The import of these criticisms was that the SAU had been set up primarily to aid the republican wounded in Spain. The Executive Committee was forced to release a statement re-avowing the SAU’s commitment to neutrality once it reached Spain, stating:
The duties of such a mobile unit must of necessity assume a most varied character in rendering aid where and when necessary to the casualties resulting from fighting, irrespective of party, and to sick and wounded members of the non-combatant population.
Eschewing these political squabbles, the people of Glasgow had set about raising funds for the SAU with zest. ‘Flag Days’ were staged, while the local branch of the Musicians’ Union offered to supply a symphony orchestra for a fundraising concert, and the Glasgow Trades Council pledged its backing. This enthusiastic support was to continue in the city and across Scotland for the duration of the Unit’s stay in Spain.
Members of the SAU witnessed this support first hand, when a large crowd turned out to wave them off from Glasgow’s George Square on 17 September. The khaki-clad crew of 19 people drove six ambulances to Dover, and then onwards through France to Marseilles, where they caught a steam boat to Barcelona. They were led by Fernanda Jacobsen, a formidable, middle-aged Scottish woman proudly dressed in a kilt and sporting a Glengarry bonnet.
The SAU staff, all but two of whom were Scottish, was pitched straight into work in Spain. Unit member WL Freebairn, of Kilsyth, described their involvement in an October 1936 republican retreat from Olias del Rey northwards towards Illescas, as the ambulances struggled to carry wounded people to hospital in the face of a nationalist advance:
The effect of the advance was to demoralise the republicans. The republican militia, mixed in indescribable confusion with women and children, fled terror-stricken before the Moors and their modern weapons. Some of the women and children were assisted by the ambulances to get to places of safety. There were touching scenes when men, howling with fear, grabbed on to the sides of the ambulances and pleaded to be taken.
Despite the regularity of bombs dropping all around them, Freebairn and his colleagues worked tirelessly on that Toledo front and, indeed, wherever they were dispatched in Spain. Fernanda Jacobsen contacted Daniel Stevenson with news of their good work on 28 October, cabling the words: ‘All working at high pressure. The Embassy and the Spaniards say ambulance doing magnificently.’ Locally, such was their perceived value, the Unit had earned the nickname ‘Los Brujos’ – The Wizards.
The second Scottish Ambulance Unit, led by the kilted Fernanda Jacobsen, are given a send off by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, John Stewart, on 17 January 1937. Unit member George Burleigh, second from the left, and three of his colleagues would soon incense Jacobsen by resigning their posts with the ambulance.
However, all was not as it seemed with the SAU. Two weeks prior to the sending of the above telegram, seven members of the Unit had been sent home, two for perfectly legitimate health reasons, the other five ‘as a disciplinary measure’. The five men had been placed under house arrest in Madrid’s National Hotel by Duncan Newbigging, Unit commander, and then sent to Alicante to board a ship for Marseilles. They stood accused of looting the bodies of soldiers on the battlefield and ransacking abandoned properties, charges they vigorously denied in an official statement released on their arrival in London. The five claimed that the charges had been fabricated as a reaction to their refusal to hand over the keys of six of their ambulances to local militias.
On 17 October, the returnees were summoned to an enquiry meeting presided over by Daniel Stevenson and attended by members of the SAU’s Executive Committee. After four hours of submissions, the meeting was adjourned with no conclusions reached.
Presented at the enquiry had been a sensational and incriminating statement from Hugh Slater, later Chief of Operations for the entire XVth Brigade. He claimed that one of the SAU five, Donald Perfect, had come to him in Madrid and given an account of their arrest by the Spanish authorities, and his own subsequent escape. Perfect had then stated that he would not be returning to Britain because of the riches on offer in Spain. He went on to describe as ‘mementoes’ the valuables SAU members had taken in Spain, and listed the contents in his own kitbag as:
1. A solid gold crucifix between nine inches and a foot long
2. Some gold ornaments taken off a decanter
3. Three gold and amber ashtrays
4. A set of silver fish knives.
Slater then listed ‘souvenirs’ claimed by other SAU members:
One had a thick roll of French bank-notes found in a house in Aranjuez where they were billeted. At least two had taken revolvers from dead or wounded militiamen (the Unit is not authorised to carry arms). My informant and another member of the Unit had spent the afternoon of the day before their arrest digging in the cellar of their headquarters, looking for the jewels of the previous owner of the house which they had been told were buried there.
