Conflict Landscapes: an Archaeology of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War [1 ed.] 9781789691351

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Conflict Landscapes An Archaeology of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War Salvatore Garfi

Conflict Landscapes An Archaeology of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War

Salvatore Garfi

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com

ISBN 978-1-78969-134-4 ISBN 978-1-78969-135-1 (e-Pdf)

© S Garfi and Archaeopress 2019 Cover photo from Tamiment Library, New York University, Item 11-0064, Jan. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

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Contents List of Figures����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� iii List of Tables ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ v Acknowledgements�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vi

PART ONE Chapter 1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 Space and Place����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Landscapes of Conflict����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2 This Study�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3 IBAP - The International Brigades Archaeology Project�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5 Outline of Chapters ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8 Chapter 2 The Spanish Civil War�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������10 The Founding of the International Brigades������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 12 A Chronology of the Spanish Civil War����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 15

PART TWO Chapter 3 On Trenches and Field Fortifications������������������������������������������������������������������������������19 Trench Systems as Architecture���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 21 How Trench Systems Worked�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 22 The Western Front in Flanders and France��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 The Russo-Japanese War����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 25 The Spanish Civil War���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 27 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31 Chapter 4 Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón����������32 Topography of the Region of the Mediana Lines������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 33 2014 and 2015 Landscape Surveys of the Mediana Lines����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37 Field Methodology��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 38 Feature Coding���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 38 Shelters���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 38 Fighting Positions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 On Fieldwork, Data Collection and ‘Para-empiricism’ ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 Satellite Imagery Analysis of the 2014 and 2015 Landscape Survey Areas ���������������������������������������������� 40 Mapping the Mediana Survey Areas��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 41 Towards an Anatomy of the Mediana Lines��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 41 Provisional Architectures in Opposition�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 42 The Disposition of the Nationalist Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’���������������������� 42 The Structure of the Nationalist Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’������������������������� 45 The Republican Trenches���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55 The Disposition of the Republican Defences: 2014 and 2015 Survey Areas���������������������������������������������� 55 The Structure of the Republican Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’������������������������� 56 The Structure of the Republican Defences: 2014 Survey Area – South of the ‘Parapet of Death’��������� 58 Republican Defences: 2014 Survey Area – ‘Little Gallipoli’�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 65 Mediana Revisited – 2017���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 69 Conclusion – A ‘Geometric Personality’���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 70

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PART THREE Chapter 5 Experiencing the Mediana Lines�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������73 George Orwell at the Front������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 76 Concusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 84 Chapter 6 An Archaeology From Photographs: Imaging the Aragón Front������������������������������������85 The ALBA Harry Randall and Moscow Archive Collections������������������������������������������������������������������������� 87 Mise-en-Scène����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 87 Sampling the ALBA Collections – Selection and Analysis ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 88 Images of Field Occupation – Zones in the Republican Rear����������������������������������������������������������������������� 88 Access to the Rear����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 88 Valley Occupation in the Rear�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 91 Free Standing Shelters��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 98 Looking Inside��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 100 Images of Occupation at or Near the Front – Republican Trenches�������������������������������������������������������� 103 Digging-in���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 103 Entrenched�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 105 Fighting Positions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 109 In-line Entrenched Shelters���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 112 Hill Top Locations – Nationalist Shelters����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 116 Conclusion �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 123 Chapter 7 History in ‘Three Dimensions’�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 124 Settling into a Martial ‘Anthropocosmos’���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 125 A Hint of Hierarchy������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 127 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 128 Bibliography ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������130 Appendix Tables�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������136

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List of Figures Chapter 3 On Trenches and Field Fortifications Figure 3.1: Maps showing how the front line of the Spanish Civil War changed from 1936 to 1938.���������������������������20 Figure 3.2: Plan showing Republican and Nationalist entrenchments in the University City, Madrid. ����������������������21 Figure 3.3: Comparative diagrams illustrating the similarities between Spanish Civil War entrenchments and those of World War One.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Figure 3.4: Plan of the Nationalist hill-top defences on Mount Garabitas in the Casa de Campo, Madrid. �����������������30 Chapter 4 Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón Figure 4.1: Map of a portion of the Aragon front showing the position of Belchite and Mediana, and the Mediana Lines study area. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 Figure 4.2: Location map of the areas southwest of Mediana de Aragón where IBAP carried out fieldwork in 2014 and 2015. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������34 Figure 4.3: Portion of 1937 map showing the area surveyed in 2014 and 2015.����������������������������������������������������������������35 Figure 4.4: Map showing the survey areas dealt with in this volume, numbered in sequence of fieldwork. �������������36 Figure 4.5: Plans of fighting positions excavated in 2014.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 Figure 4.6: Map showing the overall extent of the Nationalist and Republican entrenchments in the salient southwest of Mediana. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43 Figure 4.7: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing the disposition of Nationalist and Republican trenches at the socalled ‘Parapet of Death’. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������44 Figure 4.8: 2015 Survey Area. Detailed plan of the opposing Nationalist and Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������45 Figure 4.9: 2015 Survey Area. Viewshed from the Nationalist trenches looking towards the opposing Republican lines. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46 Figure 4.10: 2015 Survey Area. Disposition of fighting positions along Nationalist and Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47 Figure 4.11: 2015 Survey Area. Density of Nationalist and Republican fighting positions by quadrats at the Parapet of Death.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������48 Figure 4.12: 2015 Survey Area. Examples of Nationalist trenches and some trench features. ��������������������������������������49 Figure 4.13: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing the distribution of Nationalist and Republican shelters along and behind the trenches at the Parapet of Death.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������50 Figure 4.14: 2015 Survey Area. Density of Nationalist and Republican soldiers’ shelters by quadrats along and behind the trenches at the Parapet of Death.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 Figure 4.15: 2015 Survey Area. Two images showing shelters behind the Nationalist trenches along the Parapet of Death.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������53 Figure 4.16: 2015 Survey Area. View of the south side of the triangular area behind the Nationalist trenches that might represent a marshalling or mustering area.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������54 Figure 4.17: 2015 Survey Area. View to the east showing the disposition of a group of possible Nationalist officers’ accommodation/shelters. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������54 Figure 4.18: 2015 Survey Area. Examples of Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death. ������������������������������������������57 Figure 4.19: 2015 Survey Area. Two views of features along the Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death. �������57 Figure 4.20: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing all of the Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death.������������������������59 Figure 4.21: 2014 Survey Area. Plan showing all trenches (Republican) divided into two zones.���������������������������������60 Figure 4.22: 2014 Survey Area. Plan showing all trenches, shelters and fighting positions.������������������������������������������61 Figure 4.23: 2014 Survey Area. Plan of possible Republican command post.��������������������������������������������������������������������62 Figure 4.24: 2014 and 2015 Survey Areas. Viewshed from Republican trenches.�������������������������������������������������������������63 Figure 4.25: 2014 Survey Area. Density of Republican fighting positions and shelters by quadrats.����������������������������64 Figure 4.26: 2014 Survey Area. View looking northeast into one of the embayments of Little Gallipoli, showing soldiers’ shelters disposed in tiers.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65 Figure 4.27: 2014 Survey Area. Plan of Little Gallipoli.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������66 Figure 4.28: 2014 Survey Area. View looking north along a communication trench at Little Gallipoli.����������������������67 Figure 4.29: 2014 Survey Area. Views of excavated shelters in Little Gallipoli. ���������������������������������������������������������������68 Figure 4.30: 2014 Survey Area. View of excavated, nearly free standing rectangular shelter at Little Gallipoli. ������68 Figure 4.31: Four views of Republican trenches and features east of the Belchite-Mediana Road, visited in 2017.���69

