Homage to Caledonia

by Gray, Daniel.

  Gillan was invalided home, leaving behind the horrific Madrid conditions that Roddy MacFarquhar of the Scottish Ambulance Unit (see Chapter 6), was met with on his arrival there in January 1937:

  I’ll never forget those first few days – it was my first experience of war – and one image that has always stuck in my mind is of a Spanish woman running with her three children for shelter. Suddenly they were caught in a burst of shrapnel. I ran to help them, but one of the children had taken it in the belly and I could see she wasn’t going to live.

  Other early Scottish involvement in battle occurred at Lopera, a town deep in the south of Spain. Around 150 British volunteers had been formed into a company (named the Saklatvalas, after the Indian-born British communist politician of the same name) of the French Battalion and instructed to capture the nationalist-held town on Christmas Eve 1936.

  Glaswegian Tommy Flynn, killed at Cordoba while fighting as part of the German section of the Chapayev Battalion of the XIIIth International Brigade. Flynn also took part in the assault on Lopera, an action which hastened the establishment of a British Battalion.

  The Saklatvalas, including in their ranks Jock Cunningham and Dundonians James Cockburn and Ken Stalker, were soon repelled and forced to retreat. However, the formal unification of British troops in one company at Lopera had proven that militarily the formation of a larger group along the same lines was a feasible option, and in January 1937 the new British Battalion was created, becoming part of the XVth (English-speaking) International Brigade.

  They were soon to be propelled into intense action.

  At the Jarama valley, straddled around the river of the same name to the south-east of Madrid, the newly-formed British Battalion were primed for their pivotal defensive duties as part of the XVth International Brigade. For those early members of the Battalion now waiting nervously to defend the Madrid to Valencia road as the nationalists advanced upon the capital, the excitement of the journey to Spain was over, the warm-ups completed, and bloody battle imminent.

  The Battalion were to be lead by Scotsman Wilfred McCartney, an author and former British Army soldier fresh from a decade in Parkhurst prison, having been found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. Yet McCartney was never to see battle. On the night of 5 February 1937, as McCartney and Peter Kerrigan exchanged pistols ahead of the former’s impending parole trip to Britain, one of the guns went off, injuring McCartney. What happened did not pass without controversy; some later alleged that the event was no accident, and that certain factions within the CPGB had wanted McCartney out of the way. What is certain is that Kerrigan expressed great remorse at what had occurred, and even asked to be repatriated with McCartney, writing to CPGB headquarters on 10 February:

  I asked to be sent home with him. The accident was the result of a stupid mistake for which I was responsible and it was just chance that the consequences were not a great deal more serious.

  With McCartney returned to Britain due to his injuries, Tom Wintringham, an Englishman, took command of the Battalion. Under Wintringham, Jock Cunningham was promoted to Commander of the Battalion’s No. 1 Company (there were four companies in all, three regular and one, No. 2 Company, machine-gunner).

  The Glaswegian Kerrigan, domestically the CPGB’s representative to the Comintern and in Spain the commissar for English-speaking International Brigaders at Albacete, wrote to Harry Pollitt, CPGB leader, as the 500-plus strong Battalion left their training base at Madrigueras on 9 February bound for Jarama. Kerrigan displayed optimism and pride, but also an awareness that many would perish in the battle to come:

  The boys looked splendid today when we left them. They are keen and I think very efficient. They know what is expected of them and will do their best to carry out the job. I felt bloody rotten when I shook hands with Springie and George and dozens of others. After all I know dozens of them personally. I came out with them, and I’ve seen the Battalion shape itself from the beginning. I know all the arguments about this sort of reaction (I’ve listened to them out here at headquarters) but it is not possible to feel otherwise. You shake hands with lads and know that for some it’s the last time you’ll do it. What they don’t visualise clearly is the really historic part they are playing. They are too close to it all to see that history is being made here, and that this present generation and those that follow will be filled with a great pride at the way these lads have responded. After all it is no little thing to hold back international fascism and help also to save the peace of the world for a little longer.