Slater had immediately reported his discoveries to the Communist Party, and later heard that the men had been deported, having been detained by the British authorities rather than their Spanish counterparts, as Perfect had alleged. At the end of his statement, Slater somewhat menacingly reminded the SAU Executive that ‘The usual practice in Spain is to shoot looters without trial.’
Fortunately for the five accused, the Executive Committee did not wield such powers of summary justice, and the matter was, seemingly, allowed to slip. The controversy did not detract from Glaswegians’ enthusiasm for the SAU, and in the same month a Spanish market was held in the Central Halls to raise much-needed funds – the Executive required at that point a further £9,000 to avoid the immediate withdrawal of the Unit from Spain. Neither was praise for their work in Spain difficult to find, with even the seemingly pro-nationalist foreign secretary Anthony Eden praising the SAU’s work in republican Spain on 18 December. In their first months in Spain, estimated Fernanda Jacobsen, the SAU had treated 2,500 wounded and helped transport 1,000 evacuees, a fine achievement given the controversy that dogged them in that period.
Tired and low on equipment, the remaining members of the first SAU returned to Scotland towards the end of 1936. Daniel Stevenson announced that a second Unit could only be sent to Spain if £5,000 was swiftly raised. Following events in Spain, they were in dire need of new staff and apparatus, as the Glasgow Herald confirmed on 21 December:
Little by little, the personnel dwindled down to two, the men having had to return home on account of shellshock, physical and mental pain, and other causes. Two of them were caught with their ambulance by the insurgents, one further ambulance was burned, and thus the original equipment of six ambulances and one store wagon was reduced to four ambulances and one wagon.
Regular opponents of the SAU saw these weaknesses as a chance to call for the abandonment of its work in Spain. Bailie Warren was again the principal critic, writing to the Glasgow Herald to express his hope that the SAU had ‘come home to stay home’. Their presence in Madrid, he wrote, ‘is to be interpreted as sympathy with the Socialists and Anarchists in Spain who have desecrated and destroyed all forms of religion.’ Warren’s claim that ‘it is the wish of the largest population of Daniel Stevenson’s fellow citizens that his ambulance unit does not return to Spain’ was shown to be dubious when popular support and not a little help from the Lord Provost of Glasgow bolstered the SAU to the extent that it was soon ready for a return to action. On 17 January 1937, the replenished SAU set off for Spain again. It comprised two new ambulances and supply wagons, and a small emergency car. The second SAU had 11 staff in all, three from the original mission including Fernanda Jacobsen, seven new Scots and an English doctor, Len Crome.
They arrived in Madrid to find a city now ravaged by the effects of relentless nationalist air bombardments. Jacobsen wrote to Daniel Stevenson in the second week of February giving an account of conditions:
Starvation is rampant, and neither for love nor money is a bit of coal to be had in Madrid. Everyone looks pinch
ed and miserable. We cannot get any food to buy here for ourselves so we have to draw on our relief supplies to feed the unit, no matter how frugally, and then deal with relief work. The people are literally starving, and babies are dying for want of milk.
As well as medical work, the SAU devised a chit system on behalf of local authorities through which it could distribute food supplies to the neediest residents. Their indefatigable work provoked high praise from Madrid’s Politica newspaper:
There could hardly be a combatant of these days who has not seen and admired the khaki uniforms of the stretcher-bearers, blending with the canvas of the ambulances, moving to and fro near the firing line. The work already carried out by these Scotsmen who came to Spain to mitigate the sufferings of war is really extraordinary.