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Chapter 5 Experiencing the Mediana Lines Figure 5.1: A view of the so-called ‘Desert of Aragon’, where IBAP worked in 2014 and 2015.��������������������������������������78 Figure 5.2: Plan of restored Republican defences occupied by the POUM anarchist militia along the Huesca Front. Part of the ‘Ruta Orwell’.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������81 Figure 5.3: Views of the reconstructed trenches on the ‘Loma Orwell’ (‘Ruta Orwell’). ������������������������������������������������82 Figure 5.4: View of a soldiers’ shelter excavated in 2014 by IBAP��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������82 Chapter 6 An Archaeology From Photographs: Imaging the Aragón Front Figure 6.1: View of soldiers and pack animals resting along a valley trackway. �������������������������������������������������������������89 Figure 6.2: View of tents and dugout shelters at the International Brigade headquarters at Fuentes de Ebro. �������90 Figure 6.3: View of International Brigade camp behind the lines, probably at Jarama.�������������������������������������������������90 Figure 6.4: View of soldiers holding a ‘wall newspaper’.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������91 Figure 6.5: Dugout shelters being dug along the flank of a valley, probably at Jarama.�������������������������������������������������92 Figure 6.6: A closer-in view of the valley in Fig. 6.5. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������93 Figure 6.7: View of soldiers sitting in the entrance of a dugout shelter. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������94 Figure 6.8: View of shelters dug into a natural terrace, or ridge, probably at Jarama.���������������������������������������������������95 Figure 6.9: A monument to fallen International Brigade volunteers at Jarama.��������������������������������������������������������������96 Figure 6.10: A good view of a shelter, with three men sitting in front, and probably taken at Jarama.�����������������������97 Figure 6.11: Good view of soldiers in a shelter that was made in a cut and cover fashion.��������������������������������������������97 Figure 6.12: Free standing shelters covered in mounded earth at La Puebla de Valverde.��������������������������������������������98 Figure 6.13: A rear view of shelters at La Puebla de Valverde.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������99 Figure 6.14: View of well constructed shelter at Seguro de Los Baños.���������������������������������������������������������������������������100 Figure 6.15: Internal view of a fair sized shelter used as a field office. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������101 Figure 6.16: View into a large, multi-celled shelter at Gandesa.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������102 Figure 6.17: Shelters being dug into the bottom of a slope at Letux.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������103 Figure 6.18: Brigaders digging trenches near Teruel.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������104 Figure 6.19: A clear view down a trench near Teruel.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105 Figure 6.20: A scene of men manning a fire trench at Teruel.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������106 Figure 6.21: A very good view down a trench manned by the International Brigades, providing many trench details.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������106 Figure 6.22: Like the previous figure, this photo provides a good, detailed view down a trench, probably at Jarama. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������107 Figure 6.23: View of a soldier sitting in a niche along the parapet side of a fighting trench, probably at Jarama. �108 Figure 6.24: Photo providing details of the front of a machine gun position at Teruel.�����������������������������������������������109 Figure 6.25: An internal, detailed view of a machine gun position.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������110 Figure 6.26: A good view of a soldier in a fighting position along a trench, probably at Jarama. It shows some of the various ways in which a trench could be revetted.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������111 Figure 6.27: An overall view of a machine gun position, probably taken at Jarama.�����������������������������������������������������112 Figure 6.28: A possibly posed photograph providing details of a shelter in the parapet side of a probable support trench.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 Figure 6.29: A very good view down a support trench showing details of shelter construction.��������������������������������114 Figure 6.30: A very good view of dugout shelters and niches in the side walls of a trench, probably at Jarama. ����115 Figure 6.31: View of a brigader lying in his shelter at Jarama.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������116 Figure 6.32: View of a shelter being dug, or enlarged, probably at Jarama.��������������������������������������������������������������������117 Figure 6.33: View down a support trench, probably at Jarama, showing a well constructed shelter built of sand bags.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������117 Figure 6.34: Nationalist hill-top defences at Purburell Hill, outside Quinto, after being taken by the 15th International Brigade.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������118 Figure 6.35: A post battle view of a partially rock-cut officers’ shelter at Purburell Hill, Quinto.������������������������������119 Figure 6.36: Close-up view of a Nationalist shelter just visible in the left background of Fig. 6.35. ��������������������������120 Figure 6.37: A further close-up view of the shelter shown in the preceding photograph.�������������������������������������������121 Figure 6.38: A front-on view of Nationalist hill-top shelters also visible in the background of Fig 6.35. ������������������122

iv

List of Tables (in Appendix)

Table 2.1: The International Brigades and Battalions in the Spanish Civil War�������������������������������������������������������������136 Table 4.1: Showing the relationships between private, communal and public space����������������������������������������������������136 Table 4.2: Nationalist trenches and features along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area)�����������������������������������137 Table 4.3: Republican trenches and features along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area)�����������������������������������138 Table 4.4: Republican trenches and features south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area)������������������������������139 Table 4.5: Republican trenches and features south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area – ‘Little Gallipoli’)����140 Table 6.1: Images from the ALBA Archive, Tamiment Library, New York University����������������������������������������������������140

v

Acknowledgements This research is the result of a three year Leverhulme Post-Doctoral, Early Career Fellowship that I held in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies (SPLAS), at the University of Nottingham from 2015 to 2018. The fieldwork described herein – which commenced in 2014 – would not have been possible without the support, encouragement, and cooperation of colleagues and others working on the materiality of the Spanish Civil War. Their numbers are many, but above all, I must first mention and thank Alfredo González-Ruibal of the Spanish National Research Council, Heritage Sciences, who had been carrying out archaeological investigations of the Spanish Civil War since 2006, and was highly receptive to my idea for an archaeological project based around those warscapes of Spain, encountered by the volunteers of the International Brigades. Alfredo and I founded the International Brigades Archaeology Project (IBAP) in 2014, and Alfredo was its principal investigator. The project ran for two years in Aragón, and the work covered in these pages is just one result of that endeavour. IBAP depended on a team of professional archaeologists that had worked with Alfredo for at least seven years, along with non-Spanish paying volunteers with a sincere interest in the Spanish Civil War, and Spanish archaeology students, and my gratitude to all of them cannot be overstated. Of the professional team, I wish to thank Pedro Rodríguez Simón (a co-director of IBAP) for all of the background work, and baseline data acquisition that he did for IBAP’s fieldwork in Aragón, and which contributed greatly to the research presented here. I also wish to thank the following individuals who were part of the team: Xurxo Ayán Vila, Candela Martínez Barrio, Manuel Antonio Franco Fernández, Carlos Marín Suárez, Alejandro Laíño Piñeiro, Rui Gomes Coelho, and Josu Santamarina. My thanks also go out to two photographers who have worked with Alfredo for a number of years: Álvaro Minguito and Óscar Rodríguez. I wish to express my admiration for the non-Spanish IBAP volunteers, since the overwhelming majority had no previous archaeological experience, and they accepted the hard, physical work and exigencies of field archaeology with enthusiasm and good humour. I cannot thank them enough. They were: Sue Turner, Frieda Park, Des Mullaney, Wendy Lewis, Elaine Ryan, Louis-Phillippe Campeau, Bethan Edwards, Claire Maass, Morgan Pendleton, Penny Demas, Gary Barko, Kevin Woolard, Roger Deeks, Geoffrey Billett, Valerie Bondura, Nico Ortiz, Branca Franicevic, Harry Guild, Steve Dinnen, and Matthew Erlich. In 2016, I worked again with Alfredo and most of his team, but this time in Madrid, and I wish to thank them and the Spanish and North American students who were also involved on the project. Of the students, I wish to commend Pablo Gutiérrez de León Juberías as an excellent battlefield tour guide, since he and his father gave me an extensive, and enjoyable, two day tour of the Jarama battlefields in 2017. On the subject of battlefield tours, however, I wish to thank Angela Jackson for taking the time to show me sites in the Priorat, in Catalonia, where the International Brigades rested and prepared for the battle of the Ebro, and I especially wish to thank Anna Marti and her husband Enric Comas for looking after me in their village home along the Aragón-Catalonia border, where they showed me the extensive warscape remains, relevant to the International Brigades, that they had been recording for a number of years. Additionally, I should not forget Alan Warren, a well known tour guide of sites occupied and fought over by the International Brigades, and always eager to answer any questions about the Brigades put to him. I must express my especial thanks and gratitude to my colleagues in SPLAS, at Nottingham. First, I must thank my friend Alberto Marti (who also, with Mayca Rojo, introduced me to the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War at a conference in Birmingham in 2011) for suggesting to the department’s International Consortium for the Study of Post-Conflict Societies, in 2013, that I give a presentation at one of the Consortium’s colloquiums on the research for my PhD, which dealt with the 20th century conflict archaeology of Western Sahara. At this event I talked about IBAP, and got the support of Bernard McGuirk and Gareth Stockey; vi

with Gareth eventually proposing me to the department for a Leverhulme post-doctoral fellowship, and encouraging and supporting me in the application process. Although my fellowship ended in September 2018, SPLAS has given me some of the best colleagues and friends I have ever had in all the years I have been an archaeologist, and amongst them, alongside Gareth and Alberto, I have to include Rúben Leitão Serém, Stephen Roberts, Rui Miranda, Jeremy Lawrence, Tony Kapcia, Sara Costa, Rino Soares, Mark Sabine, Erica Brazil, Daniel Oviedo Silva, Simon Breden, and Alejandro Pérez-Olivares. Others I wish to thank in Britain, Spain, and elsewhere, include Richard Baxell, Javier Marquerie, Alicia Quintero Maqua, and the staff of the libraries and archives that I dealt with either in person or online. Of the latter, I must especially thank the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labour Archives, New York University, for allowing me to reproduce all of the photographs included as figures in Chapter 6. Last, but definitely not least, I am indebted to my wife, Barbara, for putting up with my long hours and trips abroad, and for encouraging and giving me support during my PhD and throughout this fellowship. Salvatore Garfi Pontrhydygroes, Wales, December 2018

vii

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Introduction Polly wasn’t certain what she’d expected. Men and horses, obviously. In her mind’s eye they were engaged in mortal combat, but you couldn’t go on doing that all day. So there would be tents. And that was about as far as the mind’s eye had seen. It hadn’t seen that an army on campaign is a sort of large, portable city. It has only one employer, and it manufactures dead people, but like all cities it attracts… citizens. What was unnerving was the sound of babies crying, off in the rows of tents. She hadn’t expected that. Or the mud. Or the crowds. Everywhere there were fires, and the smell of cooking. This was a siege after all. People had settled in. – Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment.

