fusions to wounded. In Almeria we heard for the first time that the 
town had fallen and were warned to go no farther as no one knew 
where the frontline now was but everyone was sure that the town of 
Motril had also fallen. We thought it important to proceed and 
discover how the evacuation of the wounded was proceeding. We set 
out at six o’clock in the evening along the Malaga road and a few 
miles on we met the head of the piteous procession. Here were the 
strong with all their goods on donkeys, mules and horses. We passed 
them, and the farther we went the more pitiful the sights became. 
Thousands of children, we counted five thousand under ten years of 
age, and at least one thousand of them barefoot and many of them 
clad only in a single garment. They were slung over their mother's 
shoulders or clung to her hands. Here a father staggered along with 
two children of one and two years of age on his back in addition to 
carrying pots and pans or some treasured possession. The incessant 
stream of people became so dense we could barely force the car 
through them. At eighty eight kilometers from Almeria they beseeched 
us to go no farther, that the fascists were just behind. By this time 
we had passed so many distressed women and children that we thought 
it best to turn back and start transporting the worst cases to safety. 
It was difficult to choose which to take. Our car was besieged by 
a mob of frantic mothers and fathers who with tired outstretched arms 
held up to us their children, their eyes and faces swollen and congested 
by four days of sun and dust. 
«Take this one.» «See this child.» «This one is wounded.» Children 
with bloodstained rags wrapped around their arms and legs, children 
without shoes, their feet swollen to twice their size crying helplessly 
from pain, hunger and fatigue. Two hundred kilometers of misery. 
Imagine four days and four nights, hiding by day in the hills as 
the fascist barbarians pursued them by plane, walking by night