Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  Periodically political delegates used to be sent round by the Party to visit the men in the line and, when possible, deliver [some] sort of political discourses. In addition every centuria had one or more men in its own ranks who were called its political delegates. I never grasped what the function of these men had originally been – they had evidently at the beginning had some function for which there was afterwards no need. When with the ILP English I was appointed their political delegate, but by this time the political delegate was simply a go-between who was sent to headquarters to complain about rations etc., and therefore so far as the English were concerned it was simply a question of choosing among the few men who spoke Spanish. The English were stricter than the Spaniards about electing officers and in one or two cases changed an NCO by election. They also appointed a committee of 5 men who were supposed to regulate all the affairs of the section. Although I was voted onto the committee myself I opposed its formation on the ground that we were now part of an army being commanded from above in more or less the ordinary way, and therefore such a committee had no function. Actually it had no important function but was occasionally useful for regulating very small matters. Contrary to what is generally believed the political leaders of the POUM were very hostile to this committee idea and were anxious to prevent the idea spreading from the English to the Spaniards.

  Before joining the English I was some weeks in a Spanish bandera, and of about 80 men in it some 60 were completely raw recruits. In these weeks the discipline improved a good deal, and from then on till the end of April there was a slow but fairly steady improvement in discipline throughout the militia. By April a militia unit when it had to march anywhere still looked like a retreat from Moscow, but this was partly because the men had been experienced solely in trench warfare. But by this time there was no difficulty in getting an order obeyed and no fear that it would be disobeyed as soon as your back was turned. Outwardly the special ‘revolutionary’ characteristics remained the same till the end of May, but in fact certain differences were showing themselves by this time. In May when I was commanding a seccion (which now meant a platoon) the younger Spaniards called me ‘usted’. I pulled them up about it but the word was evidently coming back, and no doubt the universal use of tu in the early months of the war was an affectation and would seem most unnatural to a Latin people. One thing that seemed to stop abruptly about March was the shouting of revolutionary slogans to the Fascists. This was not practised at Huesca, though in many cases the trenches were very close together. On the Zaragoza front it had been practised regularly and probably had its share in bringing in the deserters who were very numerous there (at one time about 15 a week on a section of front held by about 1000 men). But the universal use of ‘camarada’ and the notion that we were all supposed to be equals persisted until the militia was redistributed.* It was noticeable that the first drafts of the Popular Army who came up to the line conformed with this. Between the POUM and PSUC militias, up to the time when I last saw the latter at the beginning of March, there was no perceptible difference in state of discipline and social atmosphere.

