Features D j The Leader-Post Regina, Saskatchewan Saturday, October 113, 1984 By Peter Edwards of The Leader-Post he courage of volun- teers like Walter Mar- chuk will be recalled when veterans of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion from‘ the Spanish Civil War gather today and . tomorrow at The University of Re- gina for a reunion. .V Marchuk and Bill Beeching were friends in Regina in the 1930s and left for spam together ‘in 1937 to fight in a war against fascism. They were together overseas when their International Brigade was under heavy fire from an “approaching tank. I Beeching recalls Marchuk crawl- ing up to the tank with a small bomb. * “You had to light a fuse for that bomb,” says Beeching, now 71 and living in Regina. “He rolled it under the tank and blew its tracks of .” . No more members of the Interna- tional Brigade were killed by the tank, but Mjarchuk «did'n‘t to celebrate. Beeching could only watch from a distance while Mar-' chuk was captured and executed on the spot. ' “He was a very jolly, cheerful, happy go lucky fellow,” Beeching recalls. “He was big and strong, with an open. straight-forward way about him.” ' I Beeching also has vivid memories of Jimmy Higgins of Saskatoon. During a pitched battle, Higgins leapt into a swollen river to save a Spanish child who was hit by shrap- I nel. “He jumped in the river and saved the child." Beeching recalls. “The child was badly wounded and he carried him to an aide post.” The child. Manuel Alvarez. recov- ered and moved to Canada. His memories of Higgins are recounted in this book, The Tall Soldier. While Beeching returned home from the war, many of his friends didn‘t. Almost half of the 1,300 Cana- dians who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic against the ar- mies of Francisco Franco. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are bur- ' ied on Spanish soil. One soldier who didn’t return was Bryce Coleman of the Swift Current area, who was killed in a spot called ~Villa Nueva de la Canada, in- the battle to save Madrid. In Canada, Coleman had been an organizer of the Single Unemployed Union. About 25 members of his un- ion had marched into the offices’ of The Regina Leader-Post in 1937. and asked the editor to use his influence in getting them passage to Spain. They were featured in a large photo and write-up. The Single Unemployed Uhion’s ranks also included Tony Costello of Regina. Costello had been part of the March to Ottawa in 1935 by unemployed workers. which ended in a riot in Regina. Costello was im- prisoned for six months for his part“ in the Regina riot. _. Costello distinguished himself in Spain ina battle where the Interna- I tional Brigades was pinned down by heavy machine gun fire. Their prog- ress was blocked by barbed wire. Costello jumped up and ran for- R ward, cutting the barbed wire and making a path for the International Brigade. ’ “He was under direct machine- gun fire part of the way. and for the rest of the way, they could throw grenades at him,” Beeching recalls. Costello managed to survive. al- though he was badly wounded in the leg. He now lives in Vancouver, and his injured leg has long since been amputated. When Beeching thinks of the bra- very he saw in Spain, he doesn’t al- ways think of soldiers. “You remember things like the first time you saw a woman cover a child with her own body during a battle,” he says. “Or what hap- pened to soldiers in a battle when . they were destroyed.” - Frank Hadesbeck of Regina‘ wasn’t injured, but for 18 months he was surrounded by death. He .,......«4. Recalling the Spanish Civil War ‘iiwii frank Hadetsbeck (centre with shirt of!) loads anti-aircraft gun during Spanish Civil- War manned an anti-aircraft battery and survived persistant attacks by “Hell Divers,” the Messerschmitt fighter planes the German Luftwaffe exper- imented with in Spain. Hadesbeck saw comrades killed. when their weapons exploded and experienced the horror of running out of ammunition during battle. He saw some‘ of his comrades panic and retreat under fire. He watched fas- ‘cist pilots eject from their burning planes, then get shot by their com- rades as they tried to parachute to safety. Only six weeks after he left North , America, Hadesbeck had hiked across the Pyrenees with other vol- unteers. and had seen the first of many grisly scenes. They are described in his diary. which is now on file at the Saskat- chewan Archives. Jan. 17. 1937. Ha- desbeck wrote of seeing the bodies of women and children killed in a S ~ on Barcelona: “The whole seemed like I was sitting in a a picture . . . To ‘warn hnnnnnu living peaceful circumstances. And that I am where I can get something sweet to eat. Sugar is what I miss most in this army." He also came to miss any type of . decent food. The Aug. 27, 1938. entry in his di- ary notes: “Ted March brought a little fox terrier with him. But this morning, he had disappeared from the battery. Later in the morning ‘No. 3 Gun Crew were frying some meat. Though they said it was rab- bit, it didn’t have long ears I know; We never before had to resort to dog for food." Hadesbeck, who was unemployed when he left Canada. noted in his di- ary that Spanish farmers didn’t seem worse off than many Canadi- ans and Americans. There were no cheering crowds when he entered villages. Spanish women shied away from the foreign soldiers and some farmers hoarded produce. “If we go out at night and pinch some truck. we get fined and classed as anti-revolutionary,” Ha- Annknn,r Il9lflI\‘I\ 3" ‘ three mothers looking for their sons. A mother was in tears. She asked me if her son was coming. I didn‘t know. I said there was another train coming behind us.” Hadesbeck‘ found himself branded a “Red," although he says he doesn’t think the term applies to him. He volunteered twice for the Canadian forces overseas in the Second World War, and was twice turned down. He couldn’t get veter- ans’ benefits or join veterans’ asso- ciations. In order to get work, he moved to Calgary and changed his name to “Frances Beck.“ Today he has harsh words for the recruiters who talked him into going to Spain. He says he was led to be-’ lieve Spain offered him the chance for a new"life; the same thing that brought his parents to Canada from Hungary in 1906. Despite this bitterness. Hades- beck still believes the war could have provided a great victory. If the Allies had joined in, he believes Hit- ler might have been stopped and the holocaust prevented. “Instead. the Spanish Civil War was a testing grounds for fascist weapons. But while it was just a tri- al run for munitions makers, it was all too real for those involved. In one of the final passages of his diary. Hadesbeck writes: “ . I. . in one re- spect this war is no different than any other war . . . it is just as Vl- cious and brutal . . . A bullet. bomb or artillery shell kills just as dead as those of any other war.”