Major George Montague Nathan 

By Hugh Slater 

George Montague Nathan, Chief of Operations of the XV Interna- 
tional Brigade, with his smart apparel, pipe and clipped moustache, a 
complete officer. It is characteristic of George Nathan that he looked most 
conspicuous, most cool and even arrogant under fire. His personal in- 
trepidity and defiant manner in the most difficult and dangerous cir- 
cumstances was not mere bravado, but a quite conscious military mea- 
sure. 
With untrained and semi-trained troops it is often necessary for the 
leaders to behave under fire in a way which would be considered fool- 
hardy and therefore incorrect in a trained army. George Nathan, 
although he had been on officer in the British army, understood extraor- 
dinarily well how to work effectively with the unskilled and badly ar- 
med troops whom he commanded in the early days of the war in Spain. 
I met Nathan on the Cordova front the day after Fox, who had gone 
with him as Political Commissar, was killed. The British Company 
had had a gruelling time. His pipe was pointed more than usually acu- 
tely upwards. He spoke of Fox with tremendous enthusiasm, but I 
felt that the loss of his Political Commissar had upset him more than 
he intended to admit. 
I met him many times later on various fronts, always energetic, full 
of amusing gossip, and enjoying the fighting immensely. One evening 
in the middle of the Brunete offensive I was plodding up under shell-fire 
when I saw under a shady tree a table neatly laid with a clean check 
table-cloth and an elegant person sitting smoking in an armchair. Shells 
were falling within not so very many yards of him. Naturally and inevi- 
tably it was Nathan. Our commissariat department had been working 
atrociously. The meal I was invited to, combined with Nathan’s amu- 
singly egotistical conversation was very reviving. Somehow it was al- 
most impossible to be frightened when Major George Nathan was around. 
He was killed, ironically enough, in the recent Brunete offensive 
some kilometres behind the lines the evening he had organised very 
successfully the withdrawal of the Brigade to rest. We were among 

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