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BRUNETE EN LA MEMORIA |
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BATALLA DE
BRUNETE - GUERRA CIVIL ESPAÑOLA - Julio 1937 |
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Ultima
Revisión: 01/03/2011 |
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"SPANSKA FRONTMINNEN” Sixten Olsson Arbetarkulturs Förlag |
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Brunete "Well boys, now we will be there soon. And I can assure you,
that we will soon have use for our offensive spirit. Now we are to strike and
see how that will be!" The terrain is bushy with a few small squat trees, so we have a hard
time covering the cars and artillery pieces in a way that follows the
landscape. Any order of where we shall strike has not reached us yet and
while we wait for that we squeeze ourselves down into a narrow ditch and
start our breakfast. Not far away from us there is febrile activity with
a lot of observation apparatus, an early morning battery sends hissing arches
of sound over our heads and right below us in the glen the crew brings
forwards lots of threatening sugar cones to their freshly planted field
artillery. About nine the awaited order arrives and we crawl up to the front
seats for today’s show. Below us is a huge, open field and out in the middle
of it a small town glitters with morning sleepiness towards us. The idea is,
that we will eat our dinners in that town, but the lunch on the way
there will surely be of the hard boiled kind judging by the methodic
precision by which the chatterboxes(1) over there draw thin lines of dust along every little ditch on the
field and with what humming interest they check every small hollow on the
surface of the ground. A couple of our tanks roll down on to the floor to check whether the
fascists have any artillery. Oh yes they have, and planes too. The two
vehicles draw such a noisy attention to themselves that they withdraw full of
embarrassment beyond the nearest rocks while the shells loose themselves in
the bushes and the pilots seek home in humming anger. We have a great view over today’s negotiations. The artillery are waving
their black greetings over the town looking for those who live by the
machineguns, one or two are discovered too, but our sadly so worn out barrels
make it hard for the aimers, to really prove their competence. The one long,
grey line of infantry after the other is stopped and wavers, armored cars
walk about like hungry hippopotami, a squadron of cavalry makes lightning
fast circus acts a way into the field but sees the futility in trying to
press forwards and disappears, some bombers and fighter planes work on the
roofs of the houses time and time again, but not until dusk have our troops
worked their way so far forwards as to have removed all the fascists doubts
about the benefits of moving somewhere else. During the the bombardment of the town from 400 metres we have in the
end found out about our weapons excellence(2) and Rekylens 100% ability to use it. A machinegun nest in a roof
window is lost as soon as we could locate it along with most of the roof. As we march through the city’s main street next morning we have
orders to secure a bridge, which is said to be about 300 metres outside on
the other side. But by one of the outer houses the street splits in two
directions, which is why I ask the comrades to stay and wait while I check
which of the two roads we are to take. On the way back I see that a lot of
people are running towards the house outside which the crew is waiting
and once I have gotten there Conny tells me what has happened. Long Poul and
a Spaniard had gone into the house to find something to drink but had been
received with gunshots in a most unusual manner. The Spaniard threw in a hand
grenade and shouted after it, that there would be more to come if they would
not behave in there. This must have convinced them, as a fascist captain and
12 men came out, in tatters and good looking (3) . Only a Moroccan who
happened to be too close, has moved home to Allah’s lap - all the rest have
only minor wounds. Strangely enough it turns out that all the survivors are
Spaniards, which means that our Spanish comrades heap a whole flood of
national anger at the prisoners betrayal of their country. For a few minutes
the prospects look grim for the unhappy Falangists, but in a while the anger
abates a bit and after being treated for their injuries the prisoners are
sent to battalion staff with a safe escort. At noontime we are sent to a forest, which, from what we are
told, still has the uncomfortable possibility of housing enemies as the
cavalry has not had time to clear it totally. But, we are not disturbed all
afternoon and before dusk comes a lot of infantry and machineguns are posted
everywhere in our surroundings. We do not work hard on digging in, as already
next morning our troops are to go across the small river or brook, which
still runs through no man’s land. After the evening meal Conny and I go down
to the river to get water and bathe. It is fresh and nice and a bit exciting
but no visible danger shows up until we are on our way back, when at least a
dozen guards appear to think that we are fascists and decide to want to shoot
at us. Naturally it turns out that our battery has been deployed too
narrowly and that we have to move just as the fun is about to start and then
in a terrible hurry. But in the new position, on the outer end of a wedge
shaped hill Rekylen manages to place direct hits in two machine gun nests
that are hampering the infantry’s advance. The third nest we do not have the
time to locate before the infantry themselves find it and capture all its
crew. It is really well done by them and the brigade commander(4), who has posted himself near us with his
binoculars, divides his compliments between the boys down there and us, where
after we can return to the previous position to rest for the remainder of the
day to wait for further orders. Since we have advanced yet a few kilometres and been ordered further
down the left flank it becomes a war of positions. The fascists have gotten
enormous reinforcements and are obviously not planning to run any further.