The SAU’s constant proximity to the front line meant they regularly endured close shaves with stray artillery. Unit member Morris Linden was evacuating wounded soldiers from behind the lines at Jarama when an air raid began:
About 40 bombs were dropped by one aeroplane within a short distance of the ambulance. One bomb landed in a field within 25 yards of the ambulance. Had it fallen on the hard road instead of in the soft clay-like ground of the field, this bulletin would have contained much more serious news.
On 12 May, the SAU was present on the Toledo front during an air attack by nationalist forces, which lasted 45 minutes. Though the seven crew members were able to dive for cover and cram into a two-person air raid dugout, their four ambulances suffered great damage.
Bombs were not the only element of Unit life causing the Executive Committee back in Scotland consternation. On 12 April, Daniel Stevenson issued a statement to refute press allegations that the SAU was on its way home due to mutiny in the ranks. Any trouble there had been, he wrote, was merely ‘bickering’ among two or three SAU staff. Yet there had been more to it than mere bickering.
In March, Unit members Dr Len Crome, Roddy MacFarquar, Maurice Linden and George Burleigh had resigned from the SAU and joined the Spanish Medical Aid Committee’s International Brigade team. Prior to the stalemate at Jarama, they had been appalled when Fernanda Jacobsen had suggested that, in the event of the nationalists advancing and successfully surrounding Madrid, the SAU should remain in place to help their wounded. Conversely, the four felt that the SAU should stay behind republican lines and hand their food supplies over to the government authorities if Madrid were to become surrounded.
Members of the second Scottish Ambulance Unit. Left to right: M Linden (Glasgow), R MacFarquhar (Inverness), A Boyd (Bearsden), J MacKinnon (Ayr), G Burleigh (Kilsyth), T Penman (Glasgow), T Watters (Tillicoultry) and unidentified.
Refusing to accept their resignations, a furious Jacobsen took them for what she hoped would be an admonishment from the British consul in Madrid. He, though, was a sympathetic republican, and wished the men luck in the Brigades. Jacobsen returned to her depleted Unit incandescent with rage.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given these events, Jacobsen and the four remaining members of the Unit were back in Scotland by the end of July (a further two had earlier returned home injured). Officially, the Unit had returned for an equipment refit while the Spanish Civil War was deadlocked. Privately, there was some doubt as to whether it would return for a third stint.
By September, with a further financial boost from local fundraising efforts and a successful recruitment drive, those doubts were extinguished. For the third time, on 2 September 1937 the SAU set off for Spain, its crew of seven Scots and an Englishman small but unfaltering in their commitment, as symbolised by the continued presence of Tillicoultry man Tom Watters.
Again, there was some condemnation of the Unit from anti-republicans, who, despite Daniel Stevenson’s repeated assertions that the SAU was a neutral organisation, continued to claim it was a servant of the Spanish government. A correspondent going by the name of ‘Right and Reason’ wrote in the Glasgow Herald of 29 September that: ‘It is a matter of regret to me and to many others that a Scottish Ambulance Corps has been sent to one side only, and that the side of misrule.’
Nevertheless, the third SAU remained in Spain until July 1938, at which point Unit vehicles and equipment were transferred to the republican authorities in Madrid. On their return to Glasgow, some of the Unit’s longest servants expressed their exasperation with the war. Tom Watters admitted to the Glasgow Herald that he and many other non-combatants were now ‘fed up’ with conditions in Spain.
A further controversial allegation concerning the SAU was that its ambulances were used to transport anti-republican Spaniards out of Madrid. In return, it was suggested, obliging SAU crew members would be rewarded handsomely with personal gifts.
Rumours of this duplicitous behaviour had been an additional influence on the decision of Roddy MacFarquhar and his three colleagues to resign from the SAU. MacFarquhar in particular had been suspicious of Fernanda Jacobsen’s friendship with Captain Edwin Lance, a staunch anti-communist known for arranging the escape of pro-Francoists from government territories. MacFarquhar noted how Jacobsen always seemed to meet with Lance ‘after any visits made to and at the fronts – which I personally did not like at all.’18 Tellingly, on 8 October 1937, Lance was arrested by republican police and imprisoned indefinitely for aiding nationalist escapees. Jacobsen and some of her unit had, it would seem, elected to apply their own version of the SAU’s avowed neutrality.
