by Jana Petken
Pedro ate a sloppy oatmeal breakfast and was surprised at the jubilant atmosphere in the camp. Campfires dotted around the area yielded the aroma of hot coffee. Soldiers lay their heads on jackets, chatting about their families and lovers and how many reds they thought they’d managed to kill. Others bathed themselves using buckets and helmets and some listened to radios in silence but laughed scornfully when the government issued a communiqué: “The government states that the movement is confined to the protectorate and that no one, absolutely no one, on the mainland has joined this absurd venture. I urge you to trust in the military power of the state.”
Pedro spent the rest of the day in a blur of confusion. News of Franco’s arrival in the camp had spread, and the general’s displeasure quickly reached the ranks. There was talk of failure, that the rising was going to be crushed through lack of men and means of movement, and more importantly, that General Mola was losing his nerve and might surrender. Pedro could only bolster his men by telling them that transport was being organised and that they would be reaching the mainland in the next day or two, but part of him wished that some of the rumours were true.
On the morning of 20 of July, after a fitful night’s sleep, Pedro was ordered to mobilise his troop immediately for transport to the mainland. Once there, the military objective would be to march on Seville and then on to Granada. He was still groggy from the little sleep he’d had, and he wondered if at some point, somebody was going to ask him what he thought about it all. He was following the orders of men who were butchering working-class citizens, women, children, local officials, and army officers, all because they remained loyal to their government. He had probably killed more than a few of them himself, yet he had not been asked for his opinion.
He wondered if it now meant that he too was a rebel. And did it mean that the civilians he had fought yesterday were now his enemy, chosen for death but not by him? In his mind, he saw the image of two of his friends from the Valencia garrison being shot in the head at point-blank range just for questioning their leaders’ actions. He had gone over to their lifeless bodies and had prayed for them. Standing there, he felt a mixture of anger and sadness. Then he remembered his Aunt Marie’s words: “Don’t give an opinion – opinions are dangerous killers,” she had told him, and she’d been right.
By the time Pedro arrived in Andalucía, news had reached the troops of risings all over Spain. Pedro’s first instinct was to try to find a telephone to call his family, but he realised that the pattern of cutting all communication lines had probably spread to Valencia. He was soaking wet from the rain that hadn’t stopped since they had put their feet on land. He felt helpless and so far away from those he loved, especially Marta. She was safe behind the walls of her convent, but outside, the peasants would be itching for revenge against the Catholic Church. He allowed the warm rain to wash him and, at the same time, thought about his brother, Miguel, involved in the most fanatical end of the rebel movement. How many people had Miguel killed? Was he still alive? The rest of his family at La Glorieta were probably safe right at this moment, and that brought him some comfort. But for how long, he wondered. He smiled. No doubt Aunt Rosa would be praying in her room and singing ‘God is all-powerful’ and ‘Long live the rebels!’
When Pedro reached Seville, the famed General Queipo de Llano had already taken the city. Pedro sat amongst some of the rebel nationalist soldiers already there and gratefully accepted a mug of coffee and a cigarette from a sergeant who told him that the general in command had arrived, gun in hand.
“The first thing he did,” the sergeant went on to say, “was to tell us ‘The time has come to choose a side’ … as if we have choice. Those were his exact words. And he said to join our comrades or continue to support a government leading us to ruin.”
“Then what happened?” Pedro asked him.
“Then we surrounded the civil governor’s office with our artillery, shot the arse off the governor himself, and then went into the slums where the commies and gypsies live and machine-gunned the lot of them. They were like a bunch of apes jumping all over the place, hiding in trees and crouching behind rocks. You should have been there; best entertainment I’ve had in a long time!” He rubbed his hands like an excited boy.
Pedro later learned the truth of the matter. The lower part of the Triana district was shot to pieces by cannon fire on the opposite bank of the river. The Moors had gone into the houses and killed all the inhabitants with knives, including the women and children.
“They left no one alive.” The soldier telling him the story gulped from a bottle of red wine, spilling some drops of wine onto his already bloodied uniform, where they mingled unseen.
“We slaughtered the bastards. The place looked like an abattoir when we’d finished! I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, trying to find the wine stain.
That night, Pedro lay on the narrow mattress in the quarters allocated to him and tried unsuccessfully to get the picture of death out of his mind. That whole day he’d heard story after story of the bloody rampage. What he couldn’t understand was that whilst some of the men had thought the explicit descriptions of carnage and destruction to be sickening, others had laughed, wanting to hear more and wishing they’d been there. He tossed and turned for hours, and when the first light of dawn entered his room, the first seeds of self-disgust had already begun to grow inside him.
On 25 July, Pedro was given orders to proceed with all haste to the local prison on the outskirts of the town. He chose six men to accompany him for what Captain Mora had called ‘a special duty’. He sat with his back resting against the canopy framing the truck, averting his eyes from the soldiers he had brought with him. Why him? he thought. Why had he been chosen? Captain Mora knew him, knew he would be sickened, and knew it would probably be the hardest thing he would ever have to face.
