Authors: Dave Boling
Xabier scanned the front pews, trying to gauge the impact of his words. He wished to shock them into alertness but not scare
them to the point that they could no longer absorb the message.
“I know a priest should stand here and tell you how wrong it is to take a life, that it is a mortal sin. But it is not a mortal
sin to give your life in the protection of all that is important or for a cause that is just. To protect your family with
your life is not a sin.”
A woman near the front gasped. The priest, who grew up worshipping in this church, who had known and provided clerical counsel
to many in the town, had committed a stunning heresy.
“It is difficult to understand the savagery of this war,” he continued. “I remind you of the trials of young Saint Agnes,
who was violated and murdered. You must not let that happen to your children or your wives; defend all that is precious to
you, even if it means giving your life or taking a life.”
Some sobbed openly now.
“I tell you this story only because you need to know the truth,” he said. “There has been too little truth told. It is not
a story of some ancient biblical atrocity. President Aguirre showed me a report of what happened recently to the parish priest
at Eunari. The Moorish troops of the rebels arrived as he was reciting mass.”
Xabier swallowed against his own emotions.
“They cut off his nose . . . and skewered it to his tongue; they sliced the ears from his head and left him to die, hanging
from the church bell tower. These troops, these murderers and defilers, are fighting for Franco only several valleys to the
south. Your lives, your family, your country may depend on you leaving this place or fighting to defend it.”
The planning of attacks involved mundane decisions regarding personnel, matériel, bomb loads, targets, and timing. But Wolfram
von Richthofen, from warrior stock and a noble caste, was more than an accountant of ordnance, more than a stationmaster eying
his watch to be certain his operation ran on schedule. Von Richthofen recognized a vehicle for virtuosity and creativity.
Attacks were about planning, yes, but also orchestration. Anyone can point an index finger to a crossroads on a map. But to
counterplay the timpani bass of heavy explosives with the pizzicato of fighter guns is the province of a maestro.
Reconnaissance photos revealed Republican troops in retreat near the small town of Markina, with no antiaircraft weapons to
offer resistance. Von Richthofen ordered bomber squadrons to attack in twenty-minute waves, hyphenated with fighter plane
assaults. After the initial bombs forced troops to flee on the open roads, the waiting fighters gunned them down there, and
those who sought protection from the fighters under cover were then convenient targets for the next wave of bombers.
Casualty numbers among the Republican loyalists, comprised mostly of Basque soldiers, were impossible to estimate as so many
were scattered in clusters along the roadsides and in the hills. Some were blown apart by the five-hundred-pound bombs; others
became torches when struck by the phosphorus incendiaries that flared pink when they burned flesh. Many more were gunned down
by the fighter planes.
Von Richthofen mentally superimposed the reports from his pilots onto the map of Biscaya in front of him. The map sprang into
three-dimensional relief as he visualized tiny columns of men in retreat, following the paths of least resistance, flowing
like running water in predictable tributaries, collecting at a low point or being funneled through a topographic sluice. The
intersection of paths that caused Guernica to sprout into a town centuries earlier made it a collection basin for troops.
If soldiers fled from the south or east toward the protection of what was left of Bilbao’s Iron Belt, they would coagulate
behind the one narrow passage, Guernica’s Renteria Bridge over the slender Oka River.
“Do any of you know anything about Guernica?” he asked his countrymen.
All shook their heads.
Around the blue dot on the map that symbolized the historic village of Guernica, Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen
drew a precise circle in yellow ink, marking the Condor Legion’s next target.
The dancing was Miren’s idea; she wanted to spend an evening as if there were no war, no Franco, no danger a few mountain
passes away. Lights were strung in the trees at the Plaza Las Escuelas. The music echoed other times; the
txistu
and tambourine were lively, with a fiddle and accordion added. At times, Mendiola stepped in with the crosscut saw that he
made to hum eerily when he stroked it with a fiddle bow. Miren could never hear the music and stay seated, so she and Miguel
danced several waltzes as friends watched over Catalina in her carriage.
This was part of their agreement. After hearing Father Xabier’s sermon, Miguel insisted that Miren and Catalina leave for
Bilbao, which was being lightly bombed but was fortified and sure to be the safest long-term stronghold. Xabier made arrangements.
She objected; she felt her place was with her husband, and she believed a family should not be splintered. Miguel convinced
her that it would be best for them all, but Catalina particularly. He would stay and watch over their home, then join them
in Bilbao if the Nationalist rebels arrived.
After leaving home that evening, the young couple felt awkward being out. They had seen the refugees and the agitated soldiers
retreat into town, and to dance in their presence seemed insensitive. They agreed their stay would be brief. But the music
overcame those thoughts, and the dancing caused them both to slip into a welcome fugue that softened all else.