  The general organisation was in some ways very good but in others quite unnecessarily incompetent. One striking feature about this war was the good food organisation. Up till May 1937 when certain things began to give out the food was always good, and it was always regular, a thing not easy to arrange even in a very stationary war. The cooks were very devoted, sometimes bringing food up under heavy fire. I was impressed by the food-organisation behind the lines and the way in which the peasants had been got to co-operate. The men’s clothes were laundered from time to time, but it was not done very well or very regularly. The postal arrangements were good and letters which had started from Barcelona always got to the front promptly, though an extraordinary number of letters sent into Spain went astray somewhere on the way to Barcelona. Ideas of sanitation practically did not exist and no doubt only the dry climate prevented epidemics. There was no medical service worth mentioning till one got about 10 miles behind the lines. This did not matter so long as there was only a small trickle of casualties, but even so many lives were lost unnecessarily. Trenches were at the beginning extremely primitive but about March a labour battalion was organised. This was very efficient and able to construct long sections of trench very rapidly and without noise. Nevertheless up to about May there was not much idea of communication-trenches, even where the front line was near the enemy, and it was not possible, eg., to get wounded men away without carrying them under fire. No effort was made to keep the roads behind the line in repair, although, no doubt, the labour to do so was available. The POUM Red Aid, to which it was voluntary-compulsory to subscribe, were very good about looking after wounded men in hospital etc. In regard to stores, there was probably some peculation and favouritism, but I think extremely little. When cigarettes began to run short the little English section received rather more than their fair share, a tribute to the Spanish character. The grand and inexcusable mistake made in this war, at any rate on the Aragón front, was to keep the men in the line for unnecessarily long periods. By Xmas 1936 the war was almost entirely stationary and for long periods during the next six months there was little fighting. It should therefore have been perfectly possible to organise the four days in four days out, or even four days in two days out, system. On this arrangement men do not actually get more hours of rest but they do periodically get a few nights in bed or at any rate with the chance to take their clothes off. As it was men were sometimes kept as long as five months in the line continuously. It sometimes happened that trenches were a long way from the enemy, say 1000 yards, but this is more boring and therefore worse for morale than being at 50–100 yards. Meanwhile they were sleeping in trenches in intolerable discomfort, usually lousy and up till April almost always cold. Moreover even when one is 1000 yards from the enemy one is under rifle and occasional shell fire, causing a trickle of casualties and therefore fear which is cumulative. In these circumstances it is difficult to do more than keep on keeping on. During February-March, the period when there was little fighting round Huesca, attempts were made to train the men in various things, use of the machine gun, signalling, open-order work (advancing by rushes etc.) etc. These were mainly a failure because everyone was suffering from lack of sleep and too exhausted to learn. I myself at this time tried to master the mechanism of the Hotchkiss machine gun and found that lack of sleep had simply deprived me of the power to learn. In addition it would no doubt have been feasible to grant leave at shorter intervals, but the failure to do so probably had reasons other than incompetence. But it would have been quite easy to take the men in and out of trenches as I have indicated, and to provide some kind of amenities for the troops not in the line. Even as far back as Barbastro the life of the troops was much drearier than it need have been. With a little organisation it would have been possible to arrange immediately behind the lines for hot baths, delousing, entertainments of some kind, cafés (actually there were some very feeble attempts at these) and also women. The very few women who were in or near the line and were getatable were simply a source of jealousy. There was a certain amount of sodomy among the younger Spaniards. I doubt whether troops can simultaneously engage in trench warfare and be trained for mobile warfare, but more training would certainly have been possible if more care had been devoted to resting the men. As it was they were exhausted for nothing at a period when the war was stagnant. Looking back I see that they stood it extremely well, and even at the time it was the fact that they did not disintegrate or show mutinous tendencies under these intolerable conditions that converted me (to some extent) to the notion of ‘revolutionary discipline’. Nevertheless the strain that was put upon them was partly unnecessary.

  As to jealousies between the different militias, so far as the rank and file were concerned I myself did not see serious signs of these till May 1937. To what extent the Aragón front was sabotaged from political motives I suppose we shall learn sooner or later. I do
not know how important the capture of Huesca would have been, but there is little doubt that it could have been taken in February or March with adequate artillery. As it was it was surrounded except for one gap about a km. wide, and this with so little artillery that preliminary bombardments were an impossibility, as they would only have served as a warning. This meant that attacks could only be surprise attacks delivered by a few hundred men at most. By the beginning of April Huesca appeared to be doomed, but the gap was never closed, the attacks petered out and a little later it became clear that the Fascist trenches were more strongly held and that they had improved their defences. At the end of June the big attack on Huesca was staged, clearly from political motives, to provide the Popular Army with a victory and discredit the CNT militia. The result was what could have been foreseen – heavy losses and an actual worsening of the position. But as far as rank and file were concerned party-feeling did not usually get beyond vague rumours that ‘they’, usually meaning the PSUC, had stolen guns etc. meant for ourselves. On the Zaragoza front where POUM and PSUC militia were distributed more or less alternately relations were good. When the POUM took over a sector from the PSUC at Huesca there were signs of jealousy, but this I think was purely military, the PSUC troops having failed to take Huesca and the POUM boasting that they were going to do so. The Guadalajara victory in February could be regarded as, and in fact was, a Communist victory, but everyone was unaffectedly glad and in fact enthusiastic. A little later than this one of our aeroplanes, presumably Russian, dropped a bomb in the wrong place and killed a number of POUM militiamen. Later, no doubt, it would have been said that this was ‘done on purpose’, but at the time this did not occur to anybody. About May, perhaps following on the Barcelona trouble, relations worsened. In Lérida, where large numbers of the new Popular Army formations were in training, when detachments of Popular Army marched past, I saw militiamen of I do not know what militia giving them raspberries and bleating in imitation of sheep. As to victimisation of men known to have served with the POUM, I doubt whether it began until after the alleged espionage discoveries. Immediately after these there appear to have been one or two serious incidents. About the end of June it seems that a detachment of PSUC militia were sent or came of their own accord to attack one of the POUM positions outside Huesca, and the men at the latter had to defend themselves with their machine guns. I have not either the exact date or more than general facts of this, but the source from which I had it leaves me in no doubt that it happened. It was no doubt the result of irresponsible statements in the press about espionage, desertion, etc., which had caused or almost caused trouble on earlier occasions.

