10

South of Madrid, in the equilateral triangle formed by Arganda, Chinchon and San Martin de la Vega, in an area approximating forty square miles, there was little thought of love as fifty thousand men found themselves engaged in a strange combat. In the battle which had already coursed for several weeks, tens of thousands had lost their lives, been buried in mass graves among the graceful rolling hills and valleys carpeted with gorse, marjoram, olive and grape, an occasional aspiring green cypress, pine and silver oak, under a miraculous blue sky through which sailed a white-yellow sun to the nagging shrill song of magpies. No perfume bottle ever secreted a more exquisite scent than the soles of a man’s shoes from the pressed gorse, sage and marjoram. The day’s slaughter enveloped by night, a man could fling his aching nerve-quivering body to the earth, place his shoes near his weary battered head, sniff, and smile sweetly, war almost, but not quite, forgotten. Nature’s very own justice.

The enemy—Spanish and Moorish infantry, German machine-gunners and snipers, Italian Capronis, Savoias, German Heinkel 111s, Junkers, competent generals and line officers, not a polit-commissar in the lot—was professional. Sometimes, it is true, the line officers bullwhipped their men when a trench was not deeply dug, a reactionary method for saving men’s lives, but efficacious. The Loyal Spanish and Interbrigade troops were not as well-trained, were amateurs in fact (save for the German exiles), whose trenches were not as neatly or as deeply dug, whose lives did not seem to matter as much. After all, they had right on their side.

It was the enemy’s mission to cut the roads leading from eastern Spain to Madrid before the rains inundated the valleys of Tajuña and Jarama in March. The enemy fought with competence, heavily armed, their fire power on the ground, in the air, three, four, five to one over that of the resisting Loyal forces. The enemy would attack, break through; the Loyal troops would counterattack, repulse the enemy, but rarely if ever regain the ground the enemy had won. The graves were bottomless.

The troops of the Republic had poor commanders, worse line officers, bad communications, amateur troops who were led to fight the type of war the enemy wanted them to fight. Army to army. Front to front. Though caring little for life, still they had will, and they had decided almost intuitively, collectively, not to yield The Road. The mass graves grew larger. The Road remained open, cluttered day and night with caravans of trucks, ambulances, staff cars and a few Russian tanks used for mobile machine-gun and light cannon fire. Overhead a sparse flight of Russian Moscas—flies—harried the enemy.

The fascist fire grew more ferocious, insistent; the Loyal and Interbrigade troops became more obsessively wilful, stubborn. No! they cried. Despite our officers and our political leaders, no! Fascism took Italy without a fight; Germany was handed to you on bended knee. Only here have men fought and here we’ll all die.

By the uncounted thousands they died. No one kept an accurate score.

As José Garms wrote his friend, Jake Starr, it was truly badly fucked up.

First they fought with will. And now that February approached an end, they fought with hope. It had already rained a few times, but in March there would be a deluge. Friend and enemy would sleep in their trenches, cooling their fevers with rain, healing their wounds with mud.

The hill on the Chinchon-Madrid road behind them, the American volunteers were camped in a gully shielded by its own high banks and an olive grove. To their left the narrow San Martin road, once macadam, now macadam and dirt, wound like a fish line strung out to dry through the hills and spacious flats of the Tajuña valley. To the troops in the sector, both enemy and friend, this was The Road.

To the peasants it was just another. Fearless, industrious, motivated by poverty and hunger, they could be seen daily with their burros and carts almost into the battlefield itself harvesting their olives. They too raced the deluge.

In the barranca shielded by an olive grove, Greg Ballard, his head resting on his gear, spoke quietly to Jaime Ortega, the lone vaquero, as Mack Berg slept and Joe Garms played crap with the others for the condoms they had never got to use. Greg Ballard was becoming a soldier. He had not come to Spain to die a romantic hero’s death, but to fight fascism. In the few short days they had spent on the hill, his trench had become a fort and a home: deep, spacious, neat with shelves and pegs for all his soldierly possessions. Ship shape. ‘Any man workin’ a fishin’ boat who ain’t well-organized is takin’ his life into his hands. A fishin’ boat’s little, the ocean’s big.’ You asked, he answered. Then he became embarrassed because you gave him all this attention and he giggled his high-pitched way until you squirmed. After a time you became accustomed to it, as you did to his big head on no neck on broad shoulders on long body on short legs, and the smashed nose, the thick lips and the big white teeth. Slowly over the weeks he had quietly and studiously explored his new comrades. Learned that if they had prejudices they concealed them securely behind their politics. If they suffered from a fault in their relations with him it was the one of patronage, they were just a mite too good, except for Joe Garms, Ortega and, after he’d been set straight, Mack Berg. Mack was a little too prone to include him in his, Mack’s, Jewish troubles. As Greg learned he could trust these men, he became less laconic, giggled less, began to assert himself. He was a man among men.

