At 6:00 A.M., Von Richthofen awoke, walked to the window. The sky was clear overhead, but to the north, toward the Bay of Biscay, clouds were rolling up. It would be touch and go.
He hurried through his calisthenics, shaved, showered, dressed, dropped the letter to his wife in the mailbag outside the operations room, and drove to Vitoria airfield.
There, his mood of impatience communicated itself to his staff, who, as usual, had meticulously prepared maps and reports.
He scanned the Spanish intelligence summary. Nationalist troops were converging on Marquina; Monte Oiz had been taken; Durango was at last about to capitulate.
Von Richthofen turned to a logbook stenciled: SECRET. AIRCRAFT AVAILABILITY. Inside was clipped a copy of a telegram Lieutenant Asmus had sent to General Alfredo Kindélan, the Spanish air commander, on April 12. It stated that, apart from Condor Legion aircraft operating in the south of Spain, in Burgos there were “twenty-three JU-52 plus two under repair, three HE-111 plus one under repair, two DO-17 plus one under repair, three JU-86, twelve HE-70.” Based at Vitoria airport, the telegram continued, were “twenty HE-51 plus two under repair, six ME (BF)-109 plus three under repair, and four HS-123.”
Since that telegram had been sent, Von Richthofen knew, they had lost only the Dornier-17 shot down over Bilbao on April 18; enough time had elapsed for the planes then “under repair” to have been made operational, making a total of some eighty aircraft now available.
The three squadrons of trimotor Junkers-52s, the mainstay of the Condor Legion, could carry a bomb load of one and a half tons per plane; Von Moreau’s experimental squadron with the faster two-engine HE-111s could drop about the same weight of bombs per aircraft; the Heinkel and Messerschmitt fighter planes could splatter the target with light bombs, hand grenades, and machine-gun fire.
Von Richthofen ordered Wing Commander Fuchs in Burgos to send up an HE-70 with the Legion’s most experienced reconnaissance expert, Lieutenant Balthazar, to survey the area between Marquina and Guernica. Von Richthofen wanted “every inch photographed,” wanted to know where the enemy guns and ammunition were positioned, wanted a special watch kept for telltale tracks into the forests, indicating heavy vehicles sheltering there; above all, every road and track was to be surveyed for troop movements. Balthazar was to avoid flying directly over Guernica, so that “the enemy would not know of our intentions.”
Von Richthofen looked again at a map of the area and issued further orders. A second reconnaissance aircraft, an HE-45 from Vitoria, was ordered up to duplicate Balthazar’s flight. The Legion’s two weather planes, the cumbersome W-34s, were sent off to fly a high, wide track over Vizcaya and out to sea to establish the weather pattern.
Until their aircraft returned with information, there was nothing more Von Richthofen and his staff officers could do. Rather than remain idle in the presence of the chief of staff, and risk rebuke, his officers left the office.
Alone, Von Richthofen sat and brooded over the maps and reports. For weeks he had waited for just such a situation: the enemy retreating into a bottleneck that he could cork with a fusillade of bombs. Here was an opportunity to deal a devastating blow in one concentrated attack and produce instant, sensational results.
On the far side of Vitoria airfield, Lieutenant Hans Joachim Wandel settled himself in the open cockpit of the HE-51. The early-morning sun had beat upon the gray-painted canvas fuselage and wings, and now the seat and controls were pleasantly warm to the touch. The smell of high-octane fuel was in the air.
When he left the party in the Frontón Hotel, it had been after 4:00 A.M. Too excited to sleep, his mind spinning with stories of the Legion’s exploits, Wandel had dressed in his new khaki uniform with the Spanish stars in its epaulettes, and come to the airfield.
He was surprised to find Von Lutzow, his squadron commander, already supervising the mechanics servicing the fighter planes. Von Lutzow paused to explain, “Here we work and play equally hard.”
Wandel, a trained architect, was concerned about his limited flying and technical experience. Von Lutzow had assigned him his HE-51 with the words: “Treat her like a women, with love and care, and she won’t let you down.” Now he gave Wandel permission to carry out a familiarization flight in which he could also test his machine gun.
The HE-51 was slow, barely reaching 200 mph in a dive; it was lightly armed, carrying only two fixed machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller; compared with contemporary Russian and Italian fighter planes, it did not maneuver very well, and it had an inferior rate of climb. Because it was outclassed in aerial combat, the Legion was reluctant to risk it against enemy fighters. Instead—and in any case there was now very little opposition from enemy aircraft—the HE-51 was used almost exclusively to strafe and to bomb from low level.
Sitting in the cockpit, flying helmet hiding his fair hair, goggles on his forehead, Wandel was the personification of National Socialist propaganda. His face had the same jutting determination the new Nazi state portrayed on its postage stamps to project its idealized image around the world.
Across the airfield a long figure walked purposefully toward him. Uneasy, Wandel waited until Von Richthofen had reached the plane. The two mechanics saluted. Without a word Von Richthofen walked around the HE-51 and inspected each control surface to be sure it was free-moving.
Wandel would remember feeling “like a schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework properly.” He knew he should have checked the control surfaces before strapping himself in. He guessed that Von Richthofen had noticed his oversight—and had delivered this silent reprimand.
Without speaking, the chief of staff walked away.
One of the mechanics stood by the propeller. Wandel slipped his shoes on the rudder bar pedals and then moved the control column back, forth, and sideways to make sure the controls were free of obstruction. He scanned the instruments and checked his safety straps. From below, a mechanic called out, “Watch the water-cooler flap indicator.” It was a familiar warning; pilots tended to ignore the gauge, risking engine failure in the thin mountain air.
“Frei!” yelled the mechanic by the propeller, giving it a turn.
“Frei!” acknowledged Wandel, pushing the starter switch.
The wooden propeller blade jerked around, a flash of smoke came from the exhaust, the blade completed a second turn, caught, and spun smoothly. Finally there was a satisfying roar.
In front of Wandel the instrument panel, with its gauges and needles, came alive: oil pressure, fuel pressure, engine temperature, fuel content, tachometer, coolant temperature, and direction finder. He checked the magnetos, satisfied himself the rev drop was within limits. He throttled back to check the slow running, and then gave the signal for “chocks away.” The two mechanics jerked the chock ropes and indicated to Wandel he was clear to taxi.
He lowered his goggles, pushed the throttle wider, watching the rev counter flick around. Even through his flying helmet the noise was deafening. Wandel took a final look around the cockpit, released the brakes, and the fighter rolled across the grass.
Ahead, he could see the takeoff strip marked out with flags; for night flying, the flags were replaced by flares. Wandel braked for a moment, running the engine to maximum revs. When he could feel the brakes would no longer hold, he released them and sped across the grass.
In a few minutes the airfield was below and behind him. Ahead rose the towering granite mountain range north of Vitoria.
He glanced down at the map spread on his knees. Then he gently banked the fighter to the east, away from the mountains and the front line. At little more than rooftop height he roared over Elburgo, glimpsing startled faces peering up. He now felt the excitement other pilots spoke of when they had buzzed a town. It would be another “first” for the diary he carried in his breast pocket.
