Lost Cause (13 page)

There was a wonderful feeling standing on the far bank, a place that had been enemy territory until a few hours before. Men milled about, collecting equipment, piling supplies and organizing themselves into units for the advance. Engineers were already beginning to construct a rough pontoon bridge over the river.

Tiny kept us together and moved us away from the chaos of the river. We found a pile of captured rifles, German Mausers, and those without one helped themselves. Not much ammunition, but at least I now have a weapon. Passed a column of Moorish prisoners. They were being herded none too gently by some Spanish soldiers and looked sullen and downcast. They were an exotic sight in their red fez's and turbans, and wearing blankets over their uniforms.

As we stumbled up the first ridge, we suffered our first casualties. A random shell exploded to my left, almost deafening me but killing two men and wounding several, including one man who had his arm torn completely off. I saw it spiral through the air and land 10 feet from him.

I can't believe I wrote that so casually. Back home, something like that would be a major disaster, and I would have been horrified and sickened. Here someone simply applied a tourniquet, and the man and the other wounded were led or carried down to the boats. Have I become a monster, or is it the tension of battle? Oddly, the explosion and the man and his arm seem much more vivid and real now, many hours after, than they did at the time. Then it seemed at times almost as if I was simply an observer. Someone who has paid their nickel to watch a moving picture show.

Anyway, Tiny checked that everybody was all right (I found a piece of shrapnel wedged in my backpack), and we continued. We trudged over a couple of low hills, seeing quite a lot of abandoned Fascist equipment and more lines of prisoners. Shells still exploded here and there, but we were well spread out and I don't think they did much damage. We could hear firing in the distance and see the smoke from much heavier artillery fire.

Word came that we were to stop for a break and we drank and ate some sausage and bread. I was shocked to see that it was early afternoon. I would have sworn that we had crossed the Ebro only an hour or two ago, but the day was half done.

We sat and waited for orders for a long time. As we eventually collected our packs and set off again, a squadron of dark shapes flew over, heading toward the river.

“Heinkel one-elevens,” Hugh commented, shading his eyes against the sun and squinting up. “Not as fast as those Italian Savoias, but they can carry more bombs. I don't envy the boys working on the river bridges.”

We watched them pass in silence. “They were like a flock of big black birds,” Bob commented afterward. I didn't reply, but I was glad we had crossed early enough in the morning to miss them.

The rest of the day was spent in a boring march, spread out over the country so as not to offer a tempting target to the planes that shuttled back and forth above us all the time. “Not one of ours,” Hugh commented bitterly every time a flight passed over.

I find it hard to believe all the things I have seen today, not just the river crossing or the shell exploding. Almost every moment of today I saw something new and different, and often something dreadful that would have shocked me into a panic back in the old world. Even on what I called this afternoon's “boring march,” I saw bodies, wrecked artillery pieces, a burned-out farmhouse surrounded by dead goats, and groups of our own wounded heading back for the river. The last were filthy, exhausted and bloodstained, and the less severely wounded helped or carried the others, but everyone cheered us as we passed and gave the clenched-fist salute. I wonder if I will be able to go back to worrying about the boring “normal” world after this is all over.

TWELVE

“Do you think that piece of black metal in the suitcase was the shrapnel that got caught in his pack?”

“Probably,” Laia replied. “He seemed to collect things.”

“I wish we could know exactly where he was. For all we know, he could have spent the night in that olive grove across the road.” We were finishing off a lunch of spicy sausage and bread. At the expense of a wet shirt and Laia's laughter, I was learning how to drink out of a leather
bota
. “At least we're eating and drinking much the same as him.”

“When we get to Corbera d'Ebre and Gandesa, it should be easier to work out where things happened.” Laia lifted the
bota
and directed a precise stream of water into her mouth from arm's length.

“Corbera can't be far now,” I said.

“It's not,” Laia agreed, “we'll be there easily by tonight.”

“I've been thinking,” I said, hesitantly. “Maybe we shouldn't go straight to Corbera.”

“What do you mean?” Laia asked. I was relieved to see she looked puzzled at my suggestion and not angry.

“Did you see the map of the area in the display?” She nodded and I hurried on, “It showed a side road going off to a place called La Frat…something.”

“La Fatarella,” Laia said. I was encouraged to see that she was smiling at my pitiful pronunciation.

“I know my Spanish isn't any good, but there seems to be a museum there, and there was a picture of some trenches.”

“Yes,” Laia said as she rummaged through the folder of pages she had printed from the Civil War website. “There are a couple of places where the trenches from the fighting are preserved, and you are right, there
is
a museum to the International Brigades in the village itself. We should go there. I am sorry I missed it.”

“No, don't be sorry,” I said. “You're a great tour guide. I couldn't do this without you.”

Laia smiled. “Thank you. There's so much history it's hard to know what to pick. Most of the tourists who come to Spain just come for the sun, the beaches and the cheap wine. They may run through a cathedral, but that's all.”

I nodded agreement, thinking of Elsie and Edna from the plane. How was their holiday going? I wondered. Probably very different from mine.

“Only the old people care about our history.”

“You care.”