It was with Jaime Ortega he was most at ease and he admitted to himself it was because the Cuban boy was even more bashful, more afraid of people than he. When Jaime spoke it was as if he were walking a tightrope and one became afraid at every word he was going to topple over and break his neck.

‘Soon, amigo,’ he said to Jaime, ‘we’ll be doin’ what we’ve come to do. T’other side of the gully’s the enemy. Four hundred meters Cord said.’

‘Sí, Gregory, the enemy. Are. you. a. fraid?’

‘Yup.’

‘We. are. as. one. I have pissed enough to have flooded the valley.’

Greg smiled. The lone vaquero grunted.

They hadn’t heard much rifle fire since settling in the barranca. Now a bullet snapped in the distance. They ducked. Everytime they heard a snap they ducked. Captain Cord informed them they would soon learn to gauge the distance of every sound.

Greg and Jaime looked back towards the hill and the road beneath it. It was becoming dark now and they could barely see. What they could see was enough. The ever-present trucks, ambulances, stacking their wounded, two tanks, like armored beasts clanking away towards their night’s lair, the day’s hunt in the field done.

‘I’m gonna take a nap, Jimmy. We probably move up tonight.’

‘You. sleep. I’ll. try.’

‘Yeah. Either there’s never enough or there’s too much.’

They napped.

Greg was wakened by a soft touch on his shoulder. It was Joe Garms. The sun completely gone, it was freezing. As Ballard wrapped himself in his sheepskin, Joe Garms spoke.

‘Special duty squad. Wake Mack and Ortega. Get your gear. Meet yuh down below, the edge a the gully. Don’t ferget your machine-gun.’ He smiled.

‘Okay, Joe.’

When Ballard, Ortega and Berg arrived, Garms, unusually silent, was there with Horowitz, Carrington, Dempsey, Leonidis, Bederson and Parker. Horton had an m.g. squad there, too. Captain Cord was conferring with an English officer whom they had seen around, stiffbacked and muy correcto. When Cord saw they were ready, he motioned them to follow.

They marched single-file for thirty minutes, always in the shelter of one hill or another. No one spoke. They made very little noise. It was very cold but everyone perspired. Everytime they stopped, someone had to take a leak. Captain Cord tried a joke. ‘Don’t take it, leave it.’ It helped.

Night had fully arrived; the sky was a blank slate, the quarter moon like the curved half of a question mark.

Garms’s squad waited, leaning on one another for warmth and comfort, as the captain and the Englishman led Horton’s squad up the side of a hill. Fifteen minutes later Cord and the English officer returned and the single-file march resumed. They were now in a scrub pine wood, sparse and dry, the crackle of broken twigs a monstrous din echoing off the massive blackboard of night. Without anyone saying, Joe Garms’s squad knew they were at the very edge.

First Joe and the English officer intermittently crawled and ran until they reached some stone breastworks. Ballard, the heavy carriage of his Maxim on his back, his rifle slung beside it, Jaime Ortega, cradling the machine-gun itself in his arms, and Captain Cord followed. Mack sent the others in pairs and finally himself.

Captain Cord, a lean, lantern-jawed Tennesseean, the English officer and Garms spoke with a tall slender comrade who talked with a Dutch accent, commander of a company of the famed Franco-Belges battalion. He was all business, curt and quick.

Under his orders, the Americans were positioned, the machine-gun set up, Ballard going methodically to work. Cord smiled warmly and with the English comrade wished them luck, ‘Suerte, mucha suerte’, and departed.

If the squad had been asked life or death to spit, everyone would have died.

Greg Ballard, with Ortega and Berg at his side, worked as quietly as possible emplacing the ancient gun firmly and solidly between some large stones. As they worked they heard Joe whisper, ‘Lookit those bastids smokin’.’ To their left, they saw the gleam of cigarettes. Must be nuts, with the enemy up ahead. Garms found the Dutch commander, queried him about it. The man smiled through his heavy beard, color unknown in the darkness.

‘It is very well iff your camarades are smoking. We are goodt coffered by stone breastworks. So long as your men stay down der will be no trouble.’

Joe thanked him, returned to his squad. Mimicking the commander, he told them they could smoke as long as they stayed down. Mack Berg began to laugh, soundlessly at first, but it got away from him and soon he and the rest of the squad were burying their mouths in the earth to muffle the guffaws.

Garms set up guard duty for the night, starting off with Ballard and Ortega, then ordered everyone to sleep. ‘Tomorrow when yuh wake up, right in front of them stones, up that shitass hill, is the enemy. He got guns and he shoots bullets. You been listenin’ to the bull shit of the commissars that they’re yellah, that they’ll run as soon as you aim your guns at ’em. You’ve seen those ambulances, y’ve seen the blood and the wounded, so you gotta unnerstand y’ve been told a load a shit. They got the guts you and me got and they got more fire power. There’s one difference. We’re one hundred per cent sure we’re right, they ain’t so sure. Goodnight, comrades. Jest remember, little old Joe’ll be here to help yuh.’ He laughed, the gravel running, they grinned, and they all turned in.

