The Cruel Sea part 2

I commenced to read the second part of reading the Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat on my train journey from Newcastle to London King Cross a week ago, dividing the three hours between the books and reading the material for P L A C E visits. It is now Thursday 28^th March 2013 and I am at Newcastle station once more on a train to Kings Cross although I will be alighting this time at Newark Northgate spending Easter in the Midlands and staying at the Mansfield.

 

In the first part of the book the reader is introduced to the officers and some of the crew of Compass Rose, a British Royal Navy Corvette, hurriedly designed and built for convoy escort work in the north Atlantic. We are taken through the process of commissioning and sea trials and the escort journey as the crew discovers the difficulty of accommodating eighty men in the cramped ship, no more than a large trawler, as she rolled in the ocean rough with water splashing in everywhere or condensation from the close quartering of men and supplies for war and for body.

 

The only experienced officer is Ericson, the captain, with experience of the Royal Navy and of Merchant shipping making him the ideal individual to attempt to shepherd convoys from the prowling sea serpents in the form of the German submarine. His home is Liverpool but he had mixed reactions on learning that their ship was to base in the port such was his appreciation of the demands of command in war. During the year covered by part 2 although his sea going son was also based in the city port they were never to meet.

 

The bane of everyone’s life was Bennett the number 1, second in command, just as inexperienced as the rest but gaining seniority because of his age and the ability to project himself through the confidence of being a former salesman. He loved tinned sausages which he selected for breakfast, lunch or tea at least once a day. There were two subs, Lockhart who had sailed a boat on the Solent, a free lance journalist writer who had mixed in what he describes as a bohemian world and who had experience of relationships with women but now knew it was wrong to engage in a new relationship until the war ended. His views as those of the husbands and wives who remained loyal to their partners during the long years of separation were much more common than more recent generations.

 

The second sub Ferraby was a very different man inexperienced of the sea and of life although newly married. He had jumped at the opportunity to train as an officer but quickly found the process of giving orders to experienced seamen as well as other novices, a challenge which he repeatedly failed to meet to his own and the satisfaction of his colleague. As in life outside the Services the weak have a tendency to attract the attention of the bully and in the close confines of small ship the bullying and the exploitation can become relentless. He had wanted to move his wife up to Liverpool but Bennett refused to pass his request to the captain.

 

As in the film and radio play a fourth officer was to appear before the departure of Bennett for a suspected duodenal ulcer. Morrell also married, to an independently minded minor actress, Morell had the measure of Bennett and new how to put him down without being insubordinate. It was Lockhart who expressed concern at way Bennett treated Ferraby arguing that instead of constantly picking on the young man words of encouragement would help to bring confidence. Such was the expression of dissent that Bennett insisted on putting him on report to the Captain who tried to defuse and then side step confrontation, supporting his deputy as the service code dictated but refusing to go beyond a reprimand as Bennett requested.

 

Bennett had spent his leave picking up a woman of the night at the hotel in which they stayed although I cannot remember if this is the same woman who he brought to the Christmas Party before their first convoy venture. She had his measure too.  It was also Bennett who when they returned from leave made the infamous remark about Morell and Ferraby having left a bun in the oven which provoked gasps in the cinemas given era when it was  first released..

 

But the initial focus of the second part of the story was not any of the officers but Tallow who lived with his sister Gladys at 29 Dock Road and who the first leave when half the ships company were granted six days he brought with him his friend Chief Watts from the engine room. Gladys had been widowed four years previously and quickly struck a friendship with the chief a mild mannered man who went off for a drink with her brother while she prepared them some tea. It was a year later when the two returned from one of many convoys that they were given shore leave along with those who had family or loved ones after the news that Liverpool and the surrounding Merseyside had been blitzed for more than a week and they feared the worst when the phone to warn of their arrival was not answered. The street was badly damaged with so many died that the Mayor and Corporation had attended the mass grave burial. She would have known and felt nothing was the attempt to soften the horror of what had happened.

 

There was irony for these men had by then become accustomed to the prospect of being sunk once the fall of France had occurred and the German Navy was able to use French Dutch and Belgium ports for its submarines and its fighter escorts were also based along coastal airfields. There had been no meeting the enemy on those first convoys and no convoy ships sunk only finding that the corvette rolled its innards out when the water was rough and they were more often than not. Then the first ships was lost and less than a third of its crew survived and by the time of the second year they were losing up to a third of a convoy as the submarines commenced to hunt in packs. They became sued to sending out a boat to pick up the survivors while they went in vain search of the submarine before returning for the boat and then to bury those who did not survive and were recovered. Sometimes a ship would just exploded or split in two before sinking within seconds and as the author comments men learned quickly how to die without making a fuss.  This will have been true for some, but only some I suspect a comfort for families and loved ones left behind, as with Gladys someone on hand to declare she did not know anything, she did not therefore suffer

 

They all learned how to cope with the four hours on and then off, barely sleeping but knowing that when on duty they were required to function at their best, especially in storms when the convoy was dispersed on fogs when there was risk of collision so the normal zig zag pattern had to be abandoned. It was Bennett who was found out, eventually, and who got himself out of the service. He managed to  spend most of his Watch hiding from wind and the cold checking on the asdic or using some other excuse and delegation to others as a means of escaping the elements

 

His departure had a bonus for Lockhart who was made up to Number 1 as they had to depart before a replacement could be found. He had already been promoted to Lieutenant on Ericson’s recommendation so after assuring the captain he could cope and doing well on the first convoy in the new role, the appointment was confirmed.

 

 

We also learned of the problems which Morell was to encounter when he returned home to find that his wife had carried on leading the same social life as hen he had been with her before enlistment. He wanted to spend time with her quietly recovering at home but she wanted to be out eating, and partying on every night. She seemed to know people mainly men everywhere they went and one telephoned to enquire if she would soon bring her great body to wherever he was. An instead of showing any interest in what his experience was like she only commented that he had only one stripe and not three.

 

Worse was to come for Morell during the long leave while the ship underwent a major refit but before then we learned another lesson of war. This concerns another crew member, Able Seaman Gregg, who failed to report for duty having gone ashore during a period of leave before their first convoy of 1941. There was surprise at his failure because he was considered a dependable crew member and that he had missed his ship entirely when on active duty was a very serious charge. That he offered no explanation but was prepared to take whatever punishment the captain ordered was something that neither the Captain or Lockhart was prepared to accept without making some effort to establish the cause.

 

His story and that of Morell was to become one familiar during the war, of those who when parted from their loved ones for any length of time find it difficult to resist the opportunity of a relationship should such a circumstance arise, and there have and are likely to always remain men willing to approach a woman even though she wears a wedding ring who he fancies. Admittedly there are also some women, more now than then who do not need much persuasion whether their partner is long away or not should opportunity come their way, but in general it is some men, not all who are on the constant look out for an opportunity.