North of Elburgo, he found what he was seeking: a river. He swooped across the water, released the safety catch over the firing button, and fired the twin machine guns into the water. The sour smell of cordite fumes whipped back into his face. As he pressed the firing button again, he felt the whole plane shudder. Twice more he shot up the river, watching tiny columns of water spout and subside. He experienced another emotion he had been told to expect. One pilot had described it to Wandel as “a feeling of unstoppable power.” Wandel would add: “total excitement and satisfaction.”
Wandel practiced the textbook drill of a marauding fighter pilot. He dipped first one wing, then the other, so he could look down and ensure no enemy fighter was attacking him from below. Then he looked behind, to make sure there was no one on his tail. He roared up the riverbed, pretending it was a road and that he was strafing a fleeing enemy.
At a bend in the river he pulled back on the control column and the Heinkel began to climb, its propwash disturbing the water’s surface. Although his machine was slow, he was forced back in his seat.
High over some villages west of Vitoria, he leveled out. At this height, close to 6,000 feet, he could see the distant mountain ranges around Durango. He knew that was where the enemy was, a few flying minutes away. He moved the control column forward, and using the rudder bar, dived toward Vitoria. He watched the airspeed build up and thought, “It’s better than being a bird.”
Happy, he returned to the airfield. There was, he told the mechanics, no doubt about it: An early-morning flight was the best cure he knew for a hangover.
The normally placid operations officer was this morning showing signs of tension. Captain Gautlitz had surprised everyone by arriving unusually early with the Spanish liaison officer to the Legion, Count del Cadagua, a splendid figure decked out in the uniform of an officer in the Spanish Navy.
Lieutenant Asmus watched the two men study the situation maps and overnight reports. Once more, Asmus wondered what, in practical terms, the count’s exact function was; the advice he offered was always listened to politely, but there the matter usually rested.
This morning, Cadagua, a Basque nobleman born in Bilbao, did not need to proffer suggestions. The day’s principal target was clear—the bottleneck at Guernica. The count might have used this occasion to draw the German’s attention to the sacred position Guernica held for the Basques, but he did not.
Lieutenant Raunce had already posted the target as an operational order. Gautlitz ordered it taken down, reminding him that junior aides did not post targets until they had been confirmed.
Gautlitz then questioned the elderly meteorological officer about weather conditions. The weatherman shuffled his papers, spoke technical jargon. Gautlitz demanded, “Will we or will we not be able to fly?”
The unhappy met officer replied it was impossible to know until the weather planes reported.
Disgusted, Gautlitz busied himself once more with his maps and reports.
Early that morning, Mayor José Labauría made an unpleasant discovery. His civic authority was now vested in the bespectacled troubleshooter President José de Aguirre had ordered into Guernica, Francisco Lazcano.
Lazcano knew that by temperament and background, Labauría was ill-suited to lead the town. But he also realized that to ignore the mayor would be a tactical mistake. He decided to give Labauría at least nominal responsibility for his future actions. To this end he presented himself as a presidential adviser, offering suggestions that the mayor should endorse.
He wished, he said, that the situation did not call for the drastic measures he knew the mayor would approve. But the facts allowed for no alternative.
Seated stiffly at his desk, Labauría listened as Lazcano explained that in the eyes of the Basque government, Guernica was now a linchpin in the Basque military strategy.
Accordingly, Lazcano was authorized by the president to discuss with the mayor hitherto secret plans. The first called for the town to be turned into a defensive fortress. Every street, he explained, every house would be strongly defended. There would be no surrender. Every hour gained would be an hour more for Bilbao to prepare. So long as Bilbao was held, there was the chance of a negotiated peace with the Nationalists.
Indeed, unknown to the Basques, the secretary of state at the Vatican, Cardinal Pacelli, had already sent messages to Republican government headquarters in the south, suggesting possible peace terms.
“How long do we have?” Labauría asked.
Lazcano said calmly, “Two days, three at the most. By Friday, the Nationalists will be here. And we must be ready for them.”
Stunned, the mayor listened as Lazcano delivered his second thunderbolt. A plan must be devised to evacuate everyone in the town except soldiers before Friday.
Lazcano ordered the mayor to instruct the police chief to send his men out to all the roads leading into Guernica to stop people from coming into the town. Even though it was market day, any vehicles now in the town center must be removed to allow unrestricted movement.
Antonio Arazamagni calculated he had just enough fuel to complete his bread rounds. Beginning tomorrow, he would have to deliver the loaves on foot.
Dropping a loaf into the presbytery of Santa María Church, he asked Father Iturran whether he might borrow his donkey for future deliveries. The priest agreed. He was far more concerned with saving his church relics.
Cheered by the promise, Antonio rattled over the bumpy streets. Near the market, in front of the Arrién Restaurant, he was surprised to see fourteen-year-old Javier Gardoqui, the expert txistu player and altar boy at Santa María Church, toting a fishing rod. Javier explained that as it was a fine day, he was going to miss class and go fishing.
Antonio grinned. “Bring me a fish—otherwise I’ll tell your mother.”
On Calle Don Tello, Antonio parked his car outside No. 29, a tall, narrow-fronted apartment house. The widow Lucita Bilbao’s daughter, Victoria, was celebrating her fifteenth birthday, and Antonio had baked her a cake. He climbed the four flights to the garret where mother and daughter lived and worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, as seamstresses. Antonio waved aside payment. It was, he said, his treat.
The widow Bilbao thanked him profusely and Victoria smiled. “Mama,” she said, “we’ll keep it for teatime.”
Parking his car at the mouth of Barrencalle, by the Church of San Juan, Antonio delivered his last loaves. Waiting on her doorstep was Jacinta Gómez, a twenty-seven-year-old housewife and mother of three. The children ran toward him, and Antonio handed them each a sweet from the pocketful he always carried.
Jacinta gave him a cup of coffee, and while he drank, they exchanged small talk. Why was he so late? Antonio explained that he had spent the night sleeping on flour sacks in a shed, and then asked Jacinta whether she had news of her husband, who had gone off to the war a month before. Jacinta shook her head.
“He will return soon,” said Antonio. “The whole front is pulling back.”
By the day’s end, Antonio would lose close to a hundred customers. Almost twice as many would be injured. And every second house Antonio had passed on his rounds would be a pile of rubble.
Lieutenant Gandaría was breakfasting in his office when Mother María came in. It was the first time Gandaría could recall seeing the Mother Superior outside her quarters. As always, he felt uneasy in her presence.
Mother María requested a truck to evacuate her nuns and their belongings to Bilbao this evening. Gandaría explained that all transport was already committed to military service.
In that distant voice he would always remember, Mother María announced that without suitable transport, she “regretted” las Mercedarias would be unable to leave. It was quite impossible, she added, for them to travel by public transport, as they planned to take their large chapel cross with them.
The officer and nun were still engaged when Father Eusebio arrived. His presence in the convent was not unusual; among his duties was that of chaplain to the nuns. Once a week he came to La Merced to hear their confessions and to advise them on spiritual matters.
Through these professional visits he had also come to know and respect Lieutenant Gandaría. Father Eusebio regarded him as “a capable soldier, not religious but Christian-principled.”
Gandaría looked upon the priest as “an excellent spiritual leader. He would have made a good officer.” Father Eusebio was one of the few townspeople that Gandaría liked. Once he had told Father Eusebio, “Anything you ever want, you can call on me.”
This morning, Gandaría was about to be reminded of that pledge.