As Ballard sat near his gun he smoked a cigarette. Ortega asked for a light. ‘I. can. not. sleep. even. if. I. try,’ Jaime said. ‘I keep thinking of Havana, school, my mother and father.’ Greg looked at him sharply. Jaime never spoke about himself, about his family. He was one of those shy boys who couldn’t believe anyone might be interested. Greg merely grunted. Hesitatingly, teetering ever on the tightrope of embarrassment, Greg remaining absolutely quiet so as not to throw him, Jaime continued. ‘I keep thinking about death. Last year I engaged with other students in a revolutionary action against Batista. We made some bombs and threw them into the police chief’s home. I wasn’t afraid that time. I didn’t even think of death. But now I keep seeing the faces of comrades who died that night. I suppose I am very much afraid.’

‘We all are.’

‘I come from a wealthy family. Most of the students in the Cuban revolutionary movement do. It is strange: the richer the family, the more revolutionary their children. Very unMarxian,’ he laughed.

Ballard smiled. He remembered once putting the question to Jake Starr about some of the sons of the rich joining the party in Boston, but Jake had shrugged, passed it by. Jake Starr didn’t like doubts, and questions which didn’t fit flush with his economic determinism created doubts, and he passed them by.

But Jaime Ortega was speaking, less rapidly now, and Greg stopped thinking of Jake Starr to listen.

‘We have a beautiful old hacienda outside Havana. There I lived with my parents, three sisters and two brothers. I am the baby,’ he said shyly. ‘My father was proud of my revolutionary activity but couldn’t understand my interest in the international movement. He lives only for a free and democratic Cuba. After that affair with the police chief I had to leave for the States. Before I left for Spain I wrote my father to explain my views … we left before I received an answer.’ He was abruptly quiet, then the words tumbled out. ‘If I am killed, will you write them?’

Greg was stunned by the request. Why ask him? He didn’t like putting his nose in other people’s business.

Jaime urged, ‘Will you, please? I want you to do it because I have great respect for you—you will write a letter, not a pamphlet.’

‘Thanks,’ Greg murmured.

‘I will give you their address … just tell them I died bravely.’

Greg’s hands began to shake, he grabbed hold of himself, he didn’t know what to say. ‘You haven’t died yet. Oh, of course, I’ll write them.’ Suddenly it occurred to him he could die too. ‘You’ll do the same for me. I’ll give you my sister’s address … she’ll break it easy to my mother.’

‘Muchas gracias,’ Jaime whispered, biting his lips.

Each retired into himself.

Then Jaime said, ‘If you speak about death and make the practical arrangements, it becomes easier to face.’ He spoke as though he were certain he was going to die.

Greg stared at the lean leathery face. Jaime was nineteen years old and already making the practical arrangements. ‘Yeah. When I bought my ma a plot and a funeral she was happy for days.’

‘I feel better now,’ Jaime said.

‘Good.’ A moment later. ‘If I die let Jake Starr know. He must still be in Paris. I’ll give you his address.’

‘Sí. I saw him in Paris, too,’ Jaime said, as both became busy with their stub pencils. ‘But I met him once before in Havana, at a meeting at someone’s house. He told us it was time we stopped behaving like wild anarchists, it was necessary sometimes to crawl as in war. He spoke Spanish very well and we were impressed. We did not listen, however, we made that attack on the police chief like wild Indians. It was foolish.’

As they exchanged the slips of paper, Greg said, ‘He’s a good man. He learns fast.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘He came up to the Cape for the party. Met my sister Loney at a meetin’ and they became friends. She belongs, I don’t. He told me he was color-blind. I told him, too bad you are, I got a real beautiful color. He became mad and I told him to stop patronizin’ me, it was jimcrow upsidedown. Out he slammed from the house. A big fish. I waited for a day when small craft warnin’s were up and took him out on my boat. The wind came up, 20, 30, the sea became rough just as I figgered it would and he got so sick he thought he was goin’ to die. I laughed like hell. When he was a real Kelly green I turned her about and brought her in. He stumbled off, fell on the ground and just lay there heavin’. Finally he sat up pale as boiled sole. You’re white as a sheet, I said. He gave me a sickly grin. And you’re black as coal, he said. You caught on, I said. Yup, he said. We shook hands. Now he’s not color-blind, though Loney thinks he still is. But he saw me, that’s all I want. You understand?’

Jaime grinned. ‘Yup.’

They smoked in silence. The night was totally quiet. Very dark. Some of the Franco-Belges were sitting guard, also smoking. The air seemed very light, dry.

Jaime said, ‘Something very dirty happened when Starr was in Havana. I don’t think he was responsible. There was another man with him, an older man, from the Comintern. I think it was this man.’

