LiverpoolHibs
08-06-2009, 05:30 PM
With the current political malaise and the rise of the far-right across parts of Europe this is a great gesture by the Spanish government and a fantastic article. No Pasaran!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/spanish-civil-war-british-irish-veterans
"It's a terrible thing, Civil War, but you've got a job to do." 70 years on, Spain says thank you to British and Irish civil war veterans by awarding citizenship to those who fought or helped the wounded
Sam Lesser left the Spanish Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War) with his republican dreams in pieces, two bullet scars on his body and a lingering aversion to the scent of lime trees.
The 23-year-old Londoner's disappointment sprang from Franco's creeping victory and Britain's inaction, while his healed wounds were souvenirs of friendly fire from French anti-fascists. But he owes his dislike of the fruit trees to the Italian bombers that took off from their base in Mallorca to pound the streets of Barcelona.
"There was one crossroads there," says Lesser, now 94. "The air raid alarm went off and then silence. People came out of the shelter - they'd forgotten to give them the all-clear and then the Italians came back and bombed. And I shall never forget; at that time of year there was the scent of the lime trees there - a beautiful scent - and as I went up the street you had this smell of blood and the lime trees. I can never smell a lime tree now without coming back."
Neither Spain (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/spain) nor the two years Lesser spent fighting and then reporting its civil war are ever far from his thoughts. In his south London flat, the plays of Lope de Vega (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega) struggle for shelf-space with dozens of histories and accounts of the conflict.
Tomorrow, 70 years after it ended, one of the final footnotes to the Spanish civil war will be written when Lesser and six of the British and Irish men and women who volunteered to fight - or to help the wounded - receive Spanish passports as a gesture of thanks from the government.
By Lesser's side at the Spanish embassy in London will be his fellow International Brigader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brigades_order_of_battle) Paddy Cochrane, 96.
Although Lesser came from an East End Jewish family and Cochrane was born in Dublin to a father who was shot by the Black and Tans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Tans), both men had - and still have - similar politics. "I was very leftwing," says Cochrane. "And my father before me was a non-conformist. I didn't know anything much of Spain."
Even so, when he heard that Franco had launched a coup against the elected government, Cochrane left Liverpool, where he was looking for work, and travelled to London. After signing up as an ambulance driver, he soon found himself in the middle of the war.
"I had no picture of Spain, but we'd no sooner got there when we stopped for a rest … And I sat at the side of the road and I said, 'Oh, I'm tired,' and a bloody bullet came and buried itself right in front of me between my legs. I was amazed that I escaped."
Cochrane was not so lucky when a hand grenade landed at his feet, shredding him with shrapnel and leaving him bleeding and alone until he was found and taken to hospital.
"It was terribly hot there, practically unbearable, and we all slept out in the open. As well as us there was a whole row of chaps with shocking head wounds that could never be cured. They were dying … I remember one of them kept shaking the flies away. It was awful … I was coming to and passing out, coming to and passing out."
The wounds he received, which continued to ooze "tiny flecks of twisted-up metal" for six months, put an end to Cochrane's war. But not all those who went to Spain were fiery leftwingers who wanted a crack at the Fascists who were slithering around so much of Europe in the 1930s.
Thomas Watters, who recalls his time there as he sits at home in a chair with a statue of Don Quixote on one side and a book of Spanish verb tables on the other, left behind his job as a Glasgow bus-driver to use his first aid skills and drive an ambulance. "This opportunity to do something of some good attracted me immediately," says the 96-year-old. "Nothing to do with politics; I had no interest in politics."
Despite a sketchy knowledge of Spain – "I was apt to think it was a bit like the Mexican films you saw, but it was nothing like that at all" – Watters quickly got to know the people, the terrain, and the atrocities that were being committed.
"It's a terrible thing, civil war, but you've got a job to do and you get on with it ... Some things you could help a lot with and some things were just too bad."
Like fellow veterans Penny Feiwel, Jack Edwards, Lou Kenton and Joseph Kahn, Lesser, Cochrane and Watters are proud their actions are finally being given official recognition, but sad it's taken so long. Two of their contemporaries, Jack Jones and Bob Doyle, died this year, while another, Les Gibson, is too ill to go to the embassy.
"The brigaders are delighted," says Marlene Sidaway of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/). "It has given them a great spur to keep going, but we're very, very sorry that it didn't come earlier."
Carles Casajuana, Spain's ambassador to the UK, agrees: "It should have been done earlier, but better late than never."
The award of Spanish citizenship, he says, is a symbolic way of thanking the brigaders and volunteers for their "enormous act of generosity … They came to Spain to fight against fascism and they gave up their comfortable lives here to go to a foreign land because of their ideals."
Seven decades after a war that still remains the defining moment of their long lives, the veterans say they would do it all again – even if they knew the outcome.
Sam Lesser is still angry that the British government did nothing to help the Spaniards, and furious too that the fascist, xenophobic propaganda he had to endure as a young man is again being preached by "Sir Oswald Mosley's heirs and successors".
Thomas Watters maintains his unswerving suspicion when it comes to politics: "These extremes - left or right - I don't think they're any different. To me, they're just extreme people."
And Paddy Cochrane, whose thin and ancient wrists are still embroidered with shrapnel scars, remains defiant. "I never regretted going to Spain. Never. Never."