As Terry Pratchett’s cross-dressing soldier-heroine, Polly Perks, came to realise when she finally encountered an army on campaign: armies do not fight all of the time. When not engaged with the enemy or moving cross country, they encamp. While digging in and making shelters (or raising tents), soldiers light fires to cook and keep warm, and in an era when women and wives followed their soldiering men-folk there could even be accompanying children. Such an army imprints itself on the ground with its ‘crowds’ of ‘citizens’ – soldiers and hangers-on – churning up the very earth in a way that only happens when masses of people gather together in open country. They, in effect, ‘settle in’, creating something akin to what Pratchett describes as a ‘portable city’. They can even, and often, create conurbations, made up of many places in geographic space, and all serving specialist functions, such as fighting, living, command, communication, transportation, victualing and other services, even including leisure. Hierarchies will also express themselves in the distribution of places in space, and all of these are connected through linkages. Some might be hinge-like because they are contiguous, or simple route-ways crossing open space. Space and Place This monograph deals with spaces and places in a warscape, and ones specifically created by and for armies and their numerous activities, martial or otherwise. ‘Place’ and ‘space’ are the contexts in which all human activities take place, and what Polly Perks saw, as in Terry Pratchett’s fiction, is reflected in these pages. So how do we understand the concepts of space and place in a martial environment; how do we relate to them, and how do they relate to each other? I am not a geographic theoretician, so what follows will be brief, but I should like to begin with an interpretation of space and place as expressed by the humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan: what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value… The ideas of ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.1 Space for us can be perceived in different ways. There is ‘earth’, or geographical space, being the natural environment with all of its topographic variables. There is behavioural space which deals with social relationships. These include relationships between individuals, between groups of individuals, and between the individual and groups. While also, there is cosmological space, dealing with ideational beliefs and attitudes – of myths and religions – making ‘thought as powerful as any physical factor’.2 It goes without saying that there is very much more to say about space and place, but on a personal level, my own life-path as an archaeologist has been defined by space and place. They have always sat together 1  2 

Tuan 1977: 6. Roberts 1996: 11-12.

1

Conflict Landscapes

on my shoulder, spurring me on. I have spent decades exploring geographical space and the places, both natural and man-made, that constitute the physical environment in which we humans exist, that is, the landscapes in which our lives are situated. In minimalist terms, a landscape is the backdrop against which archaeological remains are plotted. From economic and political perspectives, landscapes provide resources, refuge and risks that both impel and impact on human actions and situations. Today, however, the most prominent notions of landscape emphasise its socio-symbolic dimensions: landscape is an entity that exists by virtue of its being perceived, experienced, and contextualised by people.3 So, following on from this, by putting human perception, experience and context centre stage, then ‘the study of landscape is much more than an academic exercise – it is about the complexity of people’s lives, historical contingency, contestation, motion and change’.4 This is ever so paramount when trying to understand landscapes of conflict, and in the case of this study, a landscape of modern, twentieth century conflict. Landscapes of Conflict John and Patricia Carman, in their ongoing research into the nature of historic battlespaces, characterise modern, twentieth and twenty-first century warfare as disconcertingly extended from the surface of our globe into other realms: into the air; under the sea; into the most inhospitable regions of the world… and even into outer space. It has also gone beyond the physical into more conceptual regions: into the relations of government to people; into the realm of science and technology; and, …into the so-called ‘infosphere’ and… cyberspace. The battles of our age can be said to have no limits or boundaries: they frequently cannot be seen or measured, nor physically controlled. Unlike the warfare of previous ages, they do not occupy a particular location but are at once nowhere and everywhere.5 Modern conflict, as John Schofield points out, can be military or civilian. It can include small-scale ethnic disputes or larger civil conflagrations. Conflict can be ‘hot’ or cold’ and spread across the globe. Its complexity and size can include individual battlefields, the landscapes in which battles are situated and the ‘landscape of experience’, including not just the land, but also the sea and air, and into space.6 This sense of scale and multi-dimensionality, to Nicholas Saunders for instance, means that the archaeology of modern conflict is, by its very nature an anthropologically-informed multidisciplinary endeavour, concerned with the social, cultural, psychological, and technological as well as military complexities of recent conflicts, and their powerful and unpredictable legacies… This multitude of issues makes modern conflict sites, in effect, highly sensitised multilayered landscapes that require a robust, interdisciplinary approach.7 Such a perspective epitomises the archaeology of modern conflict in the 20th and early 21st centuries, which, by being multi-faceted, draws on the insights, resources, techniques and knowledge of disciplines other than archaeology. They include anthropology and culture studies, cultural geography, military history, art history, museum and heritage studies and tourism, plus the sub-disciplines that feed into these fields. This diversity gives a strength to modern conflict archaeology ‘which, rather than privileging one or other kinds of knowledge, seeks instead to draw on each as appropriate in order to respond to the complex challenges of investigating conflict in the modern world’.8 Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 1. Bender 2001: 2. Carman and Carman 2006: 31. 6  Schofield 2005: 19-20. 7  Saunders 2012: x. 8  Saunders 2012: x. 3  4  5 

2

Introduction

While describing the practice of archaeology, David Hurst Thomas has succinctly written: ‘Archaeological objects vary. So do archaeological contexts. Deciphering meaning from such objects in context is the business of archaeology’.9 This simple distillation of archaeology’s purpose, with an emphasis on ‘context’ is ever more challenging when studying the landscapes of modern conflict: …militarised landscapes and the metallic artefact assemblages of recent conflict… [are] windows into a world of extraordinary complexity and contradictions. Tradition clashes with modernity. Rival ethnicities and nationalisms collide. Memory and remembrance are politically contested.10 As pointed out by Klausmeier et al., these complex issues take archaeologists beyond ‘simple field recording, noting presence/absence and architectural detail’. They require ‘more reflexive, more integrated and more thoughtful approaches’.11 This Study This book presents an archaeological exploration and evocation of ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of conflict: landscapes that are often described as warscapes, battlescapes, battlespaces, and of course conflict landscapes. Its focus is the Spanish Civil War, an industrially fought war – from July 1936 to April 1939 – that was a part of Philip Bobbitt’s so-called epochal ‘Long War’ of 1914-1990,12 or as Niall Ferguson has characterised the conflicts of the twentieth century, as one ‘War of the World’, with the greatest excesses of violence carried out between 1904, with the start of the Russo-Japanese War, and ending with the Korean War in 1953.13 The Spanish Civil War is also seen as a precursor to the Second World War, and as such, it can be considered an integral part of what Charles de Gaulle was to be the first to describe as Europe’s second Thirty Years War.14 The spaces and places – the landscapes – of conflict from the civil war in Spain, and afterwards under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, are many and varied. First, the front line in the war (though its position altered by the end of the war) has left indelible remains inscribed on the land. Unlike First World War entrenchments in Flanders, the entrenchments of both the Republican and Nationalist sides in Spain are still well preserved in many places, and they can be seen to cut across swathes of countryside. There are also the sites of prisoner of war and concentration camps, with the latter still in use into the 1950s. These housed former Republicans and political prisoners and their purpose was to humiliate and punish the losers of the Civil War, to ‘re-educate’ the inmates, and to ‘rehabilitate’ many through forced labour. In fact, forced labour was a way for political prisoners to redeem parts of their sentences. They were put to work on numerous public construction projects, with the most grandiose being the dictator, Francisco Franco’s own tomb, the Valley of the Fallen.15 There is also a landscape of resistance and guerilla war that can be found behind the Nationalist lines during the war, and throughout certain parts of the country after the war, since armed opposition to the Franco regime continued in Spain for a good ten to twelve years after the conflict.16 The Spanish landscape is also littered with more than 2000 mass graves of victims of the violence of the Civil War,17 with the majority being those of extra-judicial killings by the Franco regime, as well as unmarked graves of mainly Republican soldiers (both Spanish and foreign) from the war. The identification and exhumation of mass graves sites was given a very real impetus in the year 2000, when Thomas 1989: 15. Current Archaeology 2009: 40. 11  Klausmeier, Purbrick and Schofield 2006: 5. 12  Bobbitt 2003: 24. 13  Ferguson 2007: xxxv. 14  Charles de Gaulle expressed his view that both the First and Second World Wars were one conflict, in a speech he gave at Bar-le-Duc, France, on 28 July 1946. The speech is available online at: http://mjp.univ-perp.fr/textes/degaulle28071946.htm accessed 20 February 2017. Other commentators and historians have shared this view with one of the most recent being Ian Kershaw. See Kershaw 2005. 15  González-Ruibal 2007 and 2012. 16  Bondura et al 2015; Cowen 1990 Franández Franández and Moshenska 2016; and Tellez 1996. 17  Memoria Histórica. 9 