“I care because of Maria. You care because of your grandfather.”

It was true. History had become much more important to me since reading Grandfather's journal. Maybe that was one thing he intended. “Okay,” I said, “let's do it.” I stood and stretched my aching back. “Is it far to La Fatarella?”

“Are you regretting our side trip already?” The smile I got from Laia was worth all the discomfort I was certain was soon coming my way.

I groaned at the turnoff when I read the sign announcing that La Fatarella was 8 kilometers away. Then I shook my head in disgust; an aching back and a few kilometers on an uncomfortable scooter were nothing compared to what Grandfather had gone through.

The going was easy for the first couple of kilometers. The road was flat and straight, and there was no traffic. It allowed my mind to wander to something that had been niggling at me for a while. Ultimately we were headed for Corbera, and that was what Grandfather had called the town, but back at the memorial Laia had given it its full name, Corbera d'Ebre, and that was familiar, but from where?

The road was beginning to climb and the scooter's small engine was complaining when I remembered Aina on the bus in from the airport. The town where her grandfather—no, the grandfather of one of her relatives, a cousin or something—lived was Corbera d'Ebre. He had been in the war and been saved by an International Brigader. Aina had given me his address. I tried to reach into my pocket and…almost fell off the scooter. It could wait until we stopped.

I had to concentrate harder on my driving as our route steepened and we began to wind along roads cut between walls of layered white rock. The only buildings were rough stone huts at the edges of the ever-present vineyards and olive groves. Most looked as if they had been there forever and had grown out of the ground rather than been built by farmers.

After a series of particularly vicious switchbacks, the road leveled out as we reached the top of the range of hills. Laia slowed while she checked the map, a feat that would have had me in the ditch. We continued for a few hundred meters and turned off on an unmarked dirt track. After about a hundred meters of wrestling with the scooter as it was mercilessly thrown from one pothole to the next, we stopped beside a pile of rocks. Laia parked her scooter, jumped off and removed her helmet. I followed suit. “Where are we?” I asked.

“Hill five thirty-six,” she replied, setting off around the pile of rocks.

All at once, we were standing on the lip of a depression cut out of the hilltop. To one side, a room had been excavated into the rock face; the doorway was surrounded by piled sandbags. Laia scrambled down, and I followed.

“What is this?” I asked as we peered into the dark, dank hole.

“This was part of the trench line that was dug by the Republican soldiers during the battle.”

“Could my grandfather have been here?”

Laia thought for a moment. “Probably not. I think these date from November of '38. That was after the International Brigades were sent home.”

“They were sent home?” I asked as Laia scrambled around the end of the hollow and up the hill. Then she disappeared.

“Wait,” I said, hurrying so much that I slipped and scratched my arm painfully on a sharp rock.

Laia was standing in a trench carved into the rock. It was the scene in the photograph I had found at the memorial. The trench was at least a meter and a half deep and stretched in an irregular line along the crest of the ridge. It was made deeper by rocks roughly placed on the lip. “
Una fosa
,” she said. “A trench.”

I scrambled down beside her. If I stood up, I could just see over the rocks and across the wide valley at the bottom of the ridge. I tried to imagine being a soldier standing here while the enemy charged up at me. I failed. “This is really from the war?” I asked.

“Yes. People keep it tidy, but this is what it was like.”

I walked up and down the short stretch of trench, trying to picture it filled with soldiers: Grandfather, Bob and the others.

“Why were the International Brigades sent home?” I asked once we were back at the scooters.

“The government thought that if they made a gesture, sent home the foreigners who fought for the Republic, that would force Britain and France to put pressure on Germany and Italy to withdraw their troops, planes and tanks. Of course it didn't work, and anyway, I don't think it made any difference. By that time most of the Brigaders had been killed or wounded. Your grandfather says in his journal, even before the Ebro, that most of the men in the Mac-Paps were young Spanish conscripts.”

I nodded.

“There was a parade through Barcelona on October 29, 1938. Maria was there. She told me that the streets were covered with flowers and people were weeping openly. La Pasionaria, a Communist politician, made a famous speech to the Brigaders.” Laia closed her eyes in concentration. “‘You can go with pride. You are history. You are legend. We will not forget you; and, when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves, entwined with the laurels of the Spanish Republic's victory, come back!…Long Live the International Brigades.'”

Laia opened her eyes and smiled. “Maria knew the whole speech by heart and, even six decades afterward, could never repeat it without a tear in her eye.”

Laia glanced at her watch. “We should probably go if we are to have time to see the museum in La Fatarella before it closes today.”

I nodded agreement and hauled my aching limbs onto the scooter.

From the road down the hill into town, La Fatarella looked like a comfortable place, a collection of red-tiled roofs nestled in a curve of the road and surrounded by prosperous farms and regimented terraces of olive groves. With Laia asking directions, we worked our way through the narrow streets, some of which were oddly covered by stone arches and wooden beams, until we arrived at a guesthouse a block away from the church in the center of the village. It was even smaller than our accommodation in Flix, but it was cheap and there was no emotional landlady. We dropped our packs, parked our scooters and walked to the museum of the International Brigades on the edge of town.