A Doctor at War Read online

  Among the first outsiders to bring aid into Spain were the Quakers. On 25 December 1936 the first Quaker canteen had opened in Barcelona. Strictly speaking, Quakerism demands that absolute neutrality be observed, and that those to whom help is brought should be regarded merely as suffering people and not as partisans of a particular cause. However, in reality, their help was concentrated in Republican areas. Franco had taken care to occupy the main food-producing regions, leaving two-thirds of the population cut off from vital supplies. Inspired by the Quakers’ establishment of child ‘colonies’ in which displaced children were housed and fed and provided with medical treatment, and the canteens run in and around Barcelona, Martin, now Dr Herford, joined the relief effort soon after graduating by answering a newspaper advertisement calling for volunteers. In late January 1938, with the fighting still as vicious as ever, he travelled across France by train, and then by lorry into Barcelona.

  The Catalan capital had witnessed some of the worst excesses of the war, and had been the victim of frequent air raids. The Republican government had moved its headquarters north from Valencia to Barcelona in November 1937, leading the Republican population to fear that it had chosen this spot on the Mediterranean coast and close to the French border in preparation for a hasty evacuation. Franco responded with more air raids. Many were killed in a particularly heavy night attack on 3 January 1938. Three-engine planes coming from the direction of Majorca dropped the bombs on the centre of the city. No military objectives were hit; Franco’s aim was to terrorize and starve his opposition into capitulation. In the areas captured by his rebel forces he imposed a ruthless order and attempted to ensure the people were well fed, working on the assumption that a peaceful, normal and well-fed Spain was bound in the end to triumph over a revolutionary, abnormal and under-nourished Spain.

  Martin Herford arrived in Barcelona late at night in the cab of a lorry which crawled through the blackout with dimmed headlamps. The long, wide streets were pitch-black, empty and deserted. He subsequently wrote in an article for The Black Bag, the journal of the Bristol medical faculty, that ‘War is beastly, but civil war is particularly horrible. Where there is hate, there is always fear, and especially in civil war, there are individuals on both sides who wish to exterminate those they hate for fear that they may one day be strong.’ His work was concentrated in Barcelona and nearby towns. Throughout 1937 more than one million refugees had poured into north-eastern Spain. Many of the children had only summer clothes, and famine was imminent. Medical supplies, milk, soap and clothes came in sporadically, but shortages were acute. The refugees told stories of brutality, rape and murder committed by the Fascist troops, and especially the large Moorish contingent – behaviour in stark contrast to the standards of upright moral decency Franco claimed he stood for.

  In December 1937 the American Friends Service Committee had made £200 a month available for relief in Catalonia. Herford arrived just as this money was being applied to the setting up of children’s canteens in the Barcelona satellite towns of Sabadell and Manresa, and to creating more canteens in the city. By the end of the year there were more than 15 such canteens in the area feeding 5,000 children. The rations were minimal, just enough to maintain basic nourishment if they were lucky: the children were given a plate of porridge with milk and sugar each morning and a cup of cocoa each evening.

  Other Quaker workers started a project to provide a midday meal in Barcelona’s municipal schools. Kanty Cooper, a British sculptress who was in charge of this project, later wrote:

  I would drive a loaded van to a canteen with the certainty that the milk boxes, too heavy for the staff to lift, would be unloaded by unknown, underfed men passing in the street. We were working for the children they said, it was only right that they should help. No hand was ever stretched out for a tip.

  The other Quaker workers also found that although the local people were close to starvation, their lorries were not looted and their warehouses not broken into. At the time, the concept of a large-scale charitable relief effort was quite new to the British public. On his return to Britain Herford was plagued by curious enquiries as to what the relief workers ate when they were surrounded by the hunger – did they dine luxuriously or starve with the Spaniards. In fact they ate simply. Their diet consisted mainly of chick peas or lentils with a slice of bread, sometimes a little butter, some powdered milk and a little green salad. Occasionally they had a few biscuits of chocolate or tins of meat or fish. Anything less would have made the task impossible. The job involved hard physical labour, loading and unloading trucks, and in his first three months in Spain Herford recorded that he scarcely managed to get five hours’ sleep a night.