 

In this first instance Gregg returned home early to discover a vehicle outside his home and the lights on upstairs. There was an attempt on the part of the couple to bluff their way out of the situation and then remorse and promises which might have been sufficient for the man to have returned to sea, but before he was due his wife disappeared and he went in search only to eventually find her abandoned once a pregnancy was established, and so being dependable he had agreed to take the woman back and make the child his. His reason for silence had been the wish that nothing of the circumstances would get the other ratings which would normally have proved the situation if recounted during the official hearing before the captain. Because the captain arranged for Lockhart to question in private it was possible to conduct the official hearing in such away that these details were not exposed and for the captain to order a punishment which void custody. This was not to prove a blessing in disguise.

 

But as I say he was not alone among the ship’s company as I have already hinted that the actress wife of Morell did not restrict her active social life while he was away or when he returned. But it was only on the long period ashore during the full refit and she had gained a part in along running production in the Westend, and she made excuses why she had to go off for some evening meal or to some party without him as a means of securing her acting future and the ardour of her passion disappeared that the dark thoughts arose and lingered.

 

And then the reality, the horror, the full nature of the war hit them. The hunting packs of submarines grew larger and the number of sinking increased despite the gaining greater Navy support for the convoys they now went to meet off Gibraltar.  First their sister Corvette, which had travelled with them from the beginning, The Sorrel had gone with only a handful of survivors including the Captain fund on the raft nestling a dead rating who he had attempt to help survive the night before the rescue party arrived.

 

And then there was what was to become their second or third darkest moment of the war although when it happened for the captain in particular and also for Lockhart who as number 1 became responsible for the Asdic and advising on the nature of object thrown up on the screen. It was when they were going to rescue men from sunk cargo vessel that Lockhart was certain there was a submarine below and Lockhart the Captain made the decision to drop the depth charges only for their to be no sign of the enemy afterwards, only the dead of their own. Afterwards two of the previously rescued captains, tried to bring comfort but for Ericson the war had changed and that Lockhart said his was the greater responsibility failed to help. They had done what had to be done and for them there was not even the knowledge that they had saved countless others by getting the submarine.

 

But worse was to come when the ship with a party of wrens some 20 who they had seen taking air on deck was sunk but worse still was when those rescued were also killed when their second ship went down.

 

Then their engine had to be repaired to avoid a complete breakdown and they sat motionless and alone listening to hammering as they felt sure would any submarine coming their way. Then as they strove to catch up the convoy they spotted something on the radar and as they approached the coning tower of an enemy submarine could be seen trailing the convoy and waiting for the night to attack. They had manage to fire couple of shots before the sub dived but they were quickly upon it with depth charges as the pinging grew louder and quicker.  They watched as the U boat rose to the surface and there was an element of surprise when someone fire back at them from the machine gun so their two pounder was then even quicker in its response. They watched as the U boat crew swim towards them, their craft doomed.

 

The German captain was held separate in Erickson’s cabin and was none to please by the greeting of Heil Hitler saying he had been taken by surprise and by implication that Ericson’s tactics had been somehow unfair. Ericson warned the guard that the prisoner was dangerous and that if he made any move to shoot him. After burying the one man of their crew killed by the machine gun and one of the German who had also not survived Erickson commented of he enemy that they looked a scruffy lot and said to Lockhart, I think we ought to win the war, don’t you?”

Nicholas Monsarratt and the Cruel Sea (1)

From War of the Worlds, possibly in the future I move back in time to the World at War and begin with the opening of Nicholas Monserrat’s important tribute to Navy vessels that attempted protect the convoys of supply vessels travelling between the UK and the USA and Canada, The Cruel Sea. 

 

As a school boy I bought an edited edition of the book after seeing the important film with Jack Hawkins in the role of Lieutenant Commander George Eastwood Erickson R.N.R. The film played to packed audiences throughout the UK and Commonwealth. I saw the film again recently shortly before the BBC replayed on Four extra its two one hour dramatizations. I will comment on the film and he radio plays  as I work through the original book which I recently purchased for one penny plus postage,  a 1987 reprint in The Penguin Great  Novel War at Sea series.

 

Some readers may want to skip the first part of 74 pages because there is no action at such, no excitement or events of significance in the great scheme of the war at sea and yet from my perspective it provides one of the most important  insights of what it was like for young men to move out of their warm offices, garages or shops into the ice cold stormy winds of north Atlantic in Winter, together with the steps necessary  for a new  crew and a new ship to be authorised to put to sea and to go to war, that is to kill the enemy and avoid being killed. Today the navy is rapidly becoming redundant except in hunting pirates and stop immigrant boats, and smuggled goods especially drugs. Yet it is not so long ago to me (30 years) that ships and men were lost during the Falklands War to Exorcet Missiles made and supplied by France to the then enemy Argentina and even as recently as 2011 naval ships were used off the coast of Libya to attack with rockets as well as bringing supplies to the rebels. Over seventy years ago it was little ships like the Corvettes and the crew of cargo vessels which kept the UK supplied with sufficient for the home population not to lose morale and for the Services to function.

 

Recently at the excellent Curtis Auditorium lecture theatre at Newcastle University I listened to former catholic Priest and chair of the CND, Bruce Kent on the subject of Is War Inevitable? He replied to one questioner who said he had agreed with almost everything Bruce had said but what was his response to the people of the Tyne if the government suddenly offered the building of a new aircraft carrier. The reply was why not press for a hospital ship instead to travel the world to wherever there was a natural or man made disaster? While I agree with his answer today in 1939 and 1940 the challenge was to build, equip and crew as many new ships as possible if the UK and the Commonwealth nations were to survive.

 

The Corvets were the best available in a difficult situation little more than trawlers with a limited top speed and with cramped conditions for the crew eating and sleeping in one area where it was difficult to keep dry from the condensation and with limited armaments of a four inch power, a two inch anti aircraft and a machine gun plus depth charges. The crew comprised a captain, a First Lieutenant with two subs, one responsible for communications and depth charges and the other for course and the guns. In the film a third sub is added, played by Denholm Elliot,

 

The small group of officers meant that any of the four could find themselves in charge of vessel alone for a period of up to four hours although there would usually be two officers on the watch. The officers were supported by a small team of senior ratings, middle managers, the chief responsible for the boiler room and the engines, the teams responsible for depth charges and the guns, for communications and the asdic later the radar, the supplies and kitchen.

 

Monsarrat describes the day from 6.30 until 10pm with first the process of working with ship builders and fitters and then sea trials to ensure the everything worked to the required standards and then formal trials to get the guns on target and the important coordination between the Captain, the Asdic crew and the depth charge team to ensure that as quickly as a target was identified and the order given depth charges would immediately be dropped  on target and to do all this taking account of the wind, the sea current and the position of the enemy both with different speeds and manoeuvrability and tactics.

