by Jack Ludlow
Excited, cheerful, making jokes, they shouted happily and incomprehensibly at any human or animal presence they encountered, travelling, once they were past the outskirts of the city, on an uneven road that ran up from the coastal plain through the high hills and beyond into open country dotted with dwellings but few large settlements. Pretty soon the clouds of dust thrown up by those ahead calmed the enthusiasm; a shut and covered mouth became the norm.
Yet they could not help but be like the kids they were, eager to drink in the details of a strange landscape, earth that alternated from being baked dry, with red rock-filled fields, then, in more hilly country, changing to deep-green and abundant grasslands, with thick, small, but well-watered forest and grand if rather faded manor houses.
A few miles further on, the trees were sparse and isolated, under which goats used the shade to stay cool, grubbing at earth that would provide little sustenance, while water came from deep-sunk wells and was obviously a precious commodity.
Cal and Vince were looking at the country with equal concentration but with a different level of interest. Wells could mean a water shortage and that would have a bearing on what was militarily possible, especially as they were easy to corrupt. They were high above sea level, but it was no plateau; too many high hills made sure that movement would be observed and at a good distance, allowing any enemy to set up their defences in plenty of time.
Fertile or near-barren, the crop fields, pasture and olive groves were small and enclosed by drystone walls, another fact immediately noted by a pair looking out for the conditions under which they might have to fight, such structures presenting excellent cover when attacking, while being perfect for defence in what Cal Jardine suspected would be small-unit engagements.
With a keen sense of history, he could not help but also imagine the other warriors who had passed this way over the centuries, fighting in these very hills and valleys: Iberian aborigines facing migrating Celtic tribesmen, they in turn battling the Carthaginians, who in time fell to the highly disciplined Roman legionaries. After several centuries those same Romans lost the provinces to the flaxen-haired Visigoth invaders, the whole mix progenitors of the present population.
There would be Moorish blood too, for the warriors of Islam would have come this way as they conquered in the name of Allah, an incursion from Africa that took them all the way, before they were checked, to the middle of modern France. They were passing through the same landscape as eleventh-century knights like El Cid, advancing to throw the Moors back under a papal banner in that great crusade called the Reconquista, an event that still seemed to define Spain as much as their American empire and the horrors of the Inquisition.
In the beginning they were in territory that was friendly and untouched by conflict, cheered and showered with flowers by the peasants in the hamlets they passed through as much for being Catalan as being Republican supporters of the government, which made the shock of their first encounter with the presence of an enemy all the greater, signalled at a distance by a column of smoke, slowly rising into a clear blue sky, the whole image distorted by waves of hot air.
The small town, not much more really than an extended village, sat in a fertile plain. Beyond that the road they had travelled split in two, one wide and the main road to Saragossa, the other nearer to a track. All around, though distant, lay higher ground, the source of the water that fed their trees and crops, though in late July it was beginning to show signs of baking from the relentless summer heat, while not far off a high and deep pine-forested mound overlooked the place, a huddle of buildings bisected by the road, with a small square dominated in normal times by the church; not now.
First they had seen the burning buildings; what took the eye now was the row of bodies, some shot, some strung up to trees, the latter having been tortured as well, the naked flesh already black from being exposed to the unrelenting sun. There were, too, in a couple of the untorched houses, young women, lying in positions and a state of undress which left no doubt about what they had suffered before they had been killed, while over it all there was the smell of smoke, burnt and rotting flesh; many of the youths they led could not avoid the need to vomit, which led to them being laughed at by their less squeamish Spanish companions.
Not everyone was dead or mutilated; as in most scenes like this there were those who had survived, either by hiding or not being a target of the killers, soon identified as members of the Falange, well-heeled youths who had been aided by the local Civil Guard in ridding the nation of people they saw as their class enemies. Those who came upon this did not at the time know this to be a scene being replicated all over the Peninsula, and it was not confined to one side or the other, especially given the desire for revenge for years of oppression or bloody peasant and worker uprisings.
Although he had watched these boys train for their various events, Cal hardly knew them, even Vince’s boxers, something which he would have to redress if he was to lead them properly. There was a downside to that, of course: faces became names and names became personalities, and when they were wounded or killed, which was unavoidable once the bullets stared flying, it made it that much harder to be indifferent. Now both he and Vince were busy, reassuring those throwing up, telling them to ignore the Spanish taunts, insisting, not without a degree of despondency, that they would get used to it.
‘Takes you back, guv,’ Vince said, once they were out of earshot.
Both had seen too many scenes like this, as serving soldiers in what had been Mesopotamia and was now Iraq, a part of the world more soaked in blood over time than even this. Vince had many times reflected that you could not walk a yard in that benighted part of the world without treading on the bones of the dead – Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and even Turks, and it was made no better by the presence of Europeans – the killing just became industrial.