  Outside Barcelona, providing aid for the constantly shifting rural population provided yet more challenges. The war fronts shifted rapidly, and when bombing began in one area tens of thousands of people would move quickly to another. On his return from England following a short period of leave, Herford was sent down the coast to Alicante to help set up a canteen for 1,000 children. When he arrived the town contained 80,000 people, and the air raids were becoming increasingly violent. He described the people there as nervous, ‘with one ear cocked like rabbits – ready to bolt’. When the bombing intensified the town emptied, only about 1,000 remaining. The rest scattered across the countryside to forage for what little food they could find. It was better to be hungry and alive than fed and dead.

  The people had every reason to be fearful, for the Fascists’ proven policy was to wreak havoc on the civilian population, forcing most to flee, and killing those who remained. Possession of a trade union card, or mere suspicion of Republican sympathies could be enough to sign a death warrant. Whole villages would empty in advance of the rebel anticipation, with wagons piled high and dragged along ill-kept roads by over-burdened donkeys. In Guernica in April 1937, Franco had shown that with the help of German bombers he was more than capable of wiping out large numbers of his countrymen at a stroke. Without warning, the German bombers swept over the Basque town no more than 60 feet above the ground dropping incendiary bombs. Anyone picking up the wounded in the street was shot down from above. An unnamed Basque woman gave her account to the Paris correspondent of The Guardian:

  Monday was market day, and the villagers of the neighbourhood were assembled at Guernica. At four o’clock in the afternoon, when the crowd was at its largest, an aeroplane appeared and dropped a few bombs, causing the first victims. The people fled from the marketplace to hide in the houses. New aeroplanes then appeared and bombarded the houses and churches. People were dying under the demolished ruins … they were obliged to run out, then they were fired on by machine guns… Many people remained lying in the street dead or wounded. In the houses you heard the wounded howling with pain. Many were burned alive under the ruins.

  When the house to which I had fled began to burn I ran like mad. Machine gun bullets continued to whistle round me, but I did not stop. When I got into a field I hid under a bush. People were running across the field trying to escape the bombs and bullets, which continued to pursue them. I remained under the bush until eight o’clock at night when it grew dark and the aeroplanes departed. Guernica by that time was nothing but a horrible bonfire.

  The levelling of Guernica was not an isolated incident perpetrated by over-zealous pilots. The magazine Frankfurter Zeitung reported a week before the raid that a new system of demoralizing the unprotected ‘Reds’ had been devised which consisted of bombarding them first and then firing on them with machine guns. However, the Fascists immediately denied their involvement. The day after the bombardment of Guernica Reuters in London received a communiqué from the rebel GHQ at Salamanca which read:

  The destruction of the richer part of Guernica … by the retreating Reds has aroused much indignation among our troops and is spurring them on to save the Basque people from the Communists who are destroying their property.

  To the intense frustration of Herford and his fellow relief workers, the country
as a whole did not appear to be short of food, but it was concentrated in areas which were often impossible to get at. Good roads were few, and in the hilly country, thin and winding, and often impassable by large lorries. Valencia was the main source of outside supply for Republican Spain, situated conveniently on the eastern coast, but it was also the main supply route for Madrid, and food had to be driven 250 miles over a perilous road which in many places was badly damaged.

  In the countryside, farming was carried out as it had been for many centuries. Even the steepest hillsides were terraced and planted with olives and vegetables. Almost all the work was done by hand, and Herford recalls seeing only two mechanical harvesters in the whole of his time in Spain, one of which was broken. In the areas in which the population remained sufficiently stable to produce a healthy crop, problems occurred with food hoarding. In Lerida the peasants amassed large stocks of wine, olive oil and wheat. In April 1938 the town was routed by the rebels, and the locals destroyed everything rather than let it fall into enemy hands. Only 100 miles away in Barcelona there was famine.