 

While the film, and I felt the BBC play paid some attention to the process of finishing the ship, providing equipment and supplies, and the various levels of trials of ship and of the crew, it is only in the book that we are able to gain a depth of insight into the preparations and the naval traditions and culture and the complex problems facing those who had never been sea let alone to war and who were strangers one day and living in great physical and emotional intimacy the next and away from families, friends, and everything that had previously been familiar to them.

 

However important the role of the officers, the success and survival of the ship was dependent on team working at all levels. Towards the end of the sea trials we learn that the admiral responsible for certifying that ships and their crews are ready for war writes his report on the officers of the Compass Rose, a copy of which he shows to the captain. He has gained this knowledge from his personal unannounced visits at various times and from the communication with the Captain although the chain of command and responsibility is such that once commissioned as an officer in the fleet every individual is expected to function to the highest standards within the culture of the service.

 

Monsarrat provides a summary of what we have learned about the Captain and his officer’s team. There were two inter-related problems, The First Lieutenant; a former car salesman is a bully, workshy and a sponger. How he talked his way from officer training course to an instant promotion is beyond the Captain and the reader, except that it is war and men with self confidence, ambition and aggression will be needed. Similarly the man he bullies Ferraby, married only weeks before departure,  should never have been accepted for officer training or once accepted should not have been allowed to complete the course although again it was an unplanned war and it is important not  judge how recruitment and deployment was approached then rather than since.

 

Oddly in the radio play there is little reference to the First Lieutenant while in the film the crack included, not in book, about Ferraby having left a bun in the oven as well as the man’s obsession with “snorkers, good ho,” his passion for tinned sausages at least for one meal a day.  However in fairness to number 1 the depth charge crew also have no confidence in their officer and the senior naval rating attempts to take charge something which the young sub finds it also difficult to cope with.

 

It is the mature mid twenties other sub Lieutenant Lockhart who provides the buffer. A single man, former self employed  journalist, no longer innocent about the ways  of men and women, who sides steps and ignores Bennett played in the film brilliantly by Stanley Baker. He is not prepared to tolerate the way the First Lieutenant expects one of the subs to buy his drinks and at one point her cannot resist suggesting that if he wants to get the best out of Ferraby he needs to support and help his confidence and not constantly undermine. When Bennett insists on reporting Lockhart to the Captain, Erickson is faced with a dilemma. Lockhart was out of line but he is only too well aware of the behaviour of Bennett who he feels obliged to support but the rebuke he gives fails to satisfy the bully who insisting on pressing his concern once he is with the captain on his own but Erickson is not prepared to take the matter further which is of itself a message to Bennett.

 

The other aspect of the book is that the line between officers and crew is kept pretty tight  and it is Ferraby who engages in conversation with a rating, just as young and new as himself over a mug of cocoa the night he is left in charge for a couple of hours while the skipper catches up on sleep. He is sufficiently confident to alter course away from the Scottish coast when they encounter a fishing fleet. The manoeuvre wakes the captain who calls the bridge to know what happened having been awakened as the change of course affected the noise of the engines. That he went straight back to sleep was a proud moment for the young man revealing that in normal circumstances   he was able cope but the circumstances are not normal.

 

Captain Erickson (in the film was played by Jack Hawkins), immediately inspires confidence despite the  fact that he has been out of the Royal Navy for ten years and worked as the captain of a cargo ship before his recall as a reservist. He is a strong disciplinarian determined to get the ship and the crew in condition to go to a war which fears is going to be a long one. He has reservations about the ability of the ship as designed to do the job required, especially its lack of speed and tendency to roll badly.  He can be sharp and comes down hard when mistakes are made and individuals fail to reach the standard required if they are to survive and cope with what is likely to come their way.

 

Monsarrat, himself a naval officer during World War II also understood the need that seamen have to separate the lives they lead, and in fairness to Bennett he also appreciated the distinction to be made, a man with his mind on matters ashore, was no good to his colleagues when things go wrong, in moments of crisis and as the were to find when involved with the War at sea. From the start the sea is their demanding mistress and dominates their lives rather than the enemy who face the same challenges as themselves.

 

It is the partners left at home who also have to learn to cope in their own way. Ferraby’s young newly married wife appears stronger and more understanding than her husband. She is disappointed when Bennett refuses permission for her to join him, more for the sake of her husband than herself. Erickson’s wife has become experienced as coping with the separations, she has her knitting. She knows that however much her husband enjoyed being with her when ashore, there always comes a time when his real mistress demands  attention 24 hours a day, weeks on end. Lockhart also appears to have adjusted quickly to what is expected of him and has no intention of complicating his life even with a casual relationship. Bennett on the other hand brings someone unsuitable, probably picked up at his hotel to the wardroom party just before they set off for their sea trials on Christmas Day. (To be continued)

Michael Shelden's Orwell 1

Yesterday February 26th was an important event day because in  the evening I saw Silver Linings Playbook, arguable the best of a number of  good films this Oscar and Bafta season and which I had planned to write about next after another new series of weekly catch up summary reports. However the event of the day was the arrival of the brilliant Michael Sheldon’s 1991 authorised biography where I have I managed to acquire an original first edition in hardback.

My hope in purchasing was that this book will answer some of the questions and issues which have been raised while listening to the BBC The Real George 0rwell series of programmes together with re reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Down and Out in Paris and London, and reading The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. There is Animal Farm and 1984 to reread. I had hoped to read some of his articles and essays which are available online but will not now do so unless the reading of two of  the biographies indicates that I should.

I have so far published my notes in 2419 to 2422 and 2424 and 2245 and after reading the Introduction and the first chapter on family  background and his childhood until going to preparatory school I need to continue  noting this important book chapter by chapter because of its significance to my life to date and my life that remains,  in addition to the original purpose of the completer finisher within me.

I was nearly tempted to omit the introductory chapter until after  reading the rest, but grateful that I did not as Shelden sets the scene for his book in the context of other works completed beforehand and which immediately answered some questions.

The first is why Eric Blair did not write his story and that there is no book devoted to Eileen O’Shaughnessy and only  in 2002 was a book written about his second wife and literary executor Sonia Brownell. The answer is not because Eric died comparatively young but according to Sheldon he understood that to be consistent with his ideals it would reveal what he wanted to keep private about his inner life, his inconsistencies and his relationships with others, which I suspect  was out of respect and protection of their right to privacy. I plead guilty from extrapolating from my recognition of important similarities between myself and Eric to making assumptions that I claim to know more or as much of him than those who have read and studied all his works and communicated with many people who had direct knowledge of him as Shelden mentions in his introductory chapter

I also ought to repeat my crackpot  warning that I continue to believe that despite the way human beings appear to differ in their physical make up and appearance and in their behaviour  we are all inherently the same and that we all inherit the accumulated memories of our biological ancestors which is another argument supporting my lifelong contention that everyone has the right to know the who their biological parents were, and in fact that this is one of few rights I would declare inalienable.

