Massacre in A Cemetery
Outburst of Reds Bloodlust
Hundreds of Soldiers Nauseated
Murders Work in Secret Now

Reverting to the Plaza de Toro at Albacete. This magnificent arena may have the advantage of providing the bloodthirsty citizens of Albacete with amusement, but when we were forced to eat the bulls, and in the Bull Ring, the place became revolting.

Underneath and behind the concrete stands and directly facing the latrines, long tables were stretched, flanked by crude benches. This was the mess hall, called upon to feed over a thousand or more troops daily. It was a shocking fiasco. Organisation was so infantile that no proper preparation was ever made to feed the tens of thousands of troops passing through the town.

A couple of days would have sufficed to build fireplaces and ovens. Instead, all food was cooked in huge boilers over a wood fire burning on the ground. As the tables could only accommodate about four hundred at a sitting, getting to the Bull Ring late was a tragedy. It was not uncommon to wait two hours to consume a meal in ten minutes.

First Real Taste of War

Breakfast consisted of black coffee and dry bread. Dinner: Beans stewed in rancid olive oil, a piece of boiled bull and a tin mug of red wine. Supper was much the same as dinner.

At 8 p.m. there was a complete blackout of the town as a protection against air raiders. Late diners gulped their beans and bull in the dark. Luckily the keen invigorating air of the central Spanish plateau bred vigorous appetites, and personally as the food

'We Are Going to The Cemetery'

I noticed the direction we were heading. I knew of the murder in the barber's shop. I had seen the trucks drive off and I felt our destination was similar to where they went.

'We are going to the cemetery, I imagine,' I said. But as none of the column bore arms I did not grasp the real meaning of our mission.

An hour's march brought us to the cemetery gates. As in all Spanish cemeteries today, sentries were posted all around. We passed through into the beautifully kept central walk and soon arrived at the further wall. We halted in marching alignment, three deep, facing inwards.

'About turn!' we turned about----

A line of Bleeding Corpses

A ghastly spectacle was revealed. At the base of the whitewashed wall on the ground lay a line of bleeding corpses. Twenty metres long was that line. The bodies lay singly or crossed., one above the other. Pale hands and faces, bloodstained, shattered, made vivid splashes in the sombre grisly line.

I felt horribly sick. The deep trench between us and the wall yawned gaping. To left and right were mounds. What they covered was grimly portrayed lying under the wall.

Above a cloudless blue sky looked down pure and serene: little birds were pecking for twigs not a metres length away from the body nearest to me.

I had witnessed executions in China; saw firing squads during the World War in East Africa, but never anything so wanton as this.

'Tomorrow Fifteen More Will Be Shot'

It seemed there was no limit to the accumulation of horrors. Taking advantage of the gruesome moment, an oily Hungarian Jew, a political group leader, jumped upon one of the mounds. 'Comrades,' he cried, 'There lie the enemies of the proletariat. This is the only answer to Fascism. Death to the traitors.'

He held forth on the slavery of the working classes, spoke of the broad highway of Communism leading upwards.

The impious swine waved his hand skywards.

I refused to listen to such muck and left with hundreds more who had immediately fallen out of the line after turning about. 'Tomorrow fifteen more will be shot.' We heard this bandied around as we left. Thirty five workers murdered to build up Socialism. A good day's work.

Executions Carried Out in Secret

I might explain that in Albacete the Policia area armed with Italian big game hunting rifles, double the calibre of an ordinary service rifle. The bullet fired is nothing short of a small projectile, and inflicts an awful wound, the rough base spreading fanwise and serrated on leaving the gun barrel.

A closing note. At present no one is allowed admittance into a graveyard except those directly interring a body. Executions are carried out in secret by a trusted and hardy group well primed - secrecy robs them of nothing of their terror. The following day fifteen 'Fascists' were executed according to plan.

Three days after the execution in the cemetery, at least at night, we had an air raid. A solitary bomber flew over the city bent on bombing the Government hangers. He dropped a couple of bombs and retreated, chased by three Red 'planes, firing bullets of machine gun fire. It was thrilling to watch, and spoke highly of the nerve of the sole aviator to venture so far over enemy territory. The bombs dropped out on a saffron field, making two small craters.

Disgusted With The Campaign

The following day I was summoned to Headquarters and told to prepare to leave for Madrid that night. At last I was to proceed to the capital, and in doing so, pass mighty close to the firing line. By this time I was utterly disgusted with the campaign, but determined to stick it out until I had first-hand experience at the front.

For weeks columns of the brigade had been leaving for the Front line, but still the commander of the Brigade, Kleber, remained in Albacete, riding round on the proverbial white horse. He was a Russo-German, speaking both these languages perfectly.

Russian aviators and engineers were now making their appearance in connection with deliveries of trucks and 'planes., but no Soviet citizens or soldiers made an appearance. There was no reason why they should. The Government had ore man power than they could cope with economically. It amused me to watch the thousands of young men of military age who were more mentally and physically fit than the flotsam and jetsam of the International Brigade.

Orders to Proceed to Madrid

The solution to this seeming paradox is simple enough. France gets rid of an embarrassing section of her population. Spain will see that they are exterminated in the campaign, thus solving the problem of their absorption if the Government wins. The Brigade has been formulated to act as the spearhead of attack wherever hey were in action. This is clear to almost everyone with the possible exception of the poor political refugees who imagine a land of ml and honey to exploit when they end their victorious war.

Even if they win, I cannot see Trotsky, Stalin, Blum and the Freemasons and, the most important factor of all, the Spanish people, forming a Coalition Government to rule a land of milk and honey.

On my reporting to Headquarters that night ready to move, I got the surprising order to proceed to Madrid, acting on the way as a guard of an ammunition convoy bound to the front en route Madrid.