However, the SAU did carry out valiant work in treacherous circumstances and its achievements were impressive. Additionally, the Scottish movement to raise an ambulance unit had the notable side effect of unifying Establishment figures with local left-wing activists in the name of one cause. But, perhaps buckling under the strain and contradictions of trying to avoid partisanship in a time of war, it was often overwhelmed by controversy, its good name forever sullied by murky allegations.
CHAPTER 7
Red Nightingales:
Nursing Volunteers
They need our help, poor people, and if you only could see them when bombs are dropping overhead. I can vouch your heart would ache. Mothers snatch their children and run madly for shelter. Again, they are starving
Sister Winifred Wilson, St Andrews
FURTHER SCOTTISH MEDICAL aid in Spain came from volunteer nurses, inspired on humanitarian and political grounds to serve in the conflict.
Margot Miller, a 24-year-old nurse born in Stirlingshire, was one of the first medical volunteers to arrive in Spain. Miller worked with the Red Cross on the Aragon Front, and ended up a casualty herself due to nationalist machine-gun fire. As she explained:
Four of us were walking across a field between the trenches when our Red Cross uniforms were observed and a machine-gun was turned on us. A German guide was shot through the neck and I was wounded in both legs.
In an unexpected role-reversal, the young nurse was stretchered off to hospital by Spanish militiamen. Despite this, like so many other Scottish volunteers in Spain who had suffered setbacks, she remained steadfast in her determination, pledging from her sick bed, ‘I hope to return to Spain in about a fortnight. I am just waiting for my legs to heal.’
Sister Winifred Wilson, a St Andrews woman and founder member of the College of Nursing, arrived in Spain in January 1937 to join the British section of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee’s International Brigade unit. She worked at first in an operating theatre, and then on hospital wards. Wilson’s unit had to be extremely mobile, packing equipment on sudden command and travelling wherever assistance was most needed. Rarely was her work carried out in actual hospitals; improvisation was a key asset for medical staff, as Wilson highlighted in April 1937, when writing to friends in Kirkleod that ‘we are in a small village, and the town hall is my ward, and the ante-room is the operating theatre’.
In the same letter, she described the horror she had witnessed, espousing a familiar view on British non-intervention:
After an attack we are working day and night. Oh, if you only saw the slaughter! Heads and
faces blown to bits, stomachs and brains protruding, limbs shattered or off. I never met such bricks of lads. Every company has been simply slaughtered. I wish Britain had helped at first and prevented such a massacre. I cannot think why we have not tried to stop it all.
Wilson recognised that she and her nursing colleagues were now part of the Spanish republican army, who could not ‘depart from Spain until the end of the war’, though this was not a challenge she was about to shirk:
They need our help, poor people, and if you only could see them when bombs are dropping overhead. I can vouch your heart would ache. Mothers snatch their children and run madly for shelter. Again, they are starving.
As members of the International Brigade, Wilson’s unit were seen as a legitimate target by nationalist aeroplanes, and despite their earlier misses, she had no doubt that ‘they mean to get us yet’. Regardless of this, the defiant nurse wrote, ‘I have no regrets that I came to help’.
Of the three Murray siblings who served in Spain, Annie was the first to volunteer. She arrived there in late September 1936, and was to serve for almost the entire duration of the war. Born in Aberdeenshire in 1906, Annie came from an extremely politicised family and had led protests against working conditions while employed at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. It was perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that she chose to put her burgeoning nursing career on hold and volunteer for Spain through the British Medical Aid Committee. In her eyes, the decision to go to Spain was straightforward:
I went to Spain because I believed in the cause of the Spanish republican government. I didn’t believe in fascism and I had heard many stories of what happened to people who were under fascist rule.19
Homage to Caledonia Page 9