Reasonably adept now, Miguel loved dancing with her, feeling a part of something special. He reveled in the memory of her
shock at his dancing at their wedding. He would never be a confident dancer, but he could at least remain vertical. He felt
the rhythm of the music and managed to connect it to his movements. He could not look at his wife’s feet or the movement of
her hips because it would disrupt his own tentative sense of timing. He focused on her face and on those eyes.
“Just one more,” Miguel said, taking Catalina from her carriage. They held the little girl between them and they stepped slowly
together.
“Papa is going to miss his little girl,” Miguel said, kissing Catalina on her cheek before tightly squeezing Miren. “And his
big girl.”
It was a slow waltz, with Mendiola’s saw emitting weary sighs. Miren wept at the sound. This is twice in the past few weeks,
Miguel realized, pulling her in even closer. She looked away and the lights became distorted stars, aligned in tree-shaped
constellations. As they turned, all else revolved around their core; the confusion, disorder, hunger, war, and pain were somewhere
else. Everything outside was blurred by her tears.
“It shouldn’t be for long,
kuttuna
,” Miguel said, placing a kiss on her wet cheek. “This will be over soon and we’ll be back together.”
Miguel tried to place Catalina back in her carriage, but she was sleepy and held on to her father’s shirt. He kissed her again,
and she relented. They walked home, arms around each other, amid the unsettling sight of desperate strangers in the town.
Miren would go to the market the next afternoon to lay in provisions for Miguel. He might be on his own awhile. She didn’t
want him to be alone and lonely and to be hungry as well. She knew how to stretch their money at the market and Miguel reluctantly
agreed. Tuesday morning his two girls would board the train for what ever safety they could find in Bilbao.
Wolfram von Richthofen settled into the cockpit of his roadster and piloted it southwest toward Burgos, using the hour of
travel time to or ganize his thoughts. He would confer with the Nationalist military leaders over the next step toward Bilbao.
To the gathering of brass in Burgos, von Richthofen outlined the plan for the Monday bombing of a town he knew to have no
air defense and no military relevance other than his presumption that enemy forces might be knotted there behind a small bridge.
Plans were now dependent on the weather reports from reconnaissance planes that would overfly Biscaya in the morning.
Von Richthofen wrote in his journal, “Fear, which cannot be simulated in peaceful training of troops, is very important because
it affects morale. Morale is more important in winning battles than weapons. Continuous, repeated, and concentrated air attacks
have the most effect on the morale of the enemy.”
Downstairs, two pilots in the officers’ lounge celebrated the day’s sortie over Markina and unwound with doses of cognac.
“Heard where we’re going tomorrow?”
“A place called Guernica.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Just another Spanish dump.”
( April 26, 1937)
Miren slept without stirring, but Miguel hardly dozed, passing the heart of the night making plans while studying his wife’s
outline in the darkness. He feared there were still angles and shapes he had not yet memorized. He mentally sketched in the
scenarios for the upcoming days and plotted the appropriate responses to each, with the protection of Miren and Catalina as
the sole objective. He would take on any man or group of men who neared his home or threatened his family.
But he kept losing focus. (Her hair has more waves since it was cut, he thought, as if its weight had caused it to stretch
and straighten, and it was now allowed to recoil and contract. Her braid used to rest across the pillow like a thick, dark
cable. Now it is fuller and frames her face as she sleeps.)
If troops came to his home, he would fight—Nationalists, Germans, Italians, Moors, all of them, it didn’t matter.
(She breathes so easily she hardly makes a sound, and she’s completely still except for her feet, which twitch at times, like
a puppy running in its sleep.)
If forces approached before they left for Bilbao, he would take the girls into the mountains, having already scouted caves
and the thickest forests to protect them. But troops were said to be thirty miles away; even with steady advancement, they
could not reach the outskirts of Guernica until the end of the week.
(She always sleeps on her left side, facing Cat’s crib, with both hands tucked up under her left cheek and her knees bent
like a mitered right angle.)
Options covered, he concentrated on storing the images of Miren. She would be there only one more night. His throat tightened.
More than a year old, Catalina called for only one feeding in the night; now, as she stirred in the predawn hours, Miguel
retrieved her and took her to Miren.
“
Kuttuna
, she’s ready,” he whispered, hoping to ease his wife into wakefulness. “Miren . . .”
Without actually wakening, Miren moved her pillow behind her shoulders and sat up to create a basket with her arms to hold
Catalina, who immediately went to work. She was a dainty diner; at times, when stopping to catch her breath, she would look
up at her mother and smile in gratitude. Miren dozed, feeling the comfort of the milk release, the closeness of her daughter,
and the relaxing sensation of Miguel rubbing the back of her neck in the dim night. Miren fell back into her peaceful sleep
as soon as Catalina was full and taken away by Miguel. But as was often the case when Miguel took hold of her, Catalina began
kicking and squirming, eager to play.
