but on top of a pile of rubble sat a birthday cake that had somehow gone untouched although all who had gathered for the celebration that afternoon were dead. He saw young children, unscathed, racing and chasing others near the fragmented remains of their classmates. He saw on the hill that the Parliament somehow appeared unharmed, and, thank God, the tree of Guernica stood untouched.

  In the timeless aftermath, he searched, bending to pray over the wounded and dead every several yards, but searching. And as he reached the station plaza, a train carrying rescue workers arrived from Bilbao. Xabier knew he had to tell President Aguirre of the atrocity. Aguirre might not be able to comprehend the enormity of this attack without the word of someone he trusted, someone who had seen it all in person. He decided he could come back to Guernica on the next train to continue searching after he reported to Aguirre.

  Xabier boarded with many hundreds of stunned refugees, and the wounded, and the aged and the bloodied. He squeezed from car to car, looking for family. As they gained distance from Guernica, Xabier could see the red-amber glow of the burning town, and in his priest’s mind, he wondered if the night sky was filling with smoke from the raging fires or from the ascending souls of the needlessly dead.

  The ground crews applauded as each plane was chocked and the flight crews debarked. The pilots who had shuttled across northern Spain all afternoon and evening had returned to their fields in Burgos and Vitoria in a jubilant mood.

  Following the initial debriefing, von Richthofen sent a quick message to his superiors: “The concentrated air attack on Guernica was the greatest success.” Von Richthofen knew that war is impatient and impossible to appease; it allows little time for savoring a victory. Yet he was more than satisfied by the day’s events. He had never expended more resources toward the destruction of a single target, and the town of Guernica had been leveled without a Condor casualty.

  He had always been cautious in his reports to Berlin, knowing that it was better to be accurate and conservative with damage assessments than to earn a reputation among the brass as a breathless self-aggrandizer. But, yes, he was comfortable reporting that the day’s events had been “the greatest success.”

  The crews celebrated through the night in the lounge of the Fronton Hotel, drinking and singing. Using their flattened hands like wings, the fighter pilots mimed the banks and dives they used to gun down fleeing peasants, making glottal ack-ack-ack-ack sounds to represent their gun bursts.

  Von Richthofen had been right; the people had been like sheep, clustering together in predictable patterns, exposing themselves on bends in the road and at the edges of wooded areas, as if leaves and foliage would block machine-gun fire. He had taught them an art. There would be more difficult tests in the war to follow, but now they were learning their craft.

  Von Richthofen chose not to join the celebrants, but rather took his nightly stroll among the planes at the airfield, conducting his customary inspection as he formulated the more detailed official report he would send to Berlin. This was a genesis moment, he felt. This had been unexpected, instantaneous, all-consuming, compellingly lethal, and without prejudice between military and civilian. Effective. Modern. The new war.

  Of course, he could not be certain that Mola’s ground forces would act appropriately and occupy the town quickly, before the Basques could physically retrench or emotionally recover from this bombing. The opposite had been his experience with these Spaniards; they would find reasons to delay their advancement and reduce the effectiveness of the entire campaign.

  The next objective, he knew, would be Bilbao, and it would require a differ
ent approach, one demanding greater precision. Bil-bao would be the final battle on the northern front, and the Basques would retreat there with all their remaining resources. It would take time to rout them out, although the naval blockade and a ground siege would undermine their determination. But how much of that could remain after the events of this day?

  He entered through a side door and ascended the back steps of the hotel to avoid the partying in the lounge. In his suite, von Richt-hofen penned his official report to be sent to Berlin:

  Guernica literally leveled to the ground. Attack carried out with 250-kilogram and incendiary bombs, about one third of the latter. When the first Junker squadron arrived, there was smoke everywhere already (from the vanguard assault); nobody could identify the targets of roads, bridges, and suburbs, so they just dropped everything right into the center. The 250s toppled houses and destroyed the water mains. The incendiaries now could spread and become effective. The material of the houses—tile roofs, wooden porches, and half-timbering—resulted in complete annihilation. Bomb craters can be seen in the streets. Simply terrific.

  He did not explain why more airborne firepower than had been expended throughout the entire First World War was dedicated to destroying the lone target of military significance—the small Renteria Bridge. He also did not explain why the Renteria Bridge was not only still standing, but was untouched.

  PART 5

  (April 27, 1937–May 1939)

  CHAPTER 18

  Father Xabier hurried to President Aguirre’s office in Bilbao, arriving at three A.M. Tuesday. His robes were stiffening with dried fluids, and he reeked of phosphorus and smoke and putrefying tissue. As he fought exhaustion, his hands quivered and his legs bounced.

  “Good God,” Aguirre gasped, coming around his desk to embrace the priest and try to calm his palsy.

  “I know . . . I’m sorry,” the priest said.

  The military had briefed Aguirre, but he hadn’t talked face-to-face yet with anyone who had been on the ground in Guernica.

  “Go slowly,” Aguirre said. “Tell me everything.”

  Xabier sat in a hard-backed wooden chair and his legs shook so violently that the chair vibrated against the floor. He knew that Aguirre needed a dispassionate chronology, sparing sanguine details, but he had to pause and catch his breath as the recollections overtook him. What he had seen was stored as disconnected images, which were stacked in his mind like still photos. But as he reconstructed the day for Aguirre, his mind replayed it all as if it were a newsreel. Having to explain the avalanche of events forced him to crystallize those things that he had intentionally allowed to remain unfocused. It meant affixing words to it all.

  Aguirre stopped him after only a few moments; he had been given summaries earlier. He needed a few immediate specifics from someone he trusted.

  “Is there any chance the planes were not German?” he asked.

  “Who else would they be?”

  “Italians, maybe, maybe Nationalists.”

