The sun was just rising. The whole wide valley was deserted. Nat traced the narrow paths leading from the village up the hillside as far as he could follow them with his eye. He took in the olive groves, and the pines and swaying cypresses between them. The dawn light caught the leaves of the silvery oaks and made them shimmer. The sky was as blue as any he’d seen yet in Spain. Everything seemed intensely calm and clean.
From far away came the sound of tearing silk. Two droning waves of aircraft appeared from nowhere and machine-gun fire broke out above. Necks craned, the men debated. Were the German Heinkels 45s or 46s? Junkers, you oaf. The red markings? Yes, they must be the Republic’s new Chatos. They’d heard about them. And just look at them turn! The business!
Nat found it all hard to take in. It was exciting of course. But unreal. The huge sky seemed like a gigantic cinema screen. It didn’t seem possible actual men could be up there. Heads back, mesmerised, No. 1 Company of the British Battalion, XV International Brigade, watched the show. The Russian fighters seemed to be getting the better of things.
‘So much for Hitler’s bloody Luftwaffe,’ said someone. ‘Go back to Berlin!’ another man yelled at the sky. Then a blast of whistles called them away from the distant dogfight. Marching orders. Heads down. Fall in.
Nat stood in his section, reassured by Bernie’s broad back in front of him. Single file, they began to move, Nat near the back of the line. Each step released the scent of crushed thyme.
The hillside became steeper. A light frost dissolved under their feet, scorched away by the climbing sun. You wouldn’t think it was only February. Sweat started to form on his back. Why hadn’t they practised marching with such full packs before? Nat wanted to pee. Pints of coffee had woken them up all right, but it was having its effect now. His cartridge boxes banged against his hips.
A book bounced off a gorse bush, shaking drops from a sparkling cloak of spiderwebs. It fell open, face down, right into Nat’s path. With a kind of joy he recognised its weight and spine and almost bent to pick it up: T. A. Jackson, Dialectics: the Logic of Marxism. It took him back, like an old man. He remembered a heated discussion at a study group in Stepney, an age ago.
As the march became a rocky scramble, books were discarded all around. A copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies, a fair amount of philosophy. On they climbed. Slimmer volumes were jettisoned later: poetry mostly, less easily cast aside perhaps. Look, Stranger! Nat noticed. Its pink jacket was distinct against the pale white soil, W. H. Auden set clear in cream. Beton, wasn’t it? That new German typeface. Very modern. Very clean.
He could feel his own Jack London still in his pocket. He wasn’t going to give that up just yet. He’d manage. Or he’d tear out the drawing if he had to. Nat pulled his shoulder straps tighter.
‘Not going to be a long battle then?’ he panted out to Bernie, when he realised that volunteers were beginning to chuck down their overcoats too.
Bernie looked at them, but didn’t answer.
‘They’ll have to come back for those,’ said Nat. A couple of kitbags had been set down in the dappled shade of an olive tree, two blankets neatly folded on top of each.
Bernie grunted.
Another man interrupted. ‘I heard we were back-up. Aren’t we?’ Nobody who could hear the question knew the answer.
Their line of men was quite strung out in places now, and the other three companies were out of sight. Nat had always imagined going up to the front line in stony silence, all focus on the job in hand. But it wasn’t like that at all. He wanted it to be more serious, more momentous. Where was the background music? The mounting throb of guns?
The banter paused as they scrambled up a rocky escarpment, and renewed as the ground levelled out into a plateau, which they crossed. A core of veterans who’d spent the winter defending Madrid were getting to know the company’s new recruits – some had only arrived at Madrigueras a week before. They didn’t even know each others’ names.
Scrub took over from olive groves. The distant firing became a fraction louder. Nat was aware of more dogfights, a long way off and up, and wondered if he was also hearing the thunder of heavy shelling. Then the flat land stopped abruptly and the ground fell away steeply into a dry flat valley, before rising again. Still he couldn’t really work out where they were heading, or even exactly where the enemy was. They negotiated a kind of road – a mule track really, sunk into the ground like a ready-made trench. Down four feet. Through the puddles in the cart runnels. Up again.
Not so much talking now. Nat wasn’t in the mood for it himself – he didn’t have much breath to spare anyway – but it wasn’t fear that stopped him. Not yet. He just felt a tremendous alertness, in mind and body, like a firework waiting for a match. He was ready.
They reached another rough ridge of hills. The next drop swept down towards the gorge of the Jarama river. Nat couldn’t get a real sense of the lie of the land. Too many hills and broken ridges. Afterwards, he knew he could never draw what he’d seen, though he’d remember the colours, and the light. A rounded hill. Another, almost conical. And on the slope of the next, a white house, bright as a beacon.
