Free A Broken Land by Jack Ludlow Page B

good at governance; left alone the area would descend into chaos. In truth, the sandy desert was rich in oil. His had been a lone voice in the mess when it came to condemnation of both the enforcement of the League of Nations mandate, something to which the unrepresented Arabs had not been allowed to object, and of the methods of control, most tellingly the bombing – to most of his fellow soldiers, officers and other ranks, airmen included, it had been the proper way to make war on folk they saw as lesser mortals.
    The overweight bugger Vince was examining had, no doubt, exactly the same attitude: the men and women opposing him were scum; he was an officer, a gentleman and he had a God-given right to both his position and the blood he was sure he was about to spill. Maybe if he had had good troops under him he might have succeeded; he did not, he had command of what was now, clearly, a uniformed rabble.
    ‘They’re getting ready to move,’ Vince said, passing the binoculars back.
    ‘At least set up your machine guns,’ Cal spat, exasperated.
    ‘You sound as if you want them to win.’
    ‘You know me, Vince, I’m all heart.’
    As in all fights, the people who did battle on the side of the Republican government only saw the action before their eyes, and for what happened elsewhere that Sunday a severe filter to boasting was required to sort fact from fiction, yet the nature of this fight seemed to have been replicated throughout. Released from any other care, the workers of Barcelona, both sexes, in their hundreds outside the Parque Barracks, in their thousands throughout the city, inflicted total defeat on the army over a long and sultry day of continuous combat.
    Every military column was halted and very often quickly thrown back. Others were forced to seek shelter themselves by throwing up hasty barricades or retreating into buildings in which they became besieged. On the ground, it was the sheer fury of the counter-attacks; from the rooftops the riflemen could pick their targets early and thin the advancing units, while others rained down on them home-made bombs that caused numerous casualties as they pressed forward.
    In the plaza below the Olympians, once the soldiers eventually began a slow advance, they marched into a maelstrom. Having driven off the initial assault, their officers no doubt thought progress would be easy. They had no idea of the numbers they now faced or the arms they possessed and, having made no attempt to find out, they, as well as the men they led, paid a prohibitive price.
    Vince had the discus thrower from the Olympiad hurling the dynamite sticks on which he had trimmed and lit the fuses, causing more confusion than casualties given the distance from landing to flesh, but once the massed workers had debouched from the various side streets, they had to desist, for they risked killing their own, now a dense and screaming mass hurling themselves forward.
    The infantry were first checked by that, then driven into a disordered retreat, many throwing down their weapons – those, and this was risible in the midst of a bloody battle, to be embraced by folk who had been intent on killing them a few seconds before, while another comrade snatched up their weapon and turned it on their fellows.
    No such leniency was afforded the Falange blueshirts, exposed by the break-up of the rankers who had shielded them. It had to be admitted they sought no mercy, fighting with as much fervour as those they faced, killing many, but eventually either forced to retreat or die. The Spanish officers were glad of their horses, which gave them the speed to escape certain slaughter, and if it shamed them to abandon their men, there was little evidence of it.
    Those that did stay loyal to their commanders retreated back towards the barrack gate slowly, and in many cases bravely and in reasonable order, downing their opponents as they went, while the more intelligent had secured and withdrawn the carts carrying the