Father Eusebio explained his promise to Father Iturran to obtain transport and remove the holy relics from the Church of Santa María.
Gandaría protested he had already refused Mother María’s request for a truck, and in any case this was not the time to be worrying about “stone statues.”
Mother María suggested that he raise their requests with his commanding officer, but Gandaría rejected the idea. He knew the no-nonsense commander of the Loyola Battalion would turn down the request.
Choosing his words carefully, Father Eusebio said he believed a couple of trucks were a small price to pay for the right to turn the Church of Santa María into a fortress.
A shocked sound came from Mother María.
Gandaría knew very well what Father Eusebio was suggesting: He would tacitly support the move to convert Santa María into a military stronghold in return for transport to move its religious relics to safety.
“One truck. That is all I ask,” said Father Eusebio. “The Reverend Mother and her nuns can share it as well.”
“And Father Iturran?” asked Gandaría.
“I will explain matters to him,” promised Father Eusebio.
Gandaría capitulated.
Mother María leaned across the desk and traced the sign of the cross on his forehead. Wishing him good day, she and Father Eusebio left.
Gandaría did not know where he would obtain a truck, but he need not have worried. He would never have to keep his promise.
Seated beside his father in their donkey cart, sixteen-year-old Juan Plaza bumped toward Guernica. In the back of the cart were a crate of chickens and a few sacks of garden produce. Juan expected each chicken would fetch some 50 pesetas, almost ten times the price it would have brought six months earlier. He hoped the leeks and carrots would also go for high prices.
Momentarily, the Plazas would be wealthy from their trip to market. But Juan knew that all the money would be needed to buy such equally price-inflated essentials as soap, sugar, and flour. He and his father would return home with barely enough change for the family to exist another week.
Along the road they stopped to pick up a neighbor who had sold his donkey to a butcher. Today he had been out since daybreak, trapping sea gulls on the River Mundaca. He had caught several, plucked them, and proposed to sell them at market.
They were nearly within sight of the Rentería Bridge when they were stopped by a policeman. He told them the mayor had ordered everyone to avoid the town.
Juan Plaza would remember his father’s reaction: “He said to the policeman, ‘Tell the mayor that if he will buy what I have to sell at my price, and sell me in return what I need, I will turn back.’ Then he prodded the donkey and we trotted on. The policeman must have been too surprised to say anything. In no time we were around the corner and out of his view.”
It was barely 7:30 A.M., and the police patrolling the roads into Guernica were not yet properly organized. Even later in the morning, for every trader they turned back, many more slipped into town across the unguarded, open fields.
Approaching the Rentería Bridge, the Plazas passed the Convent of La Merced. On a normal morning there would have been only a few soldiers in sight. This morning Juan could see “the building was bursting at the seams. Soldiers were hanging out of the windows, leaning up against the walls, sitting on the ground.”
His father urged the donkey over the bridge and they crossed into the town. On most Monday mornings, Calle San Juan was lined with stalls offering snacks to traders who had often journeyed a considerable distance. Now Juan saw there were only a handful, the others having been driven out of business by the food shortages.
Without bothering to stop, they continued down the street, turning off into Artecalle, the road in the center of town leading to the market. For as long as Juan could remember, an old man had stood at the corner of Artecalle, selling fruit ices. This morning he was there as usual—with an empty tray. The boy guessed that force of habit had brought him there.
Juan Silliaco packed his son’s suitcase slowly to delay the inevitable. Pedro watched his father solemnly. Now that the hour of farewell was close, both found it hard to speak. Silliaco was to remember he wanted to “hold him, tell him how much I would miss him. But I was scared he would break down, and if he did, I wouldn’t be able to let him go. And he had to go on that bus. I thought it was his last chance of escaping before the Moors came.”
It was Pedro who found a way to cope with the last difficult moments together. He asked his father to take him to the fire station so he could say good-bye to the two dray horses that pulled the town’s fire truck.
Carrying the suitcase, Silliaco walked with his son up Calle de la Estación toward the fire station, next to the Bank of Vizcaya.
A brisk breeze was blowing. Silliaco looked at the sky. The sun was breaking through the clouds. It could be a fine day.
He noticed the traffic was unusually light for a Monday morning, with only a handful of wooden-wheeled carts creaking toward the market. At the fire station he found the stable boy in a state of excitement. The lad told him of the soldiers camped out in the town cemetery, in the convents of Santa Clara and La Merced, and in the monastery of the Augustine Fathers.
Then the boy blurted out an even more sensational story. During the night enemy saboteurs were said to have infiltrated the town and poisoned the River Mundaca. Silliaco asked from whom he had heard the story. The boy said some refugees had told him, and they had heard it from a policeman. He added in triumph, “It must be true. That’s why all the refugees are leaving.”
Under normal circumstances, Juan Silliaco would have dismissed the yarn. But after the uncertainty of the past weeks, even the levelheaded Silliaco felt he had a duty to inform others that the Mundaca had been poisoned; only later would he stop to consider that the river was already heavily polluted and whether poison had been added to it or not would make little difference.
Hurrying from the fire station, he alerted a number of parents putting their children on the bus to Bilbao. In no time the story grew and spawned other rumors. One that gained swift credence was that the saboteurs were still in the town, sheltered by refugees. Tension between townspeople and refugees, already high, increased.
Juan Silliaco waved good-bye to his son as the bus left for Bilbao, then wandered through the market. It was here that rumors were most rampant. Some, like the one about the police closing off the roads from the town in order to trap enemy spies, certainly seemed plausible; even the tale of the Nationalist warships anchored off Bilbao had a basis in fact. But the story that the railway line from Bilbao had been cut was disproved when a train appeared.
For an hour María Ortuza combed the stalls, shopping for basic commodities. After some spirited haggling, she bought chick-peas, vegetables, and a bottle of cooking oil. For each purchase she insisted on receipts to show her mistress.
Near the fish market, María was surprised to meet one of her dancing partners from the night before. Rafael Herrán, manager of the candy factory near the Rentería Bridge, was hunting for the ingredients to titillate the most discerning taste buds in Guernica, those belonging to members of the town’s oldest cooking club.
There were four of these all-male clubs in Guernica. The members were all excellent cooks, and every week one of them prepared lunch for his fellow members.
Tomorrow was Rafael Herrán’s turn. He explained to María that in spite of the shortages he must still “put on a show.” Fish, he said, would be the centerpiece of his meal.
María went with him to the fish market. There, after much debate, he bought some shellfish and dried cod. With the air of a mystic imparting some ancient secret, he explained to María how he would simmer the cod and serve it with a rich garlic-flavored sauce garnished with the clams.
María wrinkled her nose. Garlic, she said, would destroy the delicate taste of the clams; any first-year cook could have told him that.
On the north side of the market square stood the Taberna Vasca, the oldest restaurant in Guernica. Six days a week the middle management from the Unceta factory and tellers from the town’s banks brought their families here for a leisurely lunch or dinner. Afterward the tables would be cleared for the complicated Basque card games that would go on for hours.
Monday lunch trade was different. From noon until around 3:00 P.M., sheep and cattle dealers from the market took possession of the restaurant, using the occasion to eat, drink, and make deals.
