[This article, first of a series by Samuel Levinger, was written in a Madrid hospital. The articles which will be published exclusively in The Citizen were transcribed from pencilled notes by the Columbus youth's mother, Mrs. Lee J. Levinger, 2257 Indianola-av.]
All night long the train puffed through France toward the Spanish border. The carriages were third class with sharp wooden benches - not comfortable for sleeping. The men slept on each seat packed like sardines. One slept on the floor, and one daring spirit tied himself with belts to each of the overhanging baggage racks. Our first minor casualties were boys who fell off baggage racks into somebody sleeping below.
Those who lay along the corridors could not sleep - they got stepped on too often. I roamed around all night talking to them. The majority were, like myself, going to Spain to join the International Brigades of the Spanish army.
There were Parisian metal workers fresh from their victories in the sit-down strikes; French peasants who hated Fascism because it meant landlords instead of farmers who owned their own land; the owner of a general store in a little French village. There were English seamen, Glasgow textile workers, men who had fought in the Irish Republican army during the Black and Tan wars.
I talked to refugees from Fascist countries. Several Germans had just been released from concentration camps; they showed their scars and bruises like medals and were hurrying to join the Thaelman Battalion.
There were Italians, exiles from Italy for a dozen years, who intended to enlist in the Garibaldi Battalion. There were two Esthonians who had ridden four days in a tank car, their necks in water, to reach France; a dozen Austrian students, who had skied across the alps to join us; Poles, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Jagoslavs [sic] to replenish the ranks of the crack Cimitroff battalions.
There were an Albanian, a Ethiopian, two Moors, sons of chiefs, who had been sent to France to study but had enlisted on the side of the Loyalists, though their fathers were with the Fascists.
I realized then that I would be taking part in one of the world's most remarkable events, that tens of thousands of men, not poets and dreamers, but ordinary workers, farmers and students just like me should throw their lives in the scale for a foreign country.
These men who were joining the desperate battle against Fascism were in earnest when they said, "Conquer or die!"
Morning came and everyone leaned out the windows to watch the neat French fields and to salute the gangs of men repairing the railroad. The response was quick and enthusiastic. Up fists in the People's Front salute; up picks and shovels held as we later saw Spanish soldiers hold their rifles.
There was no food until noon; everybody grew rather grouchy. The thoughfulu [sic] fellows who had filled their canteens with water or wine passed them around for share-and-share-alike was already the rule. At noon we stopped at a town and bought sandwiches and wine. The wine was good.
Two of the American boys slipped out of the station gate to buy some hot foodÐand missed the train. When they caught us two days later in Spain, they had hair-raising stories to tell about riding freights, astonished French railway officials who had never seen that type of traveling. Once they were in jail, but a group of railway workers got them out and slipped them over the frontier.
Ahead, more and more distinct, grew a white cloud. The Pyrenees! First by train, then by bus we rode deeper into the lovely hills. To each side of us rose the snowy scattered crags, but the pass between them was low, over brown foothills. The few people we passed were darker than the French, and they spoke with an accent which I with my weak knowledge of the language could not understand. But one language we could understand - the salute of the clenched fist. Salute the People's Front!
Now we were in a little town with both French and Spanish signs. A Spanish border guard, intensely military in his green Catalonian uniform, came into the bus and examined our papers. He had an old fashioned Oviedo rifle with the broad sword bayonet. All the new rifles, we found later, were at the front.
Finding all our papers in order, he got out and stood at stiff salute as the bus passed. We had been tense before; perhaps something would be wrong; perhaps we would be turned back! Now that we were in, there was rejoicing. Two Hungarians kissed each other on the cheeks. An Italian and a Pole tried to dance in the narrow aisle.
A steel worker from Gary, Inc., grinned happily; then turned serious.
"Well, comrade," he told me, "here's one volunteer that's not crossing this border again till Hitler and Mussolini are out of Spain."
My comrade kept his word. We buried him in the Jarama hills.
The bus wound on through the heart of the Pyrenees. Soon we were out on the mountains and into high hills dotted with goats. We were quieter now, speculating on the future and thinking of supper.
On a hill lay a vast stone fortress with grim battered walls, dried-up moat and turrents [sic] complete. Near this the bus stopped and we got stiffly out, everybody grabbing a couple of suitcases whether they were his or not. We had reached our first stopping place in Republican Spain.
[Tomorrow - Mr. Levinger is surprised at the excellence of the food and tells about "pillow slips," the cagarets which "contain two grains of dynamite and one of strychnine - you light one then take a deep breath and see what happens."]