Ballard looked at Ortega hard. A man starts, he oughta finish. ‘What was it?’

‘Better. not. I. shouldn’t. have. spoken.’

‘Yup.’ A man oughtn’t do that, start and not finish. But Greg was curious. ‘The same as happened to Nuñez in Villanueva?’

‘Worse. We were all very unhappy, but we did nothing, said nothing.’

‘That made you an accomplice,’ Greg said sharply.

‘Then you and I are accomplices about Nuñez too.’

Ballard bit his lip. ‘You bet.’

‘Our dreams are so bright, Gregory.’

‘Is that good enough excuse?’

‘I don’t know … the enemy’s so cruel.’

‘Agreed.’

‘So we become.’

‘And the enemy wins after all.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Me too, Jaime.’

They’d made themselves unhappy, and had no more to say. First carefully extinguishing their butts, they then wrapped themselves tightly in their sheepskins and stared over the stone breastworks to where the enemy slept.

A half hour later they woke Dempsey, a merchant seaman from Mobile, Alabama, and Horowitz, a pants presser from the Bronx, to do guard duty. Then Ortega and Ballard spread a common poncho on the ground, lay down back to back, and fell asleep.

Dawn, orange gray streaked with alarming blue, woke Joe Garms’s squad. Now they could see where they were. The stone breastworks were at the foot of a long easy-sloping hill covered with gorse, sweet marjoram bushes, some stray grape trees. At their rear, an open plain; to the left and slightly behind them, the scraggly pine wood through which they had come the night before. To their right, parallel to the wood, another hill which Joe Garms figured was the one being defended by Horton’s squad.

In the line with them were sturdy blond- and red-bearded soldiers, a ragged, filthy lot. Indifferently they nodded to the newcomers in the line. They spoke little among themselves. From their lips drooped crooked Canary Island stogies, removed only for food or drink. Plenty of drink—red wine. They had been in the lines incessantly for three weeks. Before that they had fought at University City.

Their commander seen in daylight was imposing: a tall man, freckled and tanned, flaming red hair, beard no less flaming and covering his entire chest like a burning bush. The hill up ahead, he informed Garms, was held by Moorish infantry and German machine-gunners and snipers. ‘Very goodt fighters. Excellent!’ The enemy had been attacking every day for weeks, been repelled each time with heavy losses. At night the dead were buried. ‘No shooting unlest I give der order. Me entiende usted?’

Joe said, ‘Yeah, entiendo.’

The commander smiled. ‘Position your men. Be always ready.’ Joe was dismissed.

As he strode back to his squad, he heard the commander call out, ‘Soon the coffee will be coming.’

Garms ordered Ballard and Ortega to remain with their machine-gun and to sight it at the top of the hill in front of them. Greg sprawled on his stomach behind his gun, sighted it at four hundred meters, as Jaime lay down beside him to feed the belt. Garms had the remaining seven men sit in a semi-circle with him in the center. They looked nervous, dirty, white-lipped. Pissass scared. Like himself. Never been so fuckin’ piss-ass scared in his life. Worse than before goin’ into the ring for a fight. So scared his scrotum hurt. Like blue balls. ‘You guys—which ones besides Parker and Dempsey know how to shoot?’

Horowitz, a big black-bearded kid, raised his hand. Garms laughed. ‘Yuh fuckin’ liar. A pants presser from the Bronx?’

Horowitz smiled darkly. ‘I was captain of the rifle team at Morris High.’

Garms grinned. ‘Sonuvabitch. Take the position at the right flank at the end a the stones.’ Horowitz obtained his gear and rifle and loped over to the farthest-most point behind the stone wall. ‘No shooting unlest I give der order. Entiende?’ Horowitz nodded. ‘Dempsey, take yer gear and set yore li’l southern ass near that meanlookin’ Dutchman on the left.’ Dempsey, a bullet-headed blond man, rose gracefully to his one short and one long leg, he wore a shoe with a built-up sole and heel, and moved lithely to his position. Joe sent Mack Berg next to Dempsey, and Leonidis, the Greek furrier who was great with a fur-cutter’s knife, a cold potato, next to Horowitz. ‘He’ll learn yuh fast, Skippy.’ Then he positioned Parker, a blond hard-nosed ugly man all of eighteen years old, a squirrel-hunter from way back when he was three, next to Mack Berg who was looking meaner by the day. He placed Bederson, a twenty-year-old bald-headed boy with metal blue eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses, a City College grad, next to Parker. Hunt Carrington, the big brown fullback from Morgan U. and party organizer from Chicago, he placed near the machine-gun.

All in position, he called out, ‘Remember, squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it. Save that for your rolled beef.’

Mack Berg said drily out of the side of his mouth, ‘Top kick Garms thinks he’s Victor McLaglen in What Price Glory?’

Everybody laughed and Garms became red in the face. ‘Screw off, yuh mean-mouthed bastid.’