‘The mayor, a left socialist, was the first to die,’ said Florencia, who had been part of the questioning of the survivors, that carried out as the bodies were cut down and laid out with those shot or bayoneted. ‘Followed by anyone who had served on the local committees.’
She pointed to the other ubiquitous feature found in a Spanish village square, the taberna. ‘Once they had strung up the owner they drank his wine, every drop, and then the spirits.’
There was no need to say that fired up by that, the men who had done this would then have gone on the rampage – that was how it went, first the settling of perceived scores, followed by a celebration and inebriation, leading to outright sack, the fate of captured towns and villages since time immemorial; knowledge did not, however, make it acceptable.
‘They came from Barcelona, the pigs,’ she spat, ‘running away like the dogs they are.’
Cal was used to such mixed metaphors from Florencia, but he was tempted to say you could not fault them for that, and the evidence was on that wall they had passed this very morning; the anarchists were likewise shooting the Falangists out of hand, and not just them, if they were rooted out in Barcelona.
Cal asked instead, ‘Do they know where they went?’
‘West, towards Lérida.’
Cal nodded and they went over to Vince. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I expect we will bivvy here for the night.’ He looked at the sky, now clouding over, with an even darker mass coming in from the east, promising rain; warm as it was, the boys would need to be under cover. ‘I’m going to talk to Juan Luis.’
‘Burial party, guv?’
Cal pulled a face, coupled with a sharp indrawn breath. ‘Best leave that to their own, Vince.’
‘They don’t seem in much of a hurry.’
‘We have sent for a priest from one of the villages we passed through,’ Florencia replied, in a manner that implied such an action was obvious. ‘The relatives have requested it.’
‘There must have been a priest here, girl,’ Vince growled, pointing to the church.
‘There was,’ she replied sadly, ‘but it was he who first identified those to be killed.�
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‘It’s dirty this, Vince,’ Cal said, ‘and I would think it’s about to get dirtier.’
His friend looked at the bodies, now in a line and covered over, his voice sad. ‘Can’t see how.’
Cal tapped him on the back. ‘Get the lads settled and fed if you can. Florencia, has Juan Luis asked about the strength of the people who did this?’ She shrugged, which left the possibility that such a basic set of questions had not been posed. ‘We need to question the survivors about more than victims. How many men came here, how were they armed, and more important, if the local Civil Guard joined them, what are their numbers and weapon strength now?’
The information that came back to him, an hour later, pointed to a potential total strength of eighty men, the majority blueshirts in the kind of cars the middle-class youths who made up the bulk of the Falange would own – fast and open-topped – their weapons rifles and pistols. The Civil Guard was more worrying, being more a military than a police force. They had both trucks and he knew from Barcelona they possessed automatic weapons including light machine guns.
The real question for the column was simple. Where were they now?
‘Don’t like that hilly forest,’ Vince said, when Cal discussed it with him.
‘Nor do I.’
‘It is not necessary,’ Laporta insisted, waving a hand at a sun that, in dying, rendered black and even more menacing the east side of the hill Vince had alluded to. ‘The swine are cowards who have run away. They could be in Lérida by now.’
Upset by the suggestion they needed to protect themselves, Laporta had been even more dismissive of the notion of digging a foxhole by the side of the road west and manning it with the sole machine gun he possessed, while covering the other exits with rifles and sentries. Also, they had explosives, wire and the ability to make charges; they could cover the areas of dead ground with booby traps, and tripwires that would set them off and alert the defence.
That too was dismissed as unnecessary, with Cal’s impression of the man sinking as quickly as it had previously risen outside the telephone exchange; especially galling was the way he had obviously translated the concerns Cal expressed to those men who surrounded him, his senior lieutenants, seeking their approval for his negative responses, which was readily given. Never mind what was right and what was wrong; it was as if he needed to reassure himself he was popular.
‘And,’ Cal said, ‘they could be sitting up a tree watching us through binoculars. If you don’t put out guards they might come back.’
‘My men are tired,’ he snapped. ‘They will not be happy to stay up all night and they are far too weary to dig. Besides, it is not the Spanish way to fight from a hole in the ground.’
‘They will be a damned sight less happy if some of them die from a slit throat.’
Said with venom, it brought a predictable response. ‘I command here.’
‘Then I ask permission to do with my men what I deem prudent.’
That was greeted with an expressive shrug. The slow salute with which Cal responded was as much an insult as a mark of respect and was taken as the former, but by the time Laporta could react he was looking at the man’s back. It was only in walking away that Cal realised it was he who had been foolish, and it was far from pleasant to acknowledge the fact.
He had approached Laporta when men whose good opinion he craved surrounded him. As at the Capitanía Marítima, he took umbrage automatically at what looked like a challenge to his authority when in their presence. Laporta alone, as they had been outside the besieged Ritz, had seemed a different fellow, and Cal was sure he had come to seek his help. He promised himself never again to make any suggestions unless they were out of both view and earshot.