  The fact that the militias were organised by and owed loyalty to different parties had bad effects after a certain date. At the beginning, when everyone was full of enthusiasm, inter-party rivalry was perhaps not a bad thing – this impression at least I derived from those who were in the earlier fighting when Siétamo etc. were taken. But when the militias were dwindling as against the Popular Army the effect was to make every party anxious to keep its strength up at no matter what cost. I believe that this was one reason for the fact, noted above, that leave was not granted as often as it might have been. Up till about June there was in reality no way of making a man who had gone on leave rejoin his unit, and conscription into the Popular Army, if6 passed into law (I forget when exactly it was passed), was completely ineffective. Therefore a militiaman once on leave could simply go home, and he had the more motive to do so as he had just drawn a big wad of back-pay, or he could join another organisation, which was often done at that time. In practice most men returned from leave, but some did not, so that every spell of leave meant a dwindling of numbers. In addition, I am certain that anxiety to keep up numbers made local commanders over-anxious not to incur casualties when they could not gain eclat° by incurring them. On the Zaragoza front valuable minor opportunities – the kind of thing that would not have got into the papers but would have made a certain difference – were lost owing to this, while such casualties as did occur were completely pointless. Also the useless riff-raff, amounting to five or ten per cent, who are to be found in all bodies of troops and who should be got rid of ruthlessly, were seldom or never got rid of. In January when I complained about the state of discipline a higher-up officer gave me his opinion that all the militias competed in slackness of discipline in order to detach recruits from the others. I don’t know whether this was true or said owing to momentary fed-upness.

  As to the personnel of the POUM militia, I doubt whether it was much different from the others. In standard of physique, which is a rough test, they were about equal to the PSUC. The POUM did not ask party affiliation from their militiamen, doubtless because being a minority party they found it hard to attract recruits. When the men were in the line efforts were made to get them to join the party, but it is fair to say that there was no kind of pressure. There was the usual proportion of riff-raff, and in addition a certain number of very ignorant peasants and people of no particular political alignment who had probably joined the POUM militia more or less by accident. In addition there was a certain number of people who had simply joined for the sake of a job. The fact that in December 1936 there was already a serious bread shortage in Barcelona and militiamen got bread in plenty had a lot to do with this. Nevertheless some of these nondescripts afterwards turned into quite good soldiers. Apart from a rather large number of refugee Germans there was a sprinkling of foreigners of many races, even including a few Portuguese. Putting aside the Germans, the best soldiers were usually the machine-gunners, who were organised in crews of six and kept rather apart from the others. The fetishistic attitude which men in this position develop towards their gun, rather as towards a household god, is interesting and should be studied. A few of the machine-gunners were old soldiers who had done their service over and over again owing to the Spanish substitute system, but most of them were ‘good party men’, some of them men of extremely high character and intelligence. I came to the conclusion, somewhat against my will, that in the long run ‘good party men’ make the best soldiers. The detachment of in all about 30 English and Americans sent out by the ILP were divided rather sharply between old soldiers of no particular political affiliations and ‘good party men’ with no military experience. As I am nearer to the first type myself I am probably not prejudiced in saying that I believe the second to be superior. Old soldiers are of course more useful at the beginning of a campaign, and they are all right when there is any fighting, but they have more tendency to go to pieces under inaction and physical exhaustion. A man who has fully identified with some political party is reliable in all circumstances. One would get into trouble in left-wing circles for saying so, but the feeling of many Socialists towards their party is very similar to that of the thicker-headed type of public school man towards his old school. There are individuals who have no particular political feelings and are completely reliable, but they are usually of bourgeois origin. In the POUM militia there was a slight but perceptible tendency for people of bourgeois origin to be chosen as officers. Given the existing class-structure of society I regard this as inevitable. Middle-class and upper-class people have usually more self-confidence in unfamiliar circumstances, and in countries where conscription is not in force they usually have more military tradition than the working class. This is notably the case in England. As to age, 20 to 35 seems to be the proper age for front-line soldiers. Above 35 I would not trust anybody in the line as a common soldier or junior officer unless he is of known political reliability. As for the younger limit, boys as young as 14 are often very brave and reliable, but they simply cannot stand the lack of sleep. They will even fall asleep standing up.