Vince nodded and climbed into the cab of the lead truck, Florencia coming to join Cal as they disappeared in a cloud of dust. What was cheering was the way the road was lined with the men alongside whom they had fought — communists apart — not ribbing them now, but all smiling and yelling encouragement, with their right hands raised, their fists tight in salute.
It was impossible to miss the increasingly febrile atmosphere in the Republican lines; necessity made comrades of the various factions only up to a point. This was especially apparent at the point where the CNT and POUM sectors met that of the communists, now reinforced so that Drecker had under his command a couple of hundred men.
Every time the cadres were subjected to lectures on dialectic materialism and other Marxist nostrums, the anarchist militiamen would gather to jeer, loud enough to make difficult what those lecturing were trying to impart, and no one in authority sought to interfere.
Had he been in command, Cal would have stopped it and quickly, not in support of communism but with the aim of improving the fighting ability of the whole; if the two factions went into action they would not support one another, hardly a sound military policy. Yet even as he registered the mutual dislike, he did not pick up on the increasing tensions behind it, and if it had not been for Florencia, he would have had no idea what was really going on.
When she cursed the Partido Comunista de Espana he took it as just her usual railing against her political rivals. Certainly, he recorded her fears that they were poaching members from the CNT, as well as her assertion that some hypocrites were joining the PCE as a way of ensuring they were not seen as class enemies, but it did not penetrate deeply and he knew the CNT to be just as guilty when it came to recruitment; it was a game they all played.
The mutual antagonism deepened seriously when Vince’s truck drivers returned with the news that the first Soviet ships had arrived, bringing in fresh arms, including tanks and aircraft. The information lifted everyone’s spirits until it was clear neither of those were going to be seen in Aragon; they were sent straight to bolster the defence of Madrid, in essence a sound policy given that was where the danger to the Republic was most severe.
Yet as another set of trucks arrived, it was very soon obvious that the drivers were communists and what they carried was a cargo exclusively for Drecker’s cadres, who received weapons of a quality and modernity that surpassed that with which they had been supplied before, just as it was clear none of these were being passed to anyone else. There was no attempt at discretion, obvious as the communists paraded to show off their equipment.
Drecker and his squad leaders carried PPD-40 machine pistols, which as far as Cal was aware — and it was his business to know these things — had only recently been supplied to the forces of the Soviet Interior Ministry. Enough Degtyarov light machine guns had been supplied to set up gun teams within every platoon-sized section, while Drecker’s command, now more than company strength, also had possession of two 50 mm mortars.
‘These weapons, mon ami,’ Juan Luis Laporta asked, as they were paraded under the eyes of their supposed anarchist comrades-in-arms. ‘Are they any good?’
On home turf, Cal rattled off their capabilities, ranges and rates of fire, summing it up thus: ‘Let’s put it this way, Juan Luis, if you can get hold of any, do so.’
‘We cannot,’ Laporta replied, his face showing both regret and, under that, a hint of fury. ‘And believe me, I have tried.’
* * *
It took several days to get to Albacete, a medium-sized town on the road from Valencia to Madrid, and what Cal found there was less than impressive, though in fairness he knew that to criticise was far from wholly just; the Spanish Republic had very few of the systems required to deal with an influx of volunteers, a fact much exacerbated by the nature of the recruits, who had come from all over the continent of Europe.
The sheer number of spoken languages would have defeated even the best-intentioned and most professional army command, while the quality of those who had come to the aid of the cause was so variable as to impose even more strain, many having near-starved to get this far. The only way to organise such mayhem was by nationality, easier with the large French contingent, to whom could be added the Belgians, as well as Germans who had fled over the Rhine from Hitler.
The British were bolstered by volunteers from the various ex-colonies, not that there was much love lost, but that looked like comradeship compared to the Italians and Austrians, while the Russians and Ukrainians — in the main, exiles from Soviet Russia looking for a way home by proving their communist credentials — seemed more likely to turn their weapons on each other than the enemy.
That was if they could first of all find a gun that fired, then locate the ammunition it required to function; the armament was a mess of conflicting patterns and differing calibres, many from well before the Great War, and the bullets were not sorted, even by box — it was necessary to rummage and select the right projectile for the weapon with which you had been issued.
Cal Jardine was not impressed enough to offer his own services, especially given the command was held by an internationally famous communist called Andre Marty, the man who claimed to have been instrumental in the mutiny of the French Black Seas Fleet in 1919. He was a member, too, of the Communist International, run from Moscow and dedicated to the spread of Marxism-Leninism.
Whatever else he was, Marty was no soldier, which underlined the nature of the brigades; even if he had experienced commanders at unit level, they too seemed to be communists, so the whole would be driven by ideology, not sound military principles, and that was not something he could be part of.
He hung around long enough to get his lads equipped with a combination of rifles and bullets that would at least mean that, should they get into a fight, they could function, and showed them how to scrounge the things they needed — uniforms, rations and some grenades — well aware that there was disappointment he would not be leading them into the coming battle.
‘You cannae be persuaded tae stay, Mr Jardine?’ asked Broxburn Jock, who had assumed the leadership of the dozen brigaders.
Cal shook his head. ‘No, I’ll be more use in Aragon, I think, trying to sort out some of those militias.’
That was a lie and there was no doubt that, in the young Scotsman’s face, he knew it to be so. It had been natural in the few days Cal had been in Albacete that he and his boys should gravitate towards their fellow countrymen, just as it was hardly surprising that many, though not all, were card-carrying members of the British Communist Party or at the very least to the far left of Labour.
In the main, when they were workers, miners, dockers and factory men from the devastated industrial areas of the UK, that was understandable; even if he did not share their politics, he could appreciate the reasons for their allegiance to the cause. Had he shared their life — surrounded by poverty, put upon by rapacious employers, or on the dole, as well as being citizens of an indifferent state — he might also have shared their views.
It was the university and middle-class types that got up Cal’s nose, too many of them from comfortable backgrounds, romantics with no grasp whatsoever of the lives of the poor and certainly not a clue about the nature of life in Soviet Russia, which, when he talked with them, was something they saw through spectacles that were more blacked out than rose-tinted.
A gentle hint that life might not be so sweet east of Poland, that it might be as bad as Nazi Germany, led to a tirade of abuse, well argued and articulate, but utterly wrong, this before he was treated to a quasi-religious attempt to point out that the way he lived his life was to fly in the face of what they called ‘historical determinism’; only good manners inculcated into him from birth stopped him from telling these intellectual idiots to get stuffed.