The Vengeance of Rome

FIFTY-SIX

Checking the compass strapped to my wrist just below the map-board, I kept a steady course, gradually climbing until I was safe from anything but the most precise long-range anti-aircraft fire. The plains of Aragon rolled away before me, rising towards a line of low hills. Already on the roads I saw columns of trucks and infantry, some cavalry even. I observed no other aircraft in this area but understood that German pilots had been briefed to look out for me and not shoot me down! My markings were clearly Nationalist. Following the railway line I found several trains, some waiting in sidings to move men and munitions up to the front, and used my radio to report that all was well. I was extremely impressed by Franco’s war effort. I had been told the Spanish of both sides were poorly armed, but I saw no sign of this. I was involved in a sophisticated modern war, not the confused conflict I had witnessed in Ukraine so many years before.

When I was convinced I had sufficient momentum and the prevailing wind was on my side, I switched off my engine to save precious fuel and let myself drift towards the enemy lines. I tested my radio again and was pleased to hear my own operator responding from the home base. I reported that I had seen no enemy yet.

Ahead were the hills and a series of shallow valleys. As I descended to get my bearings, a whole squadron of Heinkels roared past above me, dropping down upon a long earthworks behind which I now saw the Republican troops sheltering. Machine guns rattled. The ground spurted into life as bullets hit it and light artillery returned the aircrafts’ fire. This skirmish between lightly armed Spaniards and German aircraft had its inevitable result. The Republicans had no chance. They were being wiped out and, as tanks appeared, began to fall back, heading for the low hills behind them.

I hovered, knowing I would be unwise to follow, watching as the Reds were chased all the way up the shallow valley. I was witnessing a rout, and I felt almost sorry for the Republicans who were dropping in dozens. Eventually the survivors broke and fled in all directions. The planes turned and headed back towards their aerodrome, leaving me alone in the sudden silence of that cool, blue sky. I made radio contact and reported the incident. Now tanks and trucks were advancing, followed by the infantry. Aragon must soon fall to the Nationalists. Surely it would only be a matter of time before Barcelona was under siege.

Suddenly a voice broke into my headphones. In Spanish, I was being asked to investigate a low line of hills a little to my left where intelligence thought a division of the International Brigade was holding out. Obediently I gunned my engine. Turning my beautiful ship in a long slow dive, I felt like a huge shark making my predatory way through clear water. The little airscrew roaring behind me, my feet operating the stirrups which gave me extra lift, my hands directing me over the hills. I did not even hear the shots which struck my controls, puncturing the gasbag. How on earth had a few men with rifles managed to hit me? I cast around and saw some battlements. An old castle. A marksman hidden behind the stone walls?

The semi-rigid hull was compartmentalised. Only one section was leaking gas. I could easily get back to the aerodrome. I turned on my radio but failed to make contact. I was being jammed.

A real fear began to overcome me when I made to cut my engine off again and drift away from the enemy positions. The bar controlling the motor refused to respond. I tried everything I could to switch it off, but it still failed to answer my commands. The engine continued to roar, pushing me dangerously close to the line of hills. I was using far too much of my fuel. If I did not cut the engine quickly, I would be unable to make it back to my base under power. The best I could do was to try to gain height. Cautiously I crept up a few thousand feet where it was bitterly cold. The gas continued to escape from the hole the bullet had made, making the machine practically impossible to control.

I tried again to cut power, but the engine pounded on relentlessly. The airscrew at full throttle, I had soon overshot the hills, seeing no troops, but heading rapidly towards the coast. I was now far too deep into Republican territory, heading roughly in the direction of Tarragona and the sea, though I would run out of fuel long before I reached the Mediterranean. Any hope I might have of finding Majorca, say, and her friendly Italian-dominated skies, was baseless.

For an hour, keeping my height to avoid being shot at from below, I tried to stop the engine, but the whole thing remained jammed. Eventually the motor began to sputter and groan. My petrol was almost gone. Another few minutes and the propeller stopped. I was still airborne, but without any means of steering what had effectively become a small lopsided balloon. I was losing height as the left-hand wing, leaking hydrogen, continued to collapse.

I had no parachute, no means of unbuckling my harness without sending myself pitching straight towards the distant ground. Towns and villages sailed by below me. From my map and my compass I saw how prevailing winds would take me eventually to the sea. If I crashed into the Mediterranean at night I would have little chance of surviving but would sink with the remains of my ship. I could only hope that the wind changed again and took me back towards Zaragoza, but there seemed little chance of that.

Evening came. As it grew cooler, I began to drop slowly towards the ground. The sea was closer. The possibility of drowning was increasingly likely. I struggled in my suit, trying to discover a safe way of unhooking and unbuckling myself from the frame, but I could do nothing.

I remember a sense not so much of despair as of fatalism. I hardly saw any point in praying for survival. With my death Mrs Cornelius was free to marry again. My career as an airman was once again cut short by unfriendly Fate. God had no use for me as a flyer. I had cultivated the hubris of Icarus. I promised God that if He should save me now I would never try this experiment again. How many times now had I attempted solo flight only to be sent hurtling groundwards? Now there was even more chance of my dying. God had the common good in mind, not my personal glory! My cities would carry our children to a new security. My cities would fly. As I reconciled myself to my destiny, the fluttering wing collapsed, and I began rapidly to descend.

I was lucky. I came down at night unseen in a rocky field only a short distance from the water. Anticipating my descent, I grabbed tree limbs to slow my progress, using my flailing legs to fling my body backwards, employing the partially deflated gasbag to cushion my fall. I was badly bruised and scratched, but no bones were broken. I began hastily to unstrap myself until I was clear of the apparatus. Exhausted and demoralised, I had no idea of my bearings but knew I had to get away from the little airship as soon as possible. Its Nationalist markings identified me as one of Franco’s men. Aragon was notoriously communistic. The local peasants would tear me to pieces if they knew I had been involved in the attack on their defeated forces.

