big grey rocks in the foothills of the Guadarrama mountains. Nathan 
was personally supervising the preparation of their first real meal 
for weeks for his tired-out men. A piece of a heavy bomb from a Ger- 
man Junker plane hit him low in the back and penetrated deeply. He 
was rushed to hospital in Madrid but died early in the morning. 
Over and over again I have noticed during this war how many (in 
a sense) over-dramatic situations actually occur. It is very characte- 
ristic of the whole of Nathan’s life and of this war, that just be- 
fore he died this bourgeois Liberal-democratic ex-British Officer ex- 
pressed the wish to speak with the Communist leader, Harry Pollitt. 
I happen to know from conversations I personally had with Nathan 
that it was his desire to become a member of the Communist Party. 

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