10 

3

Conflict Landscapes

the journalist Emilio Silva Barrera wanted to look for the remains of his own grandfather – and to come to know the story of the violence that occurred in his grandfather’s village in northern Spain – and through his efforts the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, that is, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (the ARHM), was founded. The ARMH is a national NGO, now taking advantage of Spain’s ‘Historical Memory Law’ of 2007, which reversed the so-called ‘Pact of Silence’ that sought, after the death of Franco in 1975, not to examine the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Regime, in what has been described as an act of ‘national amnesia’. Exhumations are not dealt with in any way in this study, but the work of the ARMH and similar organisations has been impressive indeed, though undoubtedly controversial. The Association reaches out to locally concerned community groups and it continues to collate data on mass graves. It also records local histories from the war and the stories of those people who experienced Francoist repression, and, as its core objective, it alone has excavated (during the years 2000 to 2014) almost 160 grave sites consisting of more than 1300 individual exhumations.18 But, when taking all of the scientific work on exhumations into account across the whole of Spain (as of 2016), an overall total of around 8500 victim’s remains have been unearthed in approximately 400 exhumations.19 All of this has been carried out mainly by volunteers, alongside forensic archaeologists and anthropologists, and their work has allowed numerous Spanish families and communities to learn about the circumstances of the disappearance and death of their family and community members, and to achieve some form of personal, family, or community ‘closure’. The ARHM and its kindred organisations and initiatives are profound facilitators of this, and of bearing witness to, and making sense of, the violence of the Civil War. As an archaeological endeavour, their work is poignant in the extreme.20 To many people, the work of the ARMH is what comes to mind when the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War is mentioned. But their importance to the Spanish people in both personal and socio-political terms has obscured ‘the importance of the war heritage at large, from both a historical and a political point of view’. The archaeology of the Civil War, though exceedingly well preserved in many locations, is also deemed as unworthy of serious study since, to generalise, academic archaeologists in Spain appear to show little interest in periods that post-date late antiquity, and heritage protection legislation considers the remains of the war as too recent.21 Because of this, funding for Civil War archaeology is scant, and as González-Ruibal pointed out in 2007, but which is still pertinent today: An exploration of the archaeological bibliography of the Spanish Civil War reveals that the studies and projects existing to date are usually unconnected to other similar works, have a narrow scope, are seldom directed by professional archaeologists and are divulged in obscure journals, local books with very limited circulation, newspapers, leaflets, and unobtainable proceedings – if they are published at all.22 Of the different types of fieldwork projects carried out, they have mainly dealt with the recording of built field fortifications, the excavations of portions of battlefields (usually entrenchments), and of course, the exhumation of mass graves. This work has been undertaken by a variety of groups and these have included amateur military history associations, town councils, contract and academic archaeologists, and organisations representing the victims of Francoist repression in cooperation with archaeological volunteers and forensic scientists.23 In spite of this mix of efforts, an exceptional amount of archaeological fieldwork on the warscapes of the Civil War has nevertheless been carried out. A good deal of it has been in the form of targeted excavations with associated field prospecting usually at battle sites, though as well as these, work on labour and concentration camps have been undertaken, along with, and for example, very recent excavations at the site of a medical clinic in what was the battlespace of Madrid’s ARMH. For an introduction to these issues see Tremlett 2012. Larsen 2016. For a detailed study of an exhumation of mass graves and the effect it has had on a local community see Renshaw 2011. 21  González-Ruibal 2007: 206-207 and 209. 22  González-Ruibal 2007: 212. 23  González-Ruibal 2007: 210-211. 18  19  20 

4

Introduction

University City.24 But the material remains of the Civil War – and the individual sites and landscapes examined meticulously by archaeologists and others – are all part and parcel of larger landscapes of violence, be they sites of battle, civil unrest, or outright repression. …we cannot understand battlefields without exploring mass graves, military barracks, prisons and fascist architecture; we have to make sense of the materiality of whole warscapes and historical processes. In the era of total war and totalitarian regimes, it is totalities that have to be appraised.25 Such a topographic awareness is what informs this study, though my approach in the following pages is limited in scope and geographic area. As such, it aims to look particularly at the archaeology of a very specific landscape, one encountered by foreign volunteers who went to Spain during the civil war, and fought on the side of the Second Spanish Republic against the Nationalist rebels led by General Francisco Franco. The largest number of foreign volunteers on the Republican side fought in the International Brigades: numbering more than 35,000 and hailing from 50 some odd countries. But many also joined the ‘revolutionary’ militias, such as the POUM and the CNT-FAI,26 with others, both women and men, going to Spain to give front and rear line medical assistance, as doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers. However, in this study, all of these individuals will be treated for descriptive purposes, as making up one international force – an aggregate ‘international brigade’ – that went to Spain to assist its democratically elected government against the coup d’état and military rebellion of July 1936. An example of such a collective view of the foreign volunteers has been held for decades by the American organisation, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), which explains on its website that ‘the U.S. volunteers [in Spain] served in various units [including other battalions] and came to be known collectively as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade’.27 Such a catholic approach is relevant here since the region of Spain mainly dealt with in this study is that of the Aragón front, where the Republican forces that occupied and fought along it included the revolutionary militias, the Republican Popular Army, and of course, the International Brigades. For an overview of the foreign volunteers, who went to Spain to fight for, and support, the Spanish Republican government, and in particular, the International Brigades, see Chapter 2. IBAP - The International Brigades Archaeology Project In 2013 I was with Alfredo González-Ruibal of Incipit, the heritage sciences section of the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas – the CSIC), at an archaeological conference held at the University of Leicester. We had organised a session on modern imperialism, and since he, being probably the best known proponent of modern conflict archaeology in Spain had been carrying out fieldwork on the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War since 2006, and I was working on the archaeology of the Western Sahara conflict of 1975-1991 out of which I was tangentially developing an interest in the Spanish Civil War (Western Sahara was a former colony of Spain – Spanish Sahara), we got talking about the possibility of organising a field project exploring the archaeology of the Civil War through the prism of the International Brigades. Alfredo thought that this would be very worthwhile since the specific targeting of sites of the International Brigades had not been done before, and we presumed that there would be a good deal of support for such an endeavour since there is a very strong interest in the International Brigades in both Spain and abroad. There are numerous organisations set up to keep alive the memory of the brigades, and to foster and recognise that what the brigaders fought for in the 1930s is still relevant to people today. These organisations include the Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas González-Ruibal 2018. González-Ruibal 2007: 221. 26  Around 700 foreign volunteers joined the POUM militia between July 1936 and June 1937, see Durgan 1997, and up to 3000 joined the CNT-FAI militia, see Nelles 1997. POUM stands for the Marxist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, while CNT-FAI represents the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, two anarchist worker’s organisations pushing for a social revolution in Spanish society. As such, they opposed the Soviet Union’s brand of communism, and were considered ‘Trotskyist’ by Stalinists. 27  There was never an ‘Abraham Lincoln Brigade’ in Spain, only the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade. However, the descriptor ‘brigade’ stuck and has been used to describe all U.S. volunteers, in all of their capacities, in the Spanish Civil War, see ALBA. 24  25 

5

Conflict Landscapes

Internacionales (AABI) in Spain, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archive (ALBA), already mentioned, as well as the International Brigades Memorial Trust (IBMT) in Britain. Elsewhere, there are further organisations in countries that include Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Annually, and throughout any given year, members of these organisations, as well as other interested individuals, and even relations of some brigaders, journey singularly or in groups to the sites where the International Brigades fought, and to the towns and villages where they were stationed. There are guide books to some of the battle grounds where they fought,28 and there are even specialist tour guides who provide set and bespoke tours of the battle sites and other locales relevant to the presence of the International Brigades in Spain. These sites can be described as ‘orphan heritage’,29 since the foreign visitors give a value to the locations where the Brigaders fought making them, in effect, stakeholders. Because of this obvious international interest, Alfredo and I thought that we could run what would in effect be an international community archaeological project exploring landscapes of the Spanish Civil War as encountered by the volunteers of the International Brigades. ‘Community archaeology’ is a term that has been in use in the anglophone world at least since the 1980s, and it has come to encapsulate ‘archaeological projects explicitly designed for, or incorporating, substantial community involvement and participation’.30 To Gabriel Moshenska, community archaeology is very much a community centred undertaking. But writing in 2008 he expressed strong reservations about defining the term explicitly: ‘if pushed, I would argue that it is the actions of individuals or groups to investigate the archaeology of their local area or other areas of interest or importance to them’.31 As such, Alfredo and I felt that we could tap into the strong and sincere interest in the International Brigades that apparently exists, and to offer interested individuals the chance to take part in excavations and other field work. They would have the chance to handle artefacts that they themselves would have unearthed in the context of controlled excavations in specific historical locations, and to become intimate with landscapes and landscape features of the Spanish Civil War through field-walking. Some even, if related to International Brigaders, could have the chance to possibly tread the same ground, and maybe even the same trenches that their relations fought in, and for some, might have died in. Such archaeology would be more than just an excavation or a survey, but a memorialising experience. So, with all of this in mind, Alfredo and I launched the International Brigades Archaeology Project (IBAP) in the early months of 2014. We aimed to model IBAP after the Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP), based out of the University of Bristol and co-directed by Nicholas Saunders and Neil Faulkner. This project ended in 2016 after ten annual field seasons, and its aim was to study the conflict landscape of the Arab revolt of 1916-1918 in what is now southern Jordan (the northern Hejaz) against the Ottoman Turks, in which the British Army officer and archaeologist, T. E. Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – was a prominent figure. The project was self-funding since it relied on fee paying volunteers who would take part in fieldwork for two weeks every year. The iconic figure of T. E. Lawrence and the landscape and archaeology of southern Jordan was an obvious draw for the volunteers, and participants came from a variety of backgrounds including student and professional archaeologists. Judging from the project’s blogs over the years, the volunteers became an interested community in their own right, keeping in touch and keen to explore the archaeology of the First World War in the Hejaz and elsewhere. Some even went on to do postgraduate degrees based on their association with the project.32 We felt that this model would work for us since we had some seed funding from Spanish sources to get us started and we felt that the International Brigades, with the international interest that exists for them, would be a draw for fee paying volunteers. The project would also be attractive to Spanish students keen to explore the archaeology of the Civil War, and Alfredo already had a small team of archaeological colleagues who could serve as supervisors and instructors in the field, and be the professional backbone See Lloyd 2015; and Mathieson 2014. Price 2005. 30  Simpson 2008: 69. 31  Moshenska 2008: 52. 32  GARP. 28  29 

