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e Franco-Belge Battalion

The sons of France were among the first to come to the aid of the‘

Spanish people. They were at Irun, and in the earlier Aragon battles.’

They have been represented at one time or other in every one of the Interniattional Brigades. Courageous and trained, most with previous

military service, many with actual war-experience, they played a leading:

part in the various Brigades.

Belgian anti-Fascists were equally prompt to answer the call for help from the Spanish people. When in January military exigencies demand- ed the rapid formation of a Battalion, Belgians and French united in the-

a “Sixth of February Battalion”, which at its inception was approximately

600 men strong. , , k I \ £4 /5

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The Dimitrov Battalion

1

Among the volunteers who came to Spain to fight Fascism were men in a special category, that of the political refugees}; hunted from their countries by cru,el reaction. Such was the fate of the Croats, Germans, Blulgarians, Rumanlians, Italians, Hungarians, Austrians and Yugoslavs.

Spain was destined to become the crucible in which all the anti- Fascists scattered about the world were to come together to form one mass, moved by one force—-the force of the idea.

They knew that on the soil which the invaders had chosen as their meeting place, they would find those who had driven them from their homes, destroyed their families, imprisoned, tortured and assassinated them. They were fighting against those who had stolen their most elementary rights.

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At Albacete they merged with vorlunteers from Czecho—Slovakia and together they formed one Battalion, the Dimitrov Battalion. All the temperaments which on first impression seemed so different became one single organic whole, with but one thought —— to defeat Fascism.

More than twelve languages were spoken by the men of the Bat- talion, but they met on the ground of a single language. the language of the common struggle against a common enemy.

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