‘Up yours with a meat hook,’ Mack retorted.

Joe balled his fists, and Dempsey drawled, ‘Ten-shun!’

Garms plopped to his seat and started counting, ‘One, two, t’ree,’ up to ten, and he and Mack were friends again.

The blue widened, the orange reddened, the gray disappeared, dawn became day. The Franco-Belges spoke among themselves, smoking their stogies; the Americans fidgeted, staring through slits in the breastworks out into no-man’s land at the invisible enemy. Not a shot had been fired.

From the scrub pine wood two men and then two more brought hot coffee and bread. Devoured with relish, smacking of lips.

Chatter, waiting, snoozing, waiting. Noon: sweating. Two men broke from the pine wood, flopped, crawled, ran, crawled. Grossed half the one hundred fifty yards, flopped on a slight rise. Snap! snap! Right in front of their eyes one man lay dead and the other twisted and turned, screaming. A medic detached himself from the wood, running and flopping. Joe Garms, fists clenched, ready to go, was pinned down by the commander’s order. ‘Don’t move. No shooting. I have neider men nor bullets to spare.’ Garms and his men watched dry-mouthed as the medic reached the wounded man, gave him a shot of morphine, then started back with the man on his back. Snap! snap! The medic and his wounded man lay still.

‘Fools!’ the commander snapped out.

‘Breathe slow,’ Joe Garms said. ‘Jest breathe slow. It helps. And lookit those guys.’

The Franco-Belges calmly reclined behind the stone breastworks, smoking their stogies, drinking vino.

The Americans chatted desultorily, sweated profusely. Waited. Hunt Carrington said in his mellow bass voice, ‘We’ve been in the lines a week, been hit with artillery fire, aerial bombs, been shot at, seen lots of dead and wounded and we ain’t shot a gun in anger yet. I feel myself getting real mean. I would just love to kill somebody.’

Silence.

Ballard said, ‘A week.’ He giggled nervously. ‘It’s Washington’s birthday. The twenty-second. Hey, let’s have a parade.’

Silence.

They waited. The afternoon passed.

Nothing from the enemy. Nada. Just plain silence. Not even a wind through the gorse. The sun began to set and the coolness was like a glass of ice water in August.

‘I’m hungry,’ Mack Berg said.

‘You always say the right thing,’ Leonidis glared.

Ortega passed Berg a square of hardtack through four pairs of hands. As Mack ate it sounded like the cracking of wood under a heavy strain.

If these guys is scared as me, Joe thought, they’re gonna run. He was prone five paces behind his men, dead center. And his scrotum still hurt. Somethin’s gotta happen. It jest gotta. Too fuckin’ quiet.

Singing! Shrill, skinscrawling, weird, like a geyser of wailing oboes. Joe turned his head towards the Dutch commander who also lay prone behind his men. The man nodded affirmatively. Called out, ‘No shooting till I give der order.’ Joe signalled assent.

‘The Moors,’ he called to his men. ‘Take a piss, y’ll feel better.’

The line from Horowitz at the extreme right to the last Franco-Beige at the left arched like a cat’s back ready to spring. Smoke rings spiralled above the heads of the veterans like smoke from a hardclimbing locomotive.

The Moors seem to be screeching and Joe can feel his skin become taut. Jesus Christ, me balls hurt.

Waiting.

Joe is breathing heavily, sweating—he can see his men fidgeting with their rifles, can hear them cursing under their breath. The veterans are alert, puffing away on their stogies. Leonidis calls out, ‘Let ’em come! Let the fuckers come!’

Parker screams, ‘What the shit they waiting for?’

Joe Garms holds on tightly to his voice, still it’s like gravel spilling down a chute. ‘You will not fire until I give the order.’

At the machine-gun, Ballard giggles. ‘Did you hear Joe? His enunciation was perfect. The bastard’s scared as we are.’

‘Stop giggling.’

‘Yup.’

Still the Moors sing. All else is quiet, except Joe Garms’s heart which beats a helluva tattoo.

The shrill singing stops.

Total silence.

Dempsey begins to scream. ‘Mama, mama, let ’em come. Mama, mama, let ’em come. Mama, ma—’

‘Shudt opp!’

Dempsey clamped his mouth shut.

Suddenly bullets were around their ears and everyone dug his nose into the ground. Even the veterans. Then they heard the ratatat ratatat of machine-guns. A deadly racket. Shattering. Bits of dirt and stone began to trickle down around the stones, tufts of earth and gorse danced a drunken jig about them.

The Dutch commander signalled Garms into the line with his men. ‘Soon,’ he called. ‘Soon.’

‘There they are!’

A horde of shrieking Moors loped gracefully down the hill, bayonet-fixed guns held easily, helmets strangely high on their heads.

‘Helmets, for chrissake,’ Joe yelled. He grabbed for his, plopped it on his head. ‘Put your helmets on!’

