THE foreign journalists gathered for lunch and dinner in a basement restaurant on the Gran Via, the only restaurant open in the whole of Madrid. It was run by the Government and had a restricted clientele made up mostly of officials, police agents, army officers and prostitutes.
The room was always noisy and crowded and blue with smoke. Once during a bombardment a group of militia raised their wine-glasses and toasted each crash with shouts and bursts of song. When a six-inch shell smashed through the pavement in front of the door, twisting the steel frame of the awning, the waiter drew a tumult of applause by offering everyone a drink on the house.
The door of the restaurant was heavily guarded by armed sentries, and often I saw women crying and begging to be let in, but no one was allowed to enter without an official pass.
Once inside, the food was meagre and at times scarcely eatable. The routine menu was salami and a plate of rice for luncheon, more salami and a plate of beans for supper. Once we had a three-day run of eggs, but they had a queer taste and word spread around quickly that they were bombed eggs from Cordoba. Exactly what shape a bombed egg took on I never discovered.
We always left the restaurant hungry, and although I’d never experienced discomfort from lack of food before, our lot was so much better than the average Spaniard’s that we seldom passed through the guarded door without a guilty feeling as though we had no right to be there.
Some of the journalists had managed to bring in food supplies from France and Tom Delmer’s sitting-room in the Hotel Florida became a popular meeting-place. Tom had equipped the room with electric burners and chafing-dishes. A ham was suspended from a coat-hanger on the cupboard door and the table was littered with crackers and sardine tins. Every night from eleven on, the press gathered: there were Herbert Matthews of the New York Times: Ernest Hemingway of North American Newspaper Alliance; ‘Hank’ Gorrell of the United Press; Thomas Loyetha of the International News Service; Martha Gellhorn of Collier’s; George and Helen Seldes, Josephine Herbst and many others. Although the food was distributed gingerly, there was always plenty of beer and whisky and the gatherings seldom broke up before the early hours of the morning.
When the room got hot Tom used to switch out the lights and open the windows. He often turned on the gramophone and played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Between the chords of music we could hear the distant rumble of artillery; it was always a strange mixture.
Tom’s parties came to an abrupt end when a shell plunged into his room and turned the chafing-dishes and furniture into pulverized débris. Fortunately no one was there at the time. I came into the hotel lobby shortly afterwards and found the hotel manager sitting at his desk, poring over his accounts as though nothing had happened. When I asked him what damage had been done, he regarded me coldly and denied the hotel had been hit. Only a gas-main had broken, he said. Although the gaping hole in Tom’s room was there for everyone to see, he stubbornly clung to his story for fear his guests would grow alarmed and leave.
One guest did leave. He was a nameless American aviator who had come to Madrid on a few days’ leave. He was in the corridor near the room when the shell hit and was knocked down by the blast. He was a little tipsy anyway, and came swaying down the stairs, shouting: “A fine type of relaxation. For fun, I’ll do my own bombing!”
* * *
The newspaper men filed their stories each night from the Telephone Building on the Gran Via. It was the tallest building in Madrid and from the top floor you could see the Casa del Campo and the University City battlefields. As it was frequently used as an observation post, it was a legitimate military objective, and during the time I was in Madrid received over eighty direct hits. The building was made of steel and concrete, however, and the walls proved too solid for six-inch explosives, so little damage was done. Once a three-inch shell made a hole in the roof of the telephone-room, but none of the operators was hurt.
All newspaper stories were telephoned to London and Paris and from there cabled on to various parts of the world. There was a good deal of competition between the agencies as to who got the first call through. As there were only two outside lines it sometimes took four or five hours to establish connections. The majority of special correspondents were working for morning papers, which meant that the greatest rush came at nine o’clock in the evening; there were several cots in the telephone-room, and some of them went to sleep there until their ‘urgents’ came through.
All stories had to be submitted to the censor and each page approved by an official stamp. When they were read over the telephone an operator sat beside the journalist ready to cut the line if anything was inserted not included in the approved copy. There were frequent attempts “to beat the censor” by employing American slang expressions, but this came to an end when a Canadian girl joined the staff. The International Brigades were not allowed to be publicized; no reference could be made to Russian armaments, and buildings and streets which suffered bombardments could not be identified.
