EARS

ae we had given every life

They marched on their last
Tade in Barcelona on November
45, 1938. The streets were filled
mith flowers as 400,000 Spaniards

ig

: <
LEN NORRIS

erst... . and we followed the
Mericans,”’ Johnson recalls.
here were flowers everywhere
Wor and then all of a sudden,
Men and girls burst through the
tdon to embrace us. .. .”

Tom the reviewing stand high
a _the parade, Dolores
'rruri, “La Pasionara,’’ leader
x he Communist Party, bid
fj, ehant farewell on behalf of
|. h€public of Spain: ;
Brcomrades of the International
begets: Political reasons,
i. ONS of state, the welfare of that
ee Cause for which you offered

ic blood with boundless
a €rosity are-sending you back,
i oa of you to your own countries
Of Others to forced exile. You can
wy. You are history. You
, [hae You are the example of
hin; Ocracy’s solidarity and

iversality, in face of the
iy ‘accommodating’ spirit
}y; 0S who interpret democratic
> ciples with their eyes on the
| &tds of wealth. ...

5 “i hen the olive tree of peace
, ae its leaves again, ent-
Ban: with the laurels of the
Ic Nish Republic’s victory —

si back!”
iy. Would be months yet before the
“Kenzie-Papineau Battalion, its
5 = down to less than half
he Sate would be able to return
etre The game of evasion and
|p Be had yet to be played out in

Joh Wa. Len Norris and’ John
Waity on emember the long days
Tho, Ing in Ripoll, repatriation site
tern the English-speaking In-

Jationals.

\y . Waited ... and waited... .
ria the last from the western
hag Ties to leave Spain — and that

4 lot to do with the stalling of
} ,,~@nadian government.”

ce the repatriation order
KSecp Y came, the men were sped in
ISealegy across Europe aboard a

train that avoided the major
: S It was a pattern that was to
dj en peated in Canada once they
Boge Carked from the Duchess of
Wet bound out of Liverpool.
isch never arrived at a station on
Sdule,” recalls Johnson. “At
ilar ty all the entrances were
oh Up — no one was allowed in,
B © was allowed out.’’
x even the reshuffling of
dules and the sealing up could
prevent throngs of people from
reece returning volunteers a
_ »&s' welcome, MacKenzie King

,
|
|

i Ny

UN
,

“ot

PA
“CIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 30, 1976+Page 11

The

could speak for the Liberal
establishment but there were
10,000 people in-Toronto’s Union
Station to speak for the Canadian
people. Len Norris also remem-
bers what it was like at other stops
as the train made its way across
the country:

“On the way through Fort

William hundreds of women met us
with food — hams, ice cream,
boxes of tomatoes and lettuce. It
was the same in Brandon. In
Winnipeg a band was playing and
the mayor came out to greet
US?
Some of them were home —
although a government which two
years ago had sought to frustrate
their efforts to volunteer expressed
no joy on their return.

Behind them, in the Spain that
even the raw heroism of the
Republican soldiers could no
longer defend, Francb was already
turning the country into the vast
prison house that it remains today.
And for some months. after the
withdrawal of the International
Brigades, several Canadians

GERRY DELANEY

would be among the inmates of
that prison.

“JT was captured on March 28,
1938,’’ MacKenzie-Papineau
veteran Gerry Delaney recalls. “I
was taken by truck to San Pedro de
Cardenas where the Fascists had
turned the monastery into a huge
prison.”’ Three days later, on April

d

JIM LUCAS

1, Nels Madsen would join him,
along with 700 other International
Brigade prisoners and 4,000
Spaniards. —

For nearly 40 years, the ex-
periences of the prison at San
Pedro de Cardenas have served as
a grim reminder of all that is
Franco’s and now, Juan Carlos’,
Spain. But even in those last days
of the war, even when the defeat of
the Republic was imminent, the
light of heroism glimmered in the
fascist darkness.

1

~ International
Brigades

Among those captured in the
spring of 1938 was the renowned
commander of the Fifteenth
Brigade, the American, Robert
Merriman. Nels Madsen was one
of the last to see him alive.

“They took him out into the
churchyard — three guards in
front, three behind and two on
either side. They had stripped him
of his officer’s stripes and shoulder
pads. The blood was streaming
down his face as they marched him
out. We never saw him again.”

Gerry Delaney remembers the
German prisoners, many of whom
were already familiar with con-
centration camps and who now
sought to escape the monastery
prison.

“They would gather under their

cell window, about six of them, and
start singing their folk songs. They

“would have a blanket around them

and behind the blanket, one man
would be sawing away at the iron
bars. They didn’t have much more
than a sharpened spoon but they
would work away at it for hours
and hours, to cut enough to weaken
the bars.”

