“Take it easy,” said Al. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh Araquistain invented him. Araquistain who is Ambassador in Paris now. He made him up you know. He called him the Spanish Lenin and then the poor man tried to live up to it and somebody let him look through a pair of field glasses and he thought he was Clausewitz.”
“You said that before,” Al told him coldly. “What do you base it on?”
“Why three days ago in the Cabinet meeting he was talking military affairs. They were talking about this business we’ve got now and Jesus Hernandez, just ribbing him you know, asked him what was the difference between tactics and strategy. Do you know what the old boy said?”
“No,” Al said. I could see this new Comrade was getting a little on his nerves.
“He said, ‘In tactics you attack the enemy from in front. In strategy you take him from the sides.’ Now isn’t that something?”
“You better run along, Comrade,” Al said. “You’re getting so awfully discouraged.”
“But we’ll get rid of Largo Caballero,” the short Comrade said. ‘We’ll get rid of him right after his offensive. This last piece of stupidity will be the end of him.”
“O.K. Comrade,” Al told him. “But I’ve got to attack in the morning.”
“Oh you are going to attack again?”
“Listen Comrade. You can tell me any sort of crap you want because it’s interesting and I’m grown up enough to sort things out. But don’t ask me any questions, see? Because you’ll be in trouble.”
“I just meant it personally. Not as information.”
“We don’t know each other well enough to ask personal questions, Comrade,” Al said. “Why don’t you just go to another table and let Comrade Henry and me talk. I want to ask him some things.”
“Salud Comrade,” the little man said, standing up. “We’ll meet another time.”
“Good,” said Al. “Another time.”
We watched him go over to another table. He excused himself, some soldiers made room for him, and as we watched we could see him starting to talk. They all looked interested.
“What do you make of that little guy?” Al asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Me either,” Al said. “He certainly had this offensive sized up.” He took a drink and showed his hand. “See? It’s all right now. I’m not any rummy either. I never take a drink before an attack.”
“How was it today?”
“You saw it. How did it look?”
“Terrible.”
“That’s it. That’s the word for it all right. It was terrible. I guess he’s using strategy and tactics both now because we are attacking from straight in front and from both sides. How’s the rest of it going?”
“Duran took the new race track. The hipódromo. We’ve narrowed down on the corridor that runs up into University City. Up above we crossed the Coruña road. And we’re stopped at the Cerro de Aguilar since yesterday morning. We were up that way this morning. Duran lost over half his brigade, I heard. How is it with you?”
“Tomorrow we’re going to try those farm houses and the church again. The church on the hill, the one they call the hermit, is the objective. The whole hillside is cut by those gullies and it’s all enfiladed at least three ways by machine gun posts. They’re dug deep all through there and it’s well done. We haven’t got enough artillery to give any kind of real covering fire to keep them down and we haven’t heavy artillery to blow them out. They’ve got anti-tanks in those three houses and an anti-tank battery by the church. It’s going to be murder.”
“When’s it for?”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve got no right to tell you that.”
“If we have to film it, I meant,” I said. “The money from the film all goes for ambulances. We’ve got the Twelfth Brigade in the counterattack at the Arganda Bridge. And we’ve got the Twelfth again in that attack last week by Pingarrón. We got some good tank shots there.”
“The tanks were no good there,” Al said.
“I know,” I said, “but they photographed very well. What about tomorrow?”
“Just get out early and wait,” he said. “Not too early.” “How you feel now?”
“I’m awfully tired,” he said. “And I’ve got a bad headache. But I feel a lot better. Let’s have another one and then go up to your place and get a bath.”
“Maybe we ought to eat first.”
“I’m too dirty to eat. You can hold a place and I’ll go get a bath and join you at the Gran Via.”
“I’ll go up with you.”
“No. It’s better to hold a place and I’ll join you.” He leaned his head forward on the table. “Boy I got a headache. It’s the noise in those buckets. I never hear it anymore but it does something to your ears just the same.”
“Why don’t you go to bed?”
“No. I’d rather stay up with you for a while and then sleep when I get back down there. I don’t want to wake up twice.”
“You haven’t got the horrors, have you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m fine. Listen, Hank. I don’t want to talk a lot of crap but I think I’m going to get killed tomorrow.”
I touched the table three times with my fingertips.