He led his men through the arched entrance of the prison and was told to wait in the courtyard. After a short time in temperatures of over thirty-five degrees, enemy prisoners were led out in single file. They consisted of the leaders of the Seville labour movement and some of their union workers, officers, and soldiers who had refused to join the rebels, in addition to civil government officials with their wives and children. Pedro’s mouth felt dry, and bile rose in his throat. He felt as though he was going to throw up right there and then in front of his own men. He thought about dropping his rifle and running away. He didn’t even care at that moment if the guards shot him in the back as he ran. He couldn’t kill these people, and he couldn’t order his soldiers to aim and fire either.
A Moorish regular crossed the yard and casually saluted him. “How do you want to do this, sir?”
He asked the question in terms of practicality, Pedro noted, not because he had an ounce of morality or sympathy.
“Sir?” the Moor asked him again.
“Face the children against the far wall. Blindfold all the prisoners. Bring the adults out in groups of five and line them up as far away from the children as possible. How many are there altogether?”
“Forty-two, including seven children,” answered the Moor.
“Then we’d better begin, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. It’s hot.”
Pedro looked at his men. Some had unreadable expressions on their faces. Others, he saw, felt as he did, but like him, they were powerless to stop the executions from going ahead. He faced them all, walking down the small line of six men. He explained that they would be killed too if they refused, and that it wouldn’t help the prisoners, for they would be shot by another squad later, but his argument was ignored. They were murderers. There was no other word to describe them, he thought. They would all go to hell with no excuses.
When the first batch of men and women stood in line against the wall, he was glad he couldn’t see their eyes. He was also glad that they couldn’t see the tears that were now blinding him. He steadied himself, stood in position, and tried to picture Lucia’s sweet smiling face, but nothing coul
d replace the barbaric scene before him.
“Take aim … Fire!”
He repeated the same words after the dead were dragged away and a new batch of prisoners was brought before him. He felt as though he were stuck in a time loop, a nightmare that would never end. The word ‘fire’ came easier to him as time went on, but the self-hatred he felt made him want to point his rifle at his own head.
After all the adults were killed and had been thrown into waiting trucks, the Moors led the children to the spot where their parents had fallen. They carried a couple of the smaller ones and leaned them against the bloodied wall for support. Some cried, and others trembled, their teeth chattering against quivering lips. There was a teenager and, next to him, two small boys about six years old. A little girl about the same age grasped her doll in both hands while another small girl, no more than three years old, kicked out blindly at the invisible hands that held her captive against the wall. At the far end stood a boy who was much older than the rest, carrying a baby boy no more than six or seven months old in his arms. The baby was crying, and the boy tried desperately to sooth him.
Pedro and his squad hesitated. Pedro looked down the line of men and into their eyes. One of them looked back at him with confusion and disbelief. Tears converged on the beads of sweat running in rivers down his cheeks, and he shook his head continuously. “God, no, no,” the young soldier kept repeating.
Pedro marched over to him and told him to get a grip of himself. Instead, the man, not much more than eighteen years old himself, laughed uncontrollably and turned his rifle around and shot himself in the throat. His blood and flesh covered Pedro’s face and chest as he stood stupidly, looking down at the dead body with its head ripped open.
Pedro wiped the soldier’s blood from his face and walked over to the Moor in charge. He was breathing heavily and felt faint with heat and shock. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and suddenly anger replaced his self-pity. He grabbed the Moor by the collar, forcing him away from the courtyard area. When they were out of sight of his soldiers and the other Moors, Pedro put the man against a wall and pointed his gun at his head.
“Understand this: I will not kill innocent children, nor will my men.”
“But I have orders. You have orders,” the Moor said without emotion.
Pedro looked into the man’s eyes and saw a mirror image of self-disgust; the Moor didn’t want this to happen any more than he did.
“What’s your name?” Pedro asked him.
“Farid Achour, sir.”
“Farid, listen to me. This is what’s going to happen. We are going to take these children to the edge of town, and we’re going to leave them there alive. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The Moor nodded and then wiped the perspiration from his face. “I will be in big trouble, sir. I cannot disobey an order. I will go to hell.”
Pedro laughed and then leaned in closer until his mouth was on the Moor’s ear. “Not if you don’t tell. Farid, are you going to tell?”
“No, sir.”
“Then do it. God will reward you for your merciful act. Do it now.”
That night, Pedro huddled in a corner of the camp and watched the cooking fires light up the night sky. He didn’t want to speak to anyone or hear what anyone had to say. He hated them all. He hated himself. He couldn’t sleep, and his mind juggled an assortment of bloody images too strong to blot out and too deeply imprinted ever to forget. He was sure that atrocities were also being committed on the republican side, but he hadn’t seen them and they were not the aggressors; his side were. His family had told him where he’d come from and who he was, but he wasn’t sure of anything anymore; he barely knew himself. He had to choose a path now, he decided. His conscience and his destiny were his responsibility, no one else’s. He hated what he was doing and, more importantly, why he was doing it. He was a soldier in the Spanish army, not an assassin or a mercenary without a cause. He believed in the constitutional government, the rights of the lower classes, and a democratic society, not in killing innocents and babies. He didn’t belong there. He wasn’t ready to give up his beliefs just because he had to follow orders. This was not his army! He was in the army of the Spanish republic, and to them he would return.
