Mack Reynolds - After Utopia

When the International Brigades began to form, he left a note for his aging parents and hitchhiked to New York and located the recruiting office of the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion. It had some high-flown title such as the American Committee For the Aid of the Spanish Republic, but later on he was told by Dan Whiteley that it was a Commie front organization. At any rate, they saw to his getting a passport and a third-class passage to France. He travelled with nine others, one of whom was from Montreal and spoke French and was theoretically in charge for the time. They disembarked in Le Havre and took the train to Paris where they were met by a representative of the Spanish government and shipped, after two nights on the town, along with twenty or so others, to Ceret in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

At this time, the French were already taking a dim view of the international volunteers who were crossing their borders into Spain. Consequently, that night the whole group took off, by foot, led by a Spaniard who had been sent over for them. They crossed the border over mountain passes as though they had been smugglers. They walked all the way to the town of Figueras, on the rail line running from Port-Vendres, France, to Barcelona, and took the first train into the Catalonian capital.

In Barcelona the authorities thoughtfully relieved the new recruits of their passports. Cogswell was to learn later that these were turned over to the Russian KGB, who utilized them in international espionage-counterespionage. Not having a passport made things difficult when he was working his way back home, two years later.

They trained at the village of Villanueva de la Jara, near Albacete, and it was here the Americans realized their disadvantage. The draft was a thing of the future in the States. Few of them had even been in the American National Guard. The European volunteers had almost all served in the armies of their native lands and some were combat veterans. Six of the Italians had been in the invasion of Ethiopia, and others, mostly Germans, had served a hitch in the French Foreign Legion. Some of the older men had participated in World War I. Most of the veterans were immediately made noncoms.

The Americans were largely students and largely city bred. Their average age was considerably younger than that of the Europeans; Tracy was youngest of all. He had lied when he told them he was twenty in New York. His ‘military experience’ consisted of having belonged to the Boy Scouts for two years. His experience with firearms consisted of hunting rabbits and squirrels in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky with a twenty-two.

At Villanueva de la Jara, Tracy was issued the standard Spanish uniform, which consisted of a cap rather than a helmet, a heavy shirt, and pants. Evidently, Spanish soldiers were not so effete as to wear underwear. He kept his own shoes, which luckily were heavy; they were his hiking footwear. The Republic was short of boots in those days.

He was also issued a SMLE, which meant a short magazine Lee Enfield, probably left over from World War I; it fired the outdated .303 caliber cartridge and had a ten-round detachable box magazine. Where it had come from he hadn’t the vaguest idea. He found later that the Republic was armed from a dozen different countries, including Germany and Italy, through Portugal, and the story was that a great deal of graft went into the securing of munitions. There was some American equipment, usually filtered in through Mexico, which, practically alone among the western nations, was in support of the Republic.

The training was minimal. There was a crisis in the vicinity of Madrid, which was already partially surrounded by the Fascist armies. They were rammed on through and sent off to join the International Brigades for which they had signed up.

They were in Madrid for only a single day and were then trucked that night to an unknown destination. The rumor was that the Republicans were about to embark on a major offensive. But there have been rumors in the army since long before the days of Alexander the Macedonian. Are we going to India, or are we going to reverse our engines—or rather chariots, in those days—and take on that newly erupting, brash town, Rome?

He had hardly more than met Robert Merriman, the bespectacled twenty-eight-year-old commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Merriman was the son of a lumberjack who had worked his way through the University of Nevada and had become a lecturer at the University of California. The story was that he had come to Europe on a travelling scholarship to investigate agricultural problems, when the civil war broke out. He had immediately made his way to Spain. Later on he was to be made chief of staff of the 15th Brigade and was to die on the Ebro River where the International Brigades suffered heavy losses in the final days of the conflict.

Yes, the Ebro. Tracy Cogswell remembered the Ebro. They had fought their last action there on 22 September. Not only had Bob Merriman fallen there, after getting through the whole war, but also a kid not much older than Tracy himself, Jim Lardner, son of the American writer Ring Lardner and one of the last Americans to have enlisted. He had broken his glasses on the final day, and couldn’t even see well enough to use his rifle.

But Tracy Cogswell shifted his bulk in the bed and brought his mind back to his first meeting with Dan and Bud Whiteley.

They had left in Madrid and headed north. There were trucks, armored cars, tanks, motorcycles, and occasional staff cars, strung out before and after, as far as he could see from the truck in which he and some twenty-five others sat or squatted. It was jammed to the gunnels. He was lucky to have gotten a bench seat up against the side.

It was night but they drove without lights. The faces of the men were expressionless, save for a certain sadness. There was no banter and, at first, very little talk at all. All they knew was that they were due for an attack and what the next few days held was in the lap of the gods.

The large trucks, all painted gray and with more than ordinary clearance, had high, square cabs and square, ugly radiators. Most of them had French 8mm M 1914 Hotchkiss machine guns mounted above the cab as antiaircraft defense.

The man next to Tracy looked at him and said, “You’re one of the new replacements, aren’t you? I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”

“Yeah,” Tracy said, hoping his voice didn’t indicate his nervousness, his fear of what the following hours were to hold.

The other was a tall man, on the gangling side and possibly a few years older than Tracy. His mouth was too wide and he seemed to hold it in a perpetual half-grin. Light was insufficient for Tracy to make him out too well. He carried on his lap a submachine gun, with a heavy drum rather than a clip. Tracy didn’t know it then but it was a Russian PPD 34 and fired the standard Soviet pistol round, the 7.62 rimless.

“Name’s Whiteley,” the other said. “Dan Whiteley.”

“Cogswell. Tracy Cogswell.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said the usual. “Where you from, Dan?”

“Winnipeg.”

“Where’s Winnipeg?”

“Manitoba. It’s the capital of Manitoba.”

Tracy said, “I’m sorry. Where’s Manitoba?”

The other laughed. “You Yanks,” he said derisively. “I’ll bet you don’t even know what the capital of Canada is. The closest country to you and you know practically nothing about it.”

Tracy was glad to have the opportunity to talk, to put his thoughts on something other than impending death. He said, defensively, “It’s, uh, Toronto.”

Whiteley laughed again. “It’s Ottawa. The capital of the United States is Washington. Your president’s name is Franklin Roosevelt. I’ll bet you don’t know our premier’s name. Where do you come from?”