THE SKY TERROR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 17

THE SKY TERROR.

WAR IN CATALONIA. TRAGEDY ON THE ROAD. A PITIFUL MIGRATION. (By ERNEST HEMINGWAY.) Mr. Ernest Hemingway, the wellknown author, who lias twice before visited the scene of the Spanish civil war as special correspondent of the N.A.N.A., has now returned again to Catalonia. The following is his first dispatch describing the tragic scenes before the advance of General Franco's forces. BARCELONA. It was a lovely false spring day when we started for the front this morning. Last night, coming into Barcelona, it had been grey and foggy and dirty and sad, but to-day it was bright and warm and the pink of almond blossoms I coloured the grey hills and brightened the dusty green rows of olive trees. Then outside of Reus on a straight, smooth highway, with olive orchards on each 6ide, the chauffeur from the rumble seat shouted, "'Planes, "planes'." And with rubber screeching, we stopped the car under the tree. "They are right over us!" tlie chauffeur said, and as I dived head foremost into a ditch I looked up sideways, watching the monoplane come down and wing over and then evidently decide that a single car was not worth turning his eight machine guDs loose on. Red Eggs Dropping. But as we watched, came the sudden cluster of red eggs dropping, aji explosion of bombs and ahead Rein, silhouetted against the hills half a milt away, disappeared in a brick dusl coloured cloud of smoke. We made waj through . the town, the main street blocked by broken houses and a smashec water main, and stopping tried to get £ policeman to shoot a wounded horse but the owner thought it was stil possibly worth saving, and went on u] towards the mountain pass that leadi ' to the little Catalan city of Falset. That was how the day started, but no one yet alive can say how it will end. For soon we began passing carts loaded with refugees. An old woman was driving one, crying and sobbing while she swung the whip. She was the only woman I saw driving all day. There were eight children following another cart and one little boy pushed on the wheel as they came up a difficult grade. Bedding, sewing machines, blankets, cooking utensils, mattresses wrapped in mats, sacks of grain for the horses and mules, were piled in the carts, and goats and sheep were tethered to the tailboards. There was no panic. They were just plodding along. On a- mule piled high with bedding rode a woman holding a still freshly red-faced baby that could not have been two days old. The mother's head swung steadily up and down with the motion of the beast she rode, and the baby's new wet black hair was drifted grey I with dust. A man led the mule forward, j looking back over his shoulder and then i looking forward at the road. I "When was the baby born ?" I asked I him as the car swung alongside. | ""Yesterday," he a&id proudly, and the car #as past. But all these people, no matter where they looked as they walked or rode, all Iflooked up to watch the sky. Always the Line of People Walking. Then we began to sec the soldiers straggling along. Some carried their rifles by the muzzles, some had n.o arms. Until then we thought these refugees might be from Aragon, but then we saw the troops drifting back along the road and none going forward. At first there were only a few troops, then finally there was a steady stream, with whole units intact. Then there were troops in trucks, troops marching, trucks with guns, with tanks, with anti-tanks, and anti-aircraft, and always the line of people walking. As we went on, the road choked and swelled with this migration until finally it was not just the road, but streaming alongside the road by all the old paths of driving cattle came the civil population and the troops. There was no panic at all, only the steady movement, and many of the people seemed cheerful. But perhaps it was the day. The day was so lovely that it seemed ridiculous that anyone should ever die.

Americans Cover the Retreat. Then we began seeing people that we knew, officers you had met before, soldiers from New York and Chicago, who told how the enemy had broken through and taken Gandesi, that Americans were fighting and holding the bridge at Mora across the Ebro Eiver, and that they were cohering this retreat and holding a bridge-head across the river and still holding the town. Suddenly the stream of troops thinned, and then there was a big influx again and the road was choked so that a car could not move ahead. You could see them shelling Mora on the river and hear the pounding thud of the guns. Then there came a flock of sheep to clot the road, with shepherds trying to drive them, out of the way of the trucks and tanks. Still the planes • did not come. Still Watching the Sky. Somewhere ahead the bridge was still being held, but it was impossible to go any further with a car against that moving, dust-swamped tide. So we turned the car back towards Tarragon and Barcelona, and rode through it all again. The woman with the new-born baby had it wrapped in a shawl and held it tight against her now. You could not see the dusty head because she held it tight under the sliawl as she swung with the walking gait of the horse. Her husband led the horse, but he looked at the road, now and did not answer when we waved. People still looked up at the sky as they retreated. But they were very weary now. The planes had not yet come, but there was still time for them, land they were overdue. — (N.A.N.A.)