Dublin Opinion

Death comes in quantity from solved
Problems on maps, well ordered dispositions,
Angles of elevation and direction;

Comes innocent from tools children might
Love, retaining under pillows,
Innocently impales on any flesh.

And with flesh falls apart the mind
That trails thought from mind that cuts
Thought clearly for a waiting purpose.

Progress of poison in the nerves and
discipline’s collapse is halted.
Body awaits the tolerance of crows.

“The Tolerance of Crows”, Charlie Donnelly. 1937.

The ruins of the Spanish town Belchite lie about thirty minutes drive from Zaragoza. It was completely destroyed over the course of two battles during the Spanish Civil War in 1937/8. In 1937, in a move to take Zaragoza, the Republican forces attacked the Fascist stronghold of Purbrell Hill, outside Quinto. After three days of intense fighting, the Republicans took the hill and the Fascists fell back to Belchite. The task of taking the town fell to the XV International Brigade.

The town had been surrounded by Republican forces before the XV brigade arrived. Trenches had been dug. Finally, the order came to launch a direct attack on the town. A party of 29 men, including Charlie Regan from Dublin, ran up the hill but soon after were wounded and killed in a street that became known as “Dead Man’s Point.”

On 6 September, after days of vicious street-fighting, the town finally fell to the Republican forces.

The XV brigade was moved into reserve positions in the mountains north of Zaragoza. On 12 October the XV brigade moved out to join the attack on Fuentes de Ebro.

In February 1938 the Franco forces launched an attack on the now Republican-held Belchite. Among those who fought in its defence were the Irishmen Bob Doyle, Paddy Tighe, Johnny Lemon, Peter Brady, Maurice Levitas, who died in 2001, and William McChrystal, from Derry.

Bob Doyle recounts his experiences of Belchite in his book, Brigadista.

“We withdrew, in order, into the town as far as the church. At this point my machine gun had developed a fault and stopped working. I tossed it from me, throwing away the lock separately so it couldn’t be used. Fletcher, commander of my machine gun unit, got a bullet through the hand and I took his rifle. We were about fifty yards in front of the church. The enemy’s bullets were hitting the church wall behind us and exploding. They appeared to be dumdums.

The Fascist troops and tanks were getting near us. We were likely to be cut off and surrounded inside the town. I could only find a small stone for shelter, firing at the enemy who were on the hill in front. I stood up recklessly, no longer caring about my own safety, and started firing until the rifle got too hot. There were several brigadiers killed in this position. I couldn’t see the enemy on the move. The tanks were out of sight and we were ordered to withdraw.

Now we became involved in the last phase of the town’s defence. Faced by more than one hundred tanks, the only weapons we had were rifles of different calibre ammunition, twelve light machine guns, six heavy machine guns and our anti-tank battery.

The latter held out to the very end singing ‘hold Madrid for we are coming’, which paraphrased the famous trade union strike ballad of the thirties known to everyone. But we weren’t. After a couple of days the town fell to Italian and Moorish troops. Although we were surrounded we managed to escape having lost some very good comrades. From then on it was a continuous movement from one front to another.

In Belchite, as in most Spanish towns, the church offered us the best strategic position, the best place to make our last stand before withdrawing. Its strong fortifications were practically immune to destruction from military bombardment.

Not that the fascists didn’t try. Their artillery pounded us relentlessly and their tanks came within close range before we were ordered to withdraw to the heights on the outskirts of the town, where we were continually bombed by Stukas.

We then retired about two miles from Belchite to a small height where we could barely dig even a shallow trench as the hill was too stony. You could just get your body inside it. Just then planes came over, they appeared to be German Stuka dive-bombers, and flew around where we were occupying the height. I scraped myself in on my side to one side of the trench. The bombs were screaming as they were dropping them down on us, and machine-gunnings. I dodged them moving from one side to the other of the trench as the planes flew around us. We held this position for about two days. While I saw there I saw an ambulance being attacked by planes, as it went pass us towards Belchite. That stopped it.”

Harry Owens adds the following.

“Bob’s comrade, Carl Geiser, wrote of this battle – ‘Artillery barrages on a one-hundred-kilometre front began Franco’s drive to the sea to cut Republican Spain in two. Hundreds of aircraft bombed the front as 150,000 Fascist troops attacked 35,000 Republican defenders. They broke through in hours as defenders who stopped and fought were killed or captured. The enemy tanks were running on fuel supplied by Texaco…After the war Franco had the ruins of Belchite preserved, as a memorial to ‘the horrors inflicted by the Red hordes.”

“[My friend Miriam, who lives in Zaragoza, adds] Franco also declared that a new town be built next to the ruins by the political prisoners of the civil war. The new town’s identity as tribute to Franco is obvious in the street names, such as Plaza del Generalísimo (General’s Square), Calle de la Victoria (Victory Street). In order to construct the new Belchite a concentration camp was set up where over two thousand people subsisted in inhumane conditions while building work was carried out. Hundreds of people flocked to live there so that they could be near incarcerated family members. When the concentration camp was finally closed completion of the new town was assigned to private companies and many of the ex political prisoners chose to stay working for these companies as reinsertion in “normal” life was virtually impossible without extensive references.

In the midst of Belchite’s remaining residents are some of the original survivors. The overwhelming opinion held by these residents is that Belchite has been forgotten by Spain; the gradual erosion of old Belchite serves to wipe the collective memory of what really happened during the civil war. Repeated attempts to get funding in order to preserve what still remains of the original Belchite have been met with little enthusiasm by the government. This is something that infuriates the locals: the forgotten story of Belchite, hushed up today as it was in the concentration camp years, seems destined to fall into oblivion.”

In 2006, Bob Doyle gave a talk at the ATGWU hall on Abbey Street. He spoke about how people say to him that the Spanish Civil War was the last great noble fight, and how they wish they were alive at that time so they too could have taken part. Bob Doyle said that he has no time for this, as there are important fights taking place right now, such as against globalisation and the exploitation of the Third world. If anything, the fight today is more important than the one in which he took part seventy years ago in Spain. ¡No pasarán!

I filmed Bob Doyle speaking at the ATGWU.