  Although Herford’s main role in Spain was organizing the distribution of food to children, he had the opportunity on several occasions to visit hospitals caring for the Republicans. His strongest impression was of the Spaniards’ capacity to endure great suffering. In a civilian hospital he visited in Madrid, there were five operating tables in a row in a single theatre and only five surgeons. Patients lay watching others being operated upon while waiting their turn. In another Madrid hospital he witnessed several thoracoplasty operations being carried out under scanty local anaesthetic; the procedure involved the removal of several ribs to facilitate the collapse of a diseased or injured lung.

  Even this sight was not as tormenting as the wards in which those victims of the pellagra epidemic were lying, surrounded by swarms of black flies which infested the hospitals where supplies of disinfectants were short. The disease was caused by a deficiency of nicotinic acid (one of the B vitamins) in the diet, and is characterized by scaling of the skin, inflammation of the mouth, diarrhoea and finally dementia. Adequate supplies of milk could have prevented many thousands of painful deaths.

  It was in Madrid that Herford got his first taste of being under heavy shell fire. On a daily basis the Republicans poured shells into some part of the city. Often they concentrated on the poorer districts, hoping to break public morale. But the people adapted remarkably quickly. It amazed Herford and his colleagues that life continued virtually as normal, the streets bustling with people going about their business. When a shell was heard everyone stood still. If it fell far away business continued; if it fell near they bolted for cover into basements and underground stations.

  As aerial bombardment increased in the early months of 1938 – Franco’s ‘Blitzkrieg’ – it became increasingly clear that despite the defiant statements of their leaders, the Republicans were unable to resist the rebels’ superior firepower. Herford noted that although Barcelona, to which he returned from Madrid, was badly bombed, it could easily have been destroyed. But Franco deliberately held off from flattening cities he expected to enter as a conqueror. Instead it was small towns and villages which bore the brunt. Herford visited the small town of Nules shortly after it was bombarded. Although it had been largely evacuated before the raid, hardly a single building had escaped damage. The Republican government issued a plea to Great Britain to drop its non-intervention policy and allow them to buy arms, but still their requests fell on deaf ears. Franco continued to blame his worst atrocities on the retreating ‘Reds’, and on the occasion of Germany’s peaceful and unopposed entry into Austria in March 1938, he sent a comradely telegram to Hitler:

  From the victorious front of the war against Communism I send your excellency the greetings of Spain and my own in this solemn hour in which Germany has rendered a service to the West by sparing Europe danger and bloodshed.

  In Barcelona the small amount of resistance that could be offered from anti-aircraft guns was wholly unsuccessful. In 40 consecutive air raids, not one plane was shot down. Herford watched on many occasions as the bombers flew serenely on through puffs of white smoke from exploding shells. Even at night the raids continued. The Republicans swept the air with searchlight and tracer fire, but to little effect. German and Italian pilots were sent over in increasingly large numbers, rehearsing for the bigger conflict which was still to come. Towards the end of March 1938 the Republicans mustered their first chaser planes, and the crowds in the street cheered enthusiastically as they took to the skies. But as Herford recorded at the time, ‘They never seemed to get into the air in time.’ Defeat was becoming inevitable.

  Herford had a narrow escape himself, when he and Arthur Walker were standing on the roof of a six-storey building looking out across the city and suddenly bombs began to fall. The explosions got nearer and nearer, until a missile exploded almost on top of them. The whole building swayed with the force of the blast, feeling for a moment as if it was about to topple. Fortunately it remained upright, but was partially destroyed.

  In April 1938 Franco’s forces cut Republican Spain in half when they broke through to the sea at Vinaròs. The only way to travel between Barcelona and Valencia was by air. Shortly after this occurred, Malcolm de Lillihook, the Commissioner of the Sweden-based International Commission for Child Relief, came to Barcelona to collate information for a report on the food shortages throughout Spain. Herford had the good fortune to be invited to accompany him on a three-week whistle-stop tour of the country. Edith Pye, the head of the Quaker relief effort, had persuaded a number of outside organizations to form a joint commission which would collect funds from foreign governments with the aim of providing a hot meal each day for every Spanish child in need. For the most part the Quakers were going to be responsible for administering the funds on the ground.

