by Jack Ludlow
Would they believe it to be true, would they realise their position was hopeless and ask for safe passage; would Laporta grant that to save lives? No one was crazy enough to walk out into the open with a white flag and ask, which was just as well; waved from behind a thick tree trunk and in full view of the building, it was shredded by rifle fire within seconds. It was going to be a fight to the finish and it seemed the defenders had ammunition to spare!
The two 75 mm Schneiders arrived, drawn by horse teams now under the control of local carters. The man in charge of loading and firing them, a dock worker by trade, had been an artilleryman at one time, so he knew not to bring them too close, to a point where the gunners would be at risk from concentrated rifle fire, just as he knew to warn those along the avenue to get out of the way. Given the angle from which he was required to fire, shells could very well ricochet off the stone frontage and bring more destruction further on.
The first target was the parapet, yet even blasted – and some of the shot went right over – it was impossible to utterly destroy that, which still left good fire positions for the men occupying the roof, who, under bombardment, had been safe from anything other than flying stone by a mere withdrawal, protected by an angle of fire that could not directly do them harm.
Next it was the nearest set of windows, a row rising to the sixth storey; a shell entering through one of those would do massive interior damage, both in terms of destruction and noise, but his first efforts proved the wisdom of his earlier precautions. Hitting the front of the building the shell bounced off and within seconds had reduced to splinters one of the large trees a good hundred yards further on. Aim adjusted, the next shell hit the joint between the window and the surround, smashing through in a cacophony of tearing wood and shattering glass, followed by audible screams.
Laporta had been standing by, or to be more precise, reinforcing his restraint, given the mere sound of the shot and the long-flamed muzzle flashes were acting on his already excited cohorts to make the task ten times harder. The safe option was to fire at the rooftop and windows from cover, to keep the heads of the defenders down while not exposing yourself. It was a testimony to the level of excitement that both Vince and Cal had to yell at their own party of eager young athletes to stay still and not do as was being demonstrated to them by the others – stepping out into the open to blast off full magazines.
Even with shellfire hitting the building, and at least half the shot doing serious internal and external damage, the amount of returned fire was lethal, and several of the workers paid the price, this just as the cannon fire shifted to the main target, the double doors, which were well pounded. Yet they, being bronze, seemed like a sort of malleable armour plate, buckling but not cracking, despite taking several hits. It became increasingly clear they would need to be blown; from the angle at which the shells were striking they could not break open the part that mattered, the point at which the doors joined.
Charges were sent for while the windows of the telephone exchange building were systematically blown in until not one remained intact. Parts of the frontage, knocked off, now sat as a layer of disordered rubble before the building, yet still the defenders returned fire and inflicted casualties on anyone foolish enough to overexpose themselves, which they did regularly, leading to a steady stream of wounded and dying being borne away to the hospitals under covering fire.
When the dynamite did arrive, brought by a runner, Vince nearly had a fit as he saw the amount it had sweated. Like a father with a new baby, he held it and wiped each stick clean, careful with the cloth as well, so unstable was the nitroglycerine, before he bound the sticks into one tenfold charge, inserting a short length of fuse, while others were made ready singly and with even less fuse, to be thrown through the now-destroyed first-storey windows.
The problem, exacerbated by the fact that they were still being observed from the rooftop, was now twofold: the charge had to be laid by the doors and that meant crossing open ground under the eyes of the men on the roof; even coming from the sides, if they exposed themselves for short periods, those defenders could see what was being executed. Then, with the possibility of dropping grenades, the fuses had to be lit, and the man doing that, who must be the last to run and therefore a lone target, had to get far enough away to be safe.
Again, Cal experienced a sea change in attitude; Xavier, hitherto seen as a noisy and argumentative pest, was now transformed into a hero who would not countenance that anyone else but a miner should undertake the task, not that he had too much opposition to that stand. Laporta, who had barely spoken to Cal since the confrontation with Xavier, called to him and, with the aid of Florencia, sought his views. They were given freely, but the primary recommendation was to take time and to comprehensively explain to each person taking part, in proper detail, their individual task.
‘Otherwise, monsieur, you will have confusion, and if you have that, it will fail.’
Dusk was close by the time that task was completed, the front of the east-facing building now in deep and useful shadow. The attack was split into three parts, four if the cannon were included. Vince, with his single sticks of dynamite, took one party down the avenue well away from the exchange; Cal took another in the opposite direction and that included Xavier, both sets of attackers obliged to dodge from doorway to doorway until they were far enough off to cross the road. They would come at the exchange from the sides, using their proximity to the front of those adjoining buildings, as well as their doorways and moulded parapets, to provide some protection.
Laporta had his riflemen aiming at what remained of the roof, to keep down the heads of those watching the attackers’ movements. Any sight of one popping up resulted in a fusillade; that such action presaged an assault just had to be accepted. At the signal, the artillery would take over that task while the rifles were trained on the windows, their orders, which only existed as a hope, being that they would put a series of single shots through each one to suppress the defence enough to provide the time needed to place the charge.
