Authors: Jack Ludlow
‘My men,’ Laporta continued, after a very long silence, ‘those I commanded today, are not soldiers.’
Cal Jardine had to stop himself from too hearty an agreement, while at the same time thinking that the Spaniard was beginning to rise another notch in his estimation, because nothing so far had intimated anything other than a blind faith in the power of political
belief to overcome any difficulty. It took courage, of a sort, to admit it was insufficient.
‘Here,’ the Spaniard waved, to encompass the city, ‘they are effective, for they are people of the city, but once we are out in open country they will not have the skills needed to fight, and if they do not have these things they will suffer.’
If you want to ask for help, do so, Cal thought, knowing he was damned if he was going to volunteer. The question that followed only hinted at the possibility.
‘Will you stay and fight?’
‘I have other responsibilities.’
‘Florencia has told me of these.’ Laporta stood up; he was clearly not going to beg but he did point out that the shooting was dying down and that a contingent of Civil Guards was now making for the entrance to the Ritz Hotel. ‘If you do not decide to stay on, then I must thank you and your people for what you have already done this day.’
With hand held out to shake, Cal was obliged to stand up and take it, then, with a nod, Laporta departed.
The hotel guests, those who had not already fled and who had taken refuge in the basement with the staff, were being led out of the Ritz as he made his way towards the entrance. With his black and red CNT armband and a rifle sling on his shoulder, he was stopped by a grime-covered Civil Guard who demanded in Spanish where he thought he was going; getting over that took some doing – it was not easy for anyone to either understand him or believe that someone staying in a luxury hotel would be on the side of the government and filthy from a day’s fighting.
It required that he be vouched for by the hotel manager, a seriously harassed individual, aided by the receptionist – both of whom clearly disapproved of the connection – to identify him as a proper guest so he could go to his room, passing, in the lobby before the lifts, those who had defended the place and survived, sat in dejected rows, hands over their heads and eyes cast down.
The staff had clearly not taken part in the fighting. They were now working hard to get the public spaces back to rights so it could function again as a proper hotel, and once you got away from the parts adjoining the frontage it was hard to match up the deep-piled carpets and the walls lined with pastoral pictures and silk wallpaper as anything to do with what he had witnessed out front.
Reality bit as soon as he opened his own door without the need for his key. The room was a mess, the plaster to rear and side blasted off the walls by bullets, one or two of which had taken splinters out of the door, though Cal was grateful there was no sign of blood, despite the high number of spent shell casings by the window. His luggage had been ransacked and was strewn all over the floor, while the mattress was full of holes, having been used as a shield, but it was still likely to be more comfortable than any alternative, and bliss for a very weary man, so he heaved it back onto the bed frame.
Running the taps in the bathroom, he was grateful the water had been kept piping hot, and within minutes he was stripped off and soaping, before enjoying a good long soak, listening to the popping sounds of distant gunfire and the odd explosion through windows entirely lacking in glass. Dry, aching to sleep and fearing to be disturbed by an overzealous maid wanting to tidy the place, while enjoying the delicious irony, he hung the ‘do not disturb’ sign on his door handle, not forgetting to put out his shoes to be cleaned and
polished, before jamming a chair under the handle of the door.
Florencia had to bang on that for an age before he opened it the next morning; he had been having another luxurious soak and was wrapped in a towel, she in a fetching pair of blue overalls, a pistol at her waist and one in a holster for him. Whatever they had been when first acquired, the garment was now tailored to her enticing figure, with the top buttons undone enough to show a decent amount of cleavage, this while his towel failed in any way to hide his quickening interest.
Not much later, languishing in post-carnal relaxation, he found he was required to respond to a lover desperate to ensure his continued assistance, without being aware if Laporta had asked her to apply pressure. Any resistance to the idea of taking part in the move on Saragossa was sapped as quickly as had been his sexual energy, though he did manage the caveat that he would have to talk to Vince Castellano before making any decision.
If he had hoped that would be an end to Florencia’s attempts at persuasion he was disappointed; if a female anarchist was anything, she was persistent.
T
hroughout the barrage of passionately delivered arguments, Cal Jardine had to consider what he might be joining, never mind any commitment to back up Vince. To his mind, the principles of the group to which Florencia belonged had within them all the ingredients that could create a recipe for disaster, one policy crossing with another to produce mostly confusion; if everyone had a right to an opinion, as well as the entitlement to express it, who made the decisions – a committee, a show of hands?
The notion of any form of organised government was anathema, as were courts, the law, a police force and prison for offenders against the commonwealth. Taxation was transgression; a way of taking from the productive to feather the nest of the idle, indeed money itself was nothing but the primary step to the corruption of the ideal of an economy based on trust – he had observed some anarchists lighting their cigars with high-denomination peseta notes,
fortunately not his – which might be all very well in ordered times; these were far from that.
But now it appeared the CNT-FAI had a real problem, for they had to accept that not only was government necessary for Catalonia, but they had to be part of it. The streets had to be policed, the distribution of food and the provision of medical care supervised, while the not-so-minor problem of mistrust meant an organised military force needed to be maintained to ensure that crime was held in check, and also that no one body could exercise control. The Civil and Assault Guards had to be watched as well, to protect against any backsliding – for all their recent support, such one-time state entities were not to be trusted.
