Lost Cause (9 page)

There is a hospital in the basement of our building run by an American nurse with Spanish help. It's for soldiers and was busy after the fighting south of here in March and April. At the moment, it's mostly filled with injured civilians from the bombing. I got talking to one of the Spanish nurses who wanted to practice her English. She said how grateful everyone was that foreigners like me were coming to help the Spanish people. It made me feel very proud. She lives close by and has invited me round for lunch tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

Much as I like Barcelona, I wish we were going to join the Mac-Paps (the nickname for the Canadian Battalion) and get on with our training. We came here to fight, after all.

NINE

As the train noisily hauled itself out of one more deserted station and continued its rumbling journey through Aragon's dusty hills, I passed Grandfather's journal over to Laia. She had asked if she could read it, and I saw no reason why not. My only condition was that I got to read a section first and that she would not read on past where I had got to.

I watched Laia across from me, engrossed in the journal. I could barely sit still for the three-hour journey from Barcelona's train station, Estació de França, to Flix on the Ebro River. My doubts about what I was undertaking and my concerns about traveling on my own had vanished. Here I was, unraveling my grandfather's mystery with a beautiful Spanish girl to help me. Perhaps she could become more than simply my guide. DJ was welcome to his mountain.

Laia glanced up and caught the stupid grin on my face as I stared at her. My ears burned with embarrassment, and I hurriedly turned to stare out the window at the endless regimented rows of gnarled olive trees marching across the parched, red hillsides.

After her history lesson yesterday, Laia had taken me to a place on the Ramblas called Café Moka for one of the best pizzas I had ever tasted. However, I was wrong in thinking the history lesson was over. “There was fighting here in 1937,” she had said, “between the Communists and the Anarchists.”

“Why?” I asked. “Weren't they on the same side?”

“Yes, but it was not as simple as one side or the other. The Communists hated the Anarchists because they would not obey orders without discussing them first. The Communists thought that the Republic had to be centralized and organized to win the war. The Anarchists thought people should make their own decisions, even in war. The English writer George Orwell was here then and got caught up in it all.”

“The guy who wrote
Animal Farm
?” I asked.

Laia nodded. “He had been wounded and lived across the street from where we are now. When the fighting broke out, he fought against some Communists in this café.”

I looked around at the shiny, clean counters and modern art on the walls.

“It was very different then,” Laia had said.

I was learning that there was history everywhere and that Laia seemed to know most of it.

“Maria told me about the bombing of Barcelona when she was a girl,” Laia said, pulling me back from my memories of our pizza lunch yesterday. She closed the journal and looked out the window on the far side of the carriage. “There it is,” she said.

I followed her gaze. We were traveling beside a wide brown river flowing sluggishly between high banks. “The Ebro?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It won't be long until we arrive at Flix.”

“Did Grandfather fight here?”

“I don't think so, although part of the battle was fought here.” She looked back at me. “Perhaps you need to know the background to the battle your grandfather fought in.”

“How come you know so much history?” I asked.

Laia thought for a minute. “I suppose because we have so much in Europe and a lot of it is violent and has happened in our backyards. But don't distract me. Your lecture's about to begin.”

I laughed. If all my teachers were like Laia, I would have taken every socials and history class that was offered.

“By the time your grandfather crossed the mountains, the war was going badly. The Fascists had reached the sea south of here and split the Republic in two. The bombing of Barcelona was intense, the border with France was closed and the port was blockaded by Franco's navy. The Republic was running out of everything and it was only a matter of time before the Fascists marched down the Ramblas.”

It struck me as strange that Grandfather had chosen this time, when the war was so nearly lost, to come and fight. Maybe the journal would tell me why.

“The only hope was that a war against Fascism would break out in Europe. Then Britain and France would surely have to help Spain.”

“But Grandfather was here in 1938 and the Second World War didn't start until 1939,” I said, proud to show off what little I had learned about history.

“Yes, but it almost began at Munich the year before.”

I couldn't compete with Laia. “What happened at Munich?”

“The Munich Agreement?” Laia looked at me. I stared back blankly. “The crisis over Czechoslovakia?”

I shook my head.

“In 1938, Hitler threatened to invade the borderlands of Czechoslovakia. If the democracies tried to stop him, there would be war.”

“So the Second World War could have begun then?”

“Easily.”

“Why didn't it?”

“For the same reason the democracies didn't support the Spanish government against the Fascists: they were scared. The British and French prime ministers had a meeting with Hitler in Munich and agreed to give him the bits of Czechoslovakia that he demanded.”

“That's harsh,” I blurted out.

“Yes,” Laia agreed. “For his part, Hitler promised that he wouldn't invade anywhere else. The next year his army went into the rest of Czechoslovakia, and even the most frightened politician realized that war couldn't be avoided.

“The idea here was that one big victory would encourage Britain and France to help Spain. The Republic got together everything they had left, including the surviving International Brigades, and planned a surprise attack over the Ebro River. That's what your grandfather was part of.”

“At Flix?”

