The Wanganui Chronicle. TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1938. ANOTHER GERNIKA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 132, 7 June 1938, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle. TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1938. ANOTHER GERNIKA

'I’lli: destruction of Granollers. in Catalonia, has been ue--1 scribed as another Gernika. It. is regrettably true that destruction of towns and the killing of norfflombataiits has become so common of late that the reference to Gernika does not raise the measure of repugnance which would most certainly have swept over the world had such an event stood alone. Gernika. What does that name r.taml for? (iernika stands for the name of an ancient town where the Basque democracy had met bi-anutially since the dawn of history. The Basque Republic had been suppi’er.sed by Spain, but its autonomy had been re-granted by the t'orte..; sitting at Valencia on October 1, 1936. and consequently the aneient Junta again met ::t Gernika after the Statute of Restoration had been passed. “Gernika remained a modest \ iseaynn eoiinli’t town, writes G. L. Steer in “The Tree of Gernica.” “The popußion behaved itself, the priests walked about in the cloth, Mass was held in the churches all day and every day. . . . The armies were beyond Markina, miles to the east, and ai Oitz, miler, to the south. ' Gernika lay well behind lhe front, mi part of its communications with Bilbao: io destroy it would cut off the retreating armies from the General Stuff and their base." Gernika, then, was oi. some military significance. At 4.30 on the afternoon of April 26 last year the market was full of people: sheep were being driven, oxen in earls were being loci, into the little town, which usually boasted seven thousand people, but now had added three thousand refugees and two Basque, battalions. The church bell rang a single toll, signal of aeroplanes approaching. Tn a few minutes a Heinkel 1H dropped six medium bombs. Fifteen minutes later came Junker 52’s. dropping heavier bombs and torpedoes weighing a thousand pounds, which penetrated the refuges. The people had been controlled, but at this juncture they panicked. Then came Heinkel 51.’s. diving at the populace and machine-gunning indiscriminately—twenty machine-guns working in line. This work continued for two and a-half hours, at twenty-minute intervals. Sectors of the little town were chosen in orderly fashion. On the shattered houses tubes of two pounds weight, long as a man’s forearm, were dropped, igniting the debris, thus ensuring the burning of those entrapped in the shambles. In the intervals the priests moved among the people to keep them calm, and the populace worked hard to dig out the wounded. By the end of the long bombardment the people, tried neither to save relatives nor possessions. They moved out and sat. down bewildered in hundreds, on the roads to Bermeo and Mugika. On April 28 the Salamanca Government, offered to show pressmen the in-and-out book of the Vittoria aerodrome for April 27. to prove that no ’planes had left the ground on that day. not April 26. the day of the destruction. The destruction of Gernika was attributed to the Reds, and four months later witnesses were produced in support of that contention. That, shortly, is the story of Gernika.