Not Just a Soldier’s War

by Betty Burton

  Both sides fired at once. Not all the women and children dropped to the ground of their own volition.

  Perhaps the field-dressing acted as a target for a Nationalist sniper, or maybe it was coincidental, but the second wound Lieutenant Wilmott of the 15th Brigade received that day was hardly a couple of inches from the first. It didn’t take him long to realize that he was out of this particular battle, so he reported to his leader who ordered him to make for the ambulances. He joined other walking wounded, had his arm looked at and dressed by an American nurse, and was pointed in the direction of an ambulance taking less seriously injured men to a hospital in Madrid.

  At that moment Ken didn’t care where he was taken; it was enough for now that he had been given a swig of water. It was warm, but it was water. Suddenly he remembered the leaking tap at home that had been his job to fix, but which in his excitement to leave he had forgotten. Had Ray fixed it? In his next letter he would tell Ray he was sorry he hadn’t done the washer. He could hardly bear the thought of two years of water dripping away into the sink, down the drain, through the sewers and out into the Solent. He hoped Ray had fixed it. He vowed at that moment that he would never again waste a single drop of water.

  * * *

  It was dawn by the time Ken Wilmott’s wound had been cleaned and strapped. He was right-handed, so he could still manage a rifle and not be away from his men for very long. As on the previous occasion when he had ended up in hospital, his mind became infested with little memories of his day-to-day life at home, the time after his parents had died and the three children had held on to the home, somehow remaining a family of sorts, and pooling their three wage-packets, of which only Ray’s contained anything much. One of his chores had been to fetch and carry the bag-wash. Nobody knew how much he had hated that job, it was women’s work, and he would do it only if the bag of clothes was put inside a potato sack.

  As he looked now for somewhere to wash himself and his shirt, he thought about how things had changed. For over two years he had been doing his own washing, rubbing soap in with his knuckles, when there was any soap, sometimes sluicing his clothes in a stream, or a trough, and on occasions, as when he had worked his way down through France, washing out the field dirt in some commemorative stone bowl or fountain.

  Having cleaned himself as well as he could with one arm, he sat outside on the hospital steps and savoured the only bit of the day when the heat was bearable, wondering briefly where Vallee’s body would be buried. If the village had been taken by his own side, then he might be buried in a communal grave. It was possible that he was still there where he had fallen, the flies at work on him, as also might be the women and children who had been caught between the two sides as they fired. There, on the steps of the hospital, not far from the old gates of the city, for the first time since he had joined the Internationals, the young soldier – who had been catapulted into the rank of lieutenant at the battle of Jarama because he was next in line – wondered how Spain could possibly survive as one nation. Perhaps, like Ireland, they would have to partition the country: monarchy and Church ruling one part, Republic and people the other.

  It was only when he was sorting through his haversack that he remembered the letter. Mail had been handed out almost at the same time as orders were given for the advance on Villanueva de la Cañada. The letter was from his sister. He smoothed it out and read: ‘Salud! Kenny. By the time that you receive this I too shall be in Spain.’

  He read the sentence again.

  I have offered myself as a driver. You remember Dad’s friend Sidney Anderson? He has fixed me up with the necessary papers to get me into the Republic, which means that I have become a card-carrying communist. It is a complicated story, which with any luck I may be able to tell you, but for now suffice to say, not only have I left home, I have also left my old self there and from here on I function as someone new. I am determined to make something of myself and the first step is to leave behind all preconceptions and stereotypes that people have about the kind of people we come from. I am no longer a working-class girl. I am in the process of making myself classless.

  I am now me, one Miss Eve Anders. That is who I am. I am a twenty-year-old truck driver who has volunteered to work to help keep Spain’s democratically elected government in power. That is all that I am. I have no past which means that no one can enter there and classify me, by which I mean classify as in to see me by class and not by ability and character. My papers say that I am Eve Anders, niece of Sidney Anderson. How did I arrive at that name? At first I was to be Elvi Anders (LV from my old initials, see?). Then I tried E. V. Anders and so became Eve. Are you shocked? Probably not, because I believe that you may have had something similar in mind when you left home. You wanted to know what was out there. Since I came here, you have become ‘My brother in the 15th Brigade of the International Brigade’. The IBs (or do you say brigaders?) do seem to be well thought of.