6

Introduction

of the project. As such, IBAP was conceived as an integral contributor to his, and his colleague’s, ongoing archaeological research into the Civil War’s multiple landscapes of violence, including post-war sites of repression. He and his team had already worked at numerous locations in Spain – these included sites in León, Madrid, Guadalajara, Catalonia, and Extremadura33 – and with one of his colleagues already exploring Civil War archaeology in Aragón, around the town of Belchite south of Zaragoza, then that community and its immediate hinterland was chosen as IBAP’s fieldwork locus. Belchite is one of the iconic sites of the Spanish Civil War. It was situated on the front line around 40 kilometres southeast of Zaragoza, and occupied by Nationalist forces early on in the war. The town’s layout and architecture, with its narrow streets and with the houses along its perimeter tightly terraced, and with the town only accessed through defensible gates with heavy doors, made it easy for the Nationalists to fortify, while additionally, a ring of entrenchments with bunkers and strong points was constructed around the town. In early September 1937, after Republican forces (including the International Brigades) took the nearby town of Quinto as part of the Republic’s push towards Zaragoza, Belchite was invested. After taking the town’s outlying defences, Republican forces, mainly the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade, made their way into the town, and had to take it street by street and house by house. The fighting was bloody and harrowing, with the Brigaders even using the now contemporary tactic of smashing holes through building and cellar walls to move from one building to another in which there could only be close quarter fighting.34 Other 15th Brigade units that took part in the attack included the Dimitrov Battalion and the British Battalion’s anti-tank battery. Tanks and aircraft were also used in the attack on the town, and due to the severity of the fighting and the town’s bombardment, Belchite was left virtually uninhabitable after being taken. The Nationalists retook the town in March, 1938, in their own offensive eastwards which caused the Republican forces, including the International Brigades, to rapidly retreat (known as the ‘great retreats’) into Catalonia and to the north bank of the River Ebro. Although other towns were similarly bombarded and ruined just like Belchite, Francisco Franco declared after the war that the town would not be rebuilt, but kept in its ruinous state as a memorial to the war and the Nationalist cause, and to serve as a reminder of the ‘brutality’ of the ‘reds’, meaning the Republican government and its armed forces. A Francoist new town was subsequently built, with forced labour, immediately to the north of the ruins of ‘Old’ Belchite. With Spain’s return to democracy after the death of Franco in 1975, Belchite has now become, and is presented as, a sepulchral memorial to all of the violence of the Civil War. The gates into the town have been rebuilt and the streets have been cleared of debris to make them safe. There are also guided tours held daily. If someone from outside Spain visits Old Belchite today it soon becomes obvious that the site is mainly visited by Spaniards. However, in terms of ‘orphan heritage’, it is something of a place of pilgrimage for people of all nationalities interested in the Spanish Civil War and the International Brigades. This is especially so for people related to members of the Brigades, and in particular, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. In fact, this sense of ‘pilgrimage’ was one reason why some people volunteered to take part in IBAP. In the project’s first year, 2014, four people related to Brigaders joined out of a total of eleven. For them, taking part in IBAP was very much a personal journey, and one in which they could get close to the very earth upon which their uncles, fathers and grandfathers fought and even died. They wished to gain an extra dimension to the memory of their relatives, who to them, were people who were very special indeed – and held highly in their family’s memories. The 2015 season did not include any relatives of brigaders, but it, like the previous season, included volunteers with a very keen and active interest in the Spanish Civil War, and with one volunteer in particular, who had personally known a number of brigaders, now deceased. Over both years, the age range of the paying volunteers varied from 21 to 74, and the mix was British, Canadian, Irish, American, Spanish, and Croatian.

33  34 

Arqueología de la Guerra Civil Española; and González-Ruibal 2016. Landis 1967: 296-301.

7

Conflict Landscapes

Although the total number of fee paying volunteers reached twenty-two over 2014 and 2015, and they were all extremely enthusiastic about the project, their numbers were just too low for IBAP to be financially sustainable. Because of this, and because funds from other sources in Spain were too piecemeal, it was decided that IBAP would not continue after 2015. This is not to say that IBAP’s fieldwork was not productive. A variety of fieldwork activities were carried out at, and around Belchite, and towards the town of Mediana de Aragón (Mediana), around 17 kilometres to the north. These primarily included excavations at occupied and defended Nationalist positions disposed around Belchite, field walking along portions of the perimeter of Belchite, a geomatic survey of Republican positions overlooking the town, and targetted excavations at fighting and occupation positions along opposing entrenchments southwest of Mediana, including fieldwalking. The results of this fieldwork can be found in a detailed technical report by Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal et al, with another in preparation, and in a published conference paper by Pedro Rodríguez Simón et al.35 Additionally, four volunteers recorded their impressions of IBAP in articles and blogs.36 This study, however, is an elaboration only, of survey work undertaken by myself as an adjunct to the IBAP fieldwork near Mediana de Aragón, when in 2014 it was recognised that since the project’s targeted excavations were situated within a broad warscape of Nationalist and Republican entrenchments – and associated habitations – then that landscape would benefit from further field prospection and landscape study. The defensive remains southwest of Mediana are extensive, covering approximately 56 square kilometres,37 and can be considered amongst some of the best preserved of their kind in Spain. They consist of fighting trenches and positions, communications and support lines, and habitation areas: places where a great many shelters were dug and stone huts were constructed to house the opposing armies while they watched, bombarded, and sent out sorties against each other. The environment created by the two armies was architectural, exhibiting many of the characteristics of almost any ‘built environment’. They had central and peripheral loci (strong points and outworks), and links through route-ways (tracks and communication trenches). There were specific living areas, and specialised activity loci such as observation posts, gun positions, and of course, frontal fighting trenches. They were places where life was profoundly lived, and where it could, and often did, end brutally. The soldiers of both armies ‘settled in’ and faced each other off. They made the front lines their home, and they created their own communities, though undeniably martial ones. This volume focuses on a portion of this war-scape – referred to as the Mediana Salient – as a place, or perhaps better, a series of linked and opposing places carved out of the space of the arid Aragón countryside, creating a particular landscape of ‘settlement’ – where soldiers lived their daily lives while confronting the rigours of war. Though planned and laid out, entrenched positions like those at Mediana (for both sides in the war) also had an organic quality, reminiscent of some other types of settlements. They might have been specialised and short lived – only occupied from Autumn 1937 to Spring 1938 – but they were settlements nonetheless, and in this study, their remains and delineations on the ground are presented as settlement archaeology. Outline of Chapters In order to explore the spaces and places dealt with in this book I have divided it into three parts. Part One consists of this introductory chapter, followed by a brief overview of the Spanish Civil War and the formation of the International Brigades in Chapter 2. A time-line of the Spanish Civil War is also included. Part Two consists similarly of two chapters with the first, Chapter 3, aiming to contextualise the use of entrenchments in the Spanish Civil War within that period of modern warfare that commenced with the Russo-Japanese War and continued beyond World War Two and even up to the Vietnam War. It views field fortifications as being ‘architectural’ in nature, and this is a theme that is followed throughout González-Ruibal et al 2015; Rodríguez Simón et al 2015; and Arqueología de la Guerra Civil Española. Billett 2015; Dinnen 2015; Lewis and Ryan 2014; and Park 2014. See also Garfi 2019. 37  González-Ruibal et al 2015: 80. 35  36 