  Even for such makers of history, preparations for the battle were worryingly last minute, as Tommy Bloomfield testified:

  The XVth Brigade arrived in Chinchon late on 10 February 1937. We of No. 2 Company were given that night to learn how to work with the Russian water-cooled Maxim. We were on our way to the front.

  Though the machine-gunners did remarkably attain some cohesion, such ill-preparedness resulted, perhaps inevitably, in further mistakes and early slaughter for the British Battalion, as Bloomfield related:

  No. 1 Company attacked a hill in front and slightly left of our machine-gun company which we named Suicide Hill. They took an awful beating and had to retreat. Through a mix-up we got the wrong ammo for our guns. The battle raged on through the 12th [February] into the 13th. We had sorted our problems during the night. In the morning the fascists tried to attack with a battalion of Moorish cavalry which were completely slaughtered by our eight machine-guns. With that they threw everything that they had at our position. They shelled, bombed, left overhead shrapnel on us. Unknown to us No. 4 Company had retired on our right flank which meant that we could not control the dead ground in front of our position which No. 4 Company had. This allowed the fascists to infiltrate this ground and come round our back and cut us off. When we realised what had happened, it was too late. Of our 120 men, three had gone back for ammo, we had 29 survivors, and the rest were killed.

  Jimmy Maley, another machine-gunner, described being taken up to position and jumping off the back of a truck, guns firing, straight into battle.

  Men started to die right there and then. There were men just dropping around us, people from our own group. There were about 28 of us and we were running on. All of a sudden, it stopped.

  Maley’s group had fired on until entirely out of ammunition. Much of the machine-gun company was subsequently captured by nationalist forces (see Chapter 4). Maley highlighted the tactical weaknesses of the Battalion as a reason for the isolation of his Company:

  After 200 yards going forward, the retreat was coming back and going down past us and we were going through. There were soldiers running past us and we were going up. And there were soldiers of the British Battalion dropping as we were going up. Without firing a shot they were getting killed.

  Yet the British Battalion managed to regroup. Against all the odds, as night fell on 14 February, the Battalion began to stand its ground, eventually pushing back in to the areas it had previously retreated from. By the end of February, they had successfully stemmed the advances of the nationalists, and more than held their own. Because of this, Jarama was seen as something of a victory for the republican side, though losses were heavy. Well over a quarter of the 500 British Battalion men who had gone into battle were killed, and a comparable number wounded. The number of Scots in each group was high. Those wounded became so in the most agonising of circumstances. Tom Clarke, a stretcher-bearer, was shot in the head in an area so delicate that doctors refused to remove the bullet. Instead, and without anaesthetic, a dentist extracted the shell. Around 35 Scottish Brigaders died during the main days of fighting at Jarama. Bob Mason, of Edinburgh, was killed when a burning object fell on top of him. His family wrote a glowing tribute to him, which was published in the Daily Worker on 25 March 1937:

  When Bob volunteered to go to Spain, it was not with the object of personal gain or with the spirit of adventure. He had every reason to hate fascism by his knowledge of the brutal and murderous suppression o
f the working class movement under Hitler and Mussolini. The lives of these comrades who have fallen in the fight will not have been sacrificed in vain, and the Spanish Government will be victorious.

  Such sentiments, whether printed in newspapers or contained in private correspondence, were a typical reaction for relatives of those lost in Spain. The family of another of the Jarama fallen, James Rae, wrote to the Worker:

  You can tell the comrades that though we felt a pang of sorrow, we have no regrets because we know that he died for the cause that he loved so well, and hoping that we who are left behind will keep the flag flying.

  Anti-fascism often ran in families, who supported each other in the shared belief that no death was in vain, no matter the personal pain a parent or sibling might feel.

