Not Just a Soldier’s War Page 5

  ‘I’m pretty new – a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Hey, Smarty, d’you hear that? This girl’s straight from home and we’ve entrusted life and limb to her.’

  ‘She seems a better bet than some I could remind you of. You came down by train?’

  ‘I drove down.’

  Haskell said, ‘Brilliant railway system.’

  ‘It’d be even better if the two unions were on better terms,’ Smart replied.

  ‘That’ll never happen. The UGT and the CNT hate one another’s guts. Red is red and black is black and never the twain, etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘Give it time, give it time.’

  Eve didn’t understand this exchange but she had begun to realize that the civil war was more complicated than she had supposed.

  ‘You must have impressed Alex for her to have trusted you with one of these treasures.’ Haskell indicated the converted Bedford.

  ‘She did a test run with me. We went miles and miles on little tracks.’ Smart laughed. ‘Alex would. She’s not as dotty as you’d think.’

  ‘Is she dotty?’

  ‘Unpredictable.’

  ‘How’s your Spanish, Anders?’ Haskell asked.

  ‘I’ve been learning it from a book, and I’ve picked up a smattering.’

  Smart said, ‘I think we owe it to the comrades to learn as much Spanish as we can, and about their new social order.’

  ‘Don’t sound so smug, Smarty, not everybody’s got an ear for it like you.’

  ‘It’s important to know they’ve dropped Don and Señor in favour of Comrade or informal names.’

  ‘Not everywhere, not everywhere. Trouble is,’ Haskell went on, ‘there’s Spanish and there’s Spanish. Some find Catalan is as difficult as Russian, and nobody understands Basque, not even other Spaniards.’ They drifted in and out of conversations. Haskell, who appeared to have a sixth sense for hazards, looked up from time to time: ‘burro – donkey’, ‘camion – truck’, and once, pointing to a picturesque castle in the distance, ‘See? Un castillo.’

  Eve replied, ‘Yes, “castles in Spain”.’

  ‘Too damned many,’ commented Smart. ‘It’s no wonder the peasants had had enough of the old system.’

  ‘And knowing human nature, not so surprising Franco’s determined to take them all back.’

  ‘I have a brother out here. I keep wondering whether I might come across him.’

  ‘So is Smarty’s aunt, isn’t she, Smarty?’ Haskell seemed to find this quite funny, but Smart didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Oh, Smarty darling, don’t get so po-faced over it, nobody can help their relations.’

  ‘Just drop it!’

  ‘I know you don’t agree, but it’s best to have these things out in the open.’

  ‘You have anything you like in the open. Now shut up!’

  Haskell did shut up, but one could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Eve had worked in the close company of women for long enough to recognize that this was an old argument and that Haskell was using her to score points.

  After about ten minutes had elapsed, Haskell shoved a piece of paper in front of Eve: ‘On the side of the Nationalists!’

  The silence was resumed until Smart said, ‘You can be such a bitch, Rene.’

  Haskell put an arm about Smart, who didn’t brush her off. ‘I know, darling, but better in the open. Look, Anders isn’t shocked to death that your Aunt Flo thinks the sun shines out of Franco’s arse.’

  ‘And so coarse. Florence is not my aunt, as you very well know.’

  ‘Good as, darling.’

  ‘Look,’ Eve said, ‘could you both just shut up for a bit? I’ve never driven in a proper convoy before.’ She sensed rather than saw the moue they made at one another, but they did shut up.

  On the outskirts of a small village, the commander dropped the leading vehicle to a crawl and signalled them to slow down.

  ‘More good old razzmatazz,’ Haskell said.

  ‘Don’t pretend the old ennui, darling,’ Smart said without rancour. ‘You make a four-course dinner of it.’

  Villagers came out of their homes and waved enthusiastically. In her wing-mirror Eve saw the Australian leaning out, trying to shake every hand that reached up to his. Still a bit wary of the huge Bedford, she hardly dared allow it to move ahead when people gathered round and offered their hands. Except for the distant shelling when she was out with Alexander, she had hardly been aware of the war, yet as she watched the commander and the Australian leaning out and touching every hand offered, she felt that she was taking part in a kind of triumphal parade. ‘Is it always like this?’

