10
THE VOLUNTEER, WINTER 1997-98
TO TILT AT WINDMILLS, A
MEMOIR OF THE SPANISH
CIVIL WAR
by Fred Thomas. East Lansing,
MI: Michigan State University
Press, 1996, 200 pp. Cloth $28.95
by Mel Small
F
red Thomas's account of his ser-
vices in the British Anti-Tank
Battery, To Tilt at Windmills, is one
of the most valuable memoirs of the
Spanish Civil War. Indeed, in the
words of Paul Preston, the British
historian who wrote the introduction,
in its "entirely unheroic, not-to-say
self-deprecating manner," it is an
unusually evocative and authentic
look at warfare in general.
Thomas maintained an often elo-
quent, if spare diary while he was in
Spain from May, 1937, through
December, 1938, where he first saw
action during the last days of the
Jarama campaign, as well as at
Brunete, Teruel and the battles of the
Ebro in 1938. To refresh his memory,
Thomas, along with several British
comrades, returned to Spain in 1981
to retrace his steps. (The BBC filmed
this emotional tour of Spanish battle-
fields.) To Tilt at Windmills is part
original diary entries and part
Thomas's useful additions and
bridges between them. Refreshingly
candid, he admits that he just does
not remember much about some of
the events in his diary.
The author, who after his return
from Spain became a schoolteacher,
writes about only what he saw from
the naturally tunnel-visioned perspec-
tive of a soldier occupying a small
piece of turf in campaigns whose larg-
er outlines almost always eluded him.
Thomas acknowledges that he often
did not understand how his own
actions fit into the larger picture,
despite the efforts of commissars to try
to explain what was going on. Most of
the time, of course, they, too, were
unable to see through the fog of battle.
Before going to Spain, Thomas
was a Labor Party activist in
Northeast London who became politi-
cally engaged because of the rise of
the British Union of Fascists led by
Oswald Mosley. His decision to go
was based in good measure on the
unwillingness of the democracies,
even of his own Laborites, to oppose
fascism.
How he got to Spain
Thomas offers an interesting
account, similar to those of other IB
volunteers, of how he got to Spain
(through the "cloak and dagger" work
of the British Communist Party), and
likewise of the inadequate two-and-
one-half -week military training when
he arrived. Yet, as a veteran of World
War II, he concludes that the "essen-
tials" of basic training were "much
the same in every army." Here, and
throughout the book, Thomas writes
frequently about mundane but very
real concerns involving the amount
and quality of the food the cooks
"had been born out of wedlock and
were now fascists" poor sanitation,
heat, flies, and the aggravating
absence, from time to time, of
absolute necessities like cigarettes.
But unlike soldiers in regular armies,
the Brigaders generally confined their
complaining to their diaries, realizing
that the Spanish people were in worse
straits than they were.
A typical, understated diary entry
reads:
Wednesday 30th June [1937] ...
Half dozed this afternoon in dugout
and woke with a vivid impression
of stretching my legs in my own
comfortable bed at home. Well
maybe again some day. ... After two
weeks in the line I took my first
shot at the fascist trench, at the
invitation of a Spanish comrade
who lent me his rifle for the pur-
pose. Taken all in all, I don't for a
moment regret being in the Anti-
tank Battery. Being human I'm
glad that we, I assume, will not be
faced with damned unpleasant task
of personally coming to grips (prob-
ably with bayonets) with the
enemy."
But Thomas was not spared
hand-to-hand combat: in September,
1938, his battery was disbanded and
he joined the "P.B.I." (Poor Bloody
Infantry) during the second battle of
the Ebro.
Earlier, in July 1937, Thomas
wrote:
"All the other details of this
battle, which I have left out in the
stress of the moment -- such as the
blowing up almost in its entirety of
our Base and Battery H.Q. and our
ammunition ... the terrific fight
that took place on the day Black
was killed, the sheer hell of sitting
in the blazing sun hour by hour
waiting for an attack ... all these
things too, are over, and we must
get used to them for come again
they will, very soon I think."
Occasionally, especially in the
running commentary about his 1981
visit to old battlefields, the usually
stiff-upper-lipped Thomas allows him-
self a bit of emotion. He describes the
veterans returning to their bus after
walking through the ruins of Belchite,
"a subdued party; the pages of history
are not so lightly turned back." And
considering another Brit with a stiff
upper lip, he offers a sympathetic por-
trayal of his admired leader, the leg-
endary Malcolm Dunbar.
Like soldiers in all armies,
Thomas and his comrades were con-
tinually waiting, sometimes in the hot
some, other times in the cold rain,
waiting for orders, for mail that is
late and for the week-old newspapers,
and of course, waiting for the bombs
Book Reviews
Mel Small, Professor of History
at Wayne State University in Detroit,
chairs his University's Abraham
Lincoln Brigade Scholarship Fund.
Among his many books are Johnson,
Nixon and the Doves (1988) and
Democracy and Diplomacy (1996).
A British volunteer's unheroic memoir