‘I hate it,’ he heard Mack Berg mutter.

‘Put it on!’

Mack conceded.

The Dutch commander stood behind them in the open, bullets skipping all about him, standing easily, his hands folded underneath his red beard, a pensive, sad smile on his face so it looked as if he were eating his way through his beard. The Moors were giants, unreal giants, not men. They loped gracefully, their black capes flying behind them, their bayonets ribbling white in the rays of the sun, blinding the eyes of the defenders of the line.

Horowitz way over to the side screams, ‘I can’t wait, I’m gonna shoot.’

‘No!’ Joe shouts. Scared, so fuckin’ scared. Oh, Christ, my balls hurt. There’s a constriction around his heart, and now his rectum hurts too. Too tight.

Looking up at the loping, flying Moors coming down at him, half-blinded by the sun, they looked like giants. Some of them are wearing white turbans like towels wrapped about aching heads on which they have placed their helmets. It ain’t real, Joe says. He wonders why the enemy machine-gunners aren’t shooting high to keep them down and then of a sudden he realizes the noise is fantastic, frightening, and he knows the enemy is shooting except his fear has made him deaf. Soon they gotta stop shootin’ he says to himself, for the Moors strung out in an uneven line are fast approaching. The singing has stopped. The enemy machine-guns have stopped shooting. It is quiet in the valley.

Ballard’s mouth is dry, his tongue sticks to his palate. Through his sights he discerns the features of a Moor. Very real eyes. Shining black skin. Black beard. A very deadly bayonet pointed straight at him.

‘Fire!’

Greg closes his eyes, hunches up, presses his thumbs on the machine-gun trigger. Nothing. Not even a click.

The Moor’s bayonet is at him but Joe Garms shoots the Moor dead.

The battle has begun.

The veterans of Madrid and The Road, the Franco-Beiges, raise tin cans with black fuses to their smoking stogies and heave them with great accuracy. Joe Garms climbs to the top of the stone breastworks and is pumping lead, his carbine already hot in his hands. Ballard follows him. Mack Berg is already there. The entire squad is perched on the stone wall. They are moaning, Parker is crying, but they are shooting. Moors are falling. The Franco-Belges are flinging dynamite. Moors are exploding. Dempsey screams. He is hit, stands straight up, falls on Mack Berg. Dempsey’s face is a bloody pulp. Mack vomits. Ortega pulls Dempsey off Mack and gently lays him aside. He gives Mack a large kerchief; resumes firing. The tin can and dynamite are being thrown swiftly, with great accuracy. The Moors turn tail, and as they do a machine-gun on the hill behind them shoots a burst of three, sputters. Dies. Nothing. Horton’s machine-gun. But his squad takes up the slack, sends fusillade after fusillade at the retreating Moors, black capes flowing behind them.

Greg Ballard is shooting madly, wildly, numbly, holds a running Moor in his sights, is ready to squeeze the trigger. Suddenly the Moor stops, leans over, raises a fallen comrade to his shoulders and returns to his flight, now a semi-stumble like a gull with a broken wing. Ballard swings his rifle, finds another target, fires. But out of one eye he follows the stumbling enemy. Of those making it back to their trenches, the Moor with his burden is last. Ortega aims his rifle, his shoulders stiffen, his finger squeezes, the enemy and his comrade sprawl to the sage.

Ortega sees Ballard staring at him, coldly returns the stare.

The battle is over. It has taken ten minutes.

They are all laughing hysterically. They didn’t run. Dempsey is dead. Several of the Franco-Belges are dead. Joe’s singing,

I went down to the St James Infirmary

To see my sweetheart there.

She was stretched out on a long white table

So white, so cold, so bare …

Some of the veterans of the Franco-Belges battalion straggle over to shake hands. One, a blond-bearded behemoth, dirty and grinning, waggles a stubby finger like a pendulum run wild under Joe Garms’s nose, ‘Muy locos, los americanos; muy locos.’ They laugh. Very proud. Horowitz has had the tip of his nose shot away—he could afford it. It has stopped bleeding. ‘A cheap nose-bob, a cheap nose-bob,’ he roars. The commander is sprawled on his back staring into the twilight sky, bold orange streaked with black.

Bederson’s beaming, his glasses fogged, yelling,’ I’m alive. Holy Moses, I’m still alive.’

Parker is sobbing. ‘I didn’t run. Y’get what I mean? I didn’t run.’

They are all alive, except Dempsey, whom Mack Berg has covered with his poncho.

Joe realizes he is freezing, his hands quivering like a spastic’s. He notices the others are beginning to tremble as well. He orders them to sit down against the stone wall. They do, swaggeringly fling their helmets aside, light cigarettes. Their voices are shrill, high-pitched.