“Everybody feels like that. I’ve felt like that plenty of times.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not natural with me. But where we’ve got to go tomorrow doesn’t make sense. I don’t even know that I can get them up there. You can’t make them move if they won’t go. You can shoot them afterwards. But at the time if they won’t go they won’t go. If you shoot them they still won’t go.”
“Maybe it will be all right.”
“No. We’ve got good infantry tomorrow. They’ll go anyway. Not like those yellow bastids we had the first day.”
“Maybe it will be all right.”
“No,” he said. “It won’t be all right. But it will be just exactly as good as I can make it. I can make them start all right and I can take them up to where they will have to quit one at a time. Maybe they can make it. I’ve got three I can rely on. If only one of the good ones doesn’t get knocked out at the start.”
“Who are your good ones?”
“I’ve got a big Greek from Chicago that will go anywhere. He’s just as good as they come. I’ve got a Frenchman from Marseille that’s got his left shoulder in a cast with two wounds still draining that asked to come out of the hospital in the Palace Hotel for this show and has to be strapped in and I don’t know how he can do it. Just technically I mean. He’d break your bloody heart. He used to be a taxi driver.” He stopped. “I’m talking too much. Stop me if I talk too much.”
“Who’s the third one?” I asked.
“The third one? Did I say I had a third one?”
“Sure.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re mechanics, but they couldn’t learn to soldier. They can’t size up what’s happening. And they’re all afraid to die. I tried to get them over it,” he said. “But it comes back on them every attack. They look like tank men when you see them by the tanks with the helmets on. They look like tank men when they get in. But when they shut the traps down there’s really nothing inside. They aren’t tank men. And so far we haven’t had time to make new ones.”
“Do you want to take the bath?”
“Let’s sit here a little while longer,” he said. “It’s nice here.”
“It’s funny all right, with a war right down the end of the street so you can walk to it, and then leave it and come here.”
“And then walk back to it,” Al said.
“What about a girl? There’s two American girls at the Florida. Newspaper correspondents. Maybe you could make
one.”
“I don’t want to have to talk to them. I’m too tired.”
“There’s the two Moor girls from Ceuta at that corner table.”
He looked over at them. They were both dark and bushy headed. One was large and one was small and they certainly both looked strong and active.
“No,” said Al. “I’m going to see plenty Moors tomorrow without having to fool with them tonight.”
“There’s plenty of girls,” I said. “Manolita’s at the Florida. That Seguridad bird she lives with has gone to Valencia and she’s being true to him with everybody.”
“Listen, Hank, what are you trying to promote me?”
“I just wanted to cheer you up.”
“Grow up,” he said. “What’s one more?”
“One more.”
“I don’t mind dying a bit,” he said. “Dying is just a lot of crap. Only it’s wasteful. The attack is wrong and it’s wasteful. I can handle tanks good now. If I had time I could make good tankists too. And if we had tanks that were a little bit faster the anti-tanks wouldn’t bother them the way it does when you haven’t got the mobility. Listen, Hank, they aren’t what we thought they were though: Do you remember when everybody thought if we only had tanks?”
“They were good at Guadalajara.”
“Sure. But those were the old boys. They were soldiers. And it was against Italians.”
“But what’s happened?”
“A lot of things. The mercenaries signed up for six months. Most of them were Frenchmen. They soldiered good for five but now all they want to do is live through the last month and go home. They aren’t worth a damn now. The Russians that came out as demonstrators when the government bought the tanks were perfect. But they’re pulling them back now for China they say. The new Spaniards are some of them good and some not. It takes six months to make a good tank man, I mean to know anything. And be able to size up and work intelligently you have to have a talent. We’ve been having to make them in six weeks and there aren’t so many with a talent.”
“They make fine flyers.”
“They’ll make fine tank guys too. But you have to get the ones with a vocation for it. It’s sort of like being a priest. You have to be cut out for it. Especially now they’ve got so much anti-tank.”
They had pulled down the shutters in Chicote’s and now they were locking the door. No one would be allowed in now. But you had a half an hour more before they closed.
“I like it here,” said Al. “It isn’t so noisy now. Remember that time I met you in New Orleans when I was on a ship and we went in to have a drink in the Monteleone bar and that kid that looked just like Saint Sebastian was paging people with that funny voice like he was singing and I gave him a quarter to page Mr. B. F. Slob?”
“That’s the same way you said ‘Casa del Campo.’’’