  The greatest hurdle was to try to make Ray see that it was not that I was ashamed of what we were – are, and inside ourselves will always be – but that this bit of my life was over. My love for my two brothers will never diminish. I think that he did not entirely understand, but what with him now having Bar in his life and the baby coming, he was able to let me go. With his wife much of an age with me, how could he not admit that I was no longer his little sister, no longer the girl he had protected and provided for for so long, but that I had become a woman capable of going it alone.

  I am not asking your blessing, Kenny, as I might once have done, feeling that I should explain and placate. You might be surprised to hear that I ever did that, but I did. For years I cleaned the old gas cooker and the lavs on Sunday morning in the hope that you and Ray wouldn’t think I spent too much time at night-school or with my head in a book. If I have grown to be more forthright and independent than all the girls I went to school with (‘with whom I went to school’ as we both know from our years at Lampeter C of E, that most exclusive school for the children of the elite of the Pompey back-streets), then it is quite likely because I was brought up by a mother who had no husband to speak of, and by two brothers who had the vision to see a world beyond the end of Lampeter Street.

  Please write to me, Ken. To Eve Anders, c/o Auto-Parc, Albacete, which is, of course, your own address. Odd thing that. I shall try to follow closely the fortunes of the 15th Brigade, so that if and when my orders take me anywhere near, then I shall search you out. Much love, Kenny. ¡Hasta la vista!

  Five

  Eve Anders and Ozz Lavender were three days at the El Goloso hospital before they moved on. Now driving flat-bed supply trucks back to the depot for overhaul, they were guarded by the same small personnel carrier and some of the men who had accompanied them from Albacete. Armed guards. This time the leader was a short, dark Spaniard. He made a thumbs-up and Ozz signalled that the rest were ready. ‘OK, chief, let wagons roll. You wan’a go next, Andy? I’ll bring up the rear.’ Their journey took them back in the direction from which they had come, then towards the Sierra de Alcaraz to the south-west. They drove until evening when they reached a small town and followed the lead truck into the back of a hostal where Eve gladly climbed out of her cab to flex her aching knees.

  Ozz said, ‘Looks OK. Come on, follow the boys.’

  Without ceremony their uniformed companions went inside. ‘It looks like a regular hotel. What do we do about paying?’

  ‘Leave it to our compadres, they know how it works. I guess they’ve stopped here before. There’s petrol pumps across the road, we need to fill up.’ He lit the stub of a cigarette and stood looking up at the yellow, sandy walls of the building.

  An elderly woman in black appeared, bobbing her head and holding her palms apart in a gesture of welcome. The woman directed them to a back-room where their Spanish companions were already removing their jackets and stretching their arms. Sharing with them was something Eve had not anticipated, but she placed her canvas bag against the wall, opened it and fetched o
ut a comb and face-cloth which she held up to the woman, saying hesitantly, ‘Lavar… por favor?’

  The woman smiled and indicated for Eve to pick up her bag and follow her. Up two flights of narrow stairs Eve found herself in a narrow room with a narrow window and a narrow bed. The woman took her bag, deposited it on a cane chair and pointed to a jug and basin. Having taken a look into a narrow cupboard, which was empty, she smiled and left.

  They had a satisfying meal of stew in which the beans overwhelmed the meat. The soldiers talked all through the meal, laughing with one another and with various people who came to lean against the door. Sometimes they engaged in a kind of quick-fire discussion which was entirely beyond Eve’s understanding. Ozz interpreted, and it appeared that the conversation was not very different from what it would have been anywhere. Anything new? Where have you come from? How were the roads? Sierra de Alcaraz? You should take this road, not that, too many bends. No, I say they should keep to the new road.

