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FROM PAGE 17

F

Friendly
Season’s
Greetings
and
Best Wishes to
the struggling
peoples of the
world.

from
East
Indian ;
Workers’

Association

i

Legacy of John Kozar

“My uncle Jim told me that he used to go
over enemy lines to get things. How you
substantiate that I don’t know. Maybe it’s
just one of the things you have to accept.”

Finally, in October of this year, there
came the opportunity to go to Spain to see
the places where the battles against Fran-
co’s fascist insurgents had been fought, the
places where his father had left the most
enduring memories with the survivors of the
International Brigades. The Lincolns and
several other Brigade battalions had set up a
tour of Spain to mark the 50th anniversary
of the Spanish Civil War and Tom, along

_ with some 300 others — veterans and their

wives, as well as students — made the trip.

The two-week tour made the colors in the
composite picture more vivid than ever. As
they travelled to the various sites of the
battles of the war — to Saragossa, Jarama,
and Belchite which had been left as it was
following the war as Franco’s “reminder”
to the Spanish people. As he walked
through, Tom recalls, “it was the strangest
sensation — whether it was imagination or
because I had read about it so many times, I
felt as if I knew the place.”

In Brunete, where his father had been
wounded, they looked out over the dry,

Season's Greetings
to the labor, peace,

and solidarity movements.
May you grow in your endeavors in 1987.

Trade Union Research Bureau
#170, 111 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, V5L 4C4, 255-7346.

Holiday Greetings ©

from the
Kamloops Unemployed

“FULL EMPLOYMENT”

Action Committee

W.G. (Bill) Clark
President

Serving workers in the telecommunications industry since 1949.

5261 Lane Street, Burnaby, 437-8601

D.E. Bremner

Secretary-Treasurer

24 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 17, 1986

sun-baked plain where the Lincolns had
fought. “We stopped at a pillbox where one
or two (Fascist) machine guns could have
kept people pinned down for the whole day
with only the odd burst. There was no
cover — and yet men fought there.

“T suddenly felt thirsty — like the times
in your life when you would die for a drink
of water. I think it must have been like that
at Brunete — except that there would also
have been lead in the air.”

It was in Madrid that Tom had the honor
of receiving on his father’s behalf, the
medal, a replica of the 1938 medallion,
struck by the city of Madrid this year to pay
tribute to the International Brigades. He
hadn’t planned it beforehand but “I prac-
tised my Spanish and went to the man hand-
ing them out and explained who I was and
why I had come. He gave me one without
question.” From the Lincoln veterans, he
hopes to get one of the certificates that were
given to the men in Barcelona, replicas of
those issued by the republican Govern-
ment’s defence ministry in 1938 as the

International Brigades were being sent.

home.

When he receives it, it will go, along with
the scores of other documents, photographs
and articles about his father that are now

- enough to fill a book. But as Tom points

out, that book is still incomplete.

“After Spain, the information is sketch-
ier,” he says since there were not the close
comrades and the memories that went with
the Lincoln Battalion. There is, however,
one part that he knows very well.

“T have traced his last steps,” he says.
“He disembarked from a ship called the
Cornwallis in Halifax on Dec. 8, 1941 and
went from there to Toronto to see my
mother after a four or five-month voyage. A
few days later, he went down to New York
and crewed on the ship, the Friar Rock, that
he was lost.on.

“The ship left New York a couple of days
before Christmas, steamed into Halifax
with engine trouble, put into a shipyard and
then left Halifax for Sydney on the 7th or
8th of January. It was late for the convoy it
was assigned to but was given a speed of
nine knots to overtake the others which
were travelling at seven knots.

“The ship was loaded wiht trucks and
other materials bound for Archangel — to
deliver supplies for the defence of Lenin-
grad, I believe.”

Before it reached the convoy, on the 13th
of January, a torpedo from a Nazi U-boat

Geason s
f

a

or
Peace

Solidarity

Jobs

found its mark. “The story goes that every-
body did get off the ship,” he says, “but his
lifeboat was never found.” a
Tom is still tracing his footsteps, looking |»
in the archives and in other official records. }
But the image of John “Topsy” Kozar is};
more defined now and his character has} |

emerged clearly. :
“J know now that he was very class con-|
scious, that he was a good trade unionis
says Tom. “I think he was a risk taker, not)
only in the labor movement but in Spain.)
He figured that he led a charmed life ané)
never would get it.
“There’is no doubt about which side of)
the political fence he was on. He was co n- |
mitted to the struggle of the working class.)
If there was a picket line, you went out and Cc

did what you had to. ad

“No one I have ever talked to has sai@
that they didn’t like him. They have all sai@ 4
that he was a very constant man who woule :
do whatever he said he would do. He
clearly someone who was not afraid to
things under fire.”

How have the impressions that he
gathered about his father affected his owM)
outlook? Although he does not have a hig!
profile in the trade union movement, T
has been an active member of the BCGE
since it was formed and given bargai
rights in 1973 and has been its treasurer,
unpaid post, since 1982. A member of

- B.C. Federation of Labor’s executive co
cil, he is also known for his impassio
speeches at conventions on behalf of n
rights and other social issues. ec

I’ve always known which side I’m on,
says thoughtfully. “I believe that work!
people should get a bigger piece of the w
they create. I know we’re not going to
overnight but we’ve got to keep pushi

He emphasizes that his social consct
comes from his family background — fr
his mother, and from others in the Mc
family.

He counts Tom McEwen as a
important person in my life, beca
where he came from and what he did‘
life.” He still tries to go to see him o
month in the extended care hospital
he now stays. %

But the eight years of tracing his fath
life, the meetings with Lincoln vet
“who treated me like I was part 0
family,” have re-emphasized the ¢
influences of his own life.

“My own social sense was some
was almost bound to inherit as I was
ing up. But getting to know the kind o
my father was — and the kind of re
ships he had with my mother — hav:
forced that.”

Greetings

United
Fishermen and
Allied :
Workers

Union
111 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, B.C.

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