The owners of the restaurant, the Guezureya family, enjoyed these sessions. They heard news from the surrounding countryside, and sometimes Pedro Guezureya would learn of a farmer with a pig or a sack of beans to sell. Then Pedro would set off in a donkey cart with his eldest sons, Juan, age eighteen, and Cipriano, fourteen, to buy what he could.
A few days ago they had been especially lucky and had purchased a sow and her litter. The litter had been killed for fabada, the restaurant’s famous bean stew with chunks of pork.
This morning Cipriano had been sent to the market to buy carrots for the stew. Tall for his age, he was not afraid to stand his ground and barter with the vendors. Hefting the sack of carrots on his shoulder, Cipriano returned to the restaurant.
Earlier in the morning his father had been horrified to discover soldiers asleep on the Taberna’s doorstep, and now Cipriano was glad to see that they were gone. But when he went inside, he saw they had simply moved to the kitchen door and were watching his parents preparing caldrons of fabada.
His brother Juan told the soldiers it would be several hours before the stew was ready, and then they, like everyone else, would be welcome to a helping—at 50 céntimos a plate.
The soldiers drifted away.
Shortly before 8:00 A.M., Antonio Arazamagni paused in polishing his car to watch two men approaching up Goyencalle. He recognized the mayor. The man with him was a stranger, dressed in smart city clothes.
Glancing at the 1929 Ford, the mayor’s companion told Antonio he wanted every car off the streets and parked on the tree-lined Paseo de los Tilos by evening.
Antonio grinned after them. Before his car moved, it needed one vital ingredient: gas.
The bells of Santa María had not finished tolling eight o’clock when one of the two nuns on the roof of the Carmelite Convent shouted she could see airplanes in the direction of Marquina. Her companion clanged the hand bell.
Below, an orderly ran into the convent, shouting, “Avión! Avión!”
Mother Augusta went outside. The nuns on the roof called down that the planes had disappeared into the clouds. Mother Augusta hurried to the operating room.
Captain Cortés paused to listen to the Superior’s report, then turned back to his work. “If we stop for every plane, we’ll never get anything done,” he said.
Mother Augusta continued to carry out the procedure for an aircraft alert: She telephoned the Convent of La Merced.
Lieutenant Gandaría told her the airplane had already been reported to him, and had now apparently left the area; he would not be sounding a general alarm. “The planes were probably only surveying the results of what they did to Marquina yesterday,” he said. Then he asked her to compliment her nuns for their sharp watchkeeping.
At 8:00 A.M., at the Condor Legion’s base at Burgos, teams of mechanics, electricians, fitters, and riggers climbed in and out of cockpits and probed under engine cowlings.
Tall and thin-faced, First Lieutenant Karl von Knauer was the leader of No. 1 Squadron. Under his command were nine trimotor JU-52s, each capable of carrying a bomb load of 3,300 pounds over 930 miles at a cruising speed of 185 mph. The Junkers had a four-man crew, and its armament consisted of three light machine guns.
After the previous day’s attack on Marquina, the pot of Von Knauer’s bomber had begun to lower itself as he was landing. By the time he had taxied the plane to a stop, the pot was dangling dangerously between his wheels. Mechanics had removed it, checked its mechanism, and traced the trouble to some faulty linkage that now had been replaced. This morning, under the watchful eyes of Von Knauer, the mechanics demonstrated that the pot was once more operating properly.
As an indication of his squadron’s special status, Von Moreau had parked the experimental HE-111s away from the cumbersome-looking JU-52s, closer to the canvas-covered bomb dumps. In this position his squadron could be loaded and away before the others.
The range of bombs in the Burgos dumps included the 110-, 550-, and 1,100-pound high-explosive bombs, each fitted with braced tail fins that produced an unnerving whistle as they plummeted earthward. The bomb casings were made of high-grade steel rather than cast iron, giving them superior powers of penetration. They could be used with or without delayed-action fuses. Only the Stukas carried the 1,100-pounders, but even the lightest explosive bomb could destroy a typical two-story Spanish house.
Kept a little apart from the high-explosive bombs were the 22-pound splinter bombs, designed for use against enemy troops and populations. These were not popular in the Legion, because of their tendency to explode while being loaded or after the aircraft was airborne.
In a separate dump were the incendiary bombs. The Germans had pioneered the use of these weapons in World War I, and had secretly improved on them since. The ones available to the Legion weighed either 9 or 2½ pounds. Those stored at Burgos and Vitoria were probably among the most advanced of their kind in the world. Being light, they could be carried by fighters as well as bombers. Some pilots made up their own devices, wiring together four of the smaller incendiary bombs to cans of petrol.
Viewed from the air, exploding incendiaries gave off pretty pink flashes that were visible for miles. They were also clearly visible from the ground, and so were sometimes dropped at the end of a bombing attack against enemy troops to show the Nationalist soldiers it was safe for them to move forward.
Until now, the Legion had had little experience of the effectiveness of incendiaries on towns. They had not been used against Durango. Indeed, like the splinter bombs, the incendiaries were likely to burst into flames inside the aircraft.
It was a possibility that made even Von Moreau worry. His HE-111s were too new and too valuable to be risked in such a way. Although their playload was the same as the Junkers’—3,300 pounds—they could deliver it at almost 200 mph, and were more maneuverable.
Von Moreau had personally groomed each of his Heinkel crewmen to weld his squadron into a tight-knit unit. The men had their private jokes, their favorite off-duty bars and restaurants; at times a number of them together would visit the approved brothel. They had their own flight offices where they stored their gear, played cards, and read. They largely ignored the other squadron crews, and were ignored by them.
Von Moreau had made his squadron’s markings as distinctive as possible. Many of his pilots had painted on each side of their plane’s fuselage, within the large black dot separating the plane’s recognition letters, a Condor vulture carrying a bomb in its claws. The upper halves of the Heinkels were camouflaged in a sandstone color; underneath, they were pale gray. The wing tips were white, as were the rudders, on each of which was painted the St. Andrew’s Cross that distinguished all Nationalist aircraft.
Von Moreau’s squadron had returned unscathed the previous evening after bombing Bilbao, and the maintenance checks this Monday morning were mostly routine. His own Heinkel, 25-3, had already been checked and refueled. All it now lacked was its consignment of bombs.
The important decision on the type of bombs to be carried was almost always reserved for Von Richthofen.
First Lieutenant Hans Henning, Freiherr von Beust, commander of the Legion’s second JU-52 bomber squadron, wondered how he could persuade the hotel to give him a more comfortable room. The subject of accommodations was one he often discussed with Von Knauer and the leader of No. 3 Squadron, Captain Ehrhart von Dellmensingen Krafft.
In Seville, while transporting the Moors from North Africa to Spain, Von Beust had lived in comfort in the Hotel Cristina. Then, in February, No. 2 Squadron’s previous commander had crashed after a night raid on Madrid. Von Beust had taken over and was already making quite a name for himself as a squadron leader. But despite his title, his rank, and his reputation, his hotel room in Burgos seemed a penitent’s cell. The rooms of the more senior Von Krafft and Von Knauer were little better.
The hotel’s dining room offered beans, potato mash, and meat that smelled suspiciously sweet. Connoisseurs said it was high-quality horseflesh. After almost a month of this fare Von Beust had taken to dining at the officers’ mess on the airfield. There at least the coffee was good.
This morning, after several cups, he waited for orders.