It was only in the realm of the human interest story that the journalists had a free hand. They could describe bombardments to their hearts’ content. It was dramatic to sit in the darkened room at night and listen to versions of the day’s news being sent over the wires in German, French, Spanish and English to be relayed to the most remote corners of the earth. The despatches were always varied, for some described the bombardments with indifference and others with fevered intensity. I began to realize that much depended on where the writer had been when the shells fell. In the darkness of the beleaguered capital it seemed odd to think of the telephone wires running through the misery of Spain into the free fields of France and across the Channel to the sleepy peace of London. After listening to some particularly moving eye-witness account, I was usually jerked back to reality by a journalist shouting, “Ne coupez pas, Madame. Listen, Eddie, how about sending some more dough?” …
* * *
I was not covering daily news so I worked out an outline for a series of articles. One of the first things I wanted to do was to go to the front. Now this was not difficult. Although journalists were supposed to get a proper authorization, few of the Spanish sentries could read and almost any bit of paper (no matter how far out of date) would do. When you wanted to go to the front, you just got into a car and went.
The most convenient front, however, ran through the Casa del Campo and the University City, only two miles from the main shopping district of Madrid. You took a tram halfway, walked the other half, and you were there. The two armies had been stalemated at this point ever since the previous November, when the Republican International Brigades had halted the Franco advance and at the eleventh hour saved Madrid. Neither side had been able to dislodge the other and for the past five months the soldiers had sat in opposite trenches, breaking the monotony by machine-gunning each other and lobbing grenades and mortars back and forth.
I didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity to visit the Casa del Campo. A few days after I arrived in Madrid I met Professor J. B. S. Haldane, an English scientist and former don at Cambridge University, who was lunching at the Gran Via restaurant. “Think I’ll hop down to the battlefield and have a look round,” he said casually. “Do you want to come?”
An hour later I found myself walking along a street on the outskirts of the city. The Professor cut an eccentric figure in a pair of breeches too tight for him and a tin hat with a broken chin-strap, left over from the Great War, which he’d brought from England. As it was the only tin hat in the whole of Republican Spain, it attracted a good deal of attention from passers-by, and twice sentries saluted us respectfully, obviously impressed. Although Haldane had come to Spain to advise the Government on antidotes for gas, he liked to pass himself off as a joke character. When anyone asked what he was doing in Madrid, he always replied, “Just a spectator from England. Enjoyed the last war so much I thought I’d come to Spain for a holiday.”
We walked down a long avenue with stone barricades built across the intersections. Guards in sweaters and corduroy trousers, with rifles propped up beside them, said Salud and asked to see our passes. Most of them could not read, and some even held the papers upside down, but they all studied them with knitted brows, raised a clenched fist in the Popular Front salute, and let us pass.
At the end of the avenue the streets grew desolate and blocks of houses were gutted and empty. Some had only the frames standing where bombs had plunged through the middle; others looked like stage sets with whole fronts ripped off. High up on one was a table all set for dinner, napkins in place, chairs pulled up, but for a wall it had only a piece of blue sky.
It was ghostly and sad with the wind whistling through the window-frames, and doors high above banging back and forth on empty caverns, but the Professor’s spirits were high. He was just remarking on how fine the weather was when there was a loud whistle. A shell hit the brick house on the corner and another plunged into the pavement. We stumbled into a doorway and stood against a dark wall while several more passed overhead. After a few minutes the Professor decided it was safe to continue. “Anyway,” he added, with all the disdain of the World War veteran, “they are only little shells, so come along.”
My confidence in the Professor was shaky. I thought he was making too light of the situation, and the prospect of the front was growing more alarming every minute. However, at this stage there seemed little else to do but follow.
The communication trenches started at the park at the end of the street. They were narrow, dirt trenches with a row of sandbags at the top. As they were only five feet high we had to bend down to keep under cover. The lines twisted and curved through the fields and as we crawled along, the mud slopping over our shoes, the guns grew louder, Bullets passed over our heads with an angry ring, some of them hitting the sides of the parapet with staccato cracks. From somewhere to the right was the rumble of artillery and the dull thud of mortars.
The Professor called out to me cheerfully and asked how I liked it. I said, not much, and he seemed to resent this, for he yelled back that in the last war women were not allowed within six miles of the front lines. “You ought to be grateful for the privilege,” he shouted.
Suddenly the trench turned and we found ourselves in the front line. Long streams of soldiers were firing through the openings in the sandbags. Their faces were unshaven and their jackets and khaki trousers were smeared with grease and mud. Some looked not more than sixteen or seventeen years old.
