A Broken Land by David Donachie

Author:David Donachie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2022-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The arrival of the main body of militias outside Saragossa, nearly three thousand strong and made up of members of the POUM as well as the CNT-FAI, had severely diminished the position of Juan Luis Laporta, who now found himself relegated to being one of a number of leaders instead of in sole control of his men. It did not, however, improve matters in the military sphere.

None of the new arrivals seemed capable of the kind of agreement that would enhance the needs of the Republic, which demanded a rapid advance into the Nationalist heartlands in order to force them to divert their efforts from elsewhere. Comfortably headquartered in an abandoned monastery by the River Ebro, the military hierarchy seemed like the Café de Tranquilidad all over again: endless argument which led to bad compromises, ineffective tactics, and futile mass assaults which burdened the militias with serious casualties.

As before, the need to dig in was scoffed at, which led to an even greater loss when the enemy counter-attacked, the only sector not to suffer the one held by the fully entrenched Olympians, simply because, wisely, the Nationalists, having carried out a thorough recce, came nowhere near it. Yet that secure position had to be abandoned due to the retreat of the main body.

It was obvious that on the Saragossa Front things were going nowhere, so Cal Jardine was not sorry when it came to his attention that time had run out for many of those he led. The young athletes had come to Spain for a period of three weeks - two to train and one to compete - and were now approaching a third month.

As aware as the men who led them of the faults of the Republican leadership, they now found a pressing need to get home to jobs and, in one or two cases, families of their own. Those who elected to stay, twelve in number, would mostly only be returning to the dole queue, but it was obvious that, numerically, they were too small to be useful. •

The news that the Republic was forming International Brigades from foreign volunteers provided a solution for them, and Cal agreed to take them to thé city of Albacete, where the brigades were being assembled, before determining what to do himself. Vince, funded by the last of Monty Redfern’s money, would see the others home.

Yet detaching the returnees was not easy; their departure was fought tooth and nail by Manfred Drecker, who maintained that no one had the right to desert the cause and anyone who even implied such a thing deserved to be shot; Laporta backed the athletes and took pleasure in doing so.

The antipathy between the men, political and personal, had not improved on the move into Aragon. Laporta took pleasure in pointing out what the Olympians had achieved, as opposed to Drecker’s communist cadres, which led to a blazing row in which accusations of backsliding, cowardice and chicanery were liberally thrown about.

The other anarchist leaders backed

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