Spanish Inferno

Across the plain of living death the Irish struck for the river

Dawn was near as the Irishmen of the 15^th Bandera of the Spanish Legion assembled near the ruins of what had once been the town hall of Ciempozuelos. They were tired of the monotony of trench life, tired of being shelled, tired of hearing the whine of snipers� bullets. They wanted to attack, and on the morning of March 13^th, 1937, they were given an opportunity.

As they mustered, shells whistled overhead � a foretaste of things to come for the Irishmen. They had half an hour to eat, smoke and chat before moving off. General O�Duffy moved among them, a little ripple of excitement preceding him wherever he went. A nod here and there, a hearty greeting, and the encouragement his presence gave had a visible effect.

Barrage

The shellfire of the enemy became more intense as the Red observers in the hills of Ciempozuelos spotted a squadron of Moorish cavalry. They had reached the edge of the plain which separated the lines held by the troops of General Franco from those who fought � whether they knew it or not � for the Hammer and Sickle.

Then the Irish Bandera moved off in the growing light. Some of them were hardened veterans who had fought British troops and Black and Tans, some of them were inexperienced volunteers who were about to receive their baptism of fire. Their column of more than 700 men was a reminder that other Irishmen had fought for European causes.

Forward

These men looked serene and proud, worthy successors of the Irish Brigades of other generations. All of them had been to Confession on the previous night � more than half in the trenches while the chaplain moved among them under shellfire.

The Brigade moved across the rusty tracks of the railway and then on to a short stretch of road. With a sharp order the first company broke into battle order. To their left they could see the squadron of Moorish cavalry slipping back to the concealment of olive groves. Then began their ordeal.

As the Red artillery observers saw the Brigade emerge on to the plain they called back the coordinates and immediately the guns barked in a vicious hail of fire. The earth heaved and shook as group after group of shells exploded. For minutes at a time the Irishmen were hidden form the observers in their own trenches as smoke geysered from the explosions and slowly drifted across the mile and a half of plain.

No cover

And the Irish Brigade had to traverse that before they could get near the Red positions and the bridge of Titulcia which was their objective. Deafened by the uproar, breathless in their initial dash, the Irishmen sought what cover they could find before making another rush. But there was little cover.

The grass was not high enough to give concealment. Small patches of hay which had lain mouldering for months were the only means of shelter the men of the 15^th Bandera could find.

Battered

As any soldier who has ever been under shellfire will tell you, a patch of mouldy hay is not the best protection against artillery fire. They will say that with an emphasis when such fire comes from the whip-cracking muzzles of French 75s. That gun seemed to form the basis of the Red batteries.

It had been 7 a.m. when the Irishmen began their first move forward. Now it was 9 a.m. The rain of shells showed no diminution. Four at a time they came screeching and whistling over the plain on which the Irishmen crouched and ran forward whenever they got a chance.

Gripping his binoculars, General O�Duffy watched what seemed to be the slaughter of his men. Standing beside him was a German officer who methodically counted the shell bursts.

Escape

Captain Camino stood beside the two men and slowly shook his head as General O�Duffy turned to him. �At least 300 causalities,� said the Spanish officer who was General Franco�s representative with the Irish Bandera.

The observation post in which they stood soon came under fire. They left it and took up another position. Five minutes later the post was shattered by a shell burst. Sandbags, corrugated iron and timber were blown sky high.

Relief

General O�Duffy with captain Tom gunning, Corporal Tony Monaghan, and the chaplain, Father Mulrean, made their way down to the plain. Here opportunities for observation were even less. But they could now at least learn how many had been killed or wounded in the attack. To their relief they learned that casualties � despite the hail of fire � had been comparatively slight.

The Irishmen were soon confronted with a fresh danger. Between the rolling Ciempozuelos hills ran a rail track and on the track the Reds had an armoured train. Machine-gun fire and mortar fore from the train whipped the plain on which the Irishmen lay.

Mined

But there was surprise in store for the crew of the train � most of whom were Englishmen who had joined the Red International Brigade to fight against Franco. Three nights earlier a party had left the Franco lines under cover of darkness and had laid a powerful mine under the tracks near the place where the train was accustomed to halt before fire was opened.

A Spanish officer pressed the plunger which should have wrecked the armoured train. Nothing happened. This was the moment when John McSweeney, of Tralee, was killed, either by a shell burst or by mortar fire from the train.

Meanwhile the Spanish officer was searching for the fault in the circuit which had made the landmine useless. He found it and once more he pressed the plunger with both hands. His action was followed by an explosion which shook the countryside. But the armoured train had moved back for about a hundred yards a minute before the explosion erupted. After the shower of rail tracks and flying rocks had ended the men who manned it resumed their withering fire diagonally across the plain.

Lashed

All that day the Irishmen inched their way towards the Jarama River. All day the red gunners lashed the ground they had to cross. The shearing metal of exploding shells ended the lives of Sergeant-Major Gabriel Lee of Dublin, and Volunteers Bernard Horan and Tom Foley of Kerry. All three were fatally wounded in the attack.

They were brought back under fire to the Bandera�s trenches by Volunteers Bergin of Tipperary, Roche of Cork, Brophy of Dublin. Later they were rushed to the advanced dressing station in an ambulance driven by Volunteer McCloskey of Drogheda.

Causalities

From the dressing station they were brought to hospital at Grinon, but all three died a few days later. Wounded in the attack were Michael O�Connor of Dublin, Sergeant Lawlor, Carlow, Corporal Donnelly of Louth, Volunteers P Gilbert, Limerick, Tom McGrath, Cork, and Mark Price from Dublin.

The counter barrage which Franco�s artillery could provide for the attack was too weak to batter down the heavy fire from the Red positions on the Jarama River. No troops � not even with the �lan of the Irish � could get through that curtain of fire.