A little way ahead, a runner was stumbling towards their new company commander, an Irishman called Conway. The lad seemed to be shouting out as he came closer, staggering on the rough rocks from time to time, then picking up speed. Conway looked round at his men, waved them on more urgently. They picked up their pace. Something was happening. Another messenger appeared, and the company’s course changed again. The men headed for the middle hill. Their instructions came. Hold it, at all costs. Don’t leave till you’re bloody told to.
As soon as they reached the top they were in the thick of it. No time to think before bullets were whining past, one after another, faster than Nat could count. At first they seemed like birds whistling by. Was this artillery fire? He had no idea. And where did it all come from? The enemy was invisible and the noise ferocious. It blanked out sense. Gathering clouds of dust and smoke complicated every task.
He could make out the silhouettes of the men ahead of him, standing out against the ridge of the hill, right on the skyline. Then he saw his comrades falling, one after another. Like a line of milk bottles, hit by a misfired football.
Nat ran forward, half-crouching, fumbling with his rifle. Now what? Keep moving. He couldn’t die before he’d fired a single shot for Spain. Not him. He remembered what someone had told him, weeks ago in Albacete: It’s the bullets you don’t hear you should worry about.
He made it to Bernie’s prostrate figure; Bernie instantly reached out and pulled Nat down onto his belly. Then his hand came down on Nat’s helmet so hard he found himself spitting and dribbling a mouthful of Spanish earth and saliva from the corner of his mouth. He ran his tongue round his teeth, trying to clear the dirt: how dry his throat was. Something was digging into his side. He was half-aware of Tommy, sprawled a few feet away, and struggling to sort out his rifle.
‘Keep your head down till we’ve got some shelter,’ Bernie yelled in Nat’s ear, scrabbling at the ground with his bayonet. He whipped off his helmet and started using it as a shovel. ‘Quick, get those stones in front of us. That’s right. Build ’em up.’
It wasn’t much of a parapet, but it was something.
At last he saw one. Had it imagined it? It seemed to vanish. No, there it was again. A scruffy figure, brown face, brown poncho, brown head cloth, bobbing up from a fold in the ground. Perhaps two hundred yards away. Gone again. Just one, as far as he could see. Nat had been anticipating a blood-curdling Moorish scream – aren’t they famous for their battle cries? – not this silence. He trained his rifle to a spot just above a large boulder, gambling that was where the Moroccan soldier was heading. He’d be ready for him this time.
He wasn’t. Neither was Tommy. He’d raised his head to fire and that was it. The bullet came straight into his left eye. Out through the back of his head. His right eye still stared, up at the blue sky, seeing nothing. Nat’s panic was like quicksand. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t take his own eyes off Tommy’s useless one. He wanted to crawl over and shut it for him. He started shifting, but Bernie held him back. The older man shook his head briefly, his eyes never leaving his rifle sights.
Much later Nat thought he should have checked Tommy’s jacket. Had the boy’s final letter ever got home? Tommy was always writing to his mum.
‘Meet Franco’s army of bloody Africa,’ muttered Bernie, and took aim. A different Moor, somehow even closer, staggered and fell with his poncho billowing around him. ‘Where the hell’s our bleeding artillery?’
Nat’s hands shook as he attached the bayonet as they’d been shown. Not so clean now. To begin with, he was shooting wild and high, even with it on. With his first round, he hit nothing. He pushed back his helmet, fingers sweat-slippery. He felt the chill of his sweat-soaked vest against his back. Don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer.
Then he saw a man fall, and Nat knew it was by his bullet. His own body went as limp as his victim’s. Another man appeared, moving up the hillside like a scuttling crab. Taut again, Nat took aim once more and fired, then ducked as a return of fire zinged over his head.
Bernie found a moment to shout at him: ‘That’s right. Keep at it. The best thing you can do for the Republic right now is survive. Watch it! At two o’clock!’
He and Bernie fired until their rifles were burning. Then, in turn, they unbuttoned their flies and peed on the barrels to cool them down.
Over and over again, Nat looked over the rocks to fire, and saw more Moroccans zigzagging up the hillside towards him. From time to time he dared a glimpse behind. Where were their machine-gunners? What had happened to the Maxims? All he saw were men of his own company thrown into contorted postures like dolls on a scrapheap, wounded or lifeless. Men he’d been drinking coffee with six hours earlier, men who’d made him laugh. So many men. Gone so suddenly. We’re lambs, he thought, lambs to the slaughter.
There were no officers in sight now. Nobody to tell them what to do, where to go, how long to stay. What to think. Again and again, Nat had the sensation of watching a film. Somehow he was now both player and audience. The swearing never stopped. Guns jammed, over and over again. Someone Nat couldn’t name helped himself to Tommy’s rifle, using his corpse for cover while he emptied his cartridge boxes.
Time seemed to pass at two rates at once. Slow motion or triple speed? Nat couldn’t tell. Once he clearly thought, This is what enfilade means, remembering a diagram on the blackboard at Madrigueras. Then: There is nothing, nobody, on our right flank.