  The death at Jarama of Jock Gilmour, a Prestonpans miner, was described by his friend George Watters:

  Before we were surrounded I advised him to wait on them coming up with the ambulance men that would take him down on stretchers. But he felt that it was needed for men that were more severely wounded than he was. He didn’t realise how bad he was and unfortunately he died as a result of his wound. He was pumping blood out.

  Emphasising the enormity of loss, Bill Gilmour, another World War One veteran, expressed his horror at the harrowing sight of so many Jarama burial sites:

  My heart throbs at the sight of those graves, and as the memory of those boys comes back to me, with all their gestures, jokes and good humour, their political understanding between one another, I can’t help but shed a silent tear. Often I think of them when alone in my dug-out or on guard at night by my machine-gun. If Britain only knew what they owed those dead heroes, they would give them as much room in their sentiments as they give to the Unknown Soldiers of the Great War.

  It was in this atmosphere that Possilpark Brigader Alex McDade wrote what was to become the British Battalion’s anthem, ‘There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama’. Its bittersweet first verse encapsulated Battalion mood at that juncture:

  There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama,

  That’s a place that we all know so well,

  For ’tis there that we wasted our manhood,

  And most of our old age as well.

  Yet the British Battalion had displayed courage and aptitude of the very highest order at Jarama. That they were able to achieve even a stalemate after the debilitating early losses they suffered was a breathtaking accomplishment. Holding back the nationalists at Jarama created a sense of optimism among the XVth Brigade, especially within the British Battalion after their heroics during the night of 14 February. Jock Cunningham summed up the prevailing feeling in the spring of 1937, pronouncing that ‘the tide turned at Jarama.’

  A year into the war, discipline had been tightened, and the International Brigades began to share some characteristics with regular armies.

  Bolstered by events at Jarama, in the middle of 1937 the British Battalion planned for their first offensive of the war, at Brunete, to the west of Madrid. The aim was to encircle nationalist troops in that area. Jock Cunningham felt that Battalion morale was high and discipline good, reporting to Harry Pollitt on 8 May: ‘I am pleased to say that everything is showing marked improvements, discipline is tightening up.’

  This mood was echoed among rank and file soldiers. In an early June letter to friends in Blairgowrie, Bill Gilmour wrote that:

  In spite of provocations, of Almeria, Guernica, Malaga, in spite of the Non-Intervention Committee, in spite of the many difficulties our government are facing and have faced, we are winning. And my heart is singing that I am privileged to serve so active a government.

  Soon after the republican advance began, on 6 July, Gilmour wrote home again, articulating a sense of defiance:

  We are still in the front line trenches and still happy and healthy. We fight solely for our principles, and the only reward we seek is the final defeat of that fascist monster that machine-guns women and children from the air. If necessary, I will renounce my nationality and become a Spaniard, so that I may be privileged to help attain that end.

  The Anti-tank Battery of the XVth Brigade, formed in May 1937 ahead of the offensive at Brunete. Eddie Brown recalled that ‘In the Anti-Tank Battery there must have been about ten Scotsmen at least, about half the men’. Those alongside Brown included Bill Cranston, John Dunlop, George Murray and Fraser Crombie, the latter tragically killed at Brunete.

  This defiance, though, was not enough to prevent the offensive becoming almost immediately bogged down, with enormous losses of Battalion personnel. Gilmour hinted at the tactical nous and cynical brutality of the nationalist forces in the same letter:

  Their [the fascists’] retreat was organised and it demonstrated the fact that they had clear military strategists which reminded me of the manoeuvres of the Great War. There was nothing too vile for them to stoop to to save their filthy hides. At Villanueva de Cañada they placed women and children between our guns and theirs so that their withdrawal might be easier.

  Also at Villanueva de Cañada, Gilmour received an interesting insight into the influence of religion on the nationalist side. When the Battalion managed to capture nationalist trenches there, inside they found holy emblems and prayer books, and ‘a circular written in Spanish reminding the soldiers that they were fighting to save religion from menace by reds’.