  The light went and no sooner were Eve’s shoes and jacket off and her legs stretched out gratefully on the hard little mattress than she fell into a deep sleep. Before dawn she was woken by men’s voices in the yard. The Spanish driver was already under the bonnet of his vehicle, topping up the radiator. She made her bed, took away her washing water and refilled the jug. They left the hotel with exchanges of salutes, and then drove out of the town in the first light of morning.

  They stopped on a high point from where it was possible to see across an arid-looking plain to an even higher point.

  Ozz gestured. ‘The Sierra de Alcaraz.’

  To Eve, the sight was breathtaking. The English landscape she was used to bore no comparison to the Alcaraz valley which appeared vast and infertile. But the barrenness was illusion, for the entire vista, including the slopes of the mountains, was practically one huge olive grove. A mule-cart trailed dust as it followed a narrow meandering road. The wider highway took a more direct route across the flat plain and then disappeared behind a wood of trees that were darker and much taller than the olives – spruce or pine perhaps. Except for these roadways, none of the land was left uncultivated.

  This journey – Albacete to El Goloso to Ayna in the Sierra de Alcaraz – gave Eve Anders the confidence she needed. She was now sure that she could drive anything, anywhere. She had covered hundreds of kilometres, but where was the war? She had transported supplies and people, she had seen ravaged towns and she had heard, in the distance, the sound of shelling, but she fretted to be at the front. Whatever Helan Alexander had said about the importance of what she had been doing until now, it was not the kind of war work she had envisaged doing when she volunteered. There were women on the front line, nurses picking up the pieces and putting men back together again, there were ammunition lorries and ambulances to be driven. The extraordinary beauty of the Sierra de Alcaraz was well and good, and the quaintness of meandering mule-carts stirred emotions and gave an impression of being at one with the people, but they had nothing to do with the real events that were going on without her.

  * * *

  Another dawn. Another village. Eve was the first of their little group to be up and about. Dolores, a nurse, the daughter of the proprietors of the little hostal in which they had spent the night, had asked for a lift back to her medical unit. She had shared her narrow bed with Eve, sleeping one at each end. Eve looked forward to her company and had gone down early to clear any debris from the passenger seat. Dolores was neat as could be, with blue-black hair strained back into a shining bun, and Eve would have been ashamed to have offered her less than a spick-and-span cab. She checked the oil, it was low, topped up the radiator and refilled the jerry-can, wiped the tacky grime from the big steering wheel and tucked a wet face-flannel in a sponge-bag where she could reach it. She knew from experience that it would neither cool nor refresh once the heat of the roads started to rise and heat up the cab, but the moisture gave the impression that it did.

  It was still hardly light when she had finished her check. The Spanish guard came down, his boots unlaced, wearing only his khaki trousers, the webbing braces hitched over his shoulders. He saluted, then swung round and slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. In gestured English he apologized for not wearing a shirt.

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t mind. I have brothers… hermano… two brothers.’ She held up two fingers.

  ‘I also. Antonio. Julian.’ He gestured a query.

  ‘Ralph. Kenneth.’ She gestured, ‘Bigger… older than me.’

  He gestured: Antonio a bit taller than himself, Julian very tall, indicating with flicks of his bunched fingers that his brothers were eighteen and twenty. He grinned, seemingly as pleased as she at this exchange, then patted his own head, spreading his knees, making himself even shorter. ‘Florentin.’

  It was a joke, for the name was so unsuited to such a squat and burly man, but it was also a breakthrough. Throughout the journey she had noticed him watching her manoeuvres with the flat-bed lorry very critically, and assumed that he disapproved of a woman doing a man’s job. She had thought for some time that there were far too many barriers that kept ordinary people apart, and it was true.

  She fetched water and topped up the radiator of his personnel-carrier, then washed the layer of insects and dust from the windscreen, while he removed the plugs and cleaned them.

  Ozz came out to check his own lorry, so that by the time the smell of beans and chilli wafted across to them, the sky had lightened. Florentin, who, Eve suspected, was probably the family clown, bent his knees and, twirling an imaginary cane, offered her his arm. He shuffled along with his feet at ten-to-two. ‘Charlie Chaplin!’ He made a sweeping bow. ‘Dietrich.’