  Smart replied, ‘A lot of the time. Poor sods, had centuries under the old system, not much better than slaves. These people aren’t going back.’

  Haskell said, ‘Germany can send all the bombers it likes, the spirit of our comrades will keep them going. Right is on the side of the Republic, traa-raa!’

  The convoy rolled into El Goloso without mishap. The two nurses took their bags and led the way into the hospital laughing and chatting, reminding Eve of days when she and her friends at work had forgotten any earlier friction as soon as they were free of their close confinement.

  The hospital was alive with activity: busy people hurried to and fro carrying boxes, packets, drums, parcels, awkward and unwieldy cots, mattresses, straw-filled palliasses and kitchen equipment.

  Tall and bearded, the head of the medical service greeted them briefly, shuffling their documents about. He signed some, then handed them back. ‘Sorry, but there is a change to whatever orders you have. You’ve been seconded to us for a few days while we move in, then I think you’re to collect vehicles from Madrid. A patrol truck and guards will travel with you.’

  Ozz nodded. ‘OK, doc, suits me.’

  ‘Mrs Alexander wants you to telephone her, Miss Anders. Tell her we’re grateful for letting us have a couple o’ extra hands. Can I leave you to it? We’re awfu’ busy just now.’ He banged on a wooden partition and a nurse popped her head round the door. ‘Ah, nurse, find a wee corner for the young lady, will you?’

  Eve followed the nurse, who turned out to be French, to a room full of packing cases with a couple of mattresses propped up on end. Leaving her bag, she was taken to where she and Ozz would help the nurses with the kitting-out of the Bedfords.

  Ozz said, ‘I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to drive one of these to the front.’

  ‘Is that where they are going?’

  ‘It’s what they are, mobile field-hospitals.’

  ‘Where do you think they’ll go?’

  ‘La Granja, so I heard. Our side are launching an offensive.’

  Ozz turned out to be a really good companion. He had a sixth sense about where everything might be found, and the smile on his face seemed to suggest that he found everything faintly entertaining. ‘If you need the little girls’ place, it’s down along the hall there. When you come out, go down that corridor and I reckon you’ll come to some kind of eating place. I’ll be there. It won’t be flash, but they’ll feed us poor travellers.’

  They were given bread, bully beef and some black tea. After they had eaten, they sat companionably on a couple of boxes. Eve liked Ozz, liked his easy-going manner, his open, rugged features, his broad brow made broader by hair clipped short above his ears and standing up in a high, unruly mop. It was his hair that gave the impression that he was a bit of a comic, but his deep-set eyes were intelligent and shrewd.

  ‘Not often you see a woman driver. How long you been at the depot?’

  ‘I’m pretty new. This is my first proper assignment.’

  ‘That so? Y’ done well, Andy. Nice roads, but driving on the wrong side can be a real pig when you’re not used to it. Yeah, y’ done well.’ She had done better than well. If she’d been a man, she bet he wouldn’t have given her a pat on the head. ‘It was nice driving through those villages. What a welcome!’

  He nodded. ‘A line of trucks always looks as though something�
�s happening. I reckon it must be hell for them; it would be for me. The set-up here was bloody medieval before the Republic. I’d cheer too, whoever came to help me hang on to my nice new democracy.’ He paused. ‘D’you mind if I ask you something sort of personal?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘Why does a girl want to come out here and drive trucks?’

  ‘Same reason you did, I imagine.’

  ‘To run in the Olympics?’

  ‘I thought I could do something useful. What d’you mean about the Olympics?’

  ‘I’m a bit of a runner.’ He raced two fingers across his knee. ‘Y’ know? Hundred yards sprint, hurdles. I was at the games.’

  ‘In Berlin?’

  ‘No, not them. The real ones, the games in Barcelona, the People’s Games. You never heard about it?’ Eve shook her head. ‘They were held in Barcelona in the true Olympic spirit, not like that Berlin circus.’ He laughed. ‘All the good guys came to Barcelona,’ he said. ‘Ever hear of Sam Aarons?’

  ‘I may have, my brothers were always talking about sport.’

  ‘He’s a good Aussie athlete. He ran at the People’s Games, and stayed on too. I meet up with him sometimes. This is a place where you keep meeting up with the same people.’