Miguel placed her back in the crib while he went to stir the fire in the main room, where they could play without disturbing
Miren.
“I shouldn’t be doing this, you know,” Miguel said directly into her face as she sat up on his leg. “You’ll think that it’s
time to play every night after feeding.”
“Ba-pa-ba-pa,” she replied.
“But you will be gone for a time and you won’t remember this when we’re back together.”
She offered no response except to reach toward his mouth and pull his upper lip toward his nose.
“Hey, you, ugh.” Prying her pincers off his mouth, Miguel held both her hands and gave her a pony ride. He was rewarded by
a belch that would have made her grandfather Justo proud.
They agreed that Miguel would not work in the morning; he would hike into the hills in the afternoon once Miren and Catalina
set off for the market. By evening, he’d quit his logging and they would all meet at Errotabarri for dinner with Justo and
Mariangeles before the Tuesday morning trip to Bilbao. They would settle into the temporary housing Father Xabier had arranged
and wait for the future to sort itself out.
Still awake at dawn, Miguel left his sleeping wife and daughter in their beds and walked to the bakery on Calle Santa María
in hopes of finding something other than grainy black bread for their breakfast. Strangers filled the streets, strangers who
were hungry and upset, dirty and homeless.
At the bakery, where he saw nothing worth buying, he was told that there had been a break-in the night before, the first time
they’d had such a problem. Some who sat in the bakery storefront that morning, finding comfort there in their mutual uncertainty,
told of hundreds of war-wounded who had been brought to the hospital at the Carmelite convent overnight. Men from the Loyola
Battalion had been burned and disfigured by phosphorus bombs; others had lost limbs or bled to death before they could be
treated by the few doctors available.
Surely, Miguel thought, these were tales from the alarmists, exaggerated like so many stories told in town. From more reliable
mouths, he heard talk of canceling the afternoon market and the
pelota
games scheduled for the evening. At the last moment, the council agreed that people would have too difficult a time making
it through the week without the market, and it would be impossible to get word to the outlying farmers who already were herding
stock toward town. And to cancel the
pelota
games might cause more alarm than necessary.
The news that all would proceed as normal settled Miguel as he trudged back home without the bread he’d sought.
Wolfram von Richthofen rose before dawn, executed his calisthenic ritual, and braced himself with a cool scrub-down and a
close shave. He brushed back his retreating hair and covered it with his garrison cap, pulling it low and tight so that the
German eagle on the front spread its wings directly between and only slightly above his eyes. Scanning the skies on his short
drive to the airfield, von Richthofen saw that the clarity overhead faded into a gray film over the mountains to the north.
The merest possibility of a weather-abort caused worries. Planes that sat on the ground did nothing to further the war. By
nine thirty, the reconnaissance planes touched down at the Vitoria air-field and the technicians hurried inside to develop,
fix, and print their film for the impatient von Richthofen. The reports were specific and encouraging: Light clouds were moving
into the region until midday but were expected to blow through by afternoon, leaving conditions ideal.
Father Xabier faintly attended to a series of irrelevant matters in the Santa María presbytery, and when he found himself
dusting the feet of Christ on a wall-hung crucifix, he finally conceded that his procrastination in returning to Bilbao was
a matter of avoidance. He had no way of knowing if reports of his inflammatory sermon had reached his superiors in Bilbao.
He had not asked for approval before taking on the mission to Guernica for President Aguirre, which in itself could be viewed
as a breach of protocol. He did not doubt that penalties or a defrocking were in the works already.
That Xabier, from his bed in the presbytery Sunday night, could hear the dance music from Plaza Las Escuelas convinced him
that his message had gone unheard. If the parishioners had fully comprehended the threat, there would have been no dancing
but running to safety far from this valley; there would have been no music except for the steady hum of cart wheels on the
road to Bilbao.
Had he known during the Sunday service that Republican forces were being bombed and strafed at Markina as he spoke, he would
have stressed that fact in his sermon. Had he known that the makeshift hospital at the Carmelite convent would swell Sunday
night with the dying and disfigured, he would have urged the flock to go look for themselves. To talk of blood is theoretical;
to have them see it, to step in it, to smell it as it darkened into sticky puddles would have been infinitely more illustrative.
Instead, they danced. Were the hazards less immediate, he would have been amused at this display. If there was to be a dance
then it was foolish to believe that anything would keep them from dancing. If there was to be a fight, they would fight—and
then
they would dance. None would argue that the circumstances were worthy of a battle to the death, but they obviously were not
enough to cause them to forsake an evening of dancing.
Dominus vobiscum
.
Xabier walked down Calle Santa María, past the eyesore
refugio
in the street, toward the train station. At the train station plaza, he found hundreds aligned to buy tickets for passenger
trains that were now running with sporadic unpredictability. As reluctant as he had been to return, biretta in hand, to face
his superiors, he knew he could not put it off another day. He walked back to Santa María, where a young priest arranged for
a car and driver to take him the twenty miles to Bilbao that afternoon. Soon enough, Xabier thought.