Wing Commander Fuchs felt as though all the minutiae of running the Condor Legion crossed his desk. Every day the paperwork piled up: orders from Sperrle’s adjutant, Major Heinz Trettner, transferring staff back to Germany—indeed, Fuchs himself, along with Von Moreau and Von Krafft, was about to return to Germany—routine directives from Berlin to be circulated, data on fuel consumption and bomb expenditure.
At 8:30 A.M., the direct-line telephone from Vitoria airfield jangled in his office at Burgos. The reconnaissance and weather flights had landed at Vitoria.
Four aircraft taxied to a halt in front of Von Richthofen’s office. Their crews hurried inside, watched by the fighter pilots. Old hands thought the number of aircraft used unusual.
Captain Gautlitz and the meteorological officer went into the rooms adjoining Von Richthofen’s office, where the weather forecasts were prepared and aerial photographs developed and printed. Then at about nine-thirty, Von Richthofen summoned Von Lutzow, commander of the HE-51 fighter squadron, and First Lieutenant Herwig Knuppel, leader of the Messerschmitt-109s, to his already crowded office. Spread out on his desk were sets of still-wet aerial photographs.
The met officer reported that weather conditions in the Guernica area, although not at the moment unfavorable, should nevertheless improve during the day, and by late afternoon conditions would be as follows: estimated three-tenths cloud cover scattered between about 2,000 and 20,000 feet; a probable 8- to 10-knot wind, veering south to southwest; visibility good, but with the possibility of some ground haze, especially near the coast.
Those weather conditions would be ideal for bombing. Even the expected scattered cloud and haze could be beneficial, helping the aircraft to reach the target undetected.
When the met officer had finished, the men in Von Richthofen’s office grouped around the photographs. Guernica was not visible on them, but Lieutenant Asmus would remember that they “showed enemy traffic in the vicinity of Guernica, on the roads leading into the town.”
Von Richthofen instructed the men in the room to stand by for an attack that would begin probably in midafternoon. When the men filed out of his office, Von Richthofen tried to telephone Colonel Juan Vigón, General Mola’s chief of staff, but learned the colonel had left for the front. Gathering up the photographs, Von Richthofen thrust them in his map case, left the office, and drove to meet his Spanish counterpart.
For the heavy attack Von Richthofen planned, Vigón’s approval was desirable, though not essential.
At ten o’clock, a dozen officers entered the map-lined office in the Convent of La Merced that had once been the Superior’s parlor. Except for a crucifix, all traces of Mother María’s occupancy had been removed. From an inner office emerged Captain Juan de Beiztegi, commanding officer of the Loyola Battalion. A squat, blue-jowled man in his early forties, Beiztegi was a popular commander. He made up what he lacked in battle experience with determination and energy.
As usual, Beiztegi opened his daily strategy and planning conference with the traditional Basque greeting, Gora Euzkadi Eskatuta (“Long live free Euzkadi”).
Gandaría noticed that Beiztegi looked determined after his weekend visit to Basque GHQ at Galdacano. Standing behind the only piece of furniture in the room, a desk, Beiztegi riffled through a small pile of reports, frowned at some of them, and finally thrust the papers aside.
He would, he said, waste no time reviewing past events. He turned to a wall map and, in silence, slowly traced a line from the Biscay coast at Lequeitio down to Marquina and farther south, skirting Durango.
Then he said one word—“Mola”—indicating all the territory east of the line was held by the Nationalists.
“No-man’s-land”—the palms of his hands covered an area of map west of the line he had traced.
“Our new front”—with care he traced another line, running from Bermeo, at the mouth of the Mundaco estuary, through Guernica, down to Amorebieta, and then curving back toward Bilbao.
Speaking rapidly, Beiztegi said this new front had been approved by President Aguirre. Guernica was to be a focal point for a new stand.
Turning from the map, Beiztegi told the officers how Aguirre had electrified the Basque General Staff with his words. “He made it clear that the time for running is over. We must now stand and fight. The president promised he would provide us soon with planes, they are coming from France. But we must hold our positions. The enemy may be superior in numbers. But they must find your will to resist more than equal to the situation.”
Listening to his commanding officer, Gandaría felt relieved. Aguirre’s oratory had “at last woken up GHQ.”
Beiztegi read aloud the latest intelligence report on enemy intentions. Mola’s troops were reported regrouping near Marquina. Moorish troops had been spotted among them. On present expectations, he concluded, the Nationalists would not reach Guernica until about Friday.
Beiztegi put the paper back on his desk. By Friday, he said, the town would have been evacuated by Lazcano. Unhampered by civilians, the Army would then turn Guernica into “our Alcázar, which we shall defend to the last brick.”
Pausing to pick up another paper, he continued, “Lieutenant Gandaría has already prepared a list of suitable buildings. We are fortunate to have his specialist knowledge in these matters.”
Beiztegi read out Gandaría’s report requesting disciplinary measures against troops who had misbehaved since arriving in Guernica. “There will be no punishment for what has happened. But I have ordered that henceforward all troops are banned from the town center unless they are specifically required there. Any soldier who breaks this order is to be severely punished.”
An officer asked what was to be done about the soldiers now in the Convent of Santa Clara.
Beiztegi looked at Gandaría. The lieutenant said he had issued no instructions for the convent to be occupied. The other officer admitted he had given the original order, and Beiztegi rebuked him. But, he added, the soldiers could remain: “The convent is a good defensive position. And I have received no complaint from the nuns.”
After giving more detailed military directives, Beiztegi ordered the officers to return at 6:00 P.M. to report progress. Gandaría was asked to remain behind to discuss plans for defending Guernica.
Consulting a map of the town, he and Beiztegi agreed it should be divided into a number of overlapping enclaves. Each enclave was to have its key buildings sandbagged, ready to be defended by platoons. What they lacked in heavy artillery would, hoped Beiztegi, be made up for by the defensive positions themselves: a determined machine gunner, burrowed behind sandbag-protected walls, would be very difficult to dislodge.
Gandaría believed the enclave containing the Church of Santa María, the Parliament Building, the house of the count of Montefuerte, and the Convent of Santa Clara could withstand for days the most intensive artillery bombardment. Unceta’s mansion would make an admirable position from which to defend the southern approach to Guernica. Both the Arrién Restaurant and the Taberna Vasca would give an uninterrupted arc of fire across the marketplace.
The two men then considered the Church of San Juan. Situated directly in the face of the Rentería Bridge, its stone walls were a formidable barrier to all but the heaviest fieldpieces. Ultimately, predicted Gandaría, the church would be reduced by continuous shelling, but a machine gun nesting in its crypt, protected by adequate sandbagging, could hold out for priceless hours.
“What about the priest?” asked Beiztegi.
Gandaría assured him there would be no problems with Father Eusebio.
“And the old man of Santa María?”
“He will go with his holy relics.”
Beiztegi turned back to the town plan.
Gandaría circled the Rentería Bridge. It was the only link between the Convent of La Merced, in which the two officers now stood, and the town. If they were forced to retreat over the bridge into Guernica, the bridge would be dynamited afterward.
Similarly, on Calle San Juan, certain buildings were earmarked for demolition. Mola’s troops would find themselves delayed by the destruction and caught in a crossfire once they entered the town.
