The Walking Dead

29 October 1936

We are still at Albacete. I have written little of the first days here because we are worked hard and with all that is fitted into each day there seems little time to put down on paper my thoughts and experiences, but the commandant is away this afternoon and we have been allowed time off.

At Albacete, a good-sized town inland from the coast and Valencia, we are housed in the old barracks of the Civil Guards. I do not see any point in writing a diary dictated by self-censorship. When we arrived here the building was in a quite disgusting state — not just filth but worse. Government forces took the barracks from the Civil Guards, but they did not just put the defeated men into a prison cage: they killed them. The Civil Guards who surrendered were then massacred. My German comrade who was on the train with me, Karl, told me that the first of the International Brigade volunteers to arrive here after the slaughter were his fellow countrymen. These Germans were so horrified with what they found that they cleaned the barracks. They scrubbed its walls and floors to cleanse it of blood, bones and flesh. They even found dried-out brain matter from the Civil Guards who had been bludgeoned. Then they painted over the worst of the stains with whitewash.

The same slogan is now written on those walls. Where I sleep there is 'Proletarios de todos Paises! Unios!' (Spanish); 'Proletarier Lander, vereinigt euch!' (German); 'Proletari di tutti i Paesi, Unitevi!' (Italian); and 'Workers of the World, Unite!' So, from the walls around me, I am already something of a linguist! I am also shown the truly international quality of the struggle to turn back the tide of Fascism.

The commandant at Albacete is André Marty. He is Spanish or French, I don't know which, and comes from the Pyrenees. He has a white moustache, is short but with a big stomach. I have never spoken to him. He is not a man you approach. He has a bad reputation. Discipline here is enforced with what I suppose would be called 'an iron fist'. Discipline is everything and is enforced with brutal beatings — some volunteers have died from their injuries. I have never before seen beatings of such ferocity, and they are done by men we call the 'commissars': they wear a uniform of black leather jackets and blue berets and have heavy pistols hanging from their polished leather belts. We avoid them.

I had thought I would be trained in the arts of modern warfare at Albacete. It is not so. Most of the time we drill in the square, and are shouted at by the commissars if we are not in step, or punched or kicked. In the day we drill for hours. In the evenings we go to political lectures, which are compulsory. If a volunteer is late for a lecture, or goes to sleep, he is taken outside and beaten. We are learning about Communism and the sacrifices that the Soviet state has made in support of the working-class people of Spain. I want to know what some of the older men call 'fieldcraft' and the tactics of fighting, and how to use a rifle, but there are no rifles here and what I am being taught is the politics of the struggle.

We live on a diet of beans cooked in vegetable oil. We do not see meat or fresh vegetables. Some volunteers have collapsed on parade because they have dysentery and are weak.

But I must not be negative. (I think if it were known what I have written this evening my negativity would earn me a beating from the commissars!) I came here of my own free will. I could still be at my desk with my ledger in front of me, Mr Rammage at my shoulder. I could be at the kitchen table with Mum dishing up from the stove. I am here, and it was my decision to travel to this war. And, whatever the conditions in the barracks at Albacete, I am determined to play my part as a foreign soldier in a foreign land, and stand in defence of a cause I believe in.

The best news of the last week is that I have found two new friends. Daniel is from Manchester and is three years older than me; he was a road-building labourer when he could find work. Ralph is a year younger, and should have been starting his first term at the University of Cambridge to study history, but he came here instead. On the parade-ground we march together, in the lectures we sit together, and their palliasses are on either side of mine. We watch out for each other and share everything. I have never been to Manchester or Cambridge, and they know nothing of a room full of clerks' desks in a bank. With them at my side I know — yes, know — that I will be able to fight with courage.

We have not been told when we will go to the front and stand against the Army of Africa — they are Riffian tribesmen and the battlecry when they advance is 'Viva la Muerte', which means 'Long Live Death'—but the rumour is that they are advancing towards Madrid and that they do not take prisoners.

With friends beside me, when the time comes, I shall not be afraid.

'Stand by, Delta Group. Principal on the way'