It is not yet night and it is icy cold. Hot steaming coffee is brought in urns from the pine grove. They crowd around, use their helmets for cups, as Jaime Ortega, a self-appointed mother hen, ladles out his share to each man. Bullets are zwinging overhead, but who cares, the coffee’s great. They’re alive.

An explosive bullet smashes into Jaime Ortega’s head and his brains splash into the coffee urn.

Mack Berg whispers to himself, though they all hear him, ‘Shit! There goes the coffee.’

For two hours as the sun disappeared, the night lit by a squiggle of a moon, they sat against the stone wall waiting for the commander to tell them when they could bury their dead. For two hours Mack Berg wept, inconsolable, intermittently cursing himself. ‘No fucking good, have never been any fucking good.’

Garms kept everyone away from him. ‘Leave him cry it out, it’s good for ’im. He oney said what we all thought.’

At Jaime’s death, Greg Ballard had run to the pine wood, perhaps to cry.

When night had come to stay and the commander told them they could bury their dead, Garms sent Parker to find Ballard. They waited and in fifteen minutes Parker returned with him. Greg immediately went to Mack and said, ‘Come on, Berg, help me carry him.’

They took Jaime Ortega, and Joe and Horowitz took Dempsey, the rest of the squad following. At the foot of Horton’s hill two graves were dug and they buried Ortega and Dempsey.

Later, as they sat with their backs to the stone wall, they heard the muffled cries of the earth as it was pitted with shovels. The Moors too were burying their dead.

Before they turned in, a battalion runner appeared who spoke to the commander, who came to the Americans himself, commended them, and advised them to return to their battalion, which on the following day was to go into its first battle.

On the afternoon of 23 February, their battalion commander Captain Richard Jordan Prettyman sat in the gully surrounded by his staff and the battalion. They were waiting for zero hour. They were going over the top.

Comrade Schlepp, the battalion polit-commissar, showed his tired, harried face briefly, then retired to brigade headquarters. Comrade Barrel, as round as his name, the second member of the battalion politburo, rolled away and got lost. Comrade Patrick, thin, sensitive, abstracted, the third member of the politburo, remained with his troops. Comrade Tom Demo, one-man OGPU, went into the line as an infantryman.

Captain Cord, just juiced enough so that his intelligent gray eyes showed their contempt for the commander, advised Captain Prettyman that eight of the company’s nine machine-guns were defective. Horton, a slender, curly-headed kid with a long nose and a dour disposition, was given the one good gun and sent with a few men to a flanking position close to the San Martin road. Captain Cord withdrew his remaining machine-gun squads from the line. They sat away from the battalion near the end of the gully chatting idly, not unhappy.

In no-man’s land, on the overside of the gully, hidden from view, the enemy kept up an incessant machine-gun fire. The two infantry companies, under the command of Raleigh and Avila, a Cuban, sprawled in a conglomerate group, their packs on their back, helmets on their head, bayonets fixed to rifles clutched in white bony fists, their eyes intent on Prettyman and his small staff.

They were scared, nervous, white-lipped, and impatient. Were waiting to do what they had come to do: to kill fascists, to save Madrid, to become heroes, to die. Not a few wondered out loud what in the hell they were doing there.

Two Russian tanks crawled to opposing flanks and began immediately to shell the enemy lines. They, with Horton’s machine-gun, were to give covering fire for the over-the-top bayonet charge.

Twenty-five minutes after Horton was sent to take his position, Karonian, the machine-gun company polit-commissar and Horton’s gunner, returned to the battalion, which still awaited its orders, and advised Captain Cord that Horton had been killed and that his gun too was defective. ‘Before he died,’ Karonian said, ‘Comrade Horton called out, Long Live the Communist International!’

Poor Horton. Joe Garms cursed, Ballard pursed his lips, and Captain Cord went to stand by himself for a minute. Horton had been his runner all through training at Villanueva. Bob Gladd, the battalion linguist and loudest laugher, a man whose every boast proved true, cried. Horton had been a member of their gang.

At three o’clock Captain Richard Jordan Prettyman signalled to Raleigh and Avila. They ordered their companies into battle formation. A great sigh, a quiver shook the infantrymen. Silently, the only sound the clanking of rifles, they lay themselves on the bank of the gully.

The sun shone. The two Russian tanks kept their small cannon pounding. Va-room! Va-room! The enemy machine-guns never for a moment halted their wicked fire.

At three-oh-five Prettyman stood, raised his right hand high over his head. Again a great sigh, a giant quiver shook the riflemen. Prettyman brought his hand forward and down.

The American infantry, led by Raleigh and Avila, clambered up the gully bank and went over the top.

No cameras clicked. No movies were made.

The enemy, perhaps astonished, held their fire for thirty seconds as some three hundred fifty Americans advanced on the run, flopped, ran thirty yards. Larry Hillman, straight out of Clark U., old Aron’s comrade, forgot to flop and reached the enemy trenches running like a gazelle. And was killed. A few others, envious, made a similar attempt. With a similar result. One was a company commissar, a gleaming Colt .45 clutched lovingly in his fist.