Altogether it was a textbook example of how to fight an urban rearguard action. Gandaría now turned to the question of removing the equipment from the Unceta complex. Would the freight trains and Soviet technicians arrive the following day to dismantle the machinery and ship it to Bilbao?
Beiztegi did not know, but he told Gandaría he had returned from GHQ with one order that should please him. The General Staff were concerned about the possibility of sabotage at the Unceta plant and had authorized an increase in the number of soldiers guarding it. Gandaría was to take a platoon to the factory, “and put a man on every machine. Anyone suspected of sabotage is to be shot at once.”
Armed with this order, Gandaría led a column of troops out of the convent and across the Rentería Bridge.
Just beyond the bridge was the rail track that ran from Bermeo in the north, through Guernica, and on to Bilbao. It would have been quicker for Gandaría to take his men directly down the track to the factory, but he chose the more roundabout way through the town. After the previous night’s incidents, he wanted to demonstrate to the townspeople the presence of disciplined soldiers.
Inside the Unceta factory, Gandaría posted soldiers by every workbench. Each trooper was told to report anything suspicious and to inform the workmen under his surveillance that any attempted act of sabotage would be punished by shooting.
Gandaría then went to the first-floor executive offices, where José Rodríguez was waiting for him. When Gandaría asked to see the latest production figures, Rodríguez reluctantly handed them over. They showed the factory’s stockpile, some nine hundred newly manufactured weapons. Explaining they would all be taken away that morning, Gandaría signed for them.
Rufino Unceta came into the room and demanded to know when they would receive payment for the guns.
Gandaría would remember feeling “the old boy had guts. He knew the situation was critical, that with one wrong move he might be killed. But he was not going to be cowed.”
The lieutenant grinned at Unceta. “You will be paid as you have always been, without delay.”
News that more soldiers had gone to the Unceta factory fanned further rumors in Guernica. So, too, did the sight of NCOs rounding up the remaining troops in the town center and marching them away. Some boys arrived in the market with the tale that certain troops camped out in the cemetery had forced locks on the larger mausoleums and were sheltering inside with the coffins.
Juan Plaza repeated this bizarre story to Julio Bareno, manager of the Bank of Vizcaya. The farm boy would recall how Bareno, on hearing the tale, stood before the Plazas’ market stall “white-faced, gritting his teeth.”
Bareno returned to his bank, wondering if now was the time to implement the remaining part of a plan he had devised.
Julio Bareno did not at first strike strangers as a man capable of any farsighted action. The portly fifty-two-year-old had an engaging smile, polished shoes, sharply creased trousers, and soft, well-scrubbed hands.
Behind this cultivated facade was a fierce commercial drive coupled with a deep-rooted belief in the Basque cause. During the six months he had been manager in Guernica, he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave his office. Even on Sundays he was at his desk, checking the accounts and planning new ways to increase business. In the evenings he attended political meetings where he enthusiastically gave the clenched-fist salute and took home tracts expounding the need to defend Basque independence. He denied he was a Communist sympathizer, preferring to call himself a humanist.
Any reservations Bareno’s bank directors in Bilbao may have had about his political beliefs were offset by the fact that while the other two banks in Guernica were now experiencing poor times, the Bank of Vizcaya had prospered. Julio Bareno had even persuaded many of the refugees to open bank accounts. On Saturdays he traveled to the hamlets around Guernica, drumming up business, and when the opportunity arose, pushing the Republican cause.
Ever since Mola’s campaign had begun, Bareno had kept little cash in the branch, never more than 10,000 pesetas. Twice a week he personally carried the bulk of the branch’s deposits to the bank’s head office in Bilbao. That was the part of his plan he had already implemented.
The other half was to close the bank, leaving locked in the safe all the cash he could not carry—mostly coins—and to take to Bilbao the ledgers showing each customer’s debits and credits.
Several times in the past days Bareno had been tempted to implement this part of his plan. Each time he had hesitated. Even though the bank’s directors had now told him he must “assess developments on a day-to-day basis,” he knew they would regard with disfavor any manager who closed his branch at the first sound of gunfire.
Bareno also had to consider the attitude of his most important customer, Rufino Unceta. It was Unceta who had persuaded the bank to open its branch in Guernica in the first place. Through the years Unceta had advised successive managers on important matters, and Bareno had benefited from his guidance. He was tempted to seek it again, but recently his relationship with the arms merchant had cooled. Bareno wondered if it was because of his outspoken pro-Basque views. If it was, too bad; he would not temper his opinions even for Rufino Unceta.
In any case, Bareno thought, the additional soldiers he had just seen marching to the arms factory suggested that Unceta now had his own problems. The bank manager decided not to consult Unceta before making his decision.
At 11:00 A.M., Father Iturran was trying to decide what to save from the Church of Santa María. His mind was in turmoil.
Father Eusebio had warned him that space on the truck would be limited; in return for that space, Father Iturran must accept the fact that Santa María would become a military post. Dazed, the old parish priest had gone to his church.
There, gradually he calmed himself. He walked around the church, which still retained the beauty he had felt when he first arrived in Guernica.
Its mixture of architectural styles, Basque-Baroque and Gothic; its soaring nave supported by ten pillars; its chapels and marble-walled crypt; its famous portico; the magnificence of its main altar—all were visible reminders of the building’s history, which Father Iturran knew by heart. Designed in 1418 by Sancho de Empara, the church had taken three hundred years to build. Twice during construction it had been laid waste: first when the count of Salinas had looted and burned the church in the fifteenth century; then, in 1521, when fire had destroyed it along with all of Goyencalle. In 1795, Santa María had been pillaged of its silver by the Spanish government to help finance the war against France.
The church had last been given a facelift in 1926-27. All signs of that were now faded except for the main altar, where the gold leaf glittered in the light of the candles.
In the pulpit was the massive leather-covered Bible from which he had read the Scriptures for the past twenty-three years. Father Iturran fondled the pages. He would take the Bible, part of a small but valuable library of books, most in the Basque language, that had been donated to the church through the centuries. The others, housed in the presbytery, would have to remain behind.
He paused before the main altar. He would take the sacred altar cloths, blessed long ago by a bishop, but because of their weight he would be forced to leave behind the massive altar candleholders. For the same reason, the ancient christening font must remain. The gold-plated incensory, which he had swung metronomelike at the beginning of every Mass, would go with him.
In the Chapel of Our Lady of Begonia were clear reminders of the war: candles lit for those who had died or been wounded on the battlefield, or had been captured by the Nationalists. Father Iturran encouraged the lighting of these candles, believing it a conscious act of acceptance of what had happened. Only when such acceptance came could he provide meaningful comfort. He lingered at the chapel with its small, exquisite, stained-glass windows. The statue of Our Lady, he knew, was too big to take. He turned away.
Nearby was a life-size Christ encased in a glass box. By pressing a button, one could light a score of tiny bulbs, angled to emphasize the blood on the statue’s lifelike body, the suffering on its face, and the stigmata on its hands. The statue must also remain.
He reached the rear of the church, acutely aware of how much there was to save, yet how little time or space he had.
Father Iturran was still deep in thought when he heard the heavy wooden main door creak open. He was about to go forward to greet the visitor when he saw who it was.
Lieutenant Gandaría closed the door behind him and walked into the church.
