SPANISH TRENCHES

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 257, 31 October 1938, Page 5

SPANISH TRENCHES

AMERICAN LEGION. J FIRST REAL TASTE OF WAR. i UNCANNY SHOOTING MOORS* i j (By GEORGE W. POOLE.) No. 11. ' In contrast with the repeated horror of General Franco's policy of turning African Moors loose to plunder a captured Spanish town, the International I Brigades of the Spanish Republic dis- ' played remarkable discipline when their chance came on the Aragon front last year at the towns of Quinto and Belehite. Thcv allowed themselves a few necessities and comforts and the rest was turned over to the Government. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade came out of Quinto and Belehite smoking capI tured American cigarettes, eating real ham sandwiches, wearing Fascist uniforms with German and Italian and

American pistols strapped around their j waists, real leather knapsacks over their ' shoulders, and carrying some excellent , German sniping rifles. Two decisive victories were behind them and once ' again they had proven their mettle as lighting, thinking believers in Spanish democracy. The well-trained but untried Maeken-zie-Papineau Battalion joined them in an olive grove outside the battered little town of Azaila in late September soon : after the Aragon victories Jia-d poked a stick into this long-quiet, northern hornets' liest. In about a month the brigade was going into action again, but now we were the clean-shaven schoolboys and they were the dirty and bearded veterans with hard, reserved looks in their eyes. We searched for our friends who had gone up to the brigade as replacements in early August. Some were dead, many were wounded. We listened t-o stories. This, then was war. Effect of War Stories. One story is quite significant. The civilians of Belchite, women, children and old men, were frightened almost to death when they had been rounded up by the Americans. They had been told we were Reds and therefore hobgoblins. They saw the boys—office workers from New York, farmers from lowa, seamen from Baltimore, steel workers from Pittsburgh, students from everywhere— heard them talking English and believed what they had been told: Russians! The boys tried to be friendly and chucked babies under the " chin, offered the children food, and held out their canteens to the old men. Fear clouded these people's eyes. They were finally taken out of town to the road where evacuation trucks were wait ill"' and there a Spanish battalion was camped.When the civilians saw the Spanish soldiers they gave a cry of joy and mixed, soldiers and civilians, chattering and laughing, apxiety forgotten. The soldiers told ;tliem about the Americanos and why they had come all the way to Spain to fight for the Government, and the women and the old men turned and smiled at the boys and shyly gave the Popular Front salute of tlie clenched fist. But last autumn our first action was still before us. We moved out of Azaila and rode on trucks to the hills around the city of I-luesca, a Fascist stronghold since the -Beginning of the war. After a few days of heavy rain when wo were all washed out, we marched up to just behind the front and began to dig reserve trenches at dusk. In five minutes a counter-order came and we got on the trucks and rode half the night to Quinto.

For three days we remained in reserve at Quinto, digging individual bomb-proof shelters for ourselves as scores of our 'planes and theirs passed over to bomb the front and meet in droning dogfights. The ground shook from .the concussion of dropping bombs a .few miles mp ahead and machine guns ripped as 'planes snarled around each other. We watched one or two drift quietly to earth like dropping bonfires. It was our first real taste of the war and we dug deeply in case they should bomb the reserves and get us before we entered the fight. A Fatal Mistake. There were two towns between us and a direct assault 011 Zaragossa, directly 011 the highway into the city and by the Ebro river. They were Burgo and Fuentes de Ebro. We were to take Fuentes first, march 011 immediately and clean out Burgo and clear the way for an attack 011 Zaragossa. But the attack lacked the co-ordination of those on Quinto and Belchite, and we never got into Fuentes. One bad mistake was unfortunate for the Mackenzie-Papineau j we were lined up three abreast in a long battalion column winding from the road to trenches at daylight. Bullets began to sing overhead. We thought they were strays. Then the ground sprouted up aliead of us as a Fascist machine-gun fired short. The order came to take cover and a rush was made for the trenches. They were very shallow and men and equipment were jammed into a mesa.

Men were left out in the open and we moved up the trench to make room for them and the trenches got more shallow until we had to drag ourselves along on our stomachs. Hut they began to get deeper again as they twisted up a long hill on the edge of a sloping plain to l'ucntes, and by noon we were organised again and made an attack prepared by some artillery and aviation and tanks.

About 20 of our tanks crossed the road down the valley, deployed out and lore down the hill across the plain toward l'ucntes at about -10 miles an hour with a battalion of men riding on their backs. "Bilbao" Williamson was a camera enthusiast and also authorised to take pictures- for an English newspaper ami be took some stunning scenes, lint he lost his camera later when he was shot. A tank went grinding by over the trench near our machine-gun position and the men smiled at. us and gave the clenched list Popular Front salute.

The infantry wont over tlio top pooh after, some of the boys carrying the loaves of bread they had just lieen issued, for it was noon and we had eaten nothing simc tlie night liefore. Our gun tried to give a protective cover fire lint hidden Fascist machine-gun nests broke the attack. The infantry advanced to about 200 yards of the town and dug in. We later pulled out our machine-gun and joined them to consolidate the new position. In No Man's Land. The next'day another brigade tried to cut the road behind Kuentos and isolate it from Hurgo. It failed and that night the Fascists brought up artillery and infantrv reinforcements from Burgo or Zaragossa. That ended our chance. 1 was transferred to a machine-gun corpora lied by Joe (iibbons, of Chicago, in an outpost at the end of a twisting communication trench in front of our linos—a nasty spot. Each night we dug it out closer to the Fascist lines in front of the town and every at 4 o'clock, just as we would be enjoying our coffee ■ and bread and marmalade, they would give us a workout with artillery and trench mortars and rifle grenades. Days passed and slowly we began to lose men. to snipers. They were bedsheeted Moors and uncanny shots. They sang at night—a weird wail that got on your nerves in spite of yourself. After digging the outpost nearer to their lines every night, I began to calculate that we would have our machinegun set up in the town square some morning unless we were pulled out of the lines pretty soon. A Spanish brigade moved in one night and we gathered up our equipment and marched back to Quinto. AVe stayed at Quinto for about a week just in case the Fascists wanted to make something of it at Fuentcs. We were bearded, dirty veterans now and there were gaps in the r.*tiks of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. But we had given the Fascists something to think about and a lot -of dead to bury.

Then once more the order came: we were going to the Central area. Rest. Leaves to Madrid. And the rumour that Franco was going to make a buttonspopping effort to take Madrid before winter set in. What, before we had had our leaves in it! Not a chance! Vamos, hombrcs, Marcha! —N.A.N.A.