It was a lovely afternoon. Spanish to the core—olive and grape trees, an occasional slender cypress, gorse and marjoram. The air was light, dry, the sun a rolling ball of fire. Visibility was perfect. Americans never fought or died on a more beautiful battlefield.

The enemy raised their rifles, sighted their machine-guns, their mortars, and killed these immortal Americans by the score.

An Irish boy, a laggard, stood in the gully screaming and with maniacal strength ripped his skin from forehead to jaw. For a moment he stood like a torch of blood. Ran berserk. An Irish comrade killed him with one shot.

Three Americans and one Cuban, standing on the summit of the gully and seeing the slaughter, wisely turned tail and fled.

The machine-gun company, at rest, counted its blessings and shrank into its collective self.

Captain Cord advised Richard Jordan Prettyman to order the battalion back. ‘You can’t send green infantry into that kind of fire without cover.’

Captain Prettyman stared at Cord with his blue steely eyes and said, ‘The Spanish and the Bulgarians have gone over too. We can’t let them down.’

First Captain Cord spat. Then he said, ‘If you look to your right and left you will see that they haven’t. You’ve sent green troops on a bayonet charge all alone.’

Prettyman turned away, deep in thought.

On the other side of the gully the blood ran. The screaming was like that of a hundred head of cattle with their throats slit.

Richard Jordan Prettyman faced about, his decision made. ‘Send runners to Raleigh and Avila,’ he ordered Cord, ‘to beat an orderly retreat.’

The runners, one an Austrian boy who had fought brownshirts in the streets of Vienna, closed their eyes and plunged over the gully wall.

In twenty minutes, by some miracle, the Viennese boy traversed the thirty yards out and the thirty yards back. His lips thin, his hands trembling, his voice harsh, he reported that Raleigh was badly wounded, Morrison, his second-in-command, as well. But they had sent word to their men to beat a retreat. Help would be required to bring in Morrison. Raleigh himself refused to move without his men. Then the boy added, ‘It might best be if they wait until it iss very dark. They can’t move forwards and can’t move backwards. They are pinned by a terrible fire. And when a man is on top of the gully it is like on a stage being with all the spotlights on.’

Prettyman looked at Cord as if to say, ‘You see!’ Then he clamped his big white teeth in a grimace, thought a moment. After all, it was rumored he had studied in the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow under Tukhachevsky and Gamarnik. ‘Raleigh and Avila will have to decide on the battlefield. I have given them orders that they may turn back.’

The Viennese boy slumped away, Captain Cord stamped about, and Richard Jordan Prettyman stood, thinking, his large tomb-white teeth gleaming.

Joe Garms, who had come up and listened to the conversation, ran up the gully bank and dove over headfirst. He lay slumped on the earth, screwin’ the ground, lovin’ it up, smellin’ it, till I fergot the bullets, the screams, learnin’ the ground, hearin’ it, becomin’ a part of it, vomitin’ too, givin’ it back what it give me. Then I opened me eyes, scrunched me head around and saw what there was tuh see. Holy Mother of God, they was busted open, each man hit by three different guns. Closed my eyes again. Says to meself, jest ferget it and move. I become a part of all the screamin’, the bullets, the mortar shells, the dyin’ and the wounded and I went tuh work …

Inch by inch.

By the time he brought Morrison in with the aid of a medic it was dark and he had vomited every last particle of both undigested and digested food. And blood too. Then he went back in the dark—the enemy fire had if anything intensified in a sweeping fire, low, cuttin’ the grass—and again inch by inch Joe Garms hauled Raleigh in. Two men helping him were killed. By this time those who could move were moving themselves, like a horde of wounded turtles their shells cracked open, trailing insides. Still the enemy kept cuttin’ the grass, scorchin’ it, burnin’ it. A third time Joe Garms threw himself out of the gully, crawled out there, this time brought Gonzalez in, a bullet through his jaw. Sprawled under an olive tree, protected by a shallow trench, muttering curses on friend and enemy alike, someone informed Joe that Raleigh had died, and Morrison, too, though no one knew for certain. ‘It’s harder savin’ guys than killin’ ’em,’ he shrugged.

About ten thirty that night, the enemy closed up shop and the machine-gun company labored with the medics to bring in the dead and the wounded. Some eighty men.

The corpses were buried in mass graves.

As the remaining men of the American battalion set up their guard, prepared to catch some sleep, in the midst of their greatest despair they heard a rumor of a man, a voice, who had saved the day, prevented the Chinchon road from being cut by the enemy in the north, near the Jarama river bridge. A real hero.

‘Bull shit!’ Joe Garms growled before he keeled over and fell dead asleep.

And Mack Berg said, ‘We don’t need any other heroes, we have our own. If ever a day belonged to a man, this day belongs forever to Joe Garms.’