Father Iturran, in the shadows, watched the young officer as he walked down the nave. Gandaría paused at each of the supporting columns, looking up to the roof. Then he walked on.
The priest guessed Gandaría was calculating how well the columns would withstand artillery attack. The thought made him clutch at a new hope: If Gandaría could be convinced the pillars would collapse under shelling, he might abandon his plan.
Gandaría was crossing before the high altar when Father Iturran “emerged like a phantom, pointing at the pillars and saying they would all fall down.”
The lieutenant was discomfited by the appearance of the priest. He explained the pillars could probably withstand all but a direct hit. Even if they were eventually toppled and the roof caved in, the church could still be used as a strong defensive position. He indicated the yard-thick stone walls.
“You are quite determined to go ahead, then?”
“Father, I have no alternative.”
“You will be damned for what you do.”
Gandaría rounded on the priest. Had the Holy Church condemned the Nationalists for desecrating places of worship? Until the Vatican condemned their actions, he added, Father Iturran would be well advised to remain silent.
Lieutenant Juan Dominguiz regained consciousness. His tongue felt swollen and dry. His throbbing head seemed to be encased in a massive white dome. He lifted a hand to try to touch it, and realized that his arm was also bandaged. His other hand was unencumbered. He moved it under the sheet and felt the bandage strapped across his stomach. He tried to move his legs and discovered that one of them was also enveloped in bandages. He closed his eyes. The smell of ether caught in his throat. Then he became aware that something hard and cool was being forced against his parched lips. From afar a voice spoke. He opened his eyes. An elderly nun was bent over his bed.
Mother Augusta coaxed him to sip from the cup of water. She continued to speak, telling him what she told every awakening postoperative patient—that his fuzziness would soon clear, that the fear he now experienced was a normal reaction. So, too, was the pain; it was the first step in the long process of recovery. As he became more aware, she warned him, he would feel increased pain, and though he would receive medicine to ease it, he should look upon the pain as part of the knitting together of his damaged body.
As he drank, she saw the awareness return to his eyes. Mother Augusta took his unbandaged hand in hers and told him to squeeze her fingers. His grip was surprisingly strong. She smiled at him, as she always did when satisfied with a patient.
Later, Dominguiz would remember, “She went away to attend to some new cases who had just been brought in. One man started to scream. A terrible sound. Then he struggled for breath. The doctor stood there, able to do nothing. She held the man’s hand until he died. Then she pulled the white sheet over his face.”
Dominguiz turned his eyes away from the scene, and as he did so, the memories of yesterday returned, bringing tears to his eyes.
That was how his financée found him. And later, in her diary, Carmen Batzar would write how he asked her what had happened to his platoon. She listened as he told her of their retreat through the mountains, of his joy to be coming home, and how suddenly the planes had appeared and he could remember no more.
Carmen did not tell him that she had seen him arrive at the hospital or of the fight to save his life; she would keep that for her diary. Now she was simply content to let him talk, to listen as he told her that once he was out of the hospital they would marry, and he would invite all his men to their wedding.
He did not know that most of those who had not been killed in the air attack were now only a few yards away.
The few survivors of Lieutenant Dominguiz’s platoon were among the three hundred troops who had occupied the grounds and monastery of the Augustine Fathers.
Some of the soldiers squatted beneath the trees, still too exhausted to move. Many had dumped their equipment over the floors of the monastery. In the courtyard, plank tables were laid with tin plates and spoons. A field kitchen had been set up to heat caldrons of potatoes and stew. The cooks lounged around, playing cards or reading well-thumbed magazines.
Behind the monastery, on the gentle lower slopes of Monte Cosnoaga, soldiers dug foxholes, firing pits, and communication trenches. They worked silently and with no great enthusiasm.
Faustino Pastor, a tough, battle-experienced, twenty-year-old machine gunner in the Saseta Battalion, looked at the men around him. Some of them had joined up with him, come through the same perfunctory training, and spent the same months tensed for Mola’s onslaught against the Basque provinces.
Now they were preparing to resist again. They filled and lugged sandbags to the firing pit they had dug. By 11:00 A.M. their machine gun was mounted and boxes of ammunition were neatly stacked behind a protective battlement.
Pastor settled down to clean the cheap camera he had carried with him during all the fighting. Below, away to the right, was the Carmelite Convent. As Pastor watched, stretcher-bearers left the main buildings, carrying sheeted bodies to a smaller building.
Sometime after 11:00 A.M. that Monday, Von Richthofen and Vigón met alone in, according to Von Richthofen’s diary, “a field near Monte Mouchetagui.”
The two men studied the reconnaissance photographs and discussed the military situation. Then, without reference to higher authority, a Spaniard from Madrid and a German from Silesia settled the fate of the Basques’ spiritual home.
As the morning drew to a close, Isidro Arrién was a worried man. Mayor Labauría, in an unprecedented move, had canceled his table for lunch at the Arrién Restaurant. A number of market traders had folded their stalls and hightailed it out of town. That, too, had never happened before.
Isidro sent one of his sons to scout. The boy returned with news that the Taberna Vasca Restaurant also had cancellations, that more refugees were leaving town, that troops around the cemetery were digging in.
From the doorway of his restaurant, Isidro observed a figure perched on the roof of Santa María, clearly a lookout. And in the marketplace, the mayor was walking with a stranger to whom he was showing unaccustomed deference.
Puzzled and rather worried, Isidro went back to the kitchen to supervise the lunch preparations.
Francisco Lazcano finished his tour of the town with a realization of how vulnerable it was. There was no civic plan to cope with an attack. It was he who had taken the elementary precaution of placing a lookout on Santa María’s roof. The town’s air-raid shelters did not impress him. There was no time, nor point, in improving the shelters in view of his intention to evacuate the town.
He chose the coming Wednesday to accomplish this task. Midweek, the town would be at its lowest commercial ebb. But what he had seen of Guernicans made Lazcano think they were going to be difficult to budge. There was about them a fatalism that depressed him. In the old quarter, hundreds of families lived cheek by jowl, knowing that their homes were fire risks and that the town’s horse-drawn fire truck would be incapable of controlling a serious blaze. Further, the municipal water supply was poor; the pipes were close to the surface and could easily be ruptured by shells. But that was a problem for the military. By the time the town was shelled, he and the civilian population must be clear of Guernica.
How, he wondered, did he tell a family to pack all they could carry into a few suitcases and leave their homes—perhaps forever? Would he order them? Try to reason, cajole, and plead?
His walkabout made one thing clear. Panic must be avoided if the narrow exit roads were to be kept open. By the time he reached the mayor’s office he had decided that the best way to avoid panic on Wednesday would be to flood the town with troops. Their presence, he hoped, would reassure people they were leaving their homes in safe custody—and the soldiers could act as a deterrent to anybody who still insisted on staying behind.
Juan Plaza loaded the donkey cart with the few supplies his father had been able to purchase from the sale of their chickens and produce. Juan had never before seen his father so agitated: “It was not like him to leave so early. He would not even stop on the way home for a drink. He kept saying everybody was mad and he just wanted to go home and forget everything.”
Others had the same idea. Before midday there was an unprecedented line of carts and wagons crossing the Rentería Bridge and heading out into the countryside. Traffic was heavy on the roads leading north to Bermeo and south to Bilbao.