Luckily I still wore a civilian shirt and trousers, stout boots and a scarf around my neck. The rest of my suit had been built into the harness. I had no money, of course. No papers. I was cold and hungry. My water was used up. I could salvage nothing.

In spite of the pain I walked all that night, following country lanes, seeing no one, making out the occasional lights of a village or farmhouse but avoiding them. Judging myself to be safe, I finally risked sleeping in a ramshackle old stone barn.

I awoke to find myself being shaken by a small grinning boy asking me if I was separated from my brigade. The Twentieth had passed through in the night. He took me for a Republican soldier. Like me, others had lost their weapons fleeing before the Nationalists. Since he seemed sympathetic, I told him I was an American volunteer trying to rejoin my unit. Before I quite realised it, he had taken me by the hand and I was suddenly in a farmhouse full of desperate Reds. I knew panic only briefly before I had control of myself. This was, after all, familiar company. Not for the first time did I find myself in a civil war having to pretend to be a communist in order to survive.

That was how I came under the command of Major Johnny Banks, the Yorkshire trade unionist, and joined the march to Barcelona. For an enemy Banks had considerable wit and charm. His chief boast was that he brewed the best cup of tea on the entire Iberian Peninsula. He infused his men with exceptionally high morale, considering the fact that the brigade had only a few rounds of ammunition left and had been persistently strafed by Italian or German planes pushing home the advantages of the past few days. These battles had left the defenders in a pretty hopeless position. Luckily for me they had no notion of my politics. Major Banks assumed I was a Polish-American separated from his company who would rejoin it as soon as we made it back to Barcelona. The Bolshevist vocabulary was familiar to me, and I fell back into its use with an ease based on necessity.

Thus I had no trouble convincing these Reds of my credentials. I was dressed pretty much as they were. Having left all my German documents in Zaragoza and the others having been confiscated in Dachau, I had no papers, incriminating or otherwise, and I told them I had lost my rifle when I ran out of ammunition. To them I was a comrade and a hero. Indeed, I have rarely felt so thoroughly accepted in my life. Were it not for their politics, I would have had no ambiguity about joining them. My main concern was the same as theirs, to stay out of sight of the screaming German fighters and roaring German tanks.

Barcelona showed few signs of the recent Italian bombardments. The Germans were right to believe they had been quixotic and ineffectual. Billeted at various homes, I elected to remain with the Twentieth Kropotkin Brigade, originally an anarchist unit now commanded by a communist, with numbers made up from members of the International Labour Party and several Americans who belonged to the International Workers of the World, all English speakers. None of the other Americans were from California. I told them it was my home state. We would rest and rearm in Barcelona before returning to the front. Meanwhile we had some leave. At least I had time to think of some way to escape. My only hope was that Mrs Cornelius was not paying for my freedom. The Germans no doubt believed me killed when the plane went down.

Not entirely sure what to do, I found myself in Barcelona’s Ramblas district, where the food was cheap and the people very pleasant. This became my favourite place to spend time. I had to try to make friends who were not Reds and get out of Barcelona as soon as possible. My idea was to board a neutral ship calling at Palma de Majorca. There I was sure I would be able to join up with my Italian colleagues. But I dare not arouse suspicion. I had no way of knowing how Mrs Cornelius fared.

As I strolled down a wide avenue one morning, looking at secondhand books on the stalls set in the middle of the streets, I was surprised to hear the familiar wheezing out-of-tune melody of a barrel organ and, to my astonishment, within a few moments was reunited once again with my old friend, the delighted Signor Frau, and his lovely daughter Heckie, my own sweet Zoyea. Though glad to see me, Zoyea had a rather gloomy, self-contained air, as she danced for the Catalan crowd. Signor Frau’s attitude, however, was celebratory.

‘My dear friend. I have not seen you since —’

Hastily I cautioned him to silence on that subject. I knew he had left Munich, but how had he come here from Madrid? He grew sad. He had been caught up in the fighting there when travelling outside the city. They had started from Munich with three horses. Two had pulled the family wagon. The other drew the barrel organ. This horse was ridden by his son. A Falangist commander in a small village they had passed through decided to requisition the riding horse. Against his father’s wishes the boy resisted, lost his temper with the soldier and was shot. The horse was taken.

After giving his son a Christian burial, Frau had determined to get to Republican territory where he assumed he would be safer. He now feared for his daughter’s virtue. Things were hardly any better here. When I told him that I was homeless he demanded I come back with him to their wagon. Certain we would meet again, he had kept my plans and my pistols for me. They had a spare bed in the wagon. He did not have to say that the bed had belonged to his dead son. Frau longed to hear my story. I was forced to modify a little, to spare his feelings. I informed him I had been flying for the Republicans when my plane had been shot down. Everything else I told him was as it happened.

But now, I said, I had no wish to go on fighting. I wondered if I could get home from Majorca, but I simply had no idea how to make the ten-hour voyage to Palma. At this Frau began to laugh disbelievingly. He himself had plans to try to join the Italians in Majorca and from there hoped to get a ship to Genoa. Italy was officially neutral and ordinary freighters still plied back and forth. He was in the process of selling his barrel organ but, as I had heard, it had developed a wheeze again. If I could help him repair it so that he could get a better price for it, I was assured a place in the boat he intended to buy. A little sailing vessel was his at very low cost. It would take us to the island in about a day.