‘I’ve told the boys we will sleep in the church,’ Vince said, ‘though there are a couple with Irish parents who have refused.’
‘Give them a week and they’ll sleep on the altar and drink the communion wine,’ Cal snapped, still angry with himself. ‘But we are going to have to take turns with them guarding the roads in. Our Spanish friends don’t think we need to.’
Vince looked at the cloud-covered sky. ‘There will be no moon, and they won’t fancy being stuck out in the pitch dark, so young and all.’
The implication was obvious; night guard duty with no moon was bad enough for the experienced soldier – you heard and saw things that were not there, but knew not to just shout or shoot. These keen but inexperienced boys would likely be trigger-happy and blasting off at threats more imagined than real. Being out in the open was a task for either himself or Vince, and much as he disliked the idea, Cal knew he would have to go out on his own.
‘A gunshot will do the trick.’ Cal jerked his head towards a group of Spaniards sitting outside the taberna, Florencia laughing and joking with them. ‘Even this lot will wake up to that.’
‘And shoot anything that moves,’ Vince growled. ‘So don’t you go rushing about or you’ll be their target.’
‘What I wouldn’t give for a box of flares.’
He got the eye from those worker-fighters as he went to talk to Florencia, not friendly either, with quiet ribald comments and stifled laughter. It was, he suspected, no more than a demonstration of stupid male pride, the same kind of thing he had experienced before in too many locations. It seemed the hotter the country, the more the menfolk felt the need to look and act with bravado, and that was doubled by what they had achieved so far in fighting the army.
He wanted to say to them that a healthy dose of fear and a bucketload of caution would serve them better, but he lacked both the language and the desire. At least Florencia rose and smiled at him, moving to take his arm, which did nothing to soften the looks he was getting, jealousy now thrown into the mix as, heads close, he explained his concerns.
‘We don’t want to give these poor village people any more grief, so it would be better if they moved to the centre of the village where they will be safer.’
As the last of the light was fading, Cal Jardine was out on the western edge of the village, a full water canteen over his shoulder, looking at the ground, eyeing those places where lay the kind of dead spaces into which a crawling man could move unseen, as well as the walled-off areas of planted crops, vines, olive trees and vegetable plots, which would help to cover a discreet approach. He used the remaining light to pick out a line of approach to the village, one he would use himself to get close unseen, then he selected a spot from which he could cover it.
That was a gnarled old olive tree, on a slight mound, that had probably been there since the Romans ruled. Being above ground was not comfortable – quite the reverse – but it gave him a better view if the cloud should break, and he knew from experience a crawling intruder rarely looked skywards, too intent on avoiding noise by taking care with what lay in front of him. Clambering up and lodging himself between two branches, his mood, a far from happy one, was not improved as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.
Even with eyes well accustomed to the dark there was nothing to be seen; it was all about listening, getting accustomed to the sounds that occurred naturally – croaking frogs, barking dogs, as well as raindrops hitting leaves and the chirping insects hiding under them – making sure his thoughts, which were unavoidable, did not distract him from his purpose.
CHAPTER NINE
The looks he got when he came back in the morning were close to sneers; nothing had happened, no threat had appeared and every one of the Spaniards had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Nor had any orders come to move on and by which route, which surprised him, given the supposed need to get to Saragossa quickly. Still, it was their fight, not his – the man in command, this Colonel Villabova, might have information not vouchsafed to Laporta; and if it was military incompetence, that was not something to which he was unaccustomed.
Years of training allowed Cal Jardine to get by on catnaps, one of which he took after a less-than-sustaining breakfast of unleavened bread and a fruit compote washed down with wa
ter; if there had been coffee, which he and his men had become accustomed to in Barcelona, the Falangists had pinched it. Then he spent twenty minutes lying dead flat on a warm stone, his hat pulled down to keep the sun out of his eyes and out to the world.
By the time he came round, Vince had drawn from the well and heated some water, insisting that the boys should wash and shave, even if some of them barely had the necessary growth; it paid to stay clean when you could because, when it came to a fight, you could spend a long time between opportunities.
He had also been at them before they went to sleep, insisting they washed their socks and inspected their feet and also showing them that a properly stuffed knapsack made a good pillow. Then he had ensured that, while their rifles were loaded, the safety catches were set to off.
Next they were lined up in singlets and shorts for exercises, which actually produced outright laughter from the anarchist contingent, but there were no complaints from the boys doing the leaps, squats and press-ups; they all took their own fitness seriously, and one, called Bernard, a marathon runner, had actually set off to do his usual long wake-up jog before breakfast, heading, as advised by Vince, due east. After exercises, given there were still no orders to move, Cal got them dressed and took them out into the open for training in fire and movement, the former in dumbshow.
‘My friends think you are a mad Englishman,’ Florencia said, as she joined Cal, with an air that half indicated she agreed with them.