  Yet Gilmour and comrades did not have long to ponder their finds. The scale of human carnage at Brunete swiftly became clear. When Aberdonian David Anderson escaped hospital for a return to the Brunete front, he discovered that only 24 of the 106-man Company he had left behind remained. The rest were dead or severely wounded.

  Heavily involved as at Jarama, many Scots were among the casualties. Fraser Crombie, of the Anti-tank Battery, died a quite horrific death, as Rutherglen volunteer Chris Smith explained:

  We were being shelled and unfortunately one of them caught Kirkcaldy lad Fraser Crombie in the chest. Myself and a guy called Hugh Slater crawled out to get the body. Halfway there Slater told me to cross over, and when we reached the remains I realised that he did it to keep me from having to pick up parts of the body. He rose in my esteem after that.

  Fellow Anti-tank member John Dunlop had witnessed the shocking drama unfold: ‘I was the observer for the battery and saw it all happening through the viewer of my range finder in miniature like a film.’

  Dunlop’s own life was saved at Brunete when the body of a Scottish comrade, John Black, fell on top of him and took a volley of shellfire. As Dunlop peered up, he saw a second body: ‘The other man, a runner from a French battalion, was still squatting in the same position, except his head was missing – there was just red flesh round his collar.’13

  The Spanish Communist Party passbook of John Dunlop, whose life was saved at Brunete when a dying comrade fell upon him and took the blow of a shell.

  With such devastation, Battalion morale plummeted. Even Alec Donaldson, involved with propaganda at Albacete and usually tirelessly upbeat, remarked in a post-Brunete letter to Peter Kerrigan:

  I was considerably cut up after the Brunete events. The fact our best comrades went ‘down’ in that offensive upset me tremendously. Brunete was terrible and had all the characteristics of a big battle.

  The offensive on Brunete had been an unmitigated disaster for the British Battalion, tactically and in terms of personnel: of 331 men present on the first day of battle, 289 were killed, wounded, or captured by the last. A period of reorganisation was now necessary, and Battalion morale in need of immediate resuscitation.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Esta noche todos muertos’:

  Prisoners of Franco

  We were taken out once in a while and beaten up. They stood us against the wall and slashed at us with whips. Then we were out back into the dungeons. It was no use protesting. Protests got you nowhere.

  Joseph Murray, Glasgow

  IN THE SPANISH conflict, International Brigaders were captured in battle and subsequ
ently imprisoned, or worse, with appalling regularity. However, the first Scots to be detained during the conflict were not actually active participants in it. In mid-August 1936, Scottish workers were among those at the British-owned Rio Tinto Company mines near Huelva taken hostage by the pro-republican Miners’ Syndicate group. The 36 staff were held inside the mine for almost a fortnight, until nationalists overran the strategically important site and ordered their deportation. Mass arrests and executions of Spanish republican sympathisers among the mine staff followed. One Scot, a Mr Hill, did remain in place at the mine, taking charge of several thousand Spanish workers who were now made to toil for the benefit of Franco’s forces, and produce raw materials such as pyrite for export to Nazi Germany.

  Individual Scots Brigaders were incarcerated throughout the Spanish war, though two particular occasions saw them detained in large groups. As mentioned above, a significant number, around 30, of the machine-gun company was captured at Jarama, on 13 February 1937. George Watters depicted the moment when in chaotic scenes nationalists surrounded the company and swooped to capture the men:

  Finally, they came in from both sides. Someone had cried out that it was our own fellows that were coming up from the rear. We were paying attention to the front. All that I knew about it was that I got hit on the head with the butt end of a rifle. Don Renton was wounded and quite a lot of things had happened. When I came to they were all standing with them with their hands up.

  Renton, machine-gun company Political Commissar, gathered himself enough to try and gain military advantage out of the situation:

  Prisoners, including Harold Fry, Jimmy Rutherford, Jimmy Maley and Donald Renton, are paraded after their capture at Jarama. The picture was used gloatingly in the anti-republican British press but served only to offer the relatives of missing Brigaders hope.