  Ozz, who was following, wiping black greasy hands on a rag, said, ‘Too right, Florrie! Marlene, but younger.’ There were not making a pass, there was nothing to disturb Eve’s feeling of security that had grown steadily. Growing up as she had in a military and naval town, she had developed a sixth sense about men, and she trusted these two completely.

  Eve felt good. It was a beautiful morning and she was involved in something momentous. She and Ozz shared a cigarette while Florentin and his men drove across the road to the petrol pump. Children who had gathered to wait for the school bus turned their attention to the soldiers and the lorry. All were black-haired and brown-eyed in this small village.

  ‘What is it about Spanish children, aren’t they beautiful?’

  ‘Real little charmers.’

  ‘And the young women, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many really lovely young women.’

  ‘It don’t last. They marry too young, have too many kids, work too hard.’

  Eve mimicked his accent. ‘Well ain’t that the truth the world over.’

  ‘So you ain’t all goody-goody then, Andy?’

  ‘I ain’t goody-goody at all, Ozz. I have a bland face that tells lies. Don’t be fooled by it.’

  ‘You got Florrie going all right. He thinks you’re the cat’s whiskas.’

  ‘We had a long talk. He has two brothers. I have two brothers. It took us ten minutes to exchange that bit of information.’

  Ozz, as usual, filled waiting time making new smokes from old. Eve watched the guards teasing the children. A youth standing in a cart drawn by a blunt-faced mule flicked it up to the little shed which was hung about with an odd assortment of bald tyres. The mule drank from a bucket of water, a facility for filling radiators. Several of the smaller children went to pet the mule. A woman carrying a large basket sauntered along the road and called something to the young mule-driver. He frowned. Was she his mother wanting him to do something for her? Something too demeaning for him, such as giving her a lift into town?

  The little girls’ dresses, although clean, were unironed, threadbare and patched. Eve had gone to school like that for years, unaware that there was any other kind of school clothes. She had seldom actually been ragged, and never naked underneath as some of her classmates had been, but her skirts were made fro
m remnants and the best bits of other skirts. That alone was reason enough for any girl with spirit and a liking for nice things to want to escape the drab meanness of that kind of life. And that, too, was one of the reasons why she had become Eve Anders, a free and independent woman. Now that she had lived in Spain, she was sure she could never go back and live under the dingy, dreary skies of England. She would stay here, where the sun shone, where bare-arsed children were not chilled to the marrow. She pinched out the cigarette and added it to Ozz’s cache.

  It must have been the sound of the tractor labouring in a field on the other side of the hedge that hid the sound of the aeroplanes.

  Suddenly, air was sucked up around them. Without warning there was a devastating explosion. Eve’s ear-drums hurt, yet she automatically turned towards the direction of the violence. Then, as the blast struck, she was knocked back into the open door of Ozz’s lorry, hitting her spine on something hard. Unbelievable things were in flight. A mule’s head. A basket. A child. She heard a bellow, but it was cut short when the little petrol station went up in a great sheet of flame. She got to her feet seconds before Ozz. The fierceness of the blazing petrol and oil made it impossible to get anywhere near the centre of the chaos. People came running from God knew where. She saw Dolores, still not in uniform, carrying a khaki haversack imprinted with a red cross which she unbuckled as she ran.

  For a brief second Eve caught sight of Florentin. The little clown who had been Charlie Chaplin was hanging, like a mangled scarecrow, in the fiercely burning debris of his vehicle, then in a second, as the petrol tank exploded, he was gone. There was no sign of the other guards. But there was of the children. Some of the children. Bits of the children. Perhaps the ones who had gone to pet the mule weighed less and were blown away from the fire by the bomb blast, perhaps it was luck, or fate, or even God. Three of them lay spread-eagled yards along the road, not moving. Pieces of the roof of the mechanic’s little shack were draped across them like corrugated iron blankets. Eve ran to them and heaved the hot metal away. One moved, a little girl probably, but who could tell?