According to Shelden Eric argued that the work an artist produces should stand or fall on the judgement of others over time and that experience unrelated to the creation of any individual work should be discounted, a distinction Shelden himself rejects as I do. Having said this the question remains what would Orwell have written and done with the rest of his life had he not died when he did and would this have included and autobiography or two? Would he and Eileen have remained married if she  and he survived into their sixties and  in any event would she have remained silent when after his death he became the focus of so much research, and writing by others?
According to Shelden it was Sonia, in response to an unauthorised biography where she had refused to allow any direct quotations from his writings, to invite the academic Bernard Crick (1982 revised 1992) to write up his life which Shelden explains is full of facts without getting beneath the skin of the man, although it appears Sonia was displeased with his work which she attempted to stop the publication. Crick was an important writer on politics with a left of centre  slant and the reference has reminded  me to buy a second hand copy of his book on Protest and Discontent which he published in 1970 along with the only book about the life of Sonia, a fascinating woman in her own right

Shelden comments that Eric was a man of contradictions, Are we not all? We are all made up of conflicting forces, as I believe are societies  local, national and international. Unless there are counterbalancing forces a dominate force will gain such  an ascendancy that others will find it increasingly difficult to survive, for a time at least. If the dominant is benign then most people will argue  this is how it should be, but I believe any force even if for the good, constructive etc will become unstable  and turn in on itself unless it is able to achieve balance, stability, equilibrium and this is only attained from the tension between forces.

The other aspect I feel the need to feature in my introduction is the belief there is usually more than one valid answer to a mystery,  solution to a problem or response to a question. This aspect is covered by Shelden in the sense that he notes Eric liked to understand the position of those with whom he often had fundamental disagreement. This should not be misunderstood that understanding means one does not vigorously oppose or criticise.

Also important to me from Sheldon’s introduction is the information whatever his success, and Eric worked  to be successful and for his work to be appreciated, he always expected failure and recognised his shortcomings well as those of others. He also appears to have been a driven creative  individual.

Homage to Catalonia 3

After Georges Kopp had arranged for Eileen, Orwell’s wife to visit him at the front after which he had his first experience of close action, Spring brought warm days which turned to hot and with cherries forming in their clusters and bathing in the river no longer agony. He comments on the gnarled rustic looking men from Andalusia, the homeland of my maternal great grandmother and that two fellow Englishmen were laid low with sun stroke. The Andalusians were described as illiterate, simple but knew how to make cigarettes out of dried fibre.

The Republican government doubled the number of men outside of Huesca to thirty thousand, and used  lots of planes to bomb and shoot but the city refused to fall. This could be said was an important turning point in the defence of the democratic republic against the nationalist forces of Franco. Then the Republic commenced to implode.

After 115 days at the front Eric Blair the combatant was given leave to join his wife in Barcelona and found that the workers’ revolution was coming to its end. The bourgeoisie were back on the streets and the workers were back to their jobs or their homes. The civilian population had lost interest in the war with voluntary enlistment dwindled.  

Worse perhaps than this while the hotels and restuarnts in the city centre appeared to have no difficulty in feeding their guests able to pay, in the working class districts there were queues for bread, olive oil and other necessities one hundred yards long, and children barefooted waited all over the city clamouring for scraps of food,  People went about their own business and greeting of strangers as comrades disappeared.  He came across a shop full of bon bons and pastries at ridiculous prices not out of place in Bond Street or Paris and marvelled at the extremes of means now openly displayed. It was during the week that he waited for his new pair of boots that his original enthusiams came apart as the street fighting involving comrades commenced. 

The sense of trouble brewing was not just between the Stalinist Communists and POUM anarcho syndicalism but between all the factions and differences in views about the kind fo society that should deveop once Franco was defeated. The spark was the arrival of several lorry loads of armed civil guards  driven to the telephone exchange and taken control from the CNT workers there. Two barricades were then created by the people and the war between the government and the nationalist became an open conflict between Government supported by the Communists and Stalin and the anarchists, the Syndicalist, the Trotskyists, POUM and in particular the second city of Spain Barcelona

Civil guards occupied a cafe next to the POUM building as a prelude to attacking the headquarters. There is a disussion between a Civil guard and Georges Kopp over unexploded bombs lying in the street. Orwell fires his only shot of these “troubles” in a failed attempt to explode one of them. He worries about his wife back at the hotel. There is chat between Orwell’s comrades at the top of one building and Civil guards occupying another and who explained that they did not want to shoot at them because they were all workers.

Orwell, the writer describes the changed atmopshere in the city from May5th with very few pedestrians on the street. One of main papers  called for everyone to return to work. There was rumours of Government forces and POUM men coming to the city to fight it out.  After sixty hours without sleep he is in a “ghastly state of mind.”       

Back at the hotel spy mania gripped everyone. There was only one sardine each for one meal, also mentioned in the radio programme. He and his wife breakfasted  only on goats cheese three mornings in succession and the hotel had no bread for days and nothing to drink. There was                                                                                                                        a chorus of there is no more food, we much “go back to work.”

The rumour of government troops, Assault Guards, from Valencia proved accurate and suddenly they appeared  taking control of the streets, with the outbreak of street fighting giving the government the opportunity to assume fuller control of Catalonia. In the press POUM was declared a Fascist organisation in disguise.

After describing his personal experience Blair used the next chapter, the longest in the book, to try and explain what was happening in terms of the wider picture but makes the point that working out what happened accurately is impossible because there are no records, either not made, or destroyed. Frustration and disappointment on the part of the working class once it was appreciated that the former gulf between wealth and poverty was continuing coupled with the Government orders for personal weapons to be handed in and the growth of non political well armed government forces from which trade unionists were excluded were among the factors he lists.

He describes the tactics of the Communists but not those of the secret Nationalists who would have remained in the to spy. Until he comes to writing 1984 and the role of 0’Brien Orwell, from what I have read so far, does not appear to appreciate that all sides will have undercover people joining the organisations they are against, sometimes holding major roles in an organisation and undertaking illegal  action. It is rare of these individuals to become known or for the practices to be admitted while they are taking place. Both as a young man practicing non violent direct action, in later life as local authority chief officer and since in the age when what we do and say can be viewed and listened to, recorded and changed by anyone, anywhere with the technology, I quickly came to assume that this was so, acted in accordance to what I felt and believed, and regarded as fair and good, but I also sometimes laid trails so see who and how they were followed. Eric Blair to me always remained the idealist despite the realism that became his experience  and never appears to have got stuck in until he went to Spain followed by World War Ii when his ingrained patriotism resurfaced and his anti totalitarianism governed his remaining years.