Justo was conditioned to take a break from work at midday, even if the noon meals had grown sparse. June would bring the twenty-third
anniversary of their marriage, and he still anticipated visiting with Mariangeles over lunch even if their separation had
been only the length of one morning.
He had been hoeing and weeding his early plantings, and when he came into the house he found Mariangeles mending a pair of
his pants that had been patched so many times that it was only her thread that sustained the thin fabric mosaic. Justo’s disregard
for his appearance always amused her. If she didn’t notice that the seat of his pants was split wide open and demand he surrender
them for repairs, Justo might wear them for months that way.
“The sheep have never complained,” he always responded, even after all the sheep were gone. Mariangeles also had volunteered
to bind a seam in a pair of pants that Miguel had ripped while logging, a favor for her daughter, who was so busy with little
Catalina.
“I am going to miss that little one,” Justo said, already wistful. “Give her a big kiss from her
aitxitxa
when you see them at the market.”
“You can give it to her yourself; they’re all coming up for dinner tonight for a last meal before they leave for Bilbao.”
“Do we have a few crusts of bread and crumbles of stale cheese that we have stolen from the mice that we can lay out for company?”
he asked sarcastically. “Or have we gotten lucky and are able to cook up the mice themselves?”
“Justo! We’ll have some soup and some vegetables and bread, and we will have each other’s company,” Mariangeles said, biting
off the end of a thread before asking, “Justo, do you think we should invite Miguel to stay here while they’re gone?”
“He wouldn’t be as lonely here,” Justo said. “But if he didn’t have work to do at his shop or in the woods, he would be going
to Bilbao with them already. Besides, I think that if he stayed with us he’d feel he needed to help us with the chores rather
than do his own work.”
“We might be able to convince him that he’d be safer here than in town,” Mariangeles continued.
“If we tell him we think it’s safer here, that would only convince him that there’s real danger to his home and belongings,
which would make him more determined not to leave,” Justo said, sitting at the table, examining the dried seed corn that Mariangeles
had soaked and softened into a soup for his lunch. “With all these strangers about, I’m sure he’ll want to stay at home to
protect their things.”
The image of rebels and Moorish mercenaries strolling through Guernica chilled them both. Was it possible they would come
into the hills and farms to take what they wished? Would it come to fighting the intruders with
laiak
and hoes and scythes?
“Mari . . . ,” Justo said.
“Yes . . .”
“Would you consider going with Miren and Catalina?” Justo asked. “It might be good for all three of you to go. I know you’ll
be safe here, and we’d be here to protect each other, but you might be a help to Miren with Catalina.”
“Are you trying to be rid of me? We’ve never spent a night apart. My place is here, with you. Miren will be fine with Cat.
She would feel the same way about staying with Miguel if it weren’t for the little one.”
“She is still so young and Bilbao is a very large place that isn’t always safe even in good times,” Justo said. “I worry about
her being alone with Catalina.”
“Justo, this isn’t about Miren and you know it; you’re worried about me being here,” she said. “I think we both need to be
at Errotabarri—together.”
“I am worried about this, Mari.”
Justo finished half the soup and offered the rest to his wife, saying he was filled to bursting. Mariangeles pushed the dish
of soup back to her husband, hugged him around his shoulders as he sat, and kissed his prickly cheek.
Wolfram von Richthofen’s intolerance of mistakes caused him to double-check the reconnaissance photos and intelligence information
before entering the operations room.
An initial flyover by a single bomber would serve as bait to lure fire from antiaircraft defenses that could be spotted and
eliminated. The vanguard plane would circle back and lead the bombers south through the valley. Fighter pilots were instructed
that anything that moved on those roads could be assumed to be unfriendly and should be attacked.
Intelligence reports assured von Richthofen that Mount Oiz had been secured by General Mola’s forces and would offer the perfect
“opera box” from which to view the bombing. The mountain rose to well above three thousand feet and was considered the bay
window onto Biscaya. The locals claimed the mountain was the home of the most powerful divinity, Mari, who controlled the
forces of thunder and wind. At times she assumed the shape of a white cloud or a rainbow, or she was said to ride upon fireballs
between the mountain peaks or drive through the sky on a chariot pulled by a team of snorting rams.
With an aide beside him, von Richthofen motored his Mercedes up the steep and twisting road on the west side of the mountain
at attack speed. He wore his heavy “watch” coat, collar peeled up at the back, and woolen gloves.
Once parked, von Richthofen lit a cigarette and admired the temperate afternoon. “We could not have asked for better weather,”
he said, taking a deep pull on his cigarette. He flipped the butt into a clump of heather, exhaled a white pennant of smoke,
and scanned the scenic hills to the north.