  ‘I hope so. My brother Ken is here.’

  ‘Is that so? Which outfit is he with?’

  ‘Fifteenth Brigade.’

  ‘The British Battalion?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They did good in Jarama, the Fifteenth.’

  ‘Did they? I haven’t heard from him in weeks.’

  Ozz Lavender noticed the faintly sad smile that played about the lips of his beautiful comrade. Here, in this place where they were all strangers, no matter the extent of the camaraderie, or the emotions that escaped through the eyes, it didn’t do to intrude.

  Eve shrugged away her worry about Ken. ‘Isn’t it time we started work again, Ozz?’

  She stubbed out her cigarette under her heavy shoe. At once Ozz picked it up. ‘Smoking a whole ciggie, stomping it out, says “rookie”. Here, keep it in an empty matchbox. You’ll be glad when there’s no ciggies for love or money.’

  Eve couldn’t imagine wanting a cigarette enough to be reduced to smoking dog-ends like a down-and-out.

  That night Eve fell into the deep sleep of physical and mental exhaustion and awoke next morning refreshed and full of energy for a day of helping in the preparation of the field-hospital. Aware that Ken was most likely somewhere out there in the field of battle, she didn’t allow herself to think too much about the scores of rolled-up stretchers and the hundreds of boxes stencilled: ‘Sterile field-dressings, DO NOT BREAK OPEN UNTIL NEEDED FOR IMMEDIATE USE.’

  Four

  Lieutenant Kenneth Wilmott, International Brigader of the 15th Brigade, British Battalion, was moving over the hilly countryside towards Villanueva de la Cañada. He was accompanied by 50,000 men. This was the number committed by the Republic to prevent the fascists from taking Madrid. The offensive was on a small front and as the 50,000 progressed towards the new battle front, they fouled the very atmosphere in which they moved. Dust flew up at every step, encrusting their profusely sweating bodies. There was precious little water to drink, certainly none at all to wash in. It was not surprising that flies were everywhere.

  Spanish soldiers from the south, many of whom worked in the vineyards and vegetable fields, were accustomed to working under the sun, but to the men of the 15th Brigade it was hot beyond anything they had ever thought possible. Their thirst was almost unbearable.

  As they progressed slowly towards the battle, with shells from enemy guns falling all around them, Vallee, a Welsh sergeant of the 15th Brigade, who had been with Ken Wilmott since they had had their Jarama battle-wounds treated at La Pasionaria hospital, shouted, ‘You know, boy, they say a pebble is the thing. You suck it like a boi-eld sweet.’

  Ken Wilmott shouted over his shoulder to the NCO, whom he had grown to like for his humour and his generous nature, and to admire for his courage and intelligence, ‘I’ve been sucking a bloody button the last half-hour, and I can’t spit sixpence. Makes me think about water, buckets and buckets of it.’ Here, in the sweltering mid-summer heat, there was none. If they weren’t all to die of thirst they needed to take the fortified village. The young lieutenant couldn’t imagine how they would keep going in the dreadful heat without water. ‘If you can find a pebble that hasn’t been peed or shat on, then help yourself, Vallee old son.’

  Sergeant Vallee suddenly shouted, ‘Bloody hell! Will you look at that, boy.’

  Suddenly, as though by magic, a refugee family appeared on the battle field, their meagre belongings piled on to a cart drawn by two horses with rags binding their eyes. Atop their possessions were seated two small children and an ancient couple. A youth and a woman were hanging on like grim death to one horse, while a man and a girl tried to control the other. The grandmother told her beads as she bent protectively over a baby, and the grandfather protected a couple of hens in a wicker cage without the aid of a rosary.

  The little group halted. The soldiers shouted at them to get off the road. Go away. Get going, anywhere but here. The horses bucked and shied at every shell which made the exchange with the soldiers very difficult. Ken Wilmott patted the rump of one of the horses and gave the grandmother a friendly smile which she did not receive at all well. Vallee fared better with her. He produced three glacier mints from somewhere, one each for the children and one for the grumpy old lady. With forceful gesticulations the soldiers tried to tell the family that there was a battle going on.