Orwell reports that people started to leave barricades almost as soon as they had been created. POUM leaders appeared ambivalent and unsure in that while they encouraged followers to remain at the barricades they had argued against insurrection until the war against Franco was won. He noted that the Communist press, highlighting the Daily Worker in the UK, put the entire blame for the street fighting in Barcleona on POUM as a France’s Fifth Column and goes in to considerable detail examining various articles and statements.

He also comments on Trotskyist tactics of causing disorder and bloodhsed to undermine the position of anarchists and syndicalists in Barcelona. This reminds of my single experience when I got to hear the demagogue tirade of Socialist Labour League Leader Gerry Healey at the annual meeting of the organisation at the Friends Meeting House in London in 1961( I think I have the year right). I was invited by Harry Mister, the manager of the Peace News Bookshop to spend the day looking after a  Bookstall at their annual meeting as Pat Arrowsmith had been invited to talk about the role of the Direct Action Committee campaign against the possession and potential deployment of weapons of mass destruction. In order to listen to Pat I had to complete a delegate’s card and having done so and no one showing any interest in the  books, I stayed inside the hall to listen to an address by Healey that went on for the rest of the morning.

He first told the delegates that the movement should support the action to reduce the power of capitalist countries but it was essential that the soviets did not reduce their position. He denounced the volunteering to go to prison as unproductive and wasteful.

As Orwell explains in Chapter 11 the Trotskyists like the SLL were little different from the Stalinist in both supporting the dictatorship of the proletariart and that their ends justified any means. The essential difference  being that the SLL and similar groups believed that socialism was impossible unless it existed within every country an  approach in principle, no different from the Facists,  fundamenal Christians and Muslims. Without a world wide approach the capitalists would continue to do everything they could to undermine and destroy socialism.

A major part of the speech of  the SLL leader was to report on progress achieved during the year and the various struggles many of them small scale that had taken place and that in the coming year the priority was to enter the machine tool industry. It was evident from what was said that known members of the League were black listed by employer organisatuions and therefore the approach  was to quickly move into an area, cause as much mayhem as  possible in terms of getting the employers, the capitalists to show their true colours by turning on the worker and this would have the effect of educationg the workers in to the reality of capitalism and moving them into their camp. A short time afterwards an elderly man called to see me unexpectedly at the home of the aunties first confirming that that I had attended the annual meeting. I explained the circumstances and my response to what I had heard. We argued over many issues and as I had come to appreciate from previous situations I lacked the general education and communication skills to match his eloquence although I thought I managed to hold my own as by then I had read and reflected sufficiently to be clear what I was for and what I was against. I have always wondered if the man was from the SLL or MI5!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Orwell does  report that during the month of the uprising in Barcelona, the former Monarchist flag appeared on several balconies in Barcelona thus fuelling the allegations against POUM. Poum became an illegal organisation over  15th and  16th June and one of the first acts of the Negrin  led government that came into power in May. The Executive Committee  was imprisoned as was George Kopp.

Blair wrote his analysis  six months after returning to the UK and he reports that the leadership of POUM was still in jail although within the small Spanish Cabinet they had voted by five votes to two (both Communist Ministers) to release the prisoners. There had been a number of delegations from the UK and elsewhere visiting the Republican government including one by the Socialist Labour Member of Parliament, James Maxton. And also John McGovern when he visited was told that that because they had received aid from Russia “ we had to permit certain actions which we did not like,”  the words of the Spanish Minister of the Interior. McGovern had not be able to gain admission to the secret prisons held by the Communists in Barcelona despite having a signed order from the Minster of the Interior to do so,

Three days after the fighting in Barcleona ended Orwell and his comrades in Barcelona returned to the front. He found ity difficult for anyone returning to look at the war in the same way as before.  He was stationed  back outside of Huesca, a little to the right than previously and he had been promoted to acting second Lieutenant  i.e. had he been in the British Army, an officer, and in command of about thirty men. His friend Benjamin had been officially  promoted to Captain, the same rank as a cousin and Georges Kopp to Major, the same rank as one of my uncles.   

It was five oclock in the morning always a dangerous time because with the dawn at their backs if you put your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky, He felt, although hard to remember or describe how he felt at the moment that a bullet went into and through his throat.  What surprised him was not being in pain.

As a school boy  I had  entered  the school House boxing competition, never  having boxed or been in a fight of any kind before. I was hit and hit hard but the odd thing was  I did not feel pain and considered it an odd experience and keen to have joined the school boxing club which the head of house recommended. I was stopped by the aunties.

Less than a decade later I was picked up by police as I sat  at a pier across from a Polaris Submarine supply vessel and tossed in the air on top of other protestors and the action was repeated several times. I was calm  as I had been when another prisoner at Stafford had taken offence at my manner when working in the prisoner Library and placed a neck lock intended to cause me harm. In  these incidents there was neither fear or pain, surprise yes and in retrospect  being bemused by my reaction.

He is taken to hospital where he remembers a nurse trying to feed him a large meal and two of his troop expressing relief that he was alive but then taking away his  watch, revolver, knife and electric torch, all valuable at the front, knowing that even as a survivor his war was over.   After a few days he was able to get up and walk with his arm in a sling which had become paralysed.

He was able to subsequently comment that hosptials near the front line were treated as cl;earing stations rather than as places of treatment which led to hundreds if not thousands of wounded dying prematurely or being disabled unnecessarily.  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Doctors were too busy to examine  wounds  commenting that will be looked when you get to Barcelona as they rushed by. There were no trained nurses in Spain as the work of caring was undertaken by nuns with the consequence that men too ill look after themselves  were shamefully neglected.

He was able to wire Eileen  before departing to Barcleona  via a bus to the station only to discover they were being taken to Tarragona instead presumably because that was where the train driver was prepared to go. The heat and lack of care meant that a number of the wounded died on the journey. It was ony eight or nine days after the shooting that his wound was properly looked at. The doctor told him he would never get his voice back. Although for two months he could not speak beyond a whisper, audible speech then returned. 

When he returned to Barcelona, there was a special evil in the air. Sinster rumours of all kinds rebounded. There was fear that  Franco force would attempt to invade Barcelona.  Bands of armed Assasult gurds raopmed everywhere while Civil Guards controlled buildings and strategic places with papers constantly being requested. Fortunately he had been warned  not to show his POUM doucmentation. There was a bad shortage of food. And there was no small change which meant those with large denomination currency might have wait for hours after queuing for hours to get the right change. He was taken to a sanitorium run by POUM where there were several other Englishmen.

