Sources
Spanish Inferno
Sunday Independent, June 5th 1960
The Irish Brigade was now in the thick of a grim civil war
The moments which succeeded the staccato echo of the Spanish officer�s revolver were hectic. Even in the measured statements of Capt. O�Sullivan�s report to his C.O, one senses the instinctive reaction of trained men to the first cold breath of conflict.
�I and Lieut. Beauvais returned the fire with our revolvers, and all retreated towards the company,� this report said.
Casualties
�We were on a narrow road with rising banks on both sides, and the distance to �A� Company was approximately 400 yards. During the retreat which was conducted at the double in zigzag, Lieut. Beauvais and Sergeant Calvo were shot dead. I reached the company and gave the order, �Open fire�, then assumed command of the company and conducted the attack. Lieut. T Hyde and Legionary D Chute were killed and Corporal J Hoey was wounded through the wrist.�
Lieut. Hyde from Midleton, Co. Cork, was an ex-officer of the Irish Army, and son of Cornelius Hyde, a merchant, Ballinacurra, Midleton. He served with the 1st Cork Brigade, IRA, and took part in many engagements against British forces. His death was caused by a burst of machine gun fire which caught him in the throat. Dan Chute, the other causality, was a Kerryman. His death was instantaneous.
Tragic
The tragic feature of this engagement was that the troops which had attacked the Irish Bandera were friendly. An enquiry established that they were a Bandera from the Canary Islands.
Their leader who had fired at Lieut. Beauvais had been killed by the fire of the Irishmen with his second-in-command. The Bandera from the Canary Islands suffered the ignominy of court-martial and eventual disbandment.
In state
The bodies of the four men were brought back to Caceres. There they were laid before the High Altar in the church at which they had knelt before leaving for the front. At the Mass which had preceded their departure Lieut. Hyde had carried the Tricolour which was later to cover his coffin.
Meanwhile the Bandera had moved on to Ciempozuelos. Later General O�Duffy was to record these words about the entry of the Irish into that shattered town. �Ciempozuelos was a town of the dead when we arrived. Apart from Moorish troops, who left the next day, and half-a-dozen Civil Guards, there was not a living person to be seen in streets or houses. Only a few days before our occupation the town had been taken BY General Franco�s troops in one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Grim task
�When the Reds were driven out they left over a thousand dead, many still unburied or only half-buried in a few inches of clay. One of or first duties was to dispose, as best we could, of the decomposing bodies which were to be seen everywhere; in the gardens an yards, in the river which runs through the town, and in the olive groves through which our main line of trenches ran.�
Shell-racked
Sgt.-Major Timlin (later promoted Lieutenant) gives another description of the entry of the Irish Bandera into that town of death: �The day was well advanced when A Company entered the town under cover of shell-racked buildings, finding desolation on all sides. The atmosphere seemed to be charged with an eerie expectancy. Conversations were carried on in whispers, as if the sound of a voice might disturb something unknown and unseen.
Barrage
�Anxious glances were cast from side to side, endeavouring to pierce the depths of walls and barriers and learn the cause of this deadly stillness. Suddenly the air was rent with a terrific explosion, made greater by the previous quiet and followed by another, and still another. Shells were coming screeching through the air, ploughing up the roads, knocking the sides and tops from already partially demolished buildings.
The Moors
�A halt was called in sight of a railway station where we first caught sight of Moors arrayed in long multi-coloured robes and holding rifles cradled in their arms. They were tall and dark skinned, adorned with beards and moustaches. They observed the single approach of our Spanish liaison officer with grim awareness. I entered several of the houses in a tour of inspection. It required no stretch of the imagination to visualise the haste and terror in which some of them were evacuated. Children�s toys were trampled on, babies shawls and bottles strewn about. We had arrived at our new position which we were to occupy immediately. The station building was the guardhouse.
Takeover
�There was a machinegun post was taken from the moors. In front of the station across a plateau rose twin hills separating the Reds from our position. �There were machine guns and observation posts on top of hills. We took these over also from the departing Moors.�
The Irish Bandera now was in the thick of the Spanish war. None of the young Irishmen had any doubt about it as they heard shells scream overhead in a crescendo of tortured sound before exploding.
Static
It was, for the moment, static warfare on the Jarama. Behind the 15th Bandera the railway line, long disused, stretched rusty fingers into the distance. It would be a long time before trains would run once more in that war-torn ground. But static warfare can also bring death. February and March are harsh, wet months on the Jarama. The Irish Bandera suffered from drenching rain and chilling cold.
Snipers
The trenches which they occupied were little better than swallow ditches. They did provide some cover from snipers and of those sharpshooters the reds had plenty. Bullets thudded into the mud over their heads as they crouched in the trenches or whined off in ricochet from patches of stony ground.
Ceaseless shellfire churned the ground held by the Irish. On some days it came as a hail of explosive that flung up great sprouts of earth in thunderous roars.
Hardened
One of the causalities was Tom McMullen from Co. Mayo whose terrible leg wound necessitated amputation of the limb. At night the work of strengthening their defensive positions occupied much time. These work parties laboured all through the night, then crept back into damp-walled dugouts.