“All along the river here, but the Fifteenth Brigade crossed near Flix. I think it's a good place to begin. Now read some more of the journal.” Laia handed Grandfather's book back to me. “Perhaps it will tell us where to go after that.”

JUNE 30

We have our orders! Tomorrow we will be taken out to join the Mac-Paps in the countryside where they are training. A new month and a new adventure.

Bob and I shall not miss Winnie one bit, but I shall miss Barcelona. In the past two weeks, despite the dangers of the constant bombing, I have grown to love this place. The people are unfailingly friendly and will go out of their way to help. Two days ago, I mustered almost all the Spanish I knew and asked an old man for directions to a hospital, where I was to collect some blood serum for our wounded. Not only did he point the way, but he insisted on taking me the entire distance, even though it was far and well out of his way. For the entire journey, although I understood little of what he said, he insisted on telling me stories and pointing out buildings of note. When we reached the hospital, to my great embarrassment, he embraced me and shouted “Viva las Brigadas Internacionales!” before setting off back the way we had come. These are people worth fighting for and, if anything Winnie says is to be believed, tens of thousands of them are being shot out of hand by the Fascists.

I went for lunch today with the nurse who lives nearby. Her family welcomed me as one of their own and freely shared what little food they had. Unfortunately, they had considerable wine, and after a couple of glasses on a near-empty stomach, I committed the unpardonable sin of dozing off during Winnie's lecture this afternoon. As a punishment, I was made to clean the toilets out back, a truly disgusting job that I had avoided up until now.

Despite scrubbing my skin raw, I still smell like a barnyard and barely have the strength to hold this pen steady. I wanted to put down the good news, but now I shall sleep and dream of a tomorrow without Winnie.

JULY 1

Dominion Day for the Canadians. No Red Ensigns or patriotic songs, but the Mac-Paps' flag was held high and the Internationale sung lustily. The flag is a large rectangle of red bearing the words CANADA'S MACKENZIE-PAPINEAU BATTALION, 1837–1937,
Fascism shall be destroyed.
It also sports a raised fist over a red star and a green maple leaf. It's very grand, and I got a lump in my throat as we sang beneath it.

We new recruits have been formed into a squad under a Canadian officer. His name is Pat Forest, but everyone calls him Tiny because he is over six feet tall and almost that wide across the shoulders. He's a dedicated Communist and was a stevedore on the Vancouver docks. He's been over here since January 1937 and has been wounded FOUR times. The men say it's because he's such a large target.

As I had been told, most of the Mac-Paps now are young Spaniards. Some of them look even younger than I do! Tiny told us that there are Canadians scattered in other units as well. He knows of several boys in the Dabrowski Battalion because they had recently immigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe and they felt more comfortable with the language in that battalion. It's all very strange, but there's a feeling that nationality doesn't matter. We're all here for the same reason.

The Mac-Paps suffered heavily in the spring battles, but despite that, the mood is good and everyone is certain that we will win the battle that all know is coming soon.

“We'll beat those sons-of-guns,” Tiny declared this afternoon. Actually “sons-of-guns” is not what he really said, but I don't feel comfortable writing down the real word. “The governments in Canada, Britain and America will see what we can do and finally realize that we have to stand up to Fascism, and the sooner we do it, the better it'll be. They don't even need to fight, just give us some decent tanks, planes and machine guns, and we'll do the job for them. If we win in Spain, you just watch Hitler and Mussolini run scared. Like all bullies, they're cowards at heart.”

“And as we march triumphantly into Burgos to put Franco on trial for war crimes, we'll look up and see a flock of pigs winging their way overhead.” This was from Hugh, a short, skinny guy who peers out from behind thick round spectacles; he's the only veteran apart from Tiny in our squad. He was a schoolteacher in Winnipeg before he was fired for corrupting the young minds of his students with Communist ideas. He's just back from having a bomb fragment dug out of his thigh and still has a limp. Hugh's the wet blanket in the squad, always there with a negative point of view whenever anyone says anything positive. What he said annoyed me, but the others simply shrugged it off with a laugh.

“Have you all forgotten what it was like back in March and April?” Hugh went on. “We had nothing to stop those German panzer tanks, bullets just bounced off them, and where was our air force? All I ever saw were a few relics that were blasted out of the sky as soon as they showed up. Those damned German and Italian bombers owned the sky, and the worst were those dive-bombers, coming straight down at us with those sirens wailing.” Hugh fell silent and absentmindedly rubbed his wounded leg.

“Listen to him,” Tiny said to us with a broad grin. “He thinks the dive-bombers were specifically after him.”

“Might as well be,” Hugh said bitterly, limping off. He threw a final comment over his shoulder. “They'll get us all sooner or later.”

“Pay him no mind,” Tiny told us. “This time we've got tanks. They came over when the French border was open this summer. If no one messes up, we'll have surprise on our side too. Franco's concentrating on taking Valencia to the south, and he's getting hung up on the defensive lines there. Our attack'll come as a shock. Now, let's get you lot started on some training, else all the surprise in the world won't do us a bit of good.”