No soldier sees the whole of a battle. The little area of ground which his company occupies is his battleground. To him it is the only sector that matters. Let me tell you how the advance from Ciempozuelos looked to Number 1 section of B Company.

They began to move forward in extended order, led by Lieut. Tom O�Riordan, of Cork. To Tom the whiplash of bullets was a familiar sound. He had often heard then before in action with an IRA Flying Column. The Lieutenant was a veteran.

Novice

Not so Johnny Butler from Tipperary. He was a mere boy of sixteen. But you would never have guessed it, so well built was he. Nor would you have suspected it if you saw him that morning as he crouched down between short running bursts across that shell-raked plain in Spain.

Curtain

Just ahead of them were Sergeant Joe Hughes, ex-Irish Army, from Longford and Volunteer Reginald McNulty from Drumcondra in Dublin. There too, was Volunteer Sean Clarke, of Dublin, now on the administrative staff of St. Kevin�s Hospital.

All day long the armoured train on their flank was keeping up a murderous curtain of fire. Machine gun bullets from the train were throwing up lines of sods in their search for those prone figures that made another quick dash whenever the rat-tat-tat of sudden death ceased for a moment.

Number one section of B Company were getting quite close to the buildings of a convent which lay like an island half way across the plain. To Irish eyes it resembled a mediaeval fortress with its thick walls and turreted corners. In the convent three Red machine gunners were threading long belts of cartridges into their spurting gun. To Number one section it became clear their advance had not been detected. The fire of the reds whined high above their heads.

A Chink

Ronnie Quinn, the six foot three Galway man, ran headlong for the shelter of the convent wall. Close to him he saw a side entrance which did not appear to be so massive as the other doors. Using his giant�s strength he brought the butt of his Lee Enfield rifle crashing on the woodwork. Again and again he swung his rifle, the door splintered.

Then the wooden lock was smashed so that the door flew back crazily on its hinges. Upstairs the Red machine gunners did not wait for the hail of hand grenades which they knew would follow. They fled from the building towards their own lines. Number One company, not knowing that the building was now empty, moved cat footed from apartment to apartment.

Then in one of the upper rooms the Irishmen pushed out the machine gun. And from that point of vantage they sprayed the driver�s cabin of the armoured train.

Revenge

They exulted as they gave the Red forces a taste of what they had endured in that part of the morning�s advance. Meanwhile rain continued to pour from a dark sky. Rain, such as that never experienced by the Irishmen at home, soaked them to the skin.

At times a curtain of rain hid the fringe of tress along the canal which cut through the plain. The Irish Brigade were grateful for those trees. They hindered accurate observation by the Reds. �Lieutenant Fitzpatrick� had a narrow escape.

He wore a heavy Spanish cavalry cloak or djellaba that bellowed out behind him as he ran from cover to cover. Rushing forward after a shell burst he was suddenly thrown to the ground as if by a blow from a powerful invisible hand. His djellaba had been ripped to shreds by a jagged piece of shrapnel.

On the Bandera roll he was Lieutenant Fitzpatrick, but his name in Debretts was the Hon. N Skeffington Fitzpatrick, heir to Lord Castletown, and later to become the Earl of Ossory. An officer in the Irish Guards, he was one of the first to answer General O�Duffy�s call for volunteers and he fought through the entire campaign with his Irish comrades from many walks of life, returning unscathed to enjoy life at many Irish point-to-point meetings.

Inside the convent Number One section of B Company kept up their machine-gun tattoo. But some of them found time to forage as all soldiers do.

Windfall

The nun who had been in Sister in Charge of poultry had left behind six plump fowl. They were rummaging in the courtyard and had pecked their way through a sack of sodden corn. It was the end of the war for these fine, fat Spanish pullets. Number One Section routed out some long-empty biscuit tins. They also found several packets of candles. They lighted half-a-dozen candles underneath a biscuit tin and roasted two of the fowl on the lid. They were like food for the gods.

Lesson

It was an interlude for Number One Section which they remember with good humour, forgetting the more horrible moments of that day. For hour after hour the 15^th Bandera did their gallant best to make ground.

Every now and then a fear-maddened horse galloped over the naked plain which was as extensive as the Curragh. These were the mounts of the Moorish cavalry which had tried an attack on the flank of the Irish.

Withdrawal

Some members of the Irish Bandera did reach the bank of the Jarama River, but they were too few to make a final assault. And so darkness began to gather on the plain of the Jarama River. After eleven hours under continuous fire, the Irishmen began to withdraw, section by section. For months afterwards the reds were certain that they had annihilated the 15^th Bandera. They said so on Radio Madrid when an announcer claimed that the Irish had been �completely wiped out.�

Back in their trenches outside Ciempozuelos, the 15^th Bandera of Spanish troops which had occupied the trenches from which the attack had been made were ordered elsewhere. The Irishmen had to reoccupy those muddy ditches. All night long they stood-to, ankle deep in mud, lashed by the unending rain.

Together

At Caceres, where they had trained, the Irish Bandera buried its dead. Should you ever visit that Spanish town, go to the vaults where lie these men who died for an ideal. Those who died at the Jarama were soon joined by Volunteer John Walsh of Midleton, Co. Cork, and Sergeant Tom Troy, of Clare. They lie in death together in Caceres.

Two others lies in graves in Salamanca, the town to which so many Irish priests went to study before their ordination. Eunan McDermott, Ballyshannon, and Thomas Doyle, of Roscrea, are buried there.

The Irish Bandera rested for a short while in Caceres. Then they were transferred to hold a section of line on La Maranosa front. And from high ground they could at last see Madrid, beleaguered capital of war torn Spain.