Observation over the last forty-eight hours had been confused, but for all the flag-flying and display it was obvious to even the most inattentive mind that the CNT-FAI activists were the party that had done most to save Barcelona, hardly surprising given they were by far the most numerous and committed. On barricades, and in those flying columns of truck-borne fighters, the red and black colours had been the most prominent by a factor of five to one. They were in a position to control what happened next, yet it was those very same principles Florencia espoused that prevented them for exercising that power.
To force others to accept their governance flew in the face of their core ideology; they did not believe in dictatorship, not even their own, which meant cooperation with other political organisations was inevitable, while at this moment, such consideration had to take a back seat to the primary task, the defeat of the revolt. Into that mix was thrown the endemic desire of the various factions who constituted the regional government that Catalonia should be an autonomous
federated province of Spain, if not an outright independent state, which put the whole state on a collision course with Madrid.
Laporta, apparently, had spent half the night arguing the toss with the other faction leaders and Catalonian separatists about how to proceed, both in governance and in pursuance of the conflict. The CNT was desperate and determined to go to the relief of Saragossa; everyone else, even if they had conceded the point, was concerned about the security of what they already held, fearful that a city denuded of so many fighters might be vulnerable to attack in what was a very confused picture about what was happening throughout the Peninsula.
‘Does the man ever sleep?’ Cal asked this while once more drying himself, after a second and shared bath. The saucy look he got in response made him grab for his clothes and answer with some haste. ‘We must go to Vince, who will be wondering what’s happening.’
The streets were quieter than the day before, but nothing like as settled as they had been prior to the uprising. Still lorries roared around, but the barricades had been opened and normality was in full swing: mothers pushing babies in prams, shopkeepers laying out their wares or patching damaged windows, even sweepers cleaning up the debris of the street battles. Tellingly there were no bodies – they had been removed – though the smell of their one-time presence had not faded in a sun-drenched city.
On street corners and outside important buildings, unshaven men in blue overalls and varied armbands, rifles slung over the shoulders, muzzles pointing down in the manner of the classic revolutionary, eyed passers-by with looks that would not have disgraced the most cheerless Civil Guard, who, tellingly, were not to be seen. Passing
damaged buildings, pocked with bullet marks, Cal was struck by one wall, where the indentations were mixed with the black stains of sun-dried blood.
Pointed out to Florencia as an obvious place of execution, he was struck by her indifference and wondered how it was that a woman so passionate in person, and one whom he had witnessed being kind and considerate over the time they had spent together, could now be so unfeeling. The spilling of blood did that, of course, the sight of bodies and the witnessing of killing hardening the senses until such a sight seemed normal, not softened by a sense of righteousness no less deep than the kind that had supported the Spanish Inquisition.
On arrival at the hostel, they found Vince giving his boys training in the very basics, lecturing them on how to strip, oil and reassemble their rifles, which, Cal knew from experience, he would keep at them to do until it was a task that could be carried out in the dark; rumours had abounded about the planned move on Saragossa, and looking into their faces, and watching Vince acting as an instructor, Cal was taken back to a time when he too had trained youngsters to be soldiers.
For all his misgivings about the British army and the way it was led and directed, he could recall the satisfaction that came from turning raw recruits into effective soldiers, as well as the pleasure of leading them in combat and watching them grow from boys into men. Would that happen now, would he feel the same with these kids? In the end it was the attitude of them and Vince that forced a decision; he was not prepared to leave these inexperienced boys to do what they intended without his help, which meant Cal, already swayed by Florencia, felt he had no option but to do likewise.
He and she left them at their training and went to find out
what the rest of the British party were up to, only to discover, as they toured their various places of accommodation, that they had already voted with their feet. By their very nature a spirited bunch of individuals, the athletes had, with a few exceptions, upped sticks and made some form of exit, many it seemed just deciding to hitchhike north to the French border. Those few he found still present he gave some money and told them to make their way home too, taking care to settle any outstanding bills due to their Spanish hosts.
Returning, they found Vince and his boys lined up on parade, weapons reassembled, looking smart, each with a blanket round their shoulders, a beret on their heads and a knapsack on their backs, leaving Cal to wonder if they had looted a store or paid for items that created a kind of uniform. He instituted a final equipment check, pleased that so little needed to be discarded.
Within the hour they set off for the assembly point, the park that surrounded the home of the Catalan parliament, becoming part of a stream that turned into a river of men, women, cars and trucks, not all armed, but all heading in the same direction, singing revolutionary songs with the light of battle in their eyes and bearing. Cynical as he was, it was hard for Cal Jardine not to be impressed.
Juan Luis Laporta greeted them, but not with much in the way of grace, which Cal put down to lack of sleep and being harassed by the need to get away his flying column of five hundred men, who would be the first to depart, with instruction to see how far forward lay the enemy. Allocated three trucks of their own and a motorcyclist to act as messenger, what Cal had taken to calling the Olympians were not at the head of the column, but they were close, not that it was
moving at any great speed; that was dictated by a van laden with armour plating, naturally slow.
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.