FEATURE

_Mac-Paps:
fighting the

| “good fight’ |

By DAN KEETON

It was an army unlike any other in Cana-
da’s history, not the least reason being that
it was illegal in the government's eyes.

“It was a workers’ army. A workers’
army is not like a capitalist army — its
commands come from the bottom up,”
asserts one of its surviving veterans.

Fred Mattersdorfer is one of the few
remaining members of the battalion that
fought for the Republican cause in Spain in

the years immediately prior to World War
_IL. that battalion, named for two great his-
torical revolutionary leaders in Canadian
history — William Lyon Mackenzie and
~ Louis Joseph Papineau — has celebrated
its 50th anniversary this year.

The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion mem-
bers — the Mac-Paps, as they have come to
be known — are still not, despite a
decades-long campaign, recognized as war
veterans by the federal government.

Full recognition of the Mac-Paps — who
once represented most of the estimated
1,200 Canadians who fought to stop fas-
- cism before German and Italian fascism

launched the Second World War — would

“mean veterans benefits for the approxi-
mately 55-60 members who are still alive.

But it is not the money that counts, says

_ Mattersdorfer, an unemployed activist and

Young Communist League member when

he went to Spain from his native Fernie,

B.C; in 1937.

“We deserve the recognition, Not that I
want the money. I want recognition that we
__ were the first Canadians to recognize what
fascism was all about and to do something
about it. Recognition of the Mac-Paps is an
important thing for Canadian history.”
“I knew of the menace of fascism before
- we went to Spain,” says Len Norris, an
82-year-old White Rock resident who edits
the battalion’s quarterly house organ, the
Mac-Pap’r.
“Everywhere you went, people were talk-
ing about Spain. Everyone was concerned
about where Spain was going,” says Norris
_ in recalling his decision as a single unem-
ployed worker to volunteer for the Interna-
tional Brigades.

“Young people are adventurous — but
‘jt was not a whim (to volunteer for the

brigades),” Norris stresses.

“All members recognized that the dark
cloud of fascism threatened not only
_ Europe but, in due course, all North Amer-
_ ica,” says Lionel Edwards, general secretary
of the Veterans of the International Bri-
_ gades, Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. .

Edwards points out that the so-called
“Spanish Civil War” was in fact a testing
ground for military strategies of Hitler’s
Nazis.

_ “We could see Hitler wasn’t going to stop
there,” agrees Mattersdorfer. “And we saw
that the Republic had been voted in with a

"16 * PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 17, 1986

big majority, and that they were building
schools, among other good things.”

Most of the veterans interviewed were
single unemployed workers, some involved
in organizing in the hated work camps of
the R.B. Bennett government, and all firmly
committed to fighting for a socialist future
for Canada. It was the high degree of politi-
cal commitment — coupled with the reali-
zation that Spain represented a crucial
battleground — that led the then young
men to volunteer for a war in which they
would fight thousands of miles from home
without the assistance of their government,
which in fact had outlawed participation in
the Spanish struggle.

For some, getting to Spain meant not
only leaving the country under false preten-
ces and facing possible prosecution for their
actions. It also meant overcoming the objec-
tions of the oragnizers of the campaign, as
Walter Gawrycki related.

“I was supposed to go there first,” Gaw-
rycki relates, “but Tom McEwen said no,
we need you in the Maxim Gorky club.”

Eventually Gawrycki, at the time a

MATTERS-
DORFER

NORRIS

member of the Russian-speaking club of the
Communist Party of Canada, would go,
when the party, which veterans note was at
first the sole organizer for the Canadian
volunteers. It would later broaden to
include churches, the Co-operative Com-
monwealth Federation and several other
progressive Canadian groups and become
the Committee to Aid Republican Spain.

Most veterans were poor to begin with,
and while organizers generated fundraising
benefits to aid the volunteers, many tell sto-
ries of leaving for Spain with pittances.

Edwards boarded a CNR train in Cal-
gary, his home town, with $35 in his pocket.
Dances and other benefits gave Matters-
dorfer and other volunteers from the East
Kootenays a “few dollars” when they left in
1937, ostensibly for the World’s Fair in
Paris.

Gawrycki left with “six boys” some of
whom were dressed so poorly they required
clothing donations from well wishers they
met on the way to Toronto (the fares were
paid by the Communist Party.) But not
everyone who left was poor, Gawrycki
states.