•The International Brigade Memorial Trust would like to hear from anyone who served in Spain: http://www.international-brigades.org.uk (http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/) or write to: The IBMT, 37 Reginald Road, Forest Gate, London E7 9HS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/spanish-civil-war-british-irish-veterans
"It's a terrible thing, Civil War, but you've got a job to do." 70 years on, Spain says thank you to British and Irish civil war veterans by awarding citizenship to those who fought or helped the wounded
Sam Lesser left the Spanish Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War) with his republican dreams in pieces, two bullet scars on his body and a lingering aversion to the scent of lime trees.
The 23-year-old Londoner's disappointment sprang from Franco's creeping victory and Britain's inaction, while his healed wounds were souvenirs of friendly fire from French anti-fascists. But he owes his dislike of the fruit trees to the Italian bombers that took off from their base in Mallorca to pound the streets of Barcelona.
"There was one crossroads there," says Lesser, now 94. "The air raid alarm went off and then silence. People came out of the shelter - they'd forgotten to give them the all-clear and then the Italians came back and bombed. And I shall never forget; at that time of year there was the scent of the lime trees there - a beautiful scent - and as I went up the street you had this smell of blood and the lime trees. I can never smell a lime tree now without coming back."
Neither Spain (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/spain) nor the two years Lesser spent fighting and then reporting its civil war are ever far from his thoughts. In his south London flat, the plays of Lope de Vega (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega) struggle for shelf-space with dozens of histories and accounts of the conflict.
Tomorrow, 70 years after it ended, one of the final footnotes to the Spanish civil war will be written when Lesser and six of the British and Irish men and women who volunteered to fight - or to help the wounded - receive Spanish passports as a gesture of thanks from the government.
By Lesser's side at the Spanish embassy in London will be his fellow International Brigader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brigades_order_of_battle) Paddy Cochrane, 96.
Although Lesser came from an East End Jewish family and Cochrane was born in Dublin to a father who was shot by the Black and Tans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Tans), both men had - and still have - similar politics. "I was very leftwing," says Cochrane. "And my father before me was a non-conformist. I didn't know anything much of Spain."
Even so, when he heard that Franco had launched a coup against the elected government, Cochrane left Liverpool, where he was looking for work, and travelled to London. After signing up as an ambulance driver, he soon found himself in the middle of the war.
"I had no picture of Spain, but we'd no sooner got there when we stopped for a rest … And I sat at the side of the road and I said, 'Oh, I'm tired,' and a bloody bullet came and buried itself right in front of me between my legs. I was amazed that I escaped."
Cochrane was not so lucky when a hand grenade landed at his feet, shredding him with shrapnel and leaving him bleeding and alone until he was found and taken to hospital.
"It was terribly hot there, practically unbearable, and we all slept out in the open. As well as us there was a whole row of chaps with shocking head wounds that could never be cured. They were dying … I remember one of them kept shaking the flies away. It was awful … I was coming to and passing out, coming to and passing out."
The wounds he received, which continued to ooze "tiny flecks of twisted-up metal" for six months, put an end to Cochrane's war. But not all those who went to Spain were fiery leftwingers who wanted a crack at the Fascists who were slithering around so much of Europe in the 1930s.
Thomas Watters, who recalls his time there as he sits at home in a chair with a statue of Don Quixote on one side and a book of Spanish verb tables on the other, left behind his job as a Glasgow bus-driver to use his first aid skills and drive an ambulance. "This opportunity to do something of some good attracted me immediately," says the 96-year-old. "Nothing to do with politics; I had no interest in politics."
Despite a sketchy knowledge of Spain – "I was apt to think it was a bit like the Mexican films you saw, but it was nothing like that at all" – Watters quickly got to know the people, the terrain, and the atrocities that were being committed.
"It's a terrible thing, civil war, but you've got a job to do and you get on with it ... Some things you could help a lot with and some things were just too bad."
Like fellow veterans Penny Feiwel, Jack Edwards, Lou Kenton and Joseph Kahn, Lesser, Cochrane and Watters are proud their actions are finally being given official recognition, but sad it's taken so long. Two of their contemporaries, Jack Jones and Bob Doyle, died this year, while another, Les Gibson, is too ill to go to the embassy.
"The brigaders are delighted," says Marlene Sidaway of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/). "It has given them a great spur to keep going, but we're very, very sorry that it didn't come earlier."
Carles Casajuana, Spain's ambassador to the UK, agrees: "It should have been done earlier, but better late than never."
The award of Spanish citizenship, he says, is a symbolic way of thanking the brigaders and volunteers for their "enormous act of generosity … They came to Spain to fight against fascism and they gave up their comfortable lives here to go to a foreign land because of their ideals."
Seven decades after a war that still remains the defining moment of their long lives, the veterans say they would do it all again – even if they knew the outcome.
Sam Lesser is still angry that the British government did nothing to help the Spaniards, and furious too that the fascist, xenophobic propaganda he had to endure as a young man is again being preached by "Sir Oswald Mosley's heirs and successors".
Thomas Watters maintains his unswerving suspicion when it comes to politics: "These extremes - left or right - I don't think they're any different. To me, they're just extreme people."
And Paddy Cochrane, whose thin and ancient wrists are still embroidered with shrapnel scars, remains defiant. "I never regretted going to Spain. Never. Never."
•The International Brigade Memorial Trust would like to hear from anyone who served in Spain: http://www.international-brigades.org.uk (http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/) or write to: The IBMT, 37 Reginald Road, Forest Gate, London E7 9HS