8

Introduction

this study, and in particular in Chapter 4, which is an archaeological landscape study of a portion of the Mediana Salient. There is a location at the Salient that was known as the ‘Parapet of Death’, and at this location units of the British battalion of the 15th International Brigade engaged Nationalist forces in a hard fought battle, with their hastily dug entrenchments getting them as close as 40 yards from the opposing enemy positions. The three chapters making up Part Three take a slightly tangential route from the preceding ones. In Chapter 5, the phenomenology of a foreign volunteer occupying Republican trenches along the Aragón front is described through the writings of Eric Blair – George Orwell. Although there are numerous memoirs and accounts written by international volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, very few, if any, described and observed what it was like to occupy front line trenches as lucidly as George Orwell. As Chapter 5 explains, although Orwell has been criticised for his political interpretations and his involvement with the anarchist POUM militia, he was a keen observer of the material and sensual world around him. In fact, his writing style and descriptive abilities were almost archaeological in nature, and these make his book Homage to Catalonia relevant to the fieldwork findings presented here. The second chapter in Part Three, Chapter 6, interprets a selection of thirty-eight contemporary photographs from the Spanish Civil War which show entrenchment features and soldiers’ habitations, occupied by units of the 15th International Brigade in 1937 and 1938. As explained in the chapter, the aim is to treat the photographs as ‘acts of eyewitnessing’ and each as a ‘slice of space as well as time’. Each photo is seen as something akin to an archaeological sondage, providing limited information on the materiality visible in each image. Such a systematic use of terrestrial historical photographs is rarely, if ever, undertaken in archaeology, so the sample of photographs included herein – presented as a source of archaeological data – is something of an experiment. It is hoped, also, that the way in which the photographs have been treated can be an indicator to others, on how such imagery can be incorporated into archaeological research beyond the more common use of historical imagery as simple and comparative illustrations. Finally, Chapter 7 is something of an extended epilogue. Issues are revisited, while further, selected observations and material has been added – mainly as a way of holistically rounding off this study, and of course, tying up those inevitable loose ends.

9

Chapter 2

The Spanish Civil War The second Spanish Republic came into being in April 1931. The King was deposed, and for many Spaniards it was seen as the dawn of a new era, signalling the end of the power that was held for centuries by the country’s entrenched and powerful elites. These included the landed classes, the banking and industrial oligarchies, and the Church and Army. As the British journalist Henry Buckley wrote in 1939, after ten years of reporting on Spain: The task of the [new] Republic was to convert a nation in a state of political collapse and which in so far as it had any economic system remained in its essentials a feudal régime, into a progressive twentieth-century nation with an economy founded on the possibilities of the land in relation to the swift march of science with its revolution in transport, manufacture of goods, agricultural methods and in the education and enlightenment of the individual.1 Buckley’s writing reflects the sentiments of a modernist of the early twentieth century – a belief in science and progress, democratic reform and the benefits of a liberal education for all. But the Republic’s desire for modernisation, and change in the social, political and economic structure of Spain was a direct threat to the traditional and reactionary elites that had been ascendant in the country, and had been struggling against reform since the upheaval of the Peninsular War. Throughout the nineteenth century, and up to 1931, Spain vacillated between periods of progressive reform and reactionary suppressions which aimed to ‘stop the clock and reimpose the traditional balance of social and economic power’.2 In fact, there was a failed right- wing coup in 1932, and just four years later the military, led by Spain’s African Army, rebelled against the recently elected liberal, and pro-reform, Popular Front coalition government on the 18th of July 1936, plunging Spain into the three years of bloody fighting that was the Spanish Civil War. Helen Graham cites three factors that were crucial to the eruption of civil war in 1936. First, social and economic development in Spain was, and had been, extremely uneven, so when the military rebelled, they let loose antagonisms that expressed themselves, in effect, as culture wars. These were: urban and cosmopolitan culture set against rural tradition; secular and liberal politics versus religion and authoritarianism; oppositions between the centre and the periphery; the threat to traditional gender roles by notions of the ‘new woman’; and even generational oppositions. Second, there was a ‘manichaean brand of Catholicism’ that permeated much of Spanish culture and even affected many of those who rejected the primacy of the church. And third, a reactionary military, with an officer corps that was particularly rigid and politically intolerant. This was founded on a ‘powerful myth’ that civilian politicians were responsible for the country’s defeat in the ‘disaster’ of the Spanish-American War of 1898 – culminating with the loss of Spain’s remaining colonies founded in the 16th and 17th centuries, thereby relinquishing any moral claims they had for governance.3 The Spanish officer class came to see itself as protectors of the country’s ‘unity and hierarchy and of its cultural and political homogeneity’, and they saw themselves ‘as consubstantial with the country’s greatness’.4 This created a generation of revanchist officers eager to re-create Spain’s imperial past and to avenge the so-called ‘disaster of 98’. One of these officers was the very victor of the Civil War, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, and even as late as 1941, it was clear that the 1898 war persisted in having a profound effect on him. In that year, the Newspaper La Vanguardia Española, in its 18th of July edition, quoted him saying: ‘when we began our life, …we saw our childhood dominated by the contemptible Buckley [1940] 2013: 11. Preston 2006: 18. 3  Graham 2005: 2-3. 4  Graham 2005: 3. 1  2 

10

The Spanish Civil War

incompetence of those men who abandoned half of the fatherland’s territory to foreigners’. To Franco, he viewed his own actions and the national aspirations of his dictatorship as the wiping out of that shame – the humiliation of 1898 – and his greatest achievement.5 Spain embarked on a new colonial adventure in North Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, and by 1912 Madrid established a protectorate over the north-most part of Morocco (the Rif region) and the area south of the Wadi Draa and bordering what is now Western Sahara.6 The revanchism that spurred this on was expressed in every way in the Infantry Academy at the Alcázar, in Toledo, where the very fabric of the place was a reminder of Spain’s imperial past and the men who forged it. When Franco entered the academy in 1907, at the age of fourteen, the cadets were urged to dwell on Spain’s past glory and the great personages who walked the corridors of the Alcázar: to become imbued with their spirit, and by so doing, to acquire a strong sense of national historicity. Franco was particularly moved by the entrance to the academy, where there was an inscription quoting the Emperor Charles V, referring to his Tunis campaign in North Africa: ‘I will either die in Africa or enter victoriously in Tunis’. This filled the young cadet with an ineffable swelling of emotion, and within ten years or so of entering the academy, he would find his own fame in North Africa.7 Franco embraced, even fetishised the army and its aspirations whole heartedly at the academy,8 and in that martial milieu he could become nothing other than a revanchist. He took up his first commission in Morocco in 1912, in what was to become Spain’s African Army, made up primarily of the elite Spanish Foreign Legion and the native colonial troops of the Regulares.9 The African Army was the wellspring of the military mutiny in July 1936. Its backbone was its Africanista officer corps who saw it as their duty to defend the imperial and Catholic essence of Spain, but in so doing, they redirected their colonial mindsets from Morocco back to Spain, in what was a new and deadly ‘interpretation of imperial defence’ that ‘came to be directed against other groups of Spaniards who symbolized the social and economic changes occurring’ throughout the country, and springing from the towns and cities.10 The military, along with support from traditional monarchists and the ultra-Catholic Carlist militias, and the Falange11, a fascist style political party, along with other rightwing and catholic political parties and organisations, and the Catholic Church, were utterly intolerant of the government after the 1936 election, which brought into the ascendancy a range of liberal to farleft political parties ranging from the centre-right to communists and anarchists, as well as Catalan and Basque nationalists. In a belief that only a coup d’etat could derail the course that the Spanish Republic was set upon after the elections of February 16th, 1936. Africanist officers under the leadership of generals José Sanjurjo, Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco, and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano staged a military uprising on the 17th of July. They successfully took control of Spanish Morocco and executed officers loyal to the Republic in the protectorate,12 but their actions on the mainland could not topple the government. Nevertheless, most of the Spanish military sided with the rebels and they were supported by armed Carlists and Falangists, so the government’s ability to respond to the rebellion with force was extremely limited. Unions and political parties raised militias, armed by the government, and they held the rebels in check in places like Barcelona and Madrid. But by the latter part of July, with the Navy staying loyal to the government, the air forces of fascist Germany and Italy were brought into the conflict to shuttle the Army of Africa Preston 1993: 6. Western Sahara was initially declared a protectorate by Spain in 1884, but only consolidated as a colonial territory through piecemeal efforts over the next forty years, eventually becoming known as Spanish Sahara. 7  Jensen 2005: 7. 8  Preston1993: 9. 9  The Spanish Foreign Legion (also known as the Tercio) was founded in 1920, and it was modelled on the French Foreign Legion. It came into being as a result of the Spanish regular Army’s losses in the Spanish protectorate of Northern Morocco, made-up mainly of the mountainous Rif region. The Regulares were colonial Moroccan troops recruited from the protectorates of Northern and Southern Morocco, and the Spanish enclave of Ifni. 10  Graham 2005: 3. 11  The Falange was a fascist party founded in 1933 with its own Militia. The Carlists were an ultra-conservative and Catholic pro-monarchy faction that also had its own militia – the Requetés. 12  Beevor 2006: 64. 5  6 