  Xabier thought. Of course they were Germans, but there may have been Italians involved, too. “A fireman showed me an unexploded incendiary on the street that had German eagle insignias all over it.”

  “That’s important; we can only imagine the lies Franco will use to explain all this. If there’s ever been an argument against the Non-Intervention Pact, this is it. The world won’t stand for this. There’s still a chance to win this war if the French and British and Americans are shaken out of neutrality by this.”

  “Politics!” Xabier yelled. “Is this about politics?”

  But before the sound of his shout had died in the room, he knew that yes, of course, it was about politics.

  “I know . . . I know . . . I know, I’m sorry,” Aguirre said.

  Xabier’s mind turned back to his family after he had made his report: Are they safe? What can I tell them? Who is left to tell? He knew Aguirre had to take a larger view, how it affected all the Basques. He had family, too.

  And of all the questions flying through his mind, Xabier voiced one: “What do you want me to do?”

  “You can tell the world everything you just told me.”

  Aguirre moved behind his cluttered desk and began writing papers that would accommodate Father Xabier’s quick transport out of Bilbao.

  “I need you to get to Paris, to tell the press what happened,” the president said. “I want an eyewitness, a priest in his frock, to tell the people the truth. Tell them what happened. Tell them who was responsible. Tell them everything. The sooner the better. Write your speech on the way and leave nothing out. I’ve heard your sermons, father; go preach to the world.”

  “All right, I can go later today; I’ve got to get cleaned up and changed.”

  “Father,” Aguirre interrupted, “don’t.”

  Xabier understood. “Can you do one thing for me? Can you have somebody track down my family?”

  Aguirre promised to do so and ushered him out. He needed to concentrate now on a crucial morning radio response. The people had to be convinced that this was not the end. There was still a chance to save Bilbao, which was the main rebel goal in Biscaya anyway. They needed inspiration from their leader now. They needed reassurance. He was certain this attack wouldn’t crush the Basque resolve but would reinforce it.

  A few hours later on Radio Bilbao he announced:

  German airmen in the service of the Spanish rebels have bombarded Guernica, burning the historic town that is held in such veneration by all Basques. They have sought to wound us in the most sensitive of our patriotic sentiments, once more making it clear what Euskadi may expect of those who do not hesitate to destroy us down to the very sanctuary that records the centuries of our liberty and democracy. The invading army must be warned that the Basques will respond to terrible violence in kind with unheard-of tenacity and heroism.

  On a cool late-April afternoon, Pablo Picasso was taking a short walk through familiar territory. He headed south from his studio on Rue des Grands Augustins toward the bustling Boulevard Saint-Germain. He passed the ancient church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés as he strolled to Café de Flore with his afghan hound at his side.

  A human-rights march stirred Paris that day and civic passion rose for the impending May Day parades. It is unlikely that many noticed a brief in the evening editions containing the first sketchy details of the Guernica bombing. Dora Maar, his muse of the moment, brought the papers with her to the café and intentionally in-flamed Picasso with the accounts of atrocities in his native country.

  “This,” Maar prodded, tapping at the paper, “is the subject for your mural.” But there was so little information in the brief notice.

  The next morning, as the artist puttered in his studio, Maar read to him the headlines that topped the more extensive reports in L’Humanite: MOST HORRIBLE BOMBING OF SPANISH WAR and PLANES REDUCE CITY OF GUERNICA TO CINDERS.

  “Read more,” he demanded, pacing the studio.

  Picasso heard only phrases as Dora read aloud from the London Times: “Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques . . . destroyed by insurgent air raiders . . . fighters plunged low to machine-gun those who had taken refuge in the fields . . . unparalleled in military history . . . destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.”

  She thumbed to an even more graphic report in another paper: “. . . a small hospital, wiped out with its forty-two wounded occupants . . . a bomb shelter in which over fifty women and children were trapped and burned alive . . .”

  Picasso grabbed the stack of papers in front of Maar. Impossible. Other reports marginalized the damage. Some reports even suggested that Basque arsonists played a role in the destruction of their own spiritual home.

  Picasso knew and admired many Basques. They were tougher than tree bark, he said, and natural defenders of their land. They would never set those fires or kill their own. They also wouldn’t surrender, he told Maar.

  Early Thursday morning, Father Xabier Ansotegui reached Gare de Lyon in Paris and met re
porters eager for credible eyewitness accounts of Guernica’s destruction. Reports from various sources in Spain were vastly conflicting, and the town was closed to outsiders.

  The Basque priest stepped in front of the gathering, still unwashed and wretched. His hair was matted, his cassock had grown stiff in spots, and his gold crucifix was covered with dull-brown matter. He introduced himself as a native of Guernica who had grown up in the town and now lived in Bilbao. His credibility was unassailable.

  He had shaped a presentation on the train but did not read from the outline, knowing it was better to speak as it came to him.

  “It was one of those magnificently clear days, the sky soft and serene. The streets were busy with the traffic of market day.”

  He spoke softly, and some reporters were still so shaken by his appearance that they were slow to begin taking notes.

  “. . . Women, children, and old men were falling in heaps, like flies, and everywhere we saw lakes of blood.”

  Xabier swallowed, looking into the eyes of reporters in the front row.

  “. . . I saw an old peasant standing alone in a field; a machine-gun bullet had killed him . . . The sound of the explosions and of the crumbling houses cannot be imagined.”

  Xabier explained the bombing patterns, the waves of planes that swept through the valley, the craters that carved up the town, and the manner in which the incendiaries turned the city into “an enormous furnace.”

  “. . . We were completely incapable of believing what we saw.”

  Respectfully, reporters raised their hands and tried to steer the priest from his emotional account into specifics. They wanted to define the event with numbers. But Father Xabier Ansotegui was unable to.

  “How many?” he was asked by a writer attempting to get an estimate of those killed.