Powerful bomb squadrons buzz all day over us and do not limit themselves to
just buzzing. Brunete, Villanueva del Pardillo, Villanueva de Canada, the
first line and the valley is bombarded without pause. The opponents obviously
know the terrain very well and systematically cover every lower ground with
haubitz shells. Now we truly get our presents back, and with interest.
According to intelligence no less than 40 batteries take care of our musical
entertainment and after having witnessed how insanely the landscape is
chopped to pieces I do not think it was exaggerated. Despite the incredible
number of unexploded shells one can hardly anywhere walk 20 metres without
falling into a 1.5 metre deep hole. But the line holds on bravely despite the
incredible strain and not until the commanders discover, that it costs about
double as much as one gains to stay there, it is decided that we shall
withdraw behind the river. This has dried out, by the way, with the exception of two ponds far
from each other. The entire area and especially the valley has been shrouded
in a terrible stench of rotting bodies and fermenting horse cadavers. The
Fascists have used much of it as a burial ground, but the diggers have done
their work so badly, that the rats without much trouble have opened the
graves and this results in a far from pleasant odour. Lieutenant Wagner has been wounded by a bullet straight through his
soft underbelly and Barany has taken command until Brigade Staff can replace him.
If it was up to us he could keep the command and we are certain that brigade
staff will listen to our opinions. While I am down by his cannon to discuss
the change of position at dusk the Fascists attack vigorously and our line to
the left wavers. The Battalion commander of Tschapajeff, the Swiss Otto
Brunner, runs around up by the houses, wild by anger of the necessity of
drawing back, even if it about a tiny fraction of the terrain we have taken.
Every man, no matter what service he is in, telephone operators, cooks,
couriers and ordonnances he sends off to aid the hard pressed flank men.
Barany is working hard at firing shells at the storming Fascists so I have to
wait a moment. Brunner sees me "What are you doing here? Have you nothing to
do? Get a rifle and get going!" "No." Brunners face grimaces and he makes a threatening gesture towards his
revolver; "Right, so that is how it is. But, we use no no-goods on this
side" he declares through clenched teeth. "Get going
before..." "Don’t speak rubbish" I break him off sharply. "I need
half a minute with my appointed battery commander to discuss a change of
position and as far as I know you have no command over the infantry cannons,
do you?" "No, naturally not, but..." "Well then, do not stick your nose in what is not your
business!" The battalion commander glowers at my face for a few seconds, then
laughs unexpectedly and offers me a cigarette. "Bueno" he dryly
comments and then once again leaps onto the mound to have a look at the
position. What he does is not just foolhardy - it is moronic. He can see just
as well without bidding his large body as a target for tight clusters of
bullets, which whine across the trenches without pause, but this otherwise so
immaculately wise officer has been taken with such a crazy battle rage, which
has him forget every sensible thought. A splattering bullet strikes straight
through his shoulder and colours his entire shirt red across the back almost
without him appearing to notice it. "Get down man!" a kitchen boy
from the destroyed food truck shouts... Yet two bullets drill their way
through the commander’s breast and arm and makes him shake a threatening fist
at the fascist lines, howling with rage. But not until he also has gotten a
couple of salvos in the legs does he calm down so much that the medics can
take him to the ambulance. Barany looks up for a moment from his cannon and shows me a map.