His wife Eileen continued to stay at the Continental and he came into  the city centre by day attending the General Hospital for electric shock treatment on his arm where he could move his fingers and the treatment reduces the pain. The couple decided to return to England as soon as possible, because of his desire to get away from what was happening, the atmosphere of hatred and                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            suspicion. He had been certified by the doctors as medically unfit to continue fighting.  He had to get  the position confirmed by POUM at Seitamo. Georges Kopp was back from the front in a good mood believing that at last Huesca was to fall and he had received  an invitation from the Government to go to Valencia for a special assignment leaving on the same day as Eric Blair.

It was five days before he got back with his discharge but at the POUM HQ in Barcelona everyone was issued with riffles and cartridges because an attack on the city was feared. He had to go from hospital place to hospital place to sort out his discharge . When his papers was eventually stamped he descided to take a look at Spain for the first time and he appears to have made visits to Lerida and Barbastro during the day or over a day before returning very late  to Barcelona although it is confusing given what he said about Eileen‘s concern and the wish to return to England quickly and also because of what was happening in Barcelona.  Without taxis it was too late to go to the Sanitoirum so he made his way to where Eileen was staying, stopping for dinner beforehand.

When he got to hotel he found Eileen looking relaxed in the louneg rising to greet him without emotion she put her arm tound his neck and whispered Get Out.

Get out of here at once after he had  exclaimed what? Don’t stand there you must go outside quickly. She ws leading him out and going down the stairs where  he met a Frenchman he knew who confirmed what Eileen had been trying to say, You must not come in here Get out and hide yourself before they ring the police.  He then met a member of he hotel staff also a POUM supporter who explained that the Government had suppressed POUM, seizing the buildings and putting members in prison. “They say they are shooting people already,” he added.   He and Eileen found a quiet cafe and she explained what had happened while he was away.

On June 15th the police had arrested the head of POUM in Barcelona and arrested everyone at the Hotel Falcon mostly militia men on leave. The hotel was converted into a prison. Next day POUM was declared an illegal organisation and the offices, book stalls, sanatoria and Red Aid centres were seized. The police arresting all members and associates. Almost all forty members of the Executive committee were in prison within a couple of days. Eileen had heard that some 400 hundred had been arrested in Barcelona alone. They had dragged wounded men from the hospitals. There were rumnours  that some of those arrested had been shot.  The arrests continued for months after he had departed and ran into thousands. He mentions one couple both arrested where the husband immediate disappeared and his wife remained in jail for two months, without a trial. She started a hunger strike for news of her husband and was told he was dead.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        She was released and then rearrested.

Some of their English friends and other foreigners had got immediately across the border. Others the police had taken including Georges Kopp.  I will look at the role of  Kopp and what happened to him later although on the run Orwell and his wife got to see Kopp in prison before they departed. They established that Kopp had returned from Valencia after visiting  the Ministry of War with a letter to the commander of  the Engineering operations on the eastern front. It had not occurred to him he would be arrested  on his way to the front with papers  for a special mission and came back to the Hotel for his kit bag, missing Eileen who was out at the time and  the hotel staff had notified the police as requested.

Eileen remained at the hotel and was not arrested, the couple taking the view that she was  being watched as a means of capturing Blair.  Their room had been searhed by plain clothed policemen in the middle of the night. They had removed all papers except their passport and cheque book. These included his diaries, their books and press cuttings  and letters. He later learned that the police had raided the sanitorium removing his possessions. It was agreed it was safer for her to remain at the hotel after this but he needed somewhere to stay for a good night’s sleep.  He destroyed papers  connecting  him to POUM except his official discharge papers  so it could not be claimed he was a deserter. He had difficulty finding somewhere to sleep and learned what is was like to be on the run.  He spent time  at a public bath until learning that the police had raised one and arrested a number of alleged Trotsyists with  the same idea as Eric. It was a place to relax and keep warm.

The couple arranged a meeting at the British Embassy attended also by John McNair.. McNair  born on Tyneside had become organising secretary of the Independent Labour Party and its International representative. In this capacity he had gone to Spain with John McGovern to investigate the role of the Catholic Church in the Civil War and  stayed to run the ILP office in Barcelona, greeting Blair on his arrival and later giving a job to Eileen.  Also present at the meeting was Stafford Cottman another volunteer. They learned that Bob Smillie, gradson of Robert Smillie the Labour Member of Parliament, had been arrested. He died in prison immediately after the arrest and buried, it is presumed to cover up how he died. The young man had left Glasgow Universirty where he was a student to fight Fascism  His death angered Eric.  It was in the afternoon they were able to see Kopp in prison. He was  described as being in excellent despite assuming they were all going to be shot.  Kopp explained the important of fhe letter from the War Ministry that had been taken from him. Blair went to see the Commanding officer to explain the mistake of arresting Kopp on the special government mission in an effort to retrieve the letter. Despite his  limited Spanish mixed with French, the letter was duly forwarded  to the Commander of the Engineers but his superiors failed to get him released from prison, as Orwell was to later find out.   

That same evening Orwell, McNair and Cottman slept on the grass at the edge of a derellict building lot. He comments that the Gaudi Cathedral building was hideous and regretted that it had not been blown up by the anarchists. He and his two comrades were leading an insane existence, criminals by night and by day prosperous English visitors. A  bath, shave and a shoe shine does wonder for an appearance. If I appear at my door in old clothes unshaved without my hair sorted I gain a very different reaction when in a suit, collar and tie. There was a warrant  out for the arrest of Mcnair and it was presumed Blair and the others were also on a list. The British consul got their passports in order with a train arranged from Port Bou at seven thirty in the evening so  an eighty thiorty start was probably the earliest time of actual departure. It was proposed to collect Eileen and pay her bill at the last possible moment as it was likely the hotel was required to notify the police of her departure. The train  left at ten to seven! Fortunately they managed to warn his wife  in time The three men had  dinner at a small hotel near the station and find that  the owner was politically friendly thay were given a three bedded room without notifying the police.

They left early the following morning meting up with his wife at the station. He wrote to the Ministry of War while they waited for the train to leave arguing that the arrest of Kopp was a mistake. In the radio play it was Eileen who pressed him about  trying to release Kopp.

They cross the frontier without incident. There were detectives on the train taking the names of foreigners but seeing the group in the dining car they were assumed respectable and not questioned. On his journey to Spain he had been warned  to take off his bourgeoise clothes for the anarchists would tear them off him, an exaggeration although at the broder the guards had turned back a smartly dressed couple. At the customs office they were checked on the list of the wanted but because of the general inefficiency thay  had not been included. The first newspaper they saw mentioned the warrant for the arrest of John McNair for espionage.

