Life in the Trenches I had long since given up being astonished at the courage of the Spanish people so that thepresenceof a woman so close to the line didn’t seem much out of the ordinary. But I was suriprlsed When this girl got into the armoured car with us to go into the Vtrenches.

After a few minutes of smelly darkness and the occasional clang of a Fascist bullet against the steel plating, the car stopped 111. a sort of hole in the ground which was safe from enemy observation and We tumbled out into a communication trench and in a minute were in the front line with the Fascists forty meters away. Here a great many surprises awaited us. Perhaps the first and the greatest lay in the many and unmistakable evidences we received of a strict military discipline and, what is more, a pride in that discipline.

_ Everywhere we went with the Commandante, the soldiers would spring to attention and salute with the clenched fist upraised to the forehead, or, if carrying a rifle, with the clenched fist and forearm swung across the chest. Both salutes are very effective and are capable of being carried out with a great deal more “snap” than you might expect from my sketchy description.

At the beginning of the War these militia regiments, having elected their officers, attempted to do away with military discipline in the ordinary sense, as being undemocratic. The resulting confusion can be imagined. But a People-’s Army can only establish its traditions slowly, painfully, by experience. Now they have learnt, and learnt well. There was nothing servile in what we saw, rather there was generosity and pride and a consciousness of strength.

The trenches themselves were very strongly constructed and comfortable. The dug-outs were roomy and deep. The trenches are not continuous but are concentrated in fortified posts, very skilfully disposed so as to give each other the maximum of support.

Trench Academies

Each post was equipped with a, Library and a School in charge of the Political Commissar.

It seems that the Spanish people, having been forced to defend themselves in a war not of their own seeking, are determined to make this war the occasion for theeconomic, social and spiritual regener- ation of Spain. So they fight with textrbooks as well as machine guns. From one post we visited, within earshot of the enemy, the Political Commissar gives the Fascists a mighty lecture through a megaphone. As a result, there is a steady trickle of Fascist deserters coming over on dark nights. As one young officer explained to me with a justifiable pride in his voice, “the Fascists shoot their prisoners but we send them to school and make real men out of them.”

These schools and libraries in the trenches are fulfilling a two- fold function. First they are helping to do away with the appalling amount of illiteracy in Spain, and second, they are strengthening

and deepening the emotional or other motivations which led these

men to take up arms in a cause they could at the beginninghave but dimly understood with their heads though their hearts led them to heroic deeds.-——«SALUD.