I am Spain: The Spanish Civil War and the Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism by David Boyd Haycock

Author:David Boyd Haycock [Haycock, David Boyd]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781908699114
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Published: 2012-11-21T05:00:00+00:00

III

After a bitterly cold night, the fighting resumed early the next morning. Fry’s Machinegun Company retained its forward position, and as dawn broke they saw a large section of rebel soldiers camped in the open. They opened a deadly fire upon them.

Though Fry’s position offered an excellent field of fire, it was dangerously exposed, so Wintringham placed the forty survivors of Bert Overton’s rifle company to guard their flank. But no one had told Wintringham that Overton’s nerve had been broken on Suicide Hill. To the right, the Franco-Belge, Dimitrov and Thälmann Battalions were all enduring heavy attack, and Overton’s position came under machinegun fire, then shelling. By mid-afternoon, and without orders, Overton suddenly withdrew his men some three hundred yards to the safety of a sunken road.

Exactly what happened next has never become clear. According to one survivor, towards dusk Fry’s machine-gunners were simply surrounded and overrun. Others would claim that a group of Foreign Legionnaires approached Fry’s company, their fists raised and singing the Internationale. Assuming they were rebel deserters, Fry and his men had welcomed them, realizing too late that they had been tricked. According to another report, the rebels had disguised themselves in uniforms taken from dead International Brigaders. However it happened, the British Battalion’s deadly machineguns and the thirty men of their gun crews were about to be led away into captivity.

Wintringham knew he had to act fast. All through the battle he had been steadying his nerves, waiting for the moment he would go in to action. ‘Why die crying?’ he had kept repeating, ‘Why die crying?’ Now, with the enemy only two hundred yards away, he ordered a counterattack. One of his men thought that by now they were all ‘a little mad … The sheer weight of noise was tremendous and, coupled with a feeling of desperation and excitement, produced a kind of madness among us … Wintringham bawled at us to fix bayonets, which was quite absurd.’

As Wintringham stood up to lead the charge he was shot through the leg. Of the forty men who carried out his command, only Overton and five or six others returned.

Wintringham was stretchered away. He would later complain that beneath Overton’s ‘self-confident surface,’ he was a ‘fool, a romantic, a bluffer who wanted to be courageous,’ but whose ‘cowardice’ cost lives.1 Fortunately, the rebels did not press home their advantage, and that night Jock Cunningham appeared. He had heard of the disaster of the first day’s action, and with Frank Ryan now took over unofficial command. But what had once been a Battalion was now little more than a Company, supported by a few young Spaniards.

In the heat of the following afternoon, the rebels attacked again. This time tanks supported them. As the official account of the engagement, written a few weeks later, recorded, the young Spaniards suddenly turned and ran, ‘and the rout spread to the whole line. The slaughter was terrible. One would see five men running abreast, and four of them suddenly

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