"I think it is best that you take position by the hill down by the
river, then we are at least certain to manage the gun even if you do not have
a great field of fire there. If they are to come too close while you are
still up there you cannot manage to get down the road. You will see a
cross with a ring around on the map... Try to crawl there if you
can"" "They can follow us with artillery all that way." "Yes I know. But it is the only way out. You will have to avoid
them as hell and hope for luck(5)." We get away in a way that really covers the term. The first hundred
metres are achieved while the fascists are recovering from their surprise,
but then a whole host of unpleasantness happens, which I do not want to
experience again. Before and behind, to the right and to the left the shells
throw up their 20 metre high black fountains of the soft earth. Happily it is
downhill and happily our daring makes the Fascist officer so nervous that he
fires less accurately than normally. We manage to get down to the
aforementioned hill, throw ourselves down behind a thick stone wall and
breathe so violently as only those who are entitled to can. Sigge and Poul
have worn out their alpargatas because of the great hurry and their trousers
motivate all sorts of indecent comments. But, our mood is great and is not
the least dampened by the three grapeshot the fascists use to air their
grievances at having missed us. Now the most dangerous part is done, but a no less important part is
still to do. We must bring here at least a part of the ammunition that is
left up there. If we cannot manage to get it all down there is also the
possibility to bring the rest down while it is dark, but we need at least 20
shells and some antitank rounds immediately. The Scandinavians are tired and run down after having hauled wounded
around all day plus this last effort, but I get two newly arrived Spaniards
with me. They have specifically asked to be allowed to come to us, both are
young communists and appear to be great lads, one has five years experience
as artilleryman in the old army and we would be able to demand much from
them... bueno, I think they will do! After breathing for another 5 minutes we
get going. As we are almost half way some fighter planes dive down at us. No
trees are nearby so nothing is possible but to throw oneself right down, hide
face and hands and hope for luck. The angry buzzing is not strengthened by
any more machine gun sounds and after a few seconds it diminishes as the
machines go uphill. I throw a hasty look at the two Spaniards. Perfect
discipline! None of them moves as much as a fin, despite the fact that they
have landed in the middle of the road and should feel quite visible against
the light gravel. But on the other side of the nearest hills they must have been more
nervous and have been discovered. Up and down the damned tin birds go in
steep rises and dives - the mitrallieuses throw terrible streams of death
into the valleys.... When we reach the old position there is a horror of destruction that
more than anything makes us happy that we managed to get out in time. The
shell craters are so close that it is a true miracle that the ammunition has
made it, our gun pit has been expanded to its double size by a direct hit,
the tree by my observation post has been chopped off by the roots and we find
its crown to be a great hideout while some fighter planes again come to look
where we might have gone. In a while it does calm down and we could start going back with ten
shells each in a blanket across the back. I have recommended at least thirty
metres between us so as not to lure the machineguns into activity, now that
it is harder to hide, and I myself walk in the middle. But the Fascist
battery commander still has not forgiven the fact that we got away from him
an hour ago and honour us with the truly unusual salute of a series of
shells. We naturally could not believe that it was us they shot at - three
men - until a nasty thing punches a hole in the road 20 metres in front of
me.... "Oh my god", I think holding my breath, "Now that
terrific lad must have been sent straight to hell!" The next explosion
is about as far behind... "Satan.... Did the other fellow go the same
way?" Perhaps the next one would hit me? No, it took a little house
instead by the roadside and then there was no house anymore. I ran on so the
blanket with the shells was nearly horizontal in the air.... But after a few minutes we all gathered down by the gun. The thing
was, that while the first one had been moving faster because of nervousness
the other one had hung back because of fatigue and that saved them both.... During the night a very longed for order arrives: Pull back to
rest! Give my regards to home "So, how was it at Brunete? The 11th always finds the hottest
spots and as the black ones even got a hole in you it must have been
something extraordinary. " Liljegren has to think to find the most adequate expressions.
"Well it was hot enough." he admits hesitantly, "but my main
memory from there is really the damned stench. Absolutely a foretaste of
hells most modern gas landscape. We had replaced the farmers on the Zaragossa front so that they could
be able to go home and tend to their crops and a couple of weeks later we
were parked in an oasis near a stream about two kilometres from I was on guard the night when the Brunete offensive was started. Nine
men beside each other the troops marched forwards, for the first time we got
to see the impressive sight of heavy tanks and three heavy haubitzers opened
their mouths in a way, that definitely showed that they had worked hard the
last decades, but still made us happy with their steady vehicles. We had counted on being in that offensive from the start, but all we
heard was a lot of reports about our troop’s victories. Carload after carload of wounded and prisoners whizzed past and both
the Spaniards and the rest of us stamped around impatiently waiting for the
order to move in. In the end we finally got away and drove past you between Pardillo
