Captain Harold Fry 

By James Rutherford 

Harold Fry was born of working-class parents in Kent, on Decem-
ber 31, 1904. He joined the British Army in 1925, and served in India 
and China, rising to the rank of Sergeant. He was in China during the 
Sino-Japanese War, and witnessed the fighting around the International 
Settlement at Shanghai. It was here that practical revolutionary ideas 
began to stir in his mind, and when he was discharged from the British 
Army, he began to take an active part in the working-class movement. 
He was a member of the Edinburgh Branch of the National Boot and 
Shoe Operatives. 
My first meeting with Fry was at an anti-Fascist demonstration in 
Usher Hall, where Mosley was attempting to speak. During the fighting 
that ensued Fry and myself were injured; he had a split head which 
required seven stitches, and myself a broken thumb and a split head re- 
quiring four stitches. As we parted his remark was: “Some day those 
bastards will provoke us into using rifles”. On and off, I had dealings 
with Fry. Yet we were both surprised when we found out that each of 
us had decided to go to Spain, and on the same day. 
Fry became Commander of No. 2 Company of the British Battalion. 
The circumstances under which we were captured at Jarama are well 
known. All through prison Fry gave us leadership and courage. Even 
when sentenced to death he maintained his calmness and cheeriness. 
And all the time he was suffering from a bullet-wound in the arm. 
Due to lack of attention it had not entirely healed when on October 13, 
1937, he fell in action at Fuentes de Ebro. 
He had been only six weeks at home after his release from Franco’s 
prisons when he volunteered to return to Spain. In September he was 
appointed to command the British Battalion, then on the Aragon Front. 
His death, when leading his men across across No-Man’s-Land, through 
a barrage of artillery-fire, is a severe loss to the Battalion and to the 
British working-class movement. 

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