11

Conflict Landscapes

across the straits of Gibraltar and into Spain. By the very end of July, the rebel military and the rightwing political groups in league with them were in control of almost the whole of Galicia, Castile and León, La Rioja and Navarre. They also held much of Extramadura and the western half of Aragón, and they occupied a portion of southwest Andalusia. They also held the cities of Oviedo in the north and Toledo, southwest of Madrid. The rebel military and its supporters considered themselves Nationalists. Their sympathies, aims and politics, and methods, were unquestionably inline with those of the fascist parties and governments that had taken hold elsewhere in Europe, and they were recognised as such by their opponents. In turn, the Nationalists viewed the elected Republican government as ‘reds’ – communists, and this label was bandied about against any group or anyone who opposed them. While the rebellion threw Spain into three years of violent civil war, most of the governments of the international community turned a blind eye to the conflict. Twenty-eight countries signed a nonintervention agreement that was put forward by France and ‘strongly championed’ by Great Britain. However, it was blatantly ignored, in the first instance, by Germany, Portugal and Italy who supported the Nationalists, and then by the Soviet Union who supported the Republic.13 Besides providing transport for the African Army from Morocco to Spain, fascist Germany and Italy provided material support, air forces and troops on the ground to the Nationalists. These included the German Condor Legion which first arrived in Spain in August 1936, though it was not officially created until October of that year.14 It consisted of volunteers from the German Army and Air force in Spanish army-styled uniforms who served alongside the Nationalists. The Luftwaffe contingent provided pilots, fighter plans, bombers and transports, and even sea planes, and a motorized anti-aircraft regiment. Army personnel were only occasionally involved in combat, but they provided a tank training unit, and many Nationalist NCOs and junior officers were sent to German military schools. The German Navy supported and protected German merchant ships and carried out coastal patrols for the Nationalists. Quite cynically, however, the German Navy also took part in enforcing the embargo on arms and goods into Spain, which they were obviously breaking, as part of the international non-intervention agreement.15 Portugal, under the Salazar dictatorship, was actually the first country to rally to the Nationalist rebels. Lisbon provided medical equipment, ammunition, communications equipment, and facilities for fuelling planes, distributing propaganda, and the receipt of military supplies and financial assistance. A ‘Portuguese Legion’ was even created to guard the country from Republican Spain, with several thousand volunteers fighting for the Spanish Nationalists.16 However, the most significant foreign support given to the Nationalists was from Fascist Italy. Mussolini’s Corpo Truppe Volontarie eventually totalled more than 78,000 men, with around 750 aircraft and 150 armoured vehicles. ‘Blackshirt’ units as well as the regular army started to arrive in Spain in December 1936. They initially served independently from Nationalist units, but from April 1937 they were in mixed Italo-Spanish units with Italian officers and technical personnel.17 The Founding of the International Brigades The International Brigades were not the first units of foreign fighters that supported the Spanish government in its struggle against its fascist military rebels. With much of the Spanish Army under the command of rebel officers, the vacuum this created was filled by political party and trade union militias. Foreign volunteers joined some of these formations at the very start of the conflict, and some even formed their own small units fighting alongside them. Some of the earliest volunteers came from the cohort of athletes that went to Barcelona for the Workers’ Olympiad that was planned to take place from the 19th to the 26th of July, 1936. This was supposed to be held in opposition to the Berlin Olympics (a show-case for Hitler’s Nazism), but of course it never occurred, so some of the athletes, politically attuned as they Baxell 2007: 13. Quesada 2014: 4. 15  Quesada 2014: 18-19. 16  Stelmach 2014. 17  Quesada 2014: 19-20. 13  14 

12

The Spanish Civil War

were, supported or joined the Catalan militias. Soon, other foreign volunteers arrived in Spain. They came from anti-fascist and left-wing political backgrounds (from socialist to anarchist, and from any political shade in between), and from at least ten European countries. They formed at least eight small units with the British Tom Mann Centuria being one of them; and although they mainly fought with the Catalan militias in Aragón, some also fought in Andalusia and the Basque Country.18 These volunteers, like those who would join the International Brigades, saw the rise of fascism in continental Europe as a real and substantial threat to democracy, and that something had to literally be done to stop its spread. With fascism already taken hold in Italy and Germany, and with other countries sympathetic to the ideology or even following suit, and with the existence of fascist political organisations rising in one form or another across the continent – such as Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists – the place to fight and stop the spread of this militaristic totalitarianism in 1936 was Spain, the place of its latest eruption. In almost all cases, after the initial influx of volunteers, the men and women who went to Spain to support the Republic were breaking the laws of their own countries which prohibited the giving of assistance to either side in the Civil War. This was in keeping with the non-intervention agreement of August 1936. The Soviet Union, which initially backed the non-intervention agreement saw, with the direct involvement of Italian and German forces representing ‘the most sophisticated military-industrial complex of its day’, that the accord was not working and that the Spanish Republic might very well collapse under what was an undoubted fascist onslaught. Stalin and the Soviet leadership felt that if the Republic were to succumb, the establishment of fascism in Spain could only boost German territorial expansion elsewhere in Europe, and in particular, towards Russia. So at the risk of alienating both Britain and France, with whom Stalin sought a ‘mutual defence alliance’, he agreed to give military aid to the Republic in mid-September 1936, just in time to be deployed in the defence of Madrid in November: soon after the arrival of the rebels outside the city at the end of October. Soviet aid included tanks and drivers along with a ‘small cohort’ of military advisors and technicians, plus aeroplanes and pilots which gave the Republic superiority in the air over Madrid.19 By the end of September, the head of the Communist International (the Comintern), and a number of senior Russian generals, persuaded Stalin to support the idea of the formation of the International Brigades. The Comintern had been quick to organise the influx of volunteers wanting to support the Republic, and National Communist Parties organised their recruitment. The French Communist Party also enlisted recruits from throughout continental Europe, and facilitated their travel into Spain.20 Volunteers came from more than 50 countries, and around 35,000 men and women left their countries to serve with the Republican forces; in the main, they joined the International Brigades and the internationally organised medical services. However, recruitment was not always handled by the Communist Party offices, and a sizable number of volunteers joined the anarchist militias. For instance, the 10,000 or so fighters of the POUM militia was joined by up to 700 foreigners, with perhaps the most famous being Eric Blair – George Orwell.21 Many of the volunteers from Europe had ‘bitter experiences’ of fighting fascism in their own countries, and as a result many had become refugees and political exiles. Fighting in Spain was a way of continuing the struggle against the violent and anti-democratic far-right, and as such, a way of even settling ‘personal scores’.22 Helen Graham contextualises the phenomenon of the International Brigades as part of a European diaspora. They were part of a mass migration of people – mainly from the urban working classes – who had already left their countries of birth at some point after the First World War, either for economic reasons or to flee political repression, and frequently both.

Bradley 1994: 5-6. Graham 2005: 40-41. 20  Baxell 2007: 13; and Bradley 1994: 6-8. 21  Durgan 1997. 22  Baxell 2007: 13. 18  19 

13

Conflict Landscapes

Even the majority of volunteers from North America came from recently arrived immigrant communities. Jewish volunteers made up around a quarter of all Brigade recruits, and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion included 90 African Americans.23 Arabs24 and Asians25 also enlisted in the Brigades, along with volunteers from Latin America.26 This mix of nationalities and ethnicities made the International Brigades symbolize… a certain spirit of future possibility. They were – though very imperfectly and by no means consciously – the soldiers of cosmopolitan modernity.27 When in battle, the International Brigades were primarily used as shock troops, just as the Nationalists deployed the Foreign Legion and the Rugulares. That meant that in the battles they took part, they were usually at the front, or occupying salient ground. However, the previous battle experience of all of the volunteers was variable in the extreme. The German volunteers were considered the best of the International Brigades. Many had served in the Kaiser’s army in the trenches of the Great War – along both fronts – making them experienced, disciplined, and knowledgeable of contemporary warfare. In a ruined Germany that was trying to rebuild itself, and in the struggle against post-war fascism, they were ‘the front line troops of German socialism’. They experienced ‘two revolutions in post-War Germany’, and they knew ‘the horrors of Nazi concentration camps’.28 Other veterans from other countries that took part in World War One also came to Spain with the military skills required to pursue what was then a modern war. But these ‘old sweats’ were critical of the lack of training given to the volunteers in the early part of the war. Many of the volunteers were unfit and ‘ignorant of the most elementary military skills’, and ‘as one of the [Great War] veterans remarked, they were not preparing to go over the top with Das Kapital in their hands’. With many volunteers never handling a gun before, it was up to the First World War veterans to show them how to load and fire what were for many, dated weapons of various calibres and in varying states of repair. In the early months of the war, it was the ‘sheer courage’ of the volunteers which made up for the deficiencies in their training and arms.29 None of this should be surprising. Spain was starved of foreign aid through the non-intervention agreement, so modern weaponry and armaments were slow to arrive in the country. Also with a depleted army loyal to the government, the defence of the Republic relied on additional forces made up of untrained militias and foreign volunteers, and these had to be quickly trained and despatched to the front as soon as possible. But by early 1937,with an awareness that the war would be a long one and that the International Brigades would have to face ‘the better-armed, regular fascist units’, training improved with specialist centres, and with instruction given by experienced brigaders and Soviet adivisors.30 The foreign volunteers were organised into eight brigades which, in the first instance, were administered separately from the Republican Army. The Brigades were more or less based around national languages, but their initial operational language was French.31 On September 23rd, 1937, they were fully integrated into the Popular Army of the Republic and Spanish became their operational language, also, they were to include Spanish soldiers and officers.32 In fact, Spaniards soon outnumbered the foreign volunteers in the international units, and towards the close of the Ebro campaign, for example, the 15th Brigade consisted of 75 percent Spanish soldiers, though Spanish officers only made up 14 percent.33 For a listing of the Brigades and Battalions, see Table 2.1.