I should think we must have been a strange pair, but they didn’t seem surprised to see us. They smiled warmly and the greeting Salud echoed up the line. One of them put down his rifle and pulled out a wooden box for me to sit on. Another, with a hand in a dirty bandage, offered us a package of dark brown cigarettes; then they all talked at once in eager Spanish. I couldn’t understand, but it didn’t matter, for someone suddenly opened up with an ear-splitting rattle of machine-gun fire. I put my hands over my ears and wondered how anyone ever got used to the noise.
One of the soldiers handed me a rifle and asked if I did not want to take a shot at los facciosos, and then a young boy with pink cheeks and large brown eyes stepped up and held a periscope over the trench so I could see the enemy lines. They were a jumble of stones and grass only fifty yards away. On the no-man’s land in between lay three twisted bodies.
“Los muertos nuestros,” the boy said softly.
The Professor squinted through the sandbags but said he didn’t like the view. He explained that he wanted to get a look at the Clinico (a building in which the enemy was entrenched) and that we could probably see better from another position, so once again we started crawling along the line. There were forks to the right and left, and once he called out that he hadn’t the foggiest idea where we were. “Hope we don’t land up with the Fascists,” he said cheerfully, and just then the trench came to an abrupt halt. Directly ahead was a small green slope.
Haldane scratched his head and said that in his opinion the other side of the hill ought to prove a better vantage-point; but he didn’t know what was on the other side and therefore might be wrong. Stray bullets were passing overhead and I refused to move until he found where he was going. As there was nobody in sight, I admit it offered a problem; nevertheless, I was unprepared for the Professor’s quick solution. “You wait here,” he said, and before I could stop him he ran up the slope and disappeared down the other side.
I stood alone in the trench and wondered why I had ever come to Spain. I could hear the long swish of shells overhead and the explosions as they fell in the distance. Bullets whined past and I ducked my head again and again, although I’d been carefully instructed that when you hear the whine, you’re safe.
The sun had gone behind a cloud and it was getting cold. I looked up and down the deserted line and wondered if the Professor would ever find his way back. Suddenly there was an explosion and twenty yards in front of me the earth shot up in a fountain. I went down on the ground as dirt and stones sprayed the air. When I found I was still intact I got up and tried to wipe the mud off my clothes with a handkerchief. Just then I heard someone whistling a tune and I looked up to see an officer approaching. He was a jaunty little man with a forage cap tilted over one eye. He spoke Spanish, but, when I said I couldn’t understand, broke into a jumble of French.
“This is no place to stand, Mademoiselle. They are throwing trench mortars.”
I told him he’d never spoken a truer word and explained my predicament. He laughed and told me to follow him. “Don’t worry: I’ll find your friend—dead or alive.”
He helped me over the slippery places with the air of a great cavalier and took my hand when we crawled through two dark tunnels; at last we came to a clearing. To the right of it was a white shack surrounded by trees and bushes and protected by a small hill.
The room inside was crowded with soldiers. The blinds were drawn and the only light was a feeble bulb suspended from the ceiling. The lieutenant explained that I was an American writer who’d got lost in the trenches, and told them to look after me while he tried to find my friend. The soldiers grinned and all talked at once in Spanish I couldn’t understand. There was a small burner in the middle of the room, and one of them pulled a chair up and motioned me to dry myself beside the fire. I took off my shoes and someone wiped them with a rag. Another soldier pushed his way through the group and offered me a piece of stale bread; the others laughed and explained with empty hands it was all they had to offer.
Half an hour later the lieutenant reappeared and said he had found the Professor. While I was shaking hands all round they told the lieutenant to apologize for the poor hospitality, and one of them asked if I were going to write about them in an article. When I nodded a tall soldier standing near the door, obviously an accepted wit, said to be sure to say that they liked fighting Fascists a good deal better than their grandfathers had liked fighting Americans. And did I think the United States would send some guns and planes to show what a fine new friendship it had turned out to be? Everybody laughed and I followed the lieutenant out of the door amid a farewell of Salud.
Once again we crawled through the trenches and finally came to a small dug-out. Inside, two soldiers were lying on a cot eating rice from a battered tin plate; a wireless operator sat at a wooden table with earphones on his head, and in the middle, crouched on a low wooden stool drinking a bottle of wine, was the Professor. “Hullo,” he said affably,” where have you been hiding?”
He seemed to take my reappearance for granted and enthusiastically described the splendid view he had had of the Clinico. Apparently, for him, at any rate, the trip had been a great success.
The lieutenant led us through the communicating lines and finally set us on our way down the avenue. Before he said good-bye, he drew a bottle of gin from his pocket, gave the Professor a swig, then took one himself. With a parting salute, he disappeared back into the trenches again, whistling as he went.