have the massed ranks of legionnaires marching through the arch, which reads as it should: Legionarios a luchar, legionarios a morir. Oscar tells me: ‘I see we have had a convergence of delusion.’ Colonel Yague does not hang the painting. He could not be seen to be more grand or ambitious than his superiors.
14th July 1936, Dar Riffen
Summer manoeuvres finish with a parade taken by General Romerales and General Gomez Morato, our two most senior commanders of the Army of Africa. Oscar, who has a nose for these things, says that something is going to happen. His evidence is that during the banquet after the parade, even before the dessert course was served, there were shouts of ‘Cafe!’ which was clearly not a demand for coffee. It stands for Camaradas! Arriba! Falange Espanola! and is evidence of Colonel Yague at work. He’s a falangist, who Oscar believes loathes General Gomez Morato. I don’t know how he informs himself of this and he says that all I had to do was look at the officers who came to the private unveiling ceremony of my portrait of Colonel Yague.
We are locked away in our barracks with no knowledge of what is going on across the straits. Oscar finds a newspaper, El Sol, in which there’s an article about the shooting of an officer called Lt Jose Castillo outside his home in Madrid only a month after the man was married. ‘The Falange did that,’ says Oscar. I am puzzled. I don’t know where we stand. I ask Oscar who we should support and he tells me: ‘Our commanding officer, unless you want to get shot.’ At least there are no difficult decisions to be made on that score, although Oscar alarms me by adding: ‘Whoever that might be.’
Later in the evening he calls me in. He’s very excited. He’s been listening to the radio. Spain is in a state of shock. Calvo Sotelo has been shot. I couldn’t care less, having never heard the name before. Oscar cuffs me round the head. Sotelo is the monarchist leader and a prominent figure on the right. His murder will have terrible consequences. I ask who killed him and Oscar bats an imaginary ball from hand to hand saying: ‘Tit-tat, tit- tat.
‘Except that the left have gone too far this time,’ he says. ‘This will not be seen as personal because of Calvo Sotelo’s position. This is a political killing and now, I can guarantee it, there will be civil war.’ I ask him where he stands in all of this and he holds out his hands, the palms criss-crossed with a thousand creases so that I think I must draw them. ‘Before you,’ he says and I leave him none the wiser.
19th July 1936, Ceuta
Colonel Yague marched us out of the barracks at 9 p.m. and by midnight we had control of the port of Ceuta. Not a shot was fired at us or by us. We were disappointed to meet no resistance as on the march we’d all been spoiling for a fight. By morning we were told that Melilla, Tetuan, Ceuta and Larache were all under military control and that General Franco was on his way to take over command.
We march back to the barracks at Dar Riffen in the early morning. General Franco arrives at the barracks in the afternoon and we are all on parade to meet him. We surprise ourselves by going mad without knowing why. Colonel Yague makes a speech which starts with the words: ‘Here they are, just as you left them … ‘ and we see that the general is very moved. We roar, ‘Franco! Franco!’ and he announces a pay rise of one peseta a day. We all erupt again.
6th August 1936, Seville
My first time on Spanish soil. We were one of the first detachments across the straits by boat and were disappointed not to be airlifted. They put us on trucks and we drove straight up the middle of completely empty roads to Seville. Our orders are to head north under Colonel Yague to Merida. We’ve been told that anyone who resists us is a communist and, as such, against Spain, and that they are to be dealt with in the most severe manner and shown no mercy. The word is that the opposition is ‘shitting in its pants’ at the thought of the Army of Africa. Our reputation from the Asturias miners’ rising travels before us. The effect of these orders, shot through with their bloodthirsty emotion, is like electricity through our ranks. We were already fired up and now we are invincible and righteous, too.
10th August 1936, near Merida
The advance has been relentless (300 km in four days) and we have quickly learnt that the news of the terror we inspire travels at the speed of sound. We call it castigo, punishment. When we have quelled any resistance, we move through the towns and villages with knives and machetes. It is the cold steel that terrifies. It is not impersonal like bullets.
At El Real de la Jara the people fled into the hills only to be rounded up by the Moors of the Regulares who did such terrible things to them that we met no resistance until we reached Almendralejo. There a madness seized us and we killed everybody left in the town. Hundreds of corpses, men and women, littered the streets. The stench in the heat was soon unbearable and we left the stunned houses, lifeless under a pall of smoke from the burning roofs. Oscar presses me ‘to write it all down’, but I am too exhausted for anything after the demands of the day.
11th August 1936, Merida
Officers joke that they are giving the peasants ‘agrarian reform’.
One of the Moors from the Regulares shows us his flyblown and stinking collection of men’s testicles. They castrate victims as a rite of battle. This is too much for Oscar, who puts it in a report to our Captain and the practice is soon banned.
15th August 1936, Badajoz
The 4th Bandera stormed the Puerta Trinidad. They went in singing and took heavy machine-gun fire full in the face, which drove them back for a moment. They breached the gates at the second attempt and we went in after them, stumbling over their dead bodies. Once inside it was street-to-street fighting all the way to the centre. In the afternoon anybody suspected of resistance was herded into the bullring near the cathedral. There was a lot of weeping and wailing, but we were savage after our losses in the initial assault. Shots rang out until nightfall. The Regulares searched the town, house to house, looking for anybody with a weapon or even a recoil bruise on their shoulder. After the indiscipline of Asturias, Oscar is determined that we will not lose control and go on an orgy of looting and raping like the other companies in the bandera and the Regulares. The men are disgruntled until Oscar brings in some cases of drink, mixed bottles stolen from a bar. We pour aguardiente, anis and red wine into the same glass and this drink becomes known to us as the Earthquake.
22nd September 1936, Maqueda
I know now what it is to be battle-hardened. Before they were just words attached to veterans. Now I realize that it is a mental state which endures. It comes from making multiple decisions under extreme pressure, from the complete suppression of fear, from seeing men die around you daily, from the conquering of exhaustion, from the acceptance of the inevitability of battle.
29th September 1936, Toledo
The attack was launched at midday on 27th September. Before the assault we were marched past the mutilated corpses of two executed nationalists a couple of kilometres outside town. The order came down from the colonels: ‘You know what to do.’ The fighting was fierce and the Regulares took a beating in the initial storming of the town. Just as we were expecting to have to pull back and regroup the leftists gave up and ran for it. There was some street fighting. The Moors were particularly savage that afternoon, hacking away at prisoners with their
