One of the things that I promised myself was that I would read more fiction after I was done with the PhD. Right now I am reading Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” which is a mix of memory and description of the Spanish civil war were Orwell went to fight against facism. For Orwell the journey to Spain was necessary since it was the first country to actually protest the facist regime and to put up a fight against what was to prove to be the last centuries biggest political mistake.
He also writes with brutal honesty about the terrible conditions of those involved in the everyday fighting of the war. There is no glamour and even less honour.
An example which takes place after an attack on a facist position outside the town of Heusca. They took the facist trench but were driven back again:
They had left the parapet and were coming after us. ‘Run!’ I yelled to Moyle, and jumped to my feet. And heavens, how I ran! I had thought earlier in the night that you can’t run when you are sodden from head to foot and weighted down with a rifle and cartridges; I learned now you can always run when you think you have fifty or a hundred armed men after you. But if I could run fast, others could run faster.
On the totality of his experiences in Spain, Orwell writes:
When we went on leave I had been a hundred and fifteen days in the line, and at the time this period seemed to me to have been one of the most futile of my whole life. I had joined the militia in order to fight against Fascism, and as yet I had scarcely fought at all, had merely existed as a sort of passive object, doing nothing in return for my rations except to suffer from cold and lack of sleep. Perhaps that is the fate of most soldiers in most wars. But now that I can see this period in perspective I do not altogether regret it.
This is the most iconic photo of this conflict. It is Robert Capa’s Death of a Republican