One thing that I have learnt from my writing is how much you can learn about history.
I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War before I started to write this section of the book which I finished this morning.
I was startled to discover that my story of Catalonian adventures stretched to 40 pages!
Here is an extract.
Peter and Eric are told that they must head for the front.
'After returning to the barracks at the end of their march, the newly assembled brigade were told that they must head to the battle front as soon as possible. They were issued with their remaining equipment by a team of women who seemed to materialize from nowhere. The women helped the rookie soldiers to roll their blankets and pack their kit-bags.
They were asked to assemble in the barrack square which had been illuminated by torchlight as it was now getting dark. There was a hubbub of excitement in the air as Peter and Eric joined the massed ranks of militiamen who were all adorned with knapsacks on their backs and rolled blankets across their shoulders.
They were asked to be silent so they could hear an address by a Republican commissar who stood beneath a huge red banner. He spoke in Catalan, so quickly that the two Englishmen struggled to follow what he was saying. His arm waving and general histrionics left them in no doubt as to the overall message, however.
After the inspirational speech had drawn to a close they were marched to the railway station, taking a detour so that as many people as possible could see them. All along the route red and black flags were being fluttered by the crowds who were thronging the pavements, and others were waving enthusiastically from the windows of their houses.
The militiamen travelled in the packed trains north-west towards the town of Barbastro where many of their fellow fighters, dressed in their shabby uniforms, were walking up and down the streets trying to keep warm. From there, Peter and Eric’s company were sent by lorry to Huesca, forty miles north-east of Saragossa, and a hundred and sixty miles inland from the coastal city of Barcelona. The small town had been captured by the anarchists after heavy fighting, and parts of it had been destroyed by shell-fire.
Many of the houses that had survived the bombardment were pock marked with indentations from bullets fired during the street fighting that had taken place. The newly arrived militiamen now realised how close they were to the front line.
From time to time fascist deserters were brought in. Many were not true Fascists, but conscripts who had been doing their military service at the time. They were only too keen to escape.
After three days the rifles finally arrived. Peter recognised them from his days fighting the Boers almost forty years earlier. They were German Mausers, fairly new at the time, as they had been manufactured in 1896! He picked one up, only to discover that it was rusty, the bolt was stiff and the wooden barrel-guard was split. It was completely unfit for purpose.
There was no time to dwell on the state of the rifles, however, as they were soon told that it was time to advance to the front line.
Stray bullets cracked overhead as they made their way up the steep sides of one of the many hills that dotted the landscape. Struggling up the stony path, they looked down on huge ravines, before reaching the stunted shrubs and heathland on the small plateau at the top. From there they could see the front line which consisted of a chain of fortified posts perched on each hill-top.
The position they were heading for, to relieve a company that had been there for more than three months, was a ragged barricade of sandbags over which a red flag could be seen fluttering in the breeze. When they eventually arrived there after scrambling up and down several more hills, they were greeted by the commander of the unit who had crawled out of his dug-out.
Peter was immediately struck by the appearance of the exhausted militiamen who had all grown full beards during the long weeks out in the open. Their uniforms were caked with mud, and their boots were falling apart.
On closer inspection they could see that the position was a semi-circular enclosure about fifty yards across, built up with a mixture of sandbags and rock. Behind the enclosure there were about fifty dug-outs which were gradually being evacuated by the soldiers ‘in situ’ once they saw their replacements arrive.
In front of the sandbagged parapet there was a system of narrow trenches which were occupied by the men on sentry duty. When he saw these trenches, Peter was immediately reminded of his experiences during the Great War. He realised that little progress had been made in the almost twenty years that had elapsed since the end of that terrible conflict.
A short distance from these trenches there was a string of barbed wire perched above another steep ravine. Beyond the ravine, they knew that the enemy were out there somewhere. They gazed into the distance looking for the Fascist fighters but they were nowhere to be seen.
The new sentries were soon in position in the trenches and, once settled, they started firing at the unseen enemy. They were desperate to try out their ‘new’ rifles.
A few minutes later Peter had the shock of his life as a bullet shot past his ear with a loud crack and buried itself in the rock behind him.
‘That has shaken me out of my complacency, even if they can’t be seen, they are definitely out there,’ he thought, as he dived for cover in the dug-out that would be his uncomfortable home for the foreseeable future.'