  ‘Hell’s bells, Pedro, they know that. Let’s get them off the road.’ (Vallee, who called all Spanish soldiers Pedro, was in turn called Blanco which, because Vallee had the blackest of black skins, the Pedros thought was a very original and hilarious idea. ‘I been called worse than that, boy. I been called a Taffy before now.’)

  Once the family had been moved away from the falling shells, the little group which had dealt with them turned its attention back to the objective of cutting off Villanueva de la Cañada where a fascist resistance force was holding fortified positions. As the Republican troops advanced they were subjected to continual machine-gun fire. Ken Wilmott, making his way a little ahead of his friend, called back, ‘Suck a pebble you said, didn’t you? And you had glacier mints all the time.’

  ‘I was keeping them as a surprise. For after we have taken this place.’

  Lieutenant Wilmott was about to reply when his left hand was knocked away from his rifle. He felt nothing, but from his previous experience he knew that he had been hit. Blood ran down his arm.

  Crouching, Vallee ran forward. ‘You been ’it, boy.’

  ‘I know that, you dozy Welshman.’

  Vallee pulled a dressing from his pouch and ripped it open with his teeth. Already flies were buzzing at the scent of blood.

  As Vallee bound the wound, he read aloud from the packet, ‘“Sterile field-dressings, DO NOT BREAK OPEN UNTIL NEEDED FOR IMMEDIATE USE.” Thank the Lord it was an Englishman needed this, boy. If it had been one of the Pedros, they wouldn’t have known about that. Might have been ripping dressings open any old time.’ He grinned, his large mouth pulling back over his large teeth.

  Vallee was the first black man Ken had ever known, and he could still be surprised by the pinkness inside his friend’s mouth and on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet. In their weeks together they had become good friends. They had promised one another that once the Republic had ousted the insurgents, the two of them would ‘Go and have a dekko’ at Africa. ‘Land of my Fathers, you see, boy,’ Vallee would say, demonstrating great Welshness in his vowels.

  The wound dressed, they resumed their previous positions in the advancing line. Keeping his mind on the cover ahead, Ken supported his courage by shouting inconsequential banter at Vallee. ‘What else…?’ A spray of machine-gun bullets ricocheted around them, cutting off sound.

  Vallee,
a few yards to the Lieutenant’s rear, shouted, ‘What else what?’

  ‘What else you got stowed away, like the mints? A nice cold beer? How about it, old son?’

  Ken Wilmott couldn’t hear Vallee’s reply in another hail of machine-gun bullets and artillery shells exploding very close to their positions. He looked back and saw Vallee half-concealed behind a little rise of rock. ‘You all right, Vallee?’

  Vallee did not reply.

  When Ken Wilmott crawled back to his friend, he found the black Welshman face down in a pool of blood. He turned him over. The bullet must have gone straight into his mouth and out of the back of his neck. Already the flies were black swarms in his mouth, his ears and along the rims of his large open eyes. Wilmott closed the sergeant’s eyes and tried to pull his tin hat over them, but in the urgency of battle there was no time for the dead. ‘Sorry, old son, it’s the best I can do.’

  By now the pocket of Nationalists in Villanueva de la Cañada were within firing range, but the fascists had the advantage of machine-guns. To Ken Wilmott, as he lay in a ditch, just one in a line of men with rifles, the day seemed endless. Perhaps it was the loss of blood, perhaps it was the intense heat, or the raging thirst, but the battle took on a strange air of unreality. It was as though he was in a picture house watching a film, urging on the good guys. Then, quite suddenly, as dusk was falling, the firing petered out.

  Something was happening in the village.

  The brigade held their breath as a group of women and children moved towards them, shuffling along the road in close formation. Between the two lines of fire they came slowly forward, huddled, crouching, the kids wide-eyed and clinging, all of them obviously scared to death. In any number of different languages, the men of the brigade started to shout at them to move, to hurry, to get away, to get off the road. But still the group shuffled slowly forward.

  Ken Wilmott raised his head and was about to rush forward to urge them on when, like others in the advance line of the brigade, he saw that the tight formation and the shuffling progress was because they were being used as a human shield, urged on by a group of Nationalist troops with bayonets fixed.