IN OLD MADRID

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 20, 25 January 1939, Page 21

IN OLD MADRID

By J. STUBBS-WALKER

Short Story

IJUADRID towards the end of 1936. , * L nprepared for war, it suddenlyloiiiifl the rebels at its doorstep. Sweeping along the Toledo road the i"»ii08 of Franco, with their Italian tanks and highly mobilised artillery, "•'id taken town after town. I had reached Madrid in October. « lien 1 left J.ondon my office had told me that Madrid might fall to the rebel* at any moment. Without a word of Spanish, with hardly sufficient time to buv a completely incomprehensible Spanish Gratu»"ir, r had to rely on interpreters for the firnt few weeks of my trip there as war correspondent. And when Madrid realised that it was going to be a war centre, few people who were willing to act as interpreters were willing to stay in a citv that wan then the focal point of a whole war. • • • • Perhaps that will excuse me when I xplain that by the beginning of Xovem- . lx-r, my knowledge of Spanish was ..till only sufficient to order a drink here and I there, ayid demand my nightly telephone kail to London. I Militia patrols everywhere and an •leven o'clock curfew for everyone in•icased the difficulties, hut a pocketful jof War Office passe* was supposed to ii How me to move freely. That, of course, wa« not always true, i Scores of the Government militia had | been recruited from the farm lands, and j often could not even read. | The more simple types were easy to 'handle. When a bayonet or a revolvej was pressed into your ribs, yon waved | the most important-looking" document I you carried—a Metropolitan Police pas.; ! signed by Lord T rein-hard, once pre- ' vented my arrest—and you were allowed to go on. i But there were the more suspicious types, who, being unable to read, sus-IHv-ted that you were trying to hoodwink them. That is what happened on the most frightening night of my life. All day long we had been bombed by j.lunker machines. The underground stations were packed with steaming crowds of unsavoury-smelling people. Kveryone was in a state of nerve? which had not been improved from my point of view by having to wait seven hours to get a telephone call to my office and trouble with a censor who was frightened to the point of hysteria by the constant explosions round us. The day had been made even more unpleasant by the activities of "Fifth Column" men —Franco supporters in the city—who had been shooting indiscriminately fiom windows and rooftops. • • • • ■ | So T didn't look forward, at three o'clock in the morning, to the walk from Gran Via. and the big American telephone building, along the utterly black, cobbled streets that stretched a mile and a half from the town to the British Embassy. I waited for a lull in the bombing. Then, making sure that I had the eight separate passes that should ensure my safe conduct, I started on that very lonely walk. Every few yards T was stopped. Rometimes a sentry would leap from the shadows and shout at me; others would wait for me to pass and then walk stealthily behind me until I could feci a gun in my back. Up past the prisons packed with political prisoners, and from where one heard the early morning machine-gun bursts as rapid executions were carried out. J managed very well. One sentry spoke French, and walked part of the way with me, chatting of the people who' had been shot in the streets that night. But at the end of hi* "beat" he left me. Within half a mile of the British Embassy, my real trouble started. Strung across the narrow road were flye men. As I approached them, I could see their rifles. As firmly as I could. I walked towards them, extremely careful to make no sudden movement with my arms and making no attempt to reach for my passes until they had "frisked" me for guns. At first, it was all very friendly. I could not understand a word they said to me, but they accepted cigarettes and chatted. Their leader, with a hooded torch, had gone through all my papers before I noticed a certain coldness. A stream of questions followed, and my only reply was a carefully rehearsed speech in appalling Spanish, explaining that I was an English journalist on his way to the British Embassy. Either that was misunderstood or it was disbelieved. The friendliness vanished. The squad formed up with me in the middle, and we started to walk. Through tortuous streets, evil«smelling markets, acrosa stretches of barren ground we marched. A grim, black building appeared. A steel gateway, a dozen feet high and wide enough to take two motor cars swung open, accepted us, and clanged shut. ... ~ Inside there was the terrifying silence of a crowd of men. just waiting. We marched through them, into a dimly lighted office and another burst of conversation conveyed to me that I was to be taken before the commandante immediately.

The commandante was a disappointment. Gross and rather oily, his uniform jacket was opened over a filthy shirt. An ostentatious, and from my own knowledge extremely inefficient, Belgian automatic pistol lay on his desk.

Within ten minutes I had made up my mind, that I should never get away. He ignored my passes, refused to look at my passport, finished a long harangue in Spanish with a loud laugh and a shouted order to the guards. Puzzled, and considerably frightened, I waited. His shouts produced three of the most perfect toughs I have ever seen. Their uniforms did not match, they had not shaved for days, and in the arms of two of them lay short barrelled automatic rifles—a type of gun I had used myself a few days before when I was caught in the front line during the battle for Parla. "This," I thought, "it the bump-off squad." Early in the mornings at that time in Madrid, -wagons patrolled the more distant roada, and collected the bodies of men who were found with bullet* in the backs of their heads. The system was that they were arrested, "taken for a ride," and then told that they were to be released. As they walked away from the •'bumpoff' squad, two of these automatic rifles would blaze into them.

Strangely, my new guards did not talk to me. Jn complete silence J was walked through the dark, silent courtyard and punned into the back of a large touring car, one man on either «ide of me in the back, the third fitting in front beside the driver. The iron irates swung open, noisily, the car shot forward, driven extremely incompetently by a young militia man, who had obviously learned to drive only nince tile beginning of the revolt, and we *ped north, along the completely deserted street*. It was a horrible eeiusation. I was convinced that it wan j;oing to be a nticky end to three hectic weeks of war excitement. In those three weeks. I had packed a fairly representative assortment of new experiences. I had tried nhellfire, shrapnel, trench mortars and bombs. But thin, I felt, wa* going a little too far. For hour after hour, it seemed, that drive went on. I tried to realise our direction, but knew that I was ho|K>lessly lost. I asked for a cigarette, but my I'linmen Jiits;t shook their heads. And frantically I searched my brain for a way out. In my mind I could imagine that at any moment the brakes of the car would be applied, we should stop, the door would be opened, and I nhoiild be motioned to get out.