  Before leaving Barcelona Herford accompanied Malcolm de Lillihook on a visit to no lesser person than the head of the Republican government, Prime Minister Dr Juan Negrin, and his Foreign Minister, Alvarez del Vayo. Negrin was a thickset, dark and quiet man with a kindly face. Before the war he had been a Professor of Medicine at Barcelona University. Malcolm de Lillihook explained that as they represented a humanitarian non-partisan organization, it was planning to help children on both sides of the conflict. In marked contrast to the callousness of Franco, Negrin replied, ‘I sincerely hope you will, for they are all Spanish children. I shall be most grateful for anything you can do to spare them suffering.’ Dr Negrin then saw to it that they were issued with special passes which required civil and military authorities to facilitate their journey at any time.

  When Herford set off by air from Barcelona to Valencia it was his first flight. It was a memorable experience. They took off before dawn and swept outwards into the Mediterranean over a sea of white cloud lit by a full moon, then descended at dawn to see a patchwork of orchards, cornfields, vineyards and red-tiled, white-walled houses in the fertile land near the coast. From the air the countryside looked almost sublimely peaceful. In a military hospital near Valencia Herford met another prominent Republican, Largo Caballero, Negrin’s predecessor, who had resigned in May 1937. Ideologically, Caballero was a radical socialist. One of Franco’s generals said of him, ‘It is only mistaken ideas about sanitation and hygiene which have allowed rats like him to live. It is wrong to encourage scum to breed.’ Herford asked him why all Republican hospitals had a bust of President Azana on display. Caballero replied with more than a hint of irreverence that ‘General Miaja wished it’. Miaja was the greatest of the Republican generals, one of those who had remained loyal to the Republic after the rebellion began. Caballero’s attitude was symptomatic of the divisions within Republican ranks. As Herford observed, men fought for many different and individual reasons, some for the independence of their particular homelands, the Basque region, Catalonia or Valencia, others for a wider socialist revolution. The Republican side was a broad alliance of many different interests, whose downfall
was due in no small part to their internal differences.

  On returning to Valencia to take an Air France flight back to Barcelona, Herford and de Lillihook were caught in a particularly heavy air raid. As they were driven into town to get the signature of the police official who had to authorize their travel, the whine of the falling bombs grew louder, and the clouds of dust and smoke thrown up by the exploding shells grew closer. They made it to what they thought was the correct government office, only to find that due to air raids it had been moved. The streets were virtually deserted and there were very few passers-by from whom to ask directions. They drove through the air raid from one building to the next, until finally Herford managed to find the official who had to sign their papers. But their troubles were not over. The car was running low on fuel and wouldn’t make it to the air strip. They tore through the city searching for an operational petrol pump. By the time they had refuelled the air raid was over and crowds of people were emerging from their hiding places and filling up the roads and pavements. The car was slowed to a snail’s pace. In desperation the driver stepped on the pedal horn, even though he had strict orders to use it only in an emergency. Two girls in the street called out, ‘Los syronos!’ (The sirens!), and people began to scatter. Never having used the horn before, the driver mistook it for the real thing and panicked, promptly stopped the car and ran for cover. Twenty minutes later he emerged from the shelter to be berated by his angry passengers. They raced through the rubble-strewn streets in time to see the plane roar into the air.

  Fortunately they did not remain stranded for long. By a stroke of good fortune they heard that the British cruiser Arethusa, the flagship of the Mediterranean, was about to collect a few refugees and some British journalists from the nearby town of Gandia. They made it to the dock just in time and were given magnificent hospitality by the captain. Malcolm de Lillihook had the admiral’s cabin and Herford the captain’s. Herford later remarked that he was never graced with such VIP treatment since.