The most probable estimate is that between one and two thousand people escaped from Guernica that morning. Even so, there remained in the town a civilian population greatly in excess of Guernica’s normal seven thousand, due to the refugees who had not yet left, and the many hundreds who had come in for the market.
Housekeeper María Ortuza, pausing in her preparation of lunch, went to Goyencalle to buy extra bread from baker Antonio Arazamagni. She found the narrow cobbled street “as busy as ever,” but Antonio’s bakehouse was shut. She tried a nearby cake shop. It had sold out hours before. María remembered having “quite a struggle pushing through the hundreds of people milling in the street.”
Calle Don Tello, by the railway station, was also crowded. But Juan Silliaco had never known his Bar Catalán to be so empty: “I had the feeling that people did not want to be inside, but out in the open, so that they could see what was going on.”
Opposite his bar stood the Julián, the only hotel in the town. Its three floors contained twenty-two bedrooms and two bathrooms. What it lacked in comfort, the Julián tried to compensate for with “devoted friendliness,” as a sign over each bed proclaimed. A family business, the hotel was unpretentious, its kitchen homely, its plumbing chancy.
In peacetime its clientele had been almost exclusively drawn from the arms dealers who came to do business with Rufino Unceta. The war had put an immediate end to Unceta’s foreign dealings. Recently, those refugees with a little money to spend had stayed in the hotel. But this morning the last one had checked out, leaving the Julián without a guest.
José Rodríguez hurried past the hotel. He knew he would have fired any employee who walked out as he had done. Yet, if challenged, he doubted he could have excused his abrupt departure.
All his working life he had abided by the principle: “If you can’t see it, don’t believe it.” But moments ago he had been at his office window, watching the train leave with its consignment of arms for Bilbao, and had looked at the sky: The clouds were disappearing, it was going to be a nice afternoon.
“It was all so peaceful. Suddenly, I had an overriding feeling that the attack would come this very day. Everything was right. The weather, the town filled with troops, the market. It was perfect.”
His first thought was to rush home and persuade his wife to return with him to the factory, ready to shelter in the concrete bunker at the rear of the works.
When he reached home his wife soothed his fears, promising she would come to the factory during the afternoon. He begged her to come with him immediately after lunch, but she would not be persuaded.
Rodríguez sensed his wife believed that all the weeks of strain, of coping with Gandaría, of being under constant threat, had finally taken their toll. And, he admitted to himself, it was perfectly possible that he had allowed his imagination to take over. He began to feel “a little foolish.”
Rufino Unceta listened carefully to what he hoped was artillery fire in the hills to the south of town. The railway line from Guernica to Bilbao ran through those hills. A well-placed Nationalist salvo might hit the two boxcars carrying the arms from his factory—or better still, close the line, so stopping the evacuation of his factory in the morning.
He turned to his son, Augusto, and said, “A few more days are all I need.”
Fourteen-year-old Augusto, who had spent the morning at the factory “to get the feel of the business,” wondered what it would be like under Nationalist occupation.
In the Church of San Juan, Father Eusebio was checking over a plate camera when he heard the artillery rumble. He went to his presbytery window. In the street he could see people looking toward the east.
Father Eusebio went back to the camera. A parishioner had lent it to him, together with a set of plates, asking him to photograph the church. Until now the weather had not been favorable. But this afternoon looked as if it would be ideal for taking pictures.
The two nuns on the roof of the Carmelite Convent swung their binoculars toward the hills at the sound of the gunfire, then resumed their methodical scanning of the sky.
Lieutenant Gandaría was probably the first man in Guernica to know that the artillery fire came from Basque gunners to the southeast of Guernica, ranging in on Nationalist troops. Telephone calls to forward observation posts revealed this information, and the news cheered him greatly. He was also pleased with the way the communications setup was working between La Merced and other parts of the front.
Captain Juan de Beiztegi paused at the sound of the gunfire and then continued his telephone conversation with Francisco Lazcano. Beiztegi promised to provide five hundred troops for Wednesday’s planned evacuation of the town.
A few yards from Beiztegi’s office, Mother María, the Superior of las Mercedarias, gathered together her flock for Sext, their noonday devotions. She told them that in their prayers they must ask for God’s help and guidance for the journey they would soon take. She warned them of the possible perils ahead. If they were captured, they were to offer no resistance. Their status as nuns was no guarantee that they would not be violated. But if they were assaulted, she could promise they would be absolved from any sin. Father Eusebio had assured her of this.
Outside the pelota frontón, a small crowd watched as an official put up a notice stating the stadium was closed until further notice, “by order of the mayor.”
Across town, on Calle Ocho de Enero, the manager of El Liceo cinema, owned by the Count of Arana, was refusing to agree to a Town Hall request that he should not open that afternoon. He told the official only the count could sanction such action, and anyway, in this time of trouble, the late-afternoon matinee would provide welcome relief.
All morning, baker Antonio Arazamagni had searched through the town, looking for the garage owner. He eventually found him in a bar outside the market. Antonio bought the man a drink and tried to persuade him to part with more gasoline.
The man shrugged his shoulders. Antonio bought him another drink. Still the man shrugged. Antonio was about to buy a third round when the man took him by the arm and led him from the bar. In silence they walked to the garage. The man handed Antonio the gas hose and turned on the switch. Not a drop emerged from the hose.
“There isn’t any fuel, and it may be weeks before I get more.”
Antonio wanted to search for his relatives and girl friend; he hoped they had escaped the air attack on Marquina. Then it occurred to him that by now they could be in Guernica. Walking through the town, Antonio realized the civic authorities were unusually busy. The amusement stalls in one corner of the market had been told to close; a notice said that the mobile cinema had been canceled, along with the evening dancing in the Plaza Las Escuelas.
On Calle Santa María, Antonio saw municipal workmen placing more sandbags around the shelter in the middle of the street. Nearby, he found the entrance to the Town Hall basement open. Beside the door was a large notice: refugio. The door of the fire station was also open. The horses were in their traces. It reassured Antonio to see that in some ways the town was “preparing itself for action.”
In the railway station plaza, the mood of the remaining refugees was somber. People were ridding themselves of belongings they could not easily carry. Furniture and cooking utensils were piling up everywhere, along with litter of all kinds. The square more than ever resembled a junkyard.
Doubtful of ever finding the people he was looking for, Antonio left the plaza and ambled along Calle Don Tello.
Near the Bar Catalán he noticed a flour sack in the gutter. He picked it up and recognized by the stencil mark that it was the one that had been stolen from his bakehouse. Antonio threw it back in the road and walked on.
Carmen Batzar was ordered away from Juan Dominguiz’s bedside so that her fiancé could sleep. Mother Augusta told her, “You both have a lifetime of talking ahead of you. Let him rest now.”
The Superior refused Carmen’s offer to return to duty. The hospital, she said, was being evacuated of all but the seriously ill. For the moment Juan Dominguiz would remain in Guernica. Eventually, she said, he, too, would be moved to one of the Bilbao hospitals to complete his recovery.
Mother Augusta did not add that the decision to empty as many beds as possible had been made because Captain Cortés feared renewed fighting must bring an influx of further casualties.
As Carmen left the convent, more wounded were being loaded into ambulances. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she had come to the hospital.
She reached home to find her mother out. Seated before her writing table, surrounded by her exercise books, Carmen recorded the events of the day.