The infantry were first checked by that, then driven into a disordered retreat, many throwing down their weapons – those, and this was risible in the midst of a bloody battle, to be embraced by folk who had been intent on killing them a few seconds before, while another comrade snatched up their weapon and turned it on their fellows.
No such leniency was afforded the Falange blueshirts, exposed by the break-up of the rankers who had shielded them. It had to be admitted they sought no mercy, fighting with as much fervour as those they faced, killing many, but eventually either forced to retreat or die. The Spanish officers were glad of their horses, which gave them the speed to escape certain slaughter, and if it shamed them to abandon their men, there was little evidence of it.
Those that did stay loyal to their commanders retreated back towards the barrack gate slowly, and in many cases bravely and in reasonable order, downing their opponents as they went, while the more intelligent had secured and withdrawn the carts carrying the machine guns and mortars.
From being dotted with bodies the plaza was now full of the wounded and the slain, while before the barrack gates they lay in a mass, the price of facing bayonets with nothing but naked flesh and empty weapons, as well as the sustained fire of those not willing to surrender, men who knew how to reload on the move.
‘You must come, you are needed elsewhere.’
Florencia, having received the message from a runner, had been required to tug hard at his sleeve to get his attention – with so many weapons being discharged the air was full of noise, but there was another reason he was concentrating; from this vantage point Cal could see that a pair of machine guns were being set up on the walls of the barracks on either side of the gates – there had to be a proper parapet there – and they would sweep the plaza and make it a killing zone as deadly as any wartime no man’s land.
‘Vince,’ he shouted, shrugging her off.
Carrying his rifle, Vince was with him in seconds, taking the proffered binoculars, through which it took only a couple more for him to see the problem. Without another word both men set themselves to steady their aim, taking as a target one machine gun each. There was no blasting off, it was one round at a time, with tiny adjustments made for a fresh aim as stone chips began to fly around the gunners, who were just getting ready to fire.
The reaction was immediate; the weapons swung to aim at them, not an easy shot, but given the rate of fire and the range of under a thousand yards, potentially deadly. Vince rolled behind a chimney, Cal had to grab a half-standing Florencia and drag her down as the air cracked with passing shot. Now it was their turn to be splattered with dislodged stone as, crouched down, they quickly reloaded, shouting for others to be ready to join them, waiting for the belt of both machine guns to run through.
A trained man can change an ammunition belt in under half a minute, but that is an eternity if you are faced with accurate and quick rifle fire. If the Spaniards had been sensible they would have employed one machine gun at a time so as not to be caught exposed, but, smarting from the drubbing they had just received, they had run the belts right through and were cack-handed in replacing them, there being a very strong possibility that it was not the usual gunners manning the weapons, indeed a couple seemed to be blueshirts.
They got five rounds rapid from two Mausers, then more from the loaded weapons handed to Vince and Cal by the athletes, which first disrupted the reloading, then drove them away from the weapons in a continuous hail of bullets, two of them clearly taking lead and spinning away, certainly wounded, possibly on the way to being dead.
Whatever else happened, the guns had not been used on the crowds in the plaza. They were now thinning as their leaders exercised late control and sought to get them under cover, safe from the remains of those they had chased, now behind stout walls, closed gates and regrouping.
‘Vince, you stay here and keep those bastards honest.’
‘We’ll need more ammo, guv.’
‘I’ll get it sent up.’
‘See if any bugger has a sniper rifle too,’ Vince croaked. ‘In fact, a proper sniper would be ace.’
Cal called to the youngsters, not easy with Florencia seeking to drag him away again. ‘Stay with him and make sure he has a loaded rifle at all times. Anything else, Vince?’
‘Order me up a pint of draught bitter, guv, I’m sick of bleedin’ wine.’
It was a relief to get off the roof – the temperature was now in the nineties – and into the shade of the stairway; only then did Cal realise how dry was his own throat, but a mouth turning to something like leather is the first thing that happens in combat and he was quick to put his whole head under a landing tap.
Once he reached the doorway to the plaza, he was wise enough to stop and have a good look before proceeding, though he had to drag Florencia back from just exposing herself; the gates and walls of the barracks were in range and plain sight.
‘Why worry? They are beaten.’
‘They are behind stone walls, the best soldiers have survived and you don’t take chances, ever.’ The air expelled from her heaving chest was immediate and derogatory, as was his anger, manifested in him grabbing and shaking her. ‘Why is it all you Spaniards want to martyr yourselves? I’m sick of it. Now, do as I do or as I say, or go and find someone else to bury you.’
‘Querido.’
The Spanish word for ‘darling’ he knew only too well; it was the one Florencia always employed when patently in the wrong and always expressed with warmth. She then smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek, before walking right out of the door and into the exposed plaza without looking.
The battle, as recounted later in all its confusion, soon became fluid and not always decisive; the army had a plan to seize strategic buildings as well as dominate the streets and wide avenues, before taking control of the city centre, and that made things harder as it began to take proper shape.
While they succeeded in some of the former – they held the captain general’s headquarters and the area surrounding it – the latter was proving difficult and that led to them being trapped in places like the main telephone exchange, previously occupied and closed down by the government. Unbeknown to Cal, they were also cooped up in some of the big luxury hotels, like the Ritz and the nearby Colón.
Everywhere he went, trailing Juan Luis Laporta, loudspeakers were blaring out news of the progress of the battle, or relaying messages for those not already engaged in a fight where to find one. They rushed from position to position, in one of which Cal witnessed a sight that was doubly cheering, the scattering of the Santiago Cavalry Regiment, one of the elite mounted units of Spain, by the men of the POUM, armed workers all shouting out, he was told, in Catalan and in shades of 1917, that it was time to kill the Cossacks.
At another barricade, the newspaper workers – printers, typesetters, electricians and even some journalists, members of the UGT – had driven out of their buildings the lorries carrying the huge rolls of newsprint required to produce the paper and set them up across a wide boulevard, creating a defence so solid it was impervious even to artillery fire. The workers had another weapon: a fellow feeling for those soldiers reluctant in their efforts, fighting from fear of their officers, not from conviction.
If they could get to them, and they often did, brave women especially, persuading men from their own social class to down their weapons and join the Republican cause was not only successful, it was often decisive. It one case a group of anarchists even persuaded the artillerymen in charge of two 75 mm Schneider cannon to turn their fire on their own comrades.
Finally the commanders of the Civil Guard, no doubt with an eye on the way matters were progressing, threw in their lot with the workers, emerging from their barracks to parade down the wide avenue of Las Ramblas, before a cheering crowd, as well as Lluís Companys, the head of the regional Catalan government, before proceeding to become engaged in the actual fighting.