Ayoung Fred Mattersdorfer entertains fellow volunteers in photo used in ‘““The Good
Fight,”’ a U.S. film about the Abraham Lincoln contingent.

“Some of them were miners who had
saved maybe three, four thousand dollars
which they spent to get there. We lost most
of them which is sad, because they were very
good, class-conscious guys.”

Mattersdorfer says the 1,200 figure given
for Canadians participating is an official
estimate. It represents those who left from
Canada, but others entered the fight by
jumping ships in European ports and, once
in Spain, were incorporated into other bat-
talions. But since entry into Spain was
illegal — Canadian passports bore a stam-
ped message forbidding it — most had to
make a gruelling journey through the
mountainous terrain bordering France and
Spain: the Pyrenees.

Recalls Mattersdorfer, who trekked 30
miles through the mountains to reach his
destination, “For me it wasn’t so tough,
because I was used to the mountains, but
for some of the guys, it was pretty hard.
Some of the creeks were swollen at that time
of year.”

Edwards recalls that some couldn’t make
it.

WAYWOOD EDWARDS

“We let Paris — the Fronte Populaire
government was in then, and it was very
sympathetic — and went to Alais, in
southern France. Then we took the train to
Bezieres, near the Pyrenees. That evening
we caught a bus to the foothills, where we
were met by smugglers who would be our
guides across the mountains.

“Then came the longest night, I suppose,
for many of us. Those mountains aren’t as
high as our Rockies, but they’re higher than
the coast range. Some guys among us were
World War I veterans, getting on, and they
had to drop out. But we carried on,
although it was tough.”

Arriving in Spain for most recruits meant
a stay at Figueras, a fortress where all went
through basic training — some for a few
months, others passing through in only a
few weeks.

Most of the Mac-Paps saw action in the
key battles of the Spanish war. As members
of the 15th Brigade, which included Ameri-
can and British battalions, they were in the
thick of the fights at Fuentes de Ebro,
Teruel and Jarama.

Edwards recalls losing a friend at the

Ebro River. “His name was Roget Bila-
deau. I found him after, his face chalk-
white, with a bullet hole in his forehead.”

Edwards was active in the fight to hold
the southern city of Teruel, a strategic spot
taken from the Franco forces. It took 30
days of intense fighting aided by the bombs
from Hitler’s planes, for the fascists to
retake the city.

“The upshot of it all was that very few of
us survived. I was in very bad shape physi-
cally, my nerves were shot, so I was sent off
to Valencia to recuperate.” j

It was during the “terrible experience” of
the retreats by the Republican forces and .
International Brigades that Edwards, by
then a teniente — Lieutenant — was put
out of action.

“My number came up when a shell —
exploded beside me. I recall very vividly the
smellof the sulphur. Only my pack saved’ .
my life. I lost my shoulder and was out ot
the war.” :

Walter Gawrycki recalls that, following
his being wounded in Case de la Selva, —
being “forgotten” for 24 hours in the hospi-
tal. “I was left naked with no blanket and no
breakfast. But at that time, fifth column ~
activities in the hospital were many.”

Veteran Wally Waywood, who has lec-
tured with Norris on campuses in B.C.
about the war, recalls being left behind
when the brigades departed Spain 1939. He —
was in hospital at Villa Pax.

“They bombed the train I left on. I
wound up ina ditch full of mud. That was a
rough one. At the border I had no passport, —
no nothing. I eventually got across, thanks —
to the French (Communist) Party.”

Most of the surviving Canadian volun-
teers made it back to Canada, to heroes’ ~
welcomes from trade unionists and others
who supported the Republican cause. But
they were ignored by their government, and
the governments of England and France —
the latter by that time was a right-wing —
govrnment — thwarted efforts to unite the
veterans with their supporters. Trains carry-
ing the veterans through both France and
England were rerouted — no mean feat —
around London and Paris, where thou-
sands staged rallies to welcome the
survivors and praise their efforts.

Today, members of the Mackenzie-
Papineau Battalion carry a membership
card that, on the back, lists “aims of the
association” that include extending “‘solid-
arity and aid to any national state or people
whose independence and integrity is threa-
tened by external aggression.”

That card also lists as an aim the seeking
of “official recognition” of the Mac-Paps bY
the Canadian government so that “th
Canadians who served in the Spanish wat
and ... those veterans who are still living»
shall be accorded full status of veterans of
Canada’s wars.” ’

see VETERANS page 22