Battalion.

We held our positions for three months. And then came the- long needed rest. We were sent to Alcala de Henares, the birthplarce of C-ervantes, who wrote Don Quixote. But we didn’t see any windmills.

It felt good to be sleeping with a roof over one”s head. The cots weren°t all they could have been but they wer-e better than the hard ground and when it rained we were dry. Someone had a banjo; another guy had a harmonica. Someone found a tub. Another fellow had a bugle. Talk about hot music. The Jar’ ama swing band made more noise and had more rhythm than Whiteman. And every soldier would have sworn then that it was the best band in the world. We were sort of getting used to resting when the order came the next evening that we had to go back to the line. The division that had come to relieve us was needed! elsewhere ,for{ defensive work... We sang as we marched out of that village. We were disappointed but we sang and we sang loud.

Singin' in -the Rain

One night it began to rain. I mean rain. I don’t mean the little drizzles we called rain back home. We swore that the fascist aviators had coralle-d all the clouds in Spain’, brought them overour trenches and bombed them. There was over a foot of water in our trenches. It felt strange to see and hear lightning and thunder. It was as if the heavens were imitating us. The thunder sounded just like the blast of shell fire and bombs and lightning like the flashes «of the artillery. We had to take up our position in the trenches rain or no rain. Someone suggested that we sing so that the fascists, separated from us by only one hundred metres of no man’s land, would know that the Canadian boys sang when it rained. S You guessed it. “Singin” in the rain”

with the International as chorus. Not a very fine musical are e

rangement but it worked OK. and we forgot about the rain.