What is the first thing you do when setting foot outside  a war zone in which you have been involved? He rushed to robacco-kiosk (unaware of course that this act was far more dangerous than for much of the time he had spent in Spain. After this they had their first cup of tea with fresh milk for months. It was several days before he got used to the idea he could buy tobacco whenever and wherever he wanted. Their two companion went on to Paris which became the base of the ILP.

McNair was born in Boston Lincolnshire in 1887  and moved to here on Tyneside with his family at an early age. He left school at 13 years and became an errand boy. And my earliest memories after the war when I assisted my care mother as she struggled to work out  bills and change in a various shops along the main Wallington High Street was to see errand boys with their bicycles and  baskets delivering purchases all day and every day except Sundays and Wednesday afternoons.  

McNair became General Secrteary of the Independent Labout Party in 1939 and held the post until 1955, the year I left school, having moved their officers to Glasgow.  He then returned to Tyneside and complete a first degree at the University of Durham, studying French and English History, Greek and Roman Culture at the age of 72. He then obtained a master’s degree on the work of George Orwell    

And Eric Blair, Eileen and Georges Kopp, theirs is another story

Homage to Catalonia part 2

I decided to take a break from reading and writing about George Orwell’s participation in the Spanish Civil War Homage to Catalonia. In the time between the first writing and this I reached he conclusion that because of his rush to get to the front he had no time to examine how the worker’s city of Barcelona functioned in practice and when he returned its functioning was already being dismantled. For those of us with a leaning towards non violent local based syndicalism it was the first and the last occasion that a major city on the western democracies had moved in such a direction. The only examples there has been in the UK is the way miners tended to run their communities, especially in Fife in Scotland, nut in  communities in South Wales, in Yorkshire and Durham in particular miners and their families became a tribe part from the rest much like prison officers and the military and their encampments. Go to the supermarket at the centre of Catterick Camp and experience at first hand what I mean. Those engaged in direct action in the UK against weapons of mass destruction or the civil rights movement in the USA also understand the sense of being part of something yet also separate.  In Spain, Eric Blair who had spent all his life feeling apart from the majority  experience being one of many, perhaps the majority.

I have only visited Barcelona on day visits, at night to see the fountains, a daytime visit to a bullfight where  I left at half time having seen enough to confirm my prejudices. I have  visited the Gaudi Cathedral, still in its making and the site of the Olympic Games, walked the Rambalas, and driven past the magnificent Football stadium. My impression is of a city of apartments although.  I saw little of the outskirts or the industrial plants to obtain any meaningful impression without having stayed in the city and walked more or engaged with its people. It is a very different place from the coastal resorts where I have stayed in the North or had one quick hot and tiring trip along the coast in the South on an escorted trip from Gibraltar.

Reflecting on what I had read and written so far my main reaction was at the Black and White which Orwell had approached the War and so far he did not appear to appreciate that this was country of man against country man, neighbour and work mate against neighbour and workmate, soldier and against soldier, catholic against catholic and division within extended families and indeed within some nuclear families. Is it surprising that the ordinary people were reluctant to try and kill each other, apart from the ideological fanatics, and personal power seekers? Is it surprising that they attempted to persuade each other to change sides rather than kill?

The fourth chapter ends with a Fascist aeroplane coming over their position and instead of dropping bombs, there was a leaflet which announced the fall of the city of Malaga. It is my understanding that the Republican forces and most of the population decided to withdraw, leaving the remaining population to the fate of the advancing Italian troops who without the same understanding that these were fellow countrymen, women and children, set about machine gunning down the civilian population  including those who had already fled the city.

In mid February Blair and the others made a fifty mile truck ride to join the forces attempting to take the town of Huesca. Having taken another town in the area the promise was made that tomorrow, we will have coffee in Huesca. There had been several bloody attacks but the city had not fallen and Orwell says that if he was to return to Spain he would make a point of visiting Huesca to enjoy coffee one morning. Clearly he did not do so at the time.

It is on reading the next chapter that I find Orwell recognised the shortcomings of his original reaction to the political situation in Barcelona and the rest of Spain. He had not been interested in the political and was unaware of it. He had no notion of what kind of war it was.

The reason I have become so interested in the life as much as the writings of Eric Blair is that the more I read the more I believe there is considerable similarity between  our personalities and the development of our political outlook. Like Blair I rushed into supporting the extreme end of those involved in the Gandhian Satyagraha rooted direct action protests against weapons of mass destruction and it was only after I had been to prison that I commenced to take a more in depth look at the interests involved and the motives of the individuals  involved. It is a good coincidence that for different reasons I checked my birth name on Google once more and discovered that a book was published in 2011 by Sean Scalmar looking at the rise of radical Protest in the UK and the USA based on Gandhian Satyagraha which makes reference in one of his copious footnotes to the letters written to the Direct Action Committee on behalf of Peter Brown (the author of Smallcreeps Day) and I proposing a Gandhian style march ending with a direct action protest at the USA nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch and our response to the protest after it had taken place. We had the same belief and commitment as those workers in Barcelona, despite having recently volunteered to spend six months in prison rather than giving an oral undertaking not to participate in protests for a period of two years. It was only then I began to fully understand the extent of the differences between the various factions making up the leadership of the anti nuclear movement. We were both to improve our understanding and adapt our position to changed circumstances

On returning from Spain, based on his diaries and memories, Blair wrote  that the revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona “attracted me deeply but I had made no attempt to understand it,” and he was exasperated by the number of political parties and trade union with their different names which he considered tiresome. It only on arriving outside Huesca when someone said that the Socialists were  positioned on their left that he queried,” I thought we were socialists? “

Orwell uses this event to introduce his understanding of the Civil War and its origins, he confirms my understanding outlined in the first part that Franco did not come to power to introduce Fascism in Spain but with  help of the  church and the aristocracy to return Spain to is Feudalism before the first mild democratic government had taken office. The consequence of this is that Franco had against him not just the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie and I suspect many who would not describe themselves as liberal. Orwell incorrectly assumed that it was only the bourgeoisie who supported Fascism thus not appreciating the traditionalism, the conservatism, patriotism, anti outsider and tribalism of the working class, particularly the politicised and trade union working class. I also had found this in prison and in my work with poor families with multiple problems when I worked for a Family Service Unit  in Salford throughout the summer of 1962.

What happened in Spain is that the working class opposition to the arrival of Franco was to move from accepting the democracy to engaging in revolution.  Land was sized,  factories seized, often by the trade unions, and churches wrecked with many priests killed. This led to the reaction by the Catholic church and their support for Franco. The opposition to Franco was not the elected government as such but the trade unions. Blair reports that in the street fighting 3000 people were killed in a single day. Once the blood letting starts it is difficult to stop. For purposes of propoganda to the outside world the civil war was represented as Christian patriots versus blood letting Bolsheviks, which in many respects it was, or at least became, and good republicans (Orwell says gentlemanly) quelling a military revolt against the democratic  government, which it also was. The reality was that not just the western capitalist countries but Stalinist Russia was opposed to the kind of workers revolutuion that had  taken place.  More recently we have seen how this kind of revolt in Egypt although brought down one regime has been quickly replaced by another with the help of a other countries whose systems and motives are often in conflict.  Importantly In Egypt the revolt was non violent and therefore the leaders who emerged remain whereas in Spain it was more easy to get rid of them because they has used force and committed atrocities.

