Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War by Peter Kemp

Author:Peter Kemp [Kemp, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798624731721
Publisher: Mystery Grove Publishing
Published: 2020-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

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1 Lojendio, Operaciones Militares de la Guerra de España. (Montaner y Simón, Barcelona 1940), pages 265 and 266.

2 Against God no man can fight.

CHAPTER SIX

I found Major Uhagón and his tercio at Riaño, north-east of León and just south of the famous Picos de Europa, on the borders of Asturias. The war in the north was virtually over and Uhagón thought it unlikely that they would see any action before it finished. I was tempted to linger longer with the Requetés in the delightful village beside a swift and swirling trout stream, where the yellowing birches under the clear September sky made a warm contrast against the grey and sombre grandeur of the eight thousand foot peaks which towered above the valley. But my orders from Millán Astray were to go as soon as possible to Salamanca; and so I said an affectionate farewell to Uhagón and my other friends.

There was a cosmopolitan atmosphere in Salamanca. The long centre table in the Gran Hotel dining-room was reserved for the German military observers, most of them senior officers; a general presided. They were an earnest party, who seemed to take little pleasure in their food or drink, and who kept very much to themselves. At a smaller table nearby sat the newspaper correspondents, among them Randolph Churchill, Pembroke Stevens, Reynolds Packard and his wife and Philby of The Times; Churchill’s clear, vigorous voice could be heard deploring with well-turned phrase and varied vocabulary the inefficiency of the service, the quality of the food and, above all, the proximity of the Germans, at whom he would direct venomous glances throughout the meal. ‘Surely,’ he exclaimed loudly, ‘there must be one Jew in Germany with enough guts to shoot that bastard Hitler!’

O’Duffy’s brigade had gone home; but a few stragglers remained, including my friend, Peter Lawler, a hard-bitten little Irish-Australian who had served with the A.I.F. in the First World War. During the troubles in Ireland he had been an intimate and trusted lieutenant of Michael Collins; in his own part of the country he was still known as ‘The Commandant’. At this time he was waiting in Salamanca to collect six months of back pay due to him from the Spaniards, who were responsible for paying the Irish Brigade. When he received it, a month or so later, he returned to Ireland, very bitter against O’Duffy.

Standing one day in the hall of the hotel I was accosted by a Falstaffian figure with a high, bald forehead and a small blonde moustache, who introduced himself in a direct, almost abrupt manner as Archie Lyall, an author and free-lance journalist. He had just come from Santander, where he had been reporting the trials of war criminals by the Nationalists. As a qualified barrister he considered that they had been very fairly conducted and that the sentences on those found guilty had been just. Previously, he had written a multi-lingual vocabulary entitled Lyall’s 25 Languages of Europe, some travel books on the Balkans, Portuguese West

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