A Long Petal of the Sea(13)

This surprise attack gave the Republicans an initial advantage. Arriving at the front, the soldiers crossed the river on improvised craft, pulling along terrified, loaded-down mules. The engineers built pontoon bridges that were bombed by day and replaced by night. In the vanguard, Guillem spent days with no food or water when the supply chain failed. He went weeks without bathing, sleeping on the rocks, sick from sunstroke and diarrhea, constantly exposed to enemy fire, mosquitoes, and rats that ate anything they could find and attacked anybody who fell. The hunger, thirst, churning guts, and exhaustion were made worse by the fierce summer heat. Guillem was so dehydrated he no longer produced any sweat. His skin was burned, cracked, and blackened, as leathery as a lizard’s. He sometimes spent hours crouching, rifle in hand, jaws clenched, every fiber of his body taut as he waited for death, until his legs gave out under him. He thought he must have been weakened by the bout of typhus, and was no longer as strong as he once had been. His comrades were falling at a terrifying rate, and he wondered when it would be his turn. The wounded were evacuated at night in vehicles without lights to avoid being strafed by enemy planes; some of the most badly wounded begged to be given the coup de grace, because the possibility of falling into enemy hands was worse than a thousand deaths. The bodies that couldn’t be removed before they began to stink under the merciless sun were covered with stones or burned, as were the horses and mules: it was impossible to dig graves in this rocky ground, where the earth was as hard as cement. Guillem risked exposure to bullets and grenades to reach the bodies and rescue some kind of personal item to send back to their families.



None of the combatants could understand why they had been sent to die on the banks of the River Ebro. It made no sense to push into territory Franco controlled, and the cost in lives of maintaining their position was absurd. But to voice any objection out loud was an act of cowardice or treason, paid for dearly. Guillem fought under a lionhearted American officer who had been a university student in California before joining the Lincoln Brigade. Despite having no military training, the American showed he was made for warfare, a born soldier who knew how to give orders: his men worshipped him.

Guillem had been one of the first volunteers for the militias in Barcelona, at a time when the socialist ideal of equality reigned. The revolution had extended this to every sector of society, including the army, where no one was considered superior to anyone else, or entitled to have more. The officers lived alongside the rest of the troops without privileges; they ate the same food and wore the same uniforms. There was no hierarchy, no protocol, no standing at attention, no special tents, weapons, or vehicles for officers, no shiny boots, fawning adjutants, or cooks, as in conventional armies and definitely in Franco’s. All this changed over the first year of war, when the revolutionary enthusiasm died down to a great extent. A disgusted Guillem saw how in Barcelona there was a subtle return to bourgeois ways of living: social classes, the arrogance of some and the servility of others, bribes, prostitution, the privileges of the rich, who had plenty of everything—food, tobacco, fashionable attire—while the rest of the population suffered shortages and rationing. He also saw changes in the military. Made up of conscripts, the Popular Army absorbed the voluntary militias and reimposed traditional hierarchies and discipline.



Despite this, the American officer still believed in the triumph of socialism. To him, equality was not only possible, but inevitable, and he practiced it like a religion. The men under his command called him comrade, but never questioned his orders. He had learned enough Spanish to be able to explain the Ebro campaign to his men. The aim was to protect Valencia and to restore contact with Catalonia, separated from the rest of Republican territory by a broad swath the Nationalists had conquered. Guillem respected the officer and would have followed him anywhere, with or without explanations.

In mid-September, the American was machine-gunned from behind. He fell alongside Guillem without a single moan, continuing to encourage his men from the ground until he lost consciousness. Guillem and another soldier lifted him up and laid him behind a pile of rubble until nightfall, when the stretcher-bearers could come and take him to a first aid post. A few days later, Guillem heard that if the officer didn’t die, he would be an invalid for the rest of his life. He wished him a speedy death with all his heart.

The American died a week before the Republican government announced the withdrawal of foreign fighters from Spain, in the hope that Franco, who relied on German and Italian troops, would follow suit. That didn’t happen. Buried in an unmarked grave, the Lincoln Brigade officer did not live to march with his comrades through the streets of Barcelona, cheered by a grateful population in a massive ceremony that every one of them would remember forever. The most memorable farewell speech was given by La Pasionaria, whose incandescent enthusiasm had kept Republican morale high throughout the war. She called them freedom crusaders, heroes and idealists who were both brave and disciplined, and who had left their homes and countries to give everything, only asking in return the honor of dying for Spain. Nine thousand of those crusaders stayed forever, buried on Spanish soil. La Pasionaria ended by telling the departing foreigners that after the victory they would return to Spain, where they would find a homeland and friends.



Franco’s propaganda called on the Republican troops to surrender through loudspeakers and pamphlets dropped from planes, offering bread, justice, and freedom, but all the combatants knew that deserting meant they would end up in a prison or a mass grave that they themselves would be forced to dig. They had heard that in the towns and villages conquered by Franco, the widows and families of those executed were obliged to pay for the bullets used by the firing squads. And the number of the executed was in the tens of thousands. So much blood ran that the following year the peasants swore that when they pulled up their onions they were red, and that they found human teeth in their potatoes. Even so, the temptation to go over to the enemy for a loaf of bread led to many fighters deserting—usually the youngest recruits. On one occasion, Guillem had to grapple with a youngster from Valencia who was so terrified he lost his nerve; Guillem pushed his pistol against the boy’s temple and swore he would kill him if he left his post. It took two hours to calm the boy down, but Guillem succeeded in doing so without anybody else noticing. Thirty hours later, the youngster was dead.