At Laporta’s signal Cal and Vince led their groups forward, backs pressed into stone as the docker-artilleryman aimed the shot, falling masonry another risk that just had to be accepted. The defenders knew what was coming and the first grenade, a proper one, popped out to bounce on the rubble-strewn pavement, really too far off to do serious damage.
As soon as that emerged, Vince’s men went into a huddle in which matches were set to lengths of fuse, the explosion acting as the signal to rush forward and for the riflemen to commence their suppression fire. There was no way to throw those individual sticks through the destroyed windows without stepping back to do so, and that created another risk.
Anyone shot dropping a lit fuse would endanger his own, something which happened immediately. This was an occasion when suicidal courage was admirable: the man shot did not let his dropped stick injure his fellows; twisting, he flung his body on top of the charge, bouncing in the air, his guts blown apart as it detonated.
The other sticks made their targets, exploding inside and below the level of the sills under which the attackers were now crouched, protecting their heads from both the blast which emerged and the bits of stone crashing down from above, some of them big enough to kill. Steady gunfire was coming from the main position as Xavier flung himself into the doorway and with great care lit the fuse. Just as he did so, a second grenade dropped no more than ten feet away from him.
Cal Jardine dashed forward and just kicked it, sending it spinning away before he flung his body into the doorway to huddle beside the miner, who had used his own bulk to shield the charge, cheek pressed against the cold bronze and arm up to cover his face, aware that time was limited; that fuse was fizzing. Thankfully, exploding in the open, the blast of the grenade, now too far away to wound, was dispersed and, as soon as that dissipated, Cal grabbed Xavier and dragged him away.
There was no time left to get clear, the only security lay in using the corner of the building. Dodgi
ng into the narrow alleyway, both men hunched down, hands pressed over their ears as the charge went off with an almighty drum-splitting boom. Cal was unable to observe the result, not that he was looking, but when he did open his eyes and look out it was to see a mass of workers, led by Laporta, rushing across the intervening ground, yelling and firing their weapons, to rush through the blasted and now-gaping doorway and into the building. Once inside, there could only be one outcome.
Darkness was upon them by the time the exchange was fully secured, every defender either killed or taken prisoner, mostly the former. The telephonic systems, the stacks of switching gear, housed in the basement, were intact, thus restoring communication not only with Madrid, but also with the rest of the world. It was a dust-covered Cal Jardine that joined an equally mucky and weary Vince Castellano and a delighted, if grubby, Florencia, who gave him a hug.
‘That,’ Cal sighed, ‘has got to be enough for one day. Time to go back to the hotel and clean up.’
It was the look on Florencia’s face that provided the first hint, the words that followed the facts.
‘Querido, some of the soldiers have taken refuge in the hotels. The Colón and the Ritz are under siege.’
‘You did not think to tell me this before?’ As usual, when challenged, Florencia did not look abashed, but defiant, as though it was he, not she, who might be in the wrong. ‘What did you think I was going to do, rush back and see if my luggage was safe?’
‘I told you, guv,’ Vince said. ‘You should have stayed in the hostel with us, not some swanky hotel.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
This time Cal Jardine was a spectator to a siege, and for once he was watching professionals at work. The Civil Guards were the body attacking the Ritz and doing so with some skill; it being dark, they had brought up searchlights and aimed them at the hotel front to blind the opposition and cover their own manoeuvres. No one moved without an order, no order was executed that did not come with a corresponding distraction to confuse the defence.
This was an organisation, near-military in its set-up, accustomed to dealing with civil unrest, and they were trained in the necessary tactics of fire and movement as well as those required to take a static obstacle. The only drawback to the man watching was the fact that one of the windows they were firing at was the corner room he had left in such haste twenty hours previously.
The rest of the city was far from quiet, but all the indications now pointed to it being mopping up rather than pitched battles against the insurgents. With the telephone exchange working again, news was coming in from all over the country as well as abroad, though it was probably being managed to sustain morale. Most important was that Madrid seemed to be safe for the Republic; if the capital had fallen to rebels, it would have been fairly certain the coup had succeeded. As it was, there was some hope it could be suppressed.
Sitting on a wall behind those searchlights, far enough away from the fighting to feel reasonably safe, and after a short but restorative nap, time for reflection was possible, aided by bread, cured ham and a bottle of wine, interrupted only occasionally by the distant blast of a grenade. Vince had taken his party back to the hostel to eat and sleep, while Florencia had gone to her own home to clean up and acquire a change of clothes more suitable for the counter-revolution.
There had been no end to the desire of the various factions to show their colours, usually huge flags on trucks full of armed men roaring around the city to no seeming purpose, which did lead Cal to wonder if the present alliance would hold. The mistrust was not hidden; it was out in the open whenever the various groupings came across each other viz. those Asturian miners.
‘Florencia told me I would find you here.’