As dawn came they slept � a sleep all too frequently interrupted by the shock of explosions from the Red batteries. They were soaked, they were cold, sometimes they were hungry.
These conditions took toll of the strength of the Bandera. Among those who fell ill was Major Dalton. He was succeeded by Captain O�Sullivan.
Week after week the routine never varied. Each company spent four days in the trenches. After that duty they went back to Ciempozuelos to seek shelter among the battered ruins of that little place with which the war had dealt so severely. But there was no safety in Ciempozuelos.
Through the hills which flanked the town the railway ran � the track was in good condition up to about two thirds of a mile form the town. Down the track the Reds ran an armoured train which was the special affliction of the Irishmen.
Sheltered by the hills along its approach, the train would cruise along while from the protection of its steel sides the Red troops sprayed with machine gun and rifle fire the battered town and the trenches of the 15rh Bandera.
Rubble
A few of its former inhabitants crept back into Ciempozuelos. They crept back to a town which had been reduced in many sections to rubble. Among the ruined buildings were four churches, all of them desecrated by the Reds in unspeakable fashion after they had killed the priests. Searching among the ruins of one of theses churches Eugene Dalton, from Ballinea, Mullingar, found a portion of charred vestments. He sent it home to his parents in mute testimony of the faith that had brought him to Spain.
Alcazar
This was a war fought with the grimmest ferocity in which little quarter was asked for or was granted. The siege of the Alcazar in Toledo was an example of how grim the Spanish war really was. The Alcazar was a collection of buildings which Colonel Moscardo defended in an epic of heroism. It consisted of a palace, the house of the military governor, a hospital, stables, dormitories, soldier�s quarters, a riding school and a dining hall.
The beleaguered population in the Alcazar numbered 1,700. Of those 100 were too old or too ill to fight, eight were prisoners, 520 were women and ten were children. There were 150 officers, eight cadets, 160 young soldiers, 600 civil guards and about ten others, including peasants and workmen. Colonel Moscardo, a tall, shy man, was Military governor of Toledo.
Offer
The siege had hardly opened when Colonel Moscardo was called to the telephone. The line had not been severed, and for a time the defenders could communicate with the world outside. Colonel Moscardo picked up the receiver and heard the voice of the Red commander. The message he received was that his son would be shot if the garrison did not surrender.
Colonel Moscardo asked to speak to his son to make sure that he was really captive of the Reds. There was no tremor in the voice of Colonel Moscardo�s son as he asked his father what he should do. �All you can do,� replied the grief-stricken father, �is to pray for us and to die for Spain.� �Es muy sencillo,� said the son in the current phrase of his language when a question had been finally cleared up. �That is very simple, both I shall do.�
Executed
On the following morning when Colonel Moscardo knelt in prayer a sudden volley shattered the silence of the dawn. His son had been placed against a wall close to the Alcazar. As the rifles of the execution squad spurted short jabs of flame in the half light the son died as his father had told him to die.
The garrison of the Alcazar settled down to the siege. After eight days the bread supply was exhausted and baked corn was eaten, but the supply of corn was small and when it was baked it was as hard as tone. The ordeal of the garrison really began after the first week in which they were always short of sleep and rest.
Day after day the Reds bombarded the Alcazar from many guns. Three times the Reds exploded huge mines against the walls of the fortress and then rushed the breaches the explosions had made. Eight separate assaults were made on the defenders by forces seven or eight time greater in numbers than their own. In the first fortnight the garrison had lost 12 dead and 65 wounded.
Then the Reds sent a force of bomber planes to smash the Alcazar. In that raid four were killed and eight were wounded. The aerial attack was followed by a rush of Red troops. Clambering over the rubble of their fortress the defenders rushed machine guns into position and mowed down their attackers before they could penetrate the walls.
Night attack
Then the Reds tried a night attack. They trained anti-aircraft searchlights on the Alcazar hoping to blind the men who hung on grimly to their positions. That attack also failed. He Reds were met with a withering point-blank fire and had to retire, bringing with them their dead and wounded. Daily there was a rain of shells on the Alcazar.
One morning a Red officer approached the walls carrying a white flag. He brought an offer to evacuate the women. But the women in the Alcazar refused to leave. They said that when all the men of the garrison were killed they would fight on themselves.
Finally a supreme effort was made to capture the Alcazar. For days the defenders heard the hammering of pneumatic drills as holes were bored in the walls into which sticks of explosives were pushed.
Blast
All the charges were electrically connected and all that remained to be done was to depress a plunger and the walls of the Alcazar would crumple into dust. So confident were the reds that the garrison would capitulate after the explosion that they invited the Minister for War to press the plunger.
Thousands of tones of masonry were flung into the air by the vast explosion when it came. Towers and walls collapsed as if made of cardboard. But as the reds attacked once more machine-guns began to stutter from the ruins. After a fierce fight which was sometimes hand to hand the Reds again had to admit defeat.
At last Franco�s forces made their way towards Toledo and free Spain rang with cheers with the news that the Alcazar had been relieved. For two months the garrison had held out.
Many of them died in that gallant defence. Those who lived through it deserved to be called heroes.
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