and Brunete. Apparently you had stopped there waiting for orders and I
especially remember Sigges crazy howls of joy at seeing all the old friends. At the start there was no real action for us, just a lot of moving
around, but finally we had pointed out to us which hill we would inhabit. The
idea was really that we were to make a sort of observation post there in
front of the Scandinavian company. The famous "corpse river"
separated us, and the fascists use of the terrain made it really difficult to
get food and drink forwards to us and digging the first hint of a position up
on the hill was quite an adventure. We drew lots about who was to start. A Dane called Brau drew the lot,
but he immediately got a bullet straight through his body, but he had managed
to throw up some small cover when me and Sørensen pulled him away... Brau did not want to be carried away, "One thing is that I will not
survive this anyway", he stated calmly, "and secondly you must
hurry with this job!" As soon as the worst of the work had been done and the group had a
somewhat decent protection, to be able to throw back the expected
counterattack, we got a stretcher intending to pull the severely wounded Brau
into safety. But when we rolled him onto it he said quietly, "No point
guys, I am done for. I cannot take more...." After a few seconds he said
weakly: "Give my regards to those at home in Even Sørensen was wounded in the leg but managed to crawl down to the
ambulance without help. The other six were down by the road when they managed to get hold of
a light machinegun, which they used with success on a group of fascists, who
were busy digging a flanking line towards us. They took flight all of them. The question of water was difficult. We tried to dig a number of
wells in the lower valley, but after having gotten pieces of terribly
stinking corpses on the shovel every time we had to stop. Some others had
drunk of the thick goo anyway and it soon turned out that that was not good,
as they shortly afterwards got blisters all over their bodies and died
immediately afterwards. We had to make do with ether cognac as the only drink, which is why
as anyone can understand, that lots of cognac was drunk without really doing
any good. It was so damned hot that a thermometer that I had taken in an
abandoned house and put on a sheet of metal from a downed aircraft,
showed 63 degrees in the sun. It was of course not quite as hot in the air,
though it was enough to fry eggs in the helmet. The food question could also not be solved without a lot of trouble.
We had picked potatoes in a field in no man’s land and shot a few rabbits in
the early dawn, but it was very hard to find fuel for a fire and our cooking
pot, a sweet box found in Brunete, did also not act quite satisfactorily.
Holger Ekström and a Norwegian had with great difficulty gathered a few
sticks, we had pulled the skin off both the rabbits, sieved some muddy water
through an old blanket and finally got the stuff to boil. The sweet box had
changed shape and fallen six times into the fire and the Norwegian had burnt
his fingers thoroughly as many times when the quartermasters managed what no
one had dreamed they could do - as by magic get food to us. And for once
it was really great stuff, potatoes and a sort of vegetable stew, so we
simply had to dump the result of our mornings struggle... A few things happened that day. Lennart had been out with the
battalion commander on reconnaissance and managed to get a bullet through
both legs, though one would have been sufficient, and our anti aircraft guns
had managed to shoot down a plane. Also we had find thirteen swine in a yard
- not Nazis but the useful kind - Tjatarn and Krullen had to drive the
precious animals away and I can tell you that was a hilarious sight. The pigs
screamed to high heaven and ran away in small circles before immediately
getting interested in the rubbish on the yard. Swarms of bullets whistled through the bushes so the men jumped about
like marionettes between the pits. They had a terrible job before they
could get the bacon away... The fascists bombarded us all the nights with incendiary bombs, set
fire to the fields and fried our potatoes and during the day the fighter
planes were uncomfortably eager to get us. But we had been given a couple of
anti aircraft Machineguns of German manufacture and of excellent quality and
with them we took down two fighter planes, who had stuck their noses in
at our place too long. ---------------------- History shall remember in gold writing that Liljegren took his piece
of lead while performing a good and decent act. Of the few such deeds he did
was under those conditions to get coffee, which is partly the reason why I
nowadays prefer tea.... After what all the wounded have said you should not feel anything
right after you have been hit, but in my case it most of all felt like being
placed in a medium sized bowl of burning coal at high temperature. The bullet
must have hit a nerve of the more sensitive kind and for a while I rolled
around in a pool of unpleasant green slimy water. In a while I got close to a
couple of medics, who all the time ran around in the rain of bullets and made
me so nervous that I had to keep them down at gunpoint. They hauled me by the
arms in a hardly respectful way into the shelter of a sand rampart where I
was put on a stretcher. But on the way down to the ambulance we were attacked by fighter
planes - the stretcher bearers fled and myself I rolled off the stretcher and
down a ditch, where I worked at all my might to look like a piece of grass
turf in the psychological moments. It worked. By the ambulance I got a cigarette from a Danish chauffeur as a sort
of last service and a greeting to heaven. He probably though that I looked
like I was dying. Then off to (1)
Machineguns (2)
Olsson
had just come to the antitank battery after having been a machine gunner for
a long time (3)
Sarcasm (4)
Ludwig
Renn, I suppose (5)
They are
discussing to move an anti tank gun, a heavy piece to pull... |
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