It took a moment to realise he was being addressed, and another to turn from English thoughts to spoken French, but no time at all to recognise the voice. Almost immediately Juan Luis Laporta was sitting beside him, looking right ahead at the starkly illuminated Ritz Hotel, this as an explosion erupted.
‘It is like a film, no? Eisenstein.’
‘Does the hero die or survive?’ Cal replied, while he wondered at the reason for the visit. The anarchist leader was an important person and should surely be busy, too occupied certainly for an evening stroll and a leisurely chat.
‘There are heroes dying all over Spain, my friend, but more are still living.’
The appellation was interesting; even if the relationship throughout the day had moved from downright abrasive to a degree of mutual respect and cooperation, it had certainly never been friendly. Tempted to push as to why it should be so now, Cal nevertheless hesitated, and asked how matters were progressing elsewhere in the country, only to be given a taste of how confused was the whole situation.
Seville was very much in the hands of the insurgents, the whole of Morocco too, with, it was reported, a quick bullet for any officers who hinted that they might stay loyal to the Republic. Burgos and Valladolid had declared for the uprising – not surprising given the old heartlands of Castile and León had always been rightist in their politics – while the central Pyrenean foothills were a stronghold of the deeply religious and conservative Carlist movement and thus natural allies to the generals.
Elsewhere it was confusion, with no way of knowing whose side anyone in authority was on; before them the Civil Guard were supporting the workers, elsewhere they were in the opposite camp, the Assault Guards the same. Some regional authorities were still refusing to arm the workers, too fearful to give guns to those they trusted just as little as they trusted the army, while in separatist regions like the Basque country, support for the Republic was more an opportunistic grab at regional autonomy than driven by conviction.
Worryingly, the insurgents seemingly held the major military port of Cádiz and the narrows at Gibraltar, though Valencia was an unknown quantity. Most of the navy was loyal – the lower deck had been very organised – yet there existed ships where the officers had prevailed, and it was suspected such vessels would be heading for the Straits to help the Army of Africa get troops and heavy equipment to the mainland.
A depressing rumour was circulating that two large German warships were also actively screening such a crossing from interference, which removed the doubt – if there ever had been any – that this was a fascist coup welcomed in both Berlin and Rome, who had already, it was fairly obvious, supplied weapons like rifles and machine guns.
Unclear was what the democracies would do in response, for neither France nor Britain would be happy to see Spain go into the dictators’ camp, the latter especially, with the route to India to protect. Yet just as telling was the fact that there was no mention of the Royal Navy in what Laporta was telling him; a mere gesture from the fleet based at Gibraltar and Valletta, which included several battleships, would send those two German warships packing.
Tempted to mention the fact, Cal kept silent; from what he knew of the British officer class, naval or otherwise, sympathy for Republican ideals was not a common thread. They would only act if instructed to do so and, quite inadvertently, he was back in Simpson’s, looking into the faces of the kind of folk who constituted what really passed for public opinion in good old Blighty – if they had no sympathy for the dispossessed in their own country, it was highly likely they would have even less for foreign workers.
‘How soon will this end?’ the Spaniard asked, waving a lazy hand at the besieged hotel, as a sudden burst of fire chopped bits of stone from the frontage.
‘It will end as soon as whoever is leading the defence realises they cannot win. It’s a choice, really: die in the hotel, or come out and hope the treatment you receive is better than that being meted out by your confrères.’
Cal waited, not with much in the way of hope, to see if Laporta would condemn some of the excesses being reported from around the city, albeit mostly by rumour; little mercy was being shown to those who failed to quickly surrender, and not much to those who did. A tale was circulating that some priests had been shot, accus
ed by a party of workers of firing at them from their steeples, and in many places it seemed summary executions were taking place as old scores were settled with ruthless employers or outright class and political enemies.
Such acts were troubling but not unexpected; revolutions were always bloody affairs and luck played as much a part in survival as any other factor. Able to intervene, Cal Jardine would have stopped such activities, yet he knew that even if the desire to do so was strong, leaders like Laporta risked a bullet themselves if they interfered with passions let loose after decades of resentment. Turning a blind eye was often necessary, regardless of personal feelings.
That he, himself, had a streak of callousness Jardine did not doubt; how could it be otherwise after the experiences he had endured in the last six months of the Great War? When you have seen your friends die, led men in a battle knowing many will not survive, witnessed mass slaughter and inflicted death on enemies yourself, life loses some of its value. When you have, in cold blood, shot your wife’s lover in the marital bed you shared, it is hypocrisy to expect morality in conflict from others.
‘I would just bring up the Schneider cannon and blast them to hell,’ Laporta said, breaking too long a silence.
‘I wouldn’t. My luggage is in there.’
‘Why did you come to Spain, monsieur, at such a time?’
Implicit in the question was the intimation that he had some prior knowledge of the coup, which was true, not that he was about to say so. ‘The People’s Olympiad.’
‘You are not a socialist.’
‘I am not anything. I was in London, I was asked to do something as a favour and I agreed.’