Chapter 48
Miguel was ecstatic at the news that the long-awaited civil war had actually started and that now the real fight would begin. He had been following the triumphs of Franco and Queipo De Llano in the South and the overwhelming rebel nationalist successes in the Catholic heartlands and Pamplona. Lately, he’d also been involved in small raids, assassinations mostly, from his central base in Valladolid.
On the night of 19 July, he left for Madrid. His objective was to reach the Montaña barracks before dawn to aid General Joaquín Fanjul in his bid to start the rising in the capital. He also had a message from the Phalanx high command, and he’d been told repeatedly not to give it to anyone but the general himself. He arrived just before five in the morning. The city still slept, and he had no trouble getting inside the barracks where the rebel troops had already congregated, awaiting orders.
The next morning, an unexpected onslaught began. They had been waiting for some kind of altercation or assault, but what met their eyes was completely different to what they had envisaged. Citizens of Madrid, including women, surrounded the barracks. They had barely enough arms between them: an assortment of knives and shovels, a few guns, sticks, and small rocks. Inside, Miguel and the other rebels opened fire with rifle shots and machine guns. Outside, at the corner of the plaza, assault guards loyal to the republic loaded their own rifles in the shelter of walls, trees, and park benches. A multitude of people crouched unarmed, looking up at the sky, awaiting the arrival of a loyalist plane from the nearby airfield of Cuatro Vientos, a base that had repelled the rebels the day before.
Miguel fired indiscriminately into the crowds, but he knew they were outnumbered, and for a brief moment, his arrogance was replaced by fear. He hadn’t been afraid before, had never even wondered what it would feel like. But now, crouching down and trembling uncontrollably, he wondered if he’d ever live to see his family again. He thought about his home, something he rarely did, and about the last night he’d spent there.
Miguel crouched lower beneath the window ledge on the ground floor and craned his neck to look up at the sky. He saw nothing but heard the noise of a low-flying aeroplane hovering above the building; all thoughts of home and family disappeared as quickly as they’d come. The whistling squeal of a bomb grew louder and louder, so loud that Miguel had to cover his ears. It dropped from the sky, hitting its target with perfect precision, crashing through the roof of the building and exploding on impact.
Noise, smoke, and dust filled the air, making it impossible to see anything. Miguel’s ears rang, blocking out the cheering republican masses at the walls of the garrison and the screams of injured comrades inside with him. Half of the roof had collapsed. Choking on the thick mist of dust, he gripped his rifle to his chest. He crawled on his belly towards the more sheltered area of the inner building of the barracks, and as the fog lifted, he saw the carnage for the first time. Broken and ripped bodies lay on the ground, now a deep red bloody carpet. Some of the survivors were tying white handkerchiefs to the ends of their rifles, and Miguel did the same.
“We have to surrender!” one soldier shouted.
“Restart machine gun fire!” General Fanjul shouted, running to each man in turn and repeating the order.
The general had been injured. His left ear hung comically on the side of his head, and Miguel had an overwhelming urge to laugh.
“I said reload, you bastards!” the general continued to shout.
Miguel picked his gun up and grimaced. He’d been hit too, shrapnel, he guessed. His arm spat blood from underneath his shirtsleeve, and he tied a white handkerchief around the spot that sported a gaping hole. Blood still poured from the wound, but he had no time to think about it further.
“God help us!”
a Phalanx man shouted. “They’re coming!”
Many of the soldiers inside the building wanted to surrender, but the fear of being captured or killed far outweighed the notion of being shot by one of their own officers. Miguel could see the jubilant crowds storming the barracks from his position behind a broken window on the ground floor, and he fired his own weapon several times more until he had no ammunition left.
Outside, there were so many bodies of men and women on the ground that he couldn’t count them all. The assault guards and the masses still advanced on their position. Miguel looked over at a friend who’d come with him from Valladolid.
“This is it. We’re dead,” Miguel whispered matter-of-factly, and his friend nodded in agreement.
General Fanjul continued to give the order to fire until abruptly his voice was silenced and he fell lifeless to the ground. At that moment, Miguel knew that the enemy was inside.
The noise was deafening as assault guards and civilians alike shot at everything that moved. They fired their pistols at the thick brick walls, and bullets ricocheted around the room, shattering the remaining glass in the windows and hitting some of the dead men on the floor. Miguel ripped the white handkerchief off his arm and allowed the blood to flow freely. Then he crawled under the body of a fallen comrade and, between half-closed eyelids, watched as the hordes savagely slaughtered the surviving rebels and Phalanx with knives, shovels, and gun butts. The remaining officers suffered the same fate after they’d watched the others die first, and some screamed, while others gave their last fascist salute. Miguel only heard rather than saw what went on after that. His body was still covered by a dead man whose blood ran into his own hair and eyes. He lay as still as possible, knowing that should he be found alive, he’d be killed, just like the others. The victors were laughing and joking, and bodies were being lifted and unceremoniously dumped onto trucks at the entrance of the barracks. It was only a matter of time, Miguel thought, before they got to him, and he accepted his fate with resignation.