Through the various phases of Government during the first  year of the Spanish civil war it had moved more and more to the right  ending with a right wing socialists Liberals and the Stalinist communists. POUM, the syndicalists and the anarchists  were moved out. This appears to be part of the deal with Russia as they commenced to supply weaponry to the official government for its defence.  The arms were made available through the Communist party and those allied to the Communist Party and the Communists openly said they were non revolutionary in their approach and thus gained support from many on the left who were also not revolutionaries. By the autumn of 1937 the Socialists organisations were claiming that they respected  private property, When the tide turned and even after Franco won, it was the Communists who led the hunt to track down and eliminate the revolutionaries. 

POUM which Orwell was part of its forces because of the ILP links was not just fully behind the revolution that had taken place in Barcelona, and  elsewhere, but rightly in my view believed that any comrpomise on what they had achieved would be their doom. They resisted the “bourgeoisifying” of the  workers   militia   and police force. If the workers did not control the armed forces the armed forces would control the workers. 

Orwell then explains the problem with people calling themselves anarchists and belonging to organisations and  groups which the pure anarchist will argue is contradiction.  Orwell explains that the two million strong grouping of the anarchist was  largely made up of former socialists against the centralised state, whether a capitalist or socialist state, and were more interested in workers controls than parliamentary government. Orwell argues that the anarchism of liberty and equality  was so deep rooted in Spain that it would outlive Communism. I wonder what in fact happened to this significant anarchist movement and what the position is now.

I have only read the Wikipedia article on  the subject and it is a good one making the point that the anarchism was not ideological but borne out of fhe rural economy in Spain with its Federal and individualistic history. The CNT party, now split into two groups is said to have some 50000 members.  a significant number  in terms of the generality of political involvement as Party members that exists today in most west European countries. This may be because of the extent to which the Communists and then Franco persecuted the anarahcists with hundreds of thousands executed or imprisoned. Apparently there were 30 attempts to kill Franco, none succeeding and violent resistence to his regime until the early 1960’s.

This was the context which Orwell says he became aware of the feuding that was going on between the different groups and interests which made up the Anti Franco coalition. Thus he came to appreciate that the Communists and those allied were saying with slogans, posters, radio propoganda  that he and his comrades were Trotskyists, Fascists, Traitors, Murderers, Spies                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   and more.  He ends the chapter reflecting that he had never joined POUM as a party and given subsequent events he wishes that he had. I like that about                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           the man.      

Blair returns to his war experience in Chapter six admitting that at the time he was still of a mind to join an International Brigade and place himself under effective  communist control because  of the military inactivity of his front the time. He describes becoming vermin infested and the shortages and that as the end of March came he had developed a poisoned hand that had to be lanced. I had such an experienced in childhood. His infection was more serious and he spent ten days away from the line at a clearing station hospital.

And then there were the rats. Some as big as cats. They were  big  that they did not run away unless you shot at them. In the radio drama he is criticised for wasting a  bullet attempting to shoot one. He may therefore write about rats again and this experience according to the Drama Jura about the writing of 1984 is what led to have used the rats in  the room 101 torture scene at the end of  the story, after his sister encountered rats on the island.

It has also remembered that the revolution that took place in Spain occurred in the countryside as much as the town and Orwell in describing the arrival of Spring noted that the “peasants” ( his word) were spring  ploughing fields where the land owners had gone and fields appeared to be divided up between the agricultural workers rather than collectivised as happened in Russia and then in China, taking several decades to understand that this was a recipe for disaster. Blair`` was struck by the friendliness of  agricultural workers.

So far I had also found little written about religion by Orwell but in chapter six he observes that there appeared to be little religious feeling in this part of Spain and he never saw anyone cross themselves during his whole time in Spain. He does anticipate the return of Catholicism and its Spanish Church despite its collapse and refers to the Church of England in an aside as moribund. He describes the Church of the Inquisition as having become a racket and replaced by anarchism.`

Hr describes that in May on the cold night he had experienced the line was moved, quietly to a  new trench close to the Fascist line. He also mentions that ambulances would not come to the front because it was understood by  both sides that they  were being used carry ammunition and therefore were regarded as fair targets. We are then back to the rats which were swarming in the trench and he noted with pride being able to punch one flying.

His hand having repaired in time for participating in a small group participating in an attack for which he prepared with a hunk of bread, three inches of red sausage and a cigar which his wife had sent from Barcelona via George Kopp who come to direct action, addressing him in Spanish and then in English. In order not to shoot each other they were to wear white armbands except it was discovered these had not yet arrived.

In the radio play there is reference to the arrival of Eileen in Barcelona to work at the ILP office, the meeting with George Kopp and that her his accepted his offer to go for a meal. There was to be talk  that the two had an affair, and Eric thought so accusing his wife. I speculate why Kopp chose Orwell and his group to undertake a dangerous mission to capture a Nationalist position partly up a hillside.

Meanwhile Orwell was getting his wish for action and found himself throwing not one but two grenade bombs as another landed close to him from the other side wounding those around him. He threw and then ducked quickly not looking to see where his throws had landed. The enemy was firing their riffles as were comrades behind, one going close to his position. After throwing his third grenade bomb which landed on the target the order was given to charge, although his description was that of a lumber. On arrival he found that everyone had departed with  the exception of one man he chased as he successfully escaped to a higher position  where his comrades provided safety.

Eric mentions using a small electric torch his wife had purchased for him in Barcelona. Although they found plenty of ammunition they wanted riffles to replace their own which jammed from the mud and general lack of good condition. More importantly they wanted the machine gun that fired at them but it had been removed leaving only the tripod. The enemy was counter attacking from above as were  comrades below on several places along the line and his small group was now in the middle with their only booty a powerful telescope. He throws a grenade  bomb at someone firing towards him and the cries indicated the man is wounded which causes him some regret. Then the order comes for them to go back to their line. He failed to understand why.

With Kopp anxious about an officer, his friend, who had not returned, Eric and a couple of Spanish comrades volunteer to bring the wounded or dead man back. Finding themselves under attack they retreat with finding anyone. He estimated that the Fascists had thrown  a couple of hundred men into the counter attack although a deserter said the number had been six hundred. Eric Blair could now write as George Orwell he had fought in a war and survived.