“Yeah,” he said. “I laugh every time I think of that.” Then he went on, “You see, now, they’re not frightened of tanks anymore. Nobody is. We aren’t either. But they’re still useful. Really useful. Only with the anti-tank now they’re so damn vulnerable. Maybe I ought to be in something else. Not really. Because they’re still useful. But the way they are now you’ve got to have a vocation for them. You got to have a lot of political development to be a good tank man now.”
“You’re a good tank man.”
“I’d like to be something else tomorrow,” he said. “I’m talking awfully wet but you have a right to talk wet if it isn’t going to hurt anybody else. You know I like tanks too, only we don’t use them right because the infantry don’t know enough yet. They just want the old tank ahead to give them some cover while they go. That’s no good. Then they get to depending on the tanks and they won’t move without them. Sometimes they won’t even deploy.”
“I know.”
“But you see if you had tankists that knew their stuff they’d go out ahead and develop the machine gun fire and then drop back behind the infantry and fire on the gun and knock it out and give the infantry covering fire when they attacked. And other tanks could rush the machine gun posts as though they were cavalry. And they could straddle a trench and enfilade and put flanking fire down it. And they could bring up infantry when it was right to or cover their advance when that was best.”
“But instead?”
“Instead it’s like it will be tomorrow. We have so damned few guns that we’re just used as slightly mobile armored artillery units. And as soon as you are standing still and being light artillery, you’ve lost your mobility and that’s your safety and they start sniping at you with the anti-tanks. And if we’re not that we’re just sort of iron perambulators to push ahead of the infantry. And lately you don’t know whether the perambulator will push or whether the guys inside will push them. And you never know if there’s going to be anybody behind you when you get there.”
“How many are you now to a brigade?”
“Six to a battalion. Thirty to a brigade. That’s in principle.”
“Why don’t you come along now and get the bath and we’ll go and eat?”
“All right. But don’t you start taking care of me or thinking I’m worried or anything because I’m not. I’m just tired and I wanted to talk. And don’t give me any pep talk either because we’ve got a political commissar and I know what I’m fighting for and I’m not worried. But I’d like things to be efficient and used as intelligently as possible.”
“What made you think I was going to give you any pep talk?”
“You started to look like it.”
“All I tried to do was see if you wanted a girl and not to talk too wet about getting killed.”
“Well I don’t want any girl tonight and I’ll talk just as wet as I please unless it does damage to others. Does it damage you?”
“Come on and get the bath,” I said. “You can talk just as bloody wet as you want.”
“Who do you suppose that little guy was that talked as though he knew so much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“He made me gloomy,” said Al. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The old waiter with the bald head unlocked the outside door of Chicote’s and let us out into the street.
“How is the offensive, Comrades?” he said at the door.
“It’s O. K., Comrade,” said Al. “It’s all right.”
“I am happy,” said the waiter. “My boy is in the One Hundred and Forty-fifth Brigade. Have you seen them?”
“I am of the tanks,” said Al. “This Comrade makes a cinema. Have you seen the hundred and forty-fifth?”
“No,” I said.
“They are up the Extremadura road,” the old waiter said. “My boy is political commissar of the machine gun company of his battalion. He is my youngest boy. He is twenty.”
“What party are you Comrade?” Al asked him.
“I am of no party,” the waiter said. “But my boy is a Communist.”
“So am I,” said Al. “The offensive, Comrade, has not yet reached a decision. It is very difficult. The fascists hold very strong positions. You, in the rear guard, must be as firm as we will be at the front. We may not take these positions now but we have proved we now have an army capable of going on the offensive and you will see what it will do.”
“And the Extremadura road?” asked the old waiter, still holding to the door. “Is it very dangerous there?”
“No,” said Al. “It’s fine up there. You don’t need to worry about him up there.”
“God bless you,” said the waiter. “God guard you and keep you.”
Outside in the dark street, Al said, “Jees he’s kind of confused politically, isn’t he?”
“He is a good guy,” I said. “I’ve known him for a long time.”
“He seems like a
good guy,” Al said. “But he ought to get wise to himself politically.”
The room at the Florida was crowded. They were playing the gramophone and it was full of smoke and there was a crap game going on the floor. Comrades kept coming in to use the bathtub and the room smelt of smoke, soap, dirty uniforms, and steam from the bathroom.
The Spanish girl called Manolita, very neat, demurely dressed, with a sort of false French chic, with much joviality, much dignity and closely set cold eyes, was sitting on the bed talking with an English newspaper man. Except for the gramophone it wasn’t very noisy.
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