According to another account,
the six finally did manage to
escape through the window. Two
were later found and shot. The rest

vanished.
Thirteen months after their
capture, in May, 1939, the

Canadians, by now half-starved
and ridden with lice, crossed the
international bridge into Hindaye,
France. Their places in the prison

cells would be taken by Spaniards, ©

thousands of them, as San Pedro de
Cardenas became Burgos Prison,
its infamy made known to all the
world by another prisoner, the
Spanish poet Marcos Ana.

Today, Burgos still presents its
imposing prison wallas as do
scores of other Spanish prisons —
in Carabanchel, Alicante and

~ elsewhere. Spanish fascism sur-

vived the Second World War and

the new spirit of liberation and .

socialism which emerged out of the
anti-fascist struggle. Where Hitler
and Mussolini left off, the United
States picked’ up, embracing
Franco as it has Pinochet in Chile.
The struggle that began with Spain
is, as yet unfinished.

For their part, the Spanish
people have waged an unceasing
battle. The wave of strikes that has
reverberated across Spain, the
demand for amnesty that has been
taken up throughout Europe — all
bear witness to that. The
emergence and growing strength
of the illegal Workers Com-
missions is testimony that the
combative spirit that carried the
Republic through the Civil War
lives on in a new generation.

Though thousands have already
given their blood and can do no
more, the veterans of the In-
ternational Brigades also take
their place in the struggle that is
yet unfinished. Wherever there are
veterans, they are among the
voices raised for liberty in Spain
and against the resurgence of
fascism. In the socialist world,
they are part ofa proud anti-fascist
tradition.

This October, veterans from all
over the world will gather in Italy
to mark the 40th anniversary of the
formation of the International
Brigades. Perhaps then, the
forgetful can be reminded for
whom the bell tolls — and flags are
lowered.

MINISTERIOce#DEce#D EFENSA ce? NACIONAL

Subsecretaria del

Ejercito de Tierra

Como premio a su aciuacion durante la Segunda Gue-
rra de la Independencia Espanola, el Excmo. Sr. Ministre de De-
Jensa Nacional ha resuelto se otorgue a V.la MEDALIA DE LAS
BRIGADAS INTERNACIONALES creada por o.c. fecha 20 de Octur
bre de 1938 (D.0,n#275), para los combatientes no espaioles gue
han servido en dichas Brigadas desde su creacion hasta la
Jecha dela mencionada orden circular.

Lo que me complazco en comunicarle en nombre del Sr: Me

FS ace para su satisfuccion y¥ efectos
[eer Barcelona, Adie Bck&e de 1958 FP
/ oe EL SUBSECRETARIO.

Lg

\e ee ae Ee

The certificate presented to the members of the International Brigades
by the defence ministry of the Republic of Spain. This one belonged to
Emil Goguen who died in 1973. One of the first to volunteer, he served
in the American Lincoln Battalion before the MacKenzie-Papineau
Battalion was formed.

Little Towns

Villanueva de la Canada,

Guadalajara and Brunete ...

these might have been mere names upon a map
hanging on an office wall

giving latitude and longitude; beyond that
nothing. Nothing at all.

But would you expect

anyone glancing over the vast expanse of Canada
to remember long :

such names as Chilliwack or Lillooet?

And yet

there is a strange affinity

between Lillooet upon the Fraser,

its highway poised on sun-baked hills
and dusty in the-summer; = SS
‘between the town that drowses in the valley
amid the ordered efforts of its toil

and the rocky, steel-torn hills around Brunete.

For from such little towns as these,

whose streets are quiet

and far removed from conflict,

to little towns x
whose names the cables flung up from obscurity
to hold the key to history

and tell new tales of valor,

came lads who not so long ago

looked out upon the pines atop the jagged mountain

ridge;

the wind

smelling of wood smoke in the hills.

Here they died :
the acrid stench of powder in their nostrils
side by side —
with men who came from little towns of Italy
_ and Germany and France;
- from ancient villages
in Austria and Wales,
while shrapnel, shot and shell
~ reduced the little towns of Spain
in agony
_ of twisted bone and stone.

- Here they flung the fascists back
tokeepavow _—

_ they should not pass; : ee

_ so the wind that rambles through the canyons of
_ the Fraser S73

_ might never bring =

_ the drone of bombing planes
or smell of death upon the wing. —

They didnot know  —
the while they planned the strike
-» togainaraiseoffiftycentsaday _
and barred the mine to scabs, —

that it would be this way, —

2 dar awayo
standing astride the dawn
"to bar the highway to Madrid.

Se