Graham 2005: 42-44. Sidqi 2015. 25  Geli 2013; and Tsou and Tsou 2013. 26  Fernández 2011; and Sánchez Hernández 1997. 27  Graham 2005: 45. For a map illustrating the geographic spread of the International Brigade volunteers (with numbers from each country) see Hurtada 2013: 21. 28  Romilly 1937: 130. 29  Baxell 2012: 98; Beevor 2006: 161-162; and Eby 2006: 39. 30  Alexander 1986: 75-78. 31  Eby 2006: 36. 32  Rust 1939: 200-205. 33  Eby 2006: 240. 23  24 

14

The Spanish Civil War

The foreign volunteers of the International Brigades fought in defence of the Spanish Republic from the battle for Madrid in the early months of the Civil War, up to the Autumn of 1938. Then, in a political move supervised by the League of Nations, they were withdrawn from Spain as a concession by the Republican Premier Juan Negrín to the Nationalists, in what turned out to be a vain hope that they would reciprocate and withdraw their foreign forces. Instead, Franco’s foreign troops stayed in the country and even took part in the Nationalist’s victory parade on April 1st, 1939.34 A Chronology of the Spanish Civil War The following is a brief time line of the Civil War with an emphasis on the International Brigades, and in particular, the anglophone units. It starts with the election of the Popular Front government in early 1936 and ends with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. 1936 16th February

The ‘Popular Front’ (a coalition of left-wing political parties) wins the 1936 general election in Spain.

8th March

Ultra-conservative army officers (including Generals Mola and Franco) meet in Madrid to discuss a military coup against the elected government.

17th-18th July

Start of the military rebellion against the government. It is successful in Morocco and Seville. General Francisco Franco issues a manifesto that seeks to justify rebellion.

19th-26th July

The International Workers’ Olympiad planned to take place in Barcelona is cancelled due to the outbreak of war. A number of athletes stay in Spain to fight with union members and militias in the defence of the Republic.

19th-20th July

The coup is defeated in Madrid and Barcelona. The intended leader of the coup, General José Sanjurjo is killed in an air crash.

24th July

Rebel forces capture Granada.

25th July

Nazi Germany agrees to give military aid to the army rebels.

28th July

German aircraft arrive in Morocco and begin transporting rebel, Nationalist troops to Spain.

30th July

Italian bombers arrive in Morocco.

August

Various foreign volunteers arrive in Spain. Many join the Catalan anarchist militias along the Huesca front.

1st August

The French government appeals for an international policy of non-intervention in the Civil War in Spain.

6th August

General Francisco Franco arrives in Spain from North Africa. He establishes his headquarters in Seville.

8th August

France closes its southern border, aiming to stop aid and volunteers from getting into Spain.

14th August

Nationalists capture and then massacre Republicans in Badajoz, a town near the border with Portugal.

15th August

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announces a ban on the export of arms to Spain.

18th August

The arrest and subsequent murder of the poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca in Granada.

5th September

The Nationalist Army takes Irun and closes the border on the Spanish side with France.

7th September

An autonomous Basque government is formed and recognised by the Republican government.

9th September

First meeting of the supervisory Non-Intervention Committee in London. Representatives from 26 countries attend.

21st September

Rebel leaders select Francisco Franco as supreme commander, ‘Generalissimo’, of all Nationalist forces.

28th September

General Franco becomes ‘Head of the Spanish State’.

1st October

General Franco is invested in the throne room at Burgos as ‘Caudillo’.

34 

Bradley 1994: 48.

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Conflict Landscapes

12th October

Initial aid from the Soviet Union arrives in Spain. The Spanish Prime Minister agrees to the formation of the International Brigades.

22nd October

Republican General José Miaja is placed in charge of the defence of Madrid.

22nd October

The first of the International Brigades (the 11th: German, Franco-Belge and Polish) is formed.

23rd October

First bombing of Madrid by German planes.

30th October

Official creation of the German ‘Condor Legion’. German bombing of Madrid continues well into the second half of November.

1st November

Nationalist troops reach the western and southern suburbs of Madrid.

2nd November

Brunete is captured by the Nationalist Army.

6th November

The Republican government moves from Madrid to Valencia.

7th-23rd November

Nationalist forces begin their assault on Madrid – the Battle for Madrid begins. Peoples’ militias and International Brigades repulse the Nationalists in fierce fighting in the Casa de Campo and the University City. Afterwards, Madrid stays under a state of siege until the end of the War.

8th November

The 11th International Brigade arrives in Madrid.

18th November

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy officially recognise Franco’s Nationalist regime.

12th December to 2nd January 1937

International Brigade units take part in fighting along the Córdoba Front.

13th-25th December

Battle of Boadilla – the Nationalists attempt to cut off Madrid from the North. Further fighting takes place in the suburbs of Madrid and the University City.

1937 6th January

The United States bans the export of arms to Spain.

31st January

Formation of the 15th (Anglophone) International Brigade, including the British Battalion and the American, Abraham Lincoln Battalion.

7th February to 17th June

The ‘Long Vigil’ at Jarama. Stationary (positional) trench warfare. The International Brigades ‘digin’ for more than four months.

7th February

The Nationalist Army under General Queipo de Llano takes Málaga.

8th-18th March

Battle of Guadalajara. The Nationalist’s attempts to encircle Madrid are finally thwarted. The battle lines and trenches established around Madrid stay in place until the end of the war.

30th March

General Emilio Mola opens the Nationalist offensive in the Basque region.

19th April

Francisco Franco amalgamates the Falange, Renovación Española35 and the Carlists to form a single party with him as leader.

26th April

The Condor Legion bombs Guernica in the Basque Country.

30th April

Formation of the American, Washington Battalion.

3rd May

The Barcelona ‘May Days’ (also known as the ‘Events in May’). Anarchists and Syndicalists stage an uprising in Barcelona against the Republican government.

8th May

The ‘May Days’ uprising is suppressed by Republican forces.

12th-19th June

Republicans launch an offensive at Huesca, northeast of Zaragoza.

19th June

Bilbao in the north of Spain is captured by the Nationalist Army.

Early July

Formation of the Canadian, Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

1st July

All of the Spanish Bishops endorse General Franco as the legitimate ruler of Spain.

14th July

Because of high numbers of casualties, the American Lincoln and Washington Battalions merge.

6th-26th July

Republicans launch the Brunette offensive, just west of Madrid.

24th August to 17th October

The Republic launches its Aragón offensive southeast of Zaragoza: Battle of Quinto (and Purburell Hill), Battle of Belchite, Fighting at Mediana, and Fighting at Fuentes de Ebro.

35 

Renovación Española was an ultra conservative monarchist faction.

16

The Spanish Civil War

23rd September

The International Brigades become fully integrated with the Popular Army of the Republic.

Late October

The Republican government moves to Barcelona.

8th December

Nationalist aircraft bomb Barcelona.

14th December to The Republican Teruel Offensive – the city is taken but eventually retaken by the Nationalists. 22th of February 1938. 1938 15th February

Fighting at Segura de los Baños.

The Nationalist’s Aragón offensive. They re-take Belchite and move eastwards. Republican forces are pushed across the River Ebro in the ‘Great Retreats’. 9th March to 29th July The remnants of the International Brigades encamp in the Priorat – the region in the very south of Catalonia, just north of the River Ebro. This was a period of recuperation and training for the brigades, prior to the Republican Ebro offensive. 16th-18th March

Major bombardment of Barcelona.

17th March

France reopens the border with Spain, allowing overland transport of aid to the Republic.

15th April

The Nationalist Army captures the Republican town of Vinaroz on the Mediteranean coast, the Republican zone is split in two.

21st June

With a change of government, France’s border with Spain is closed again.

25th July to 16th November

Battle of the Ebro. A Republican offensive across the River Ebro aimed at re-taking the territory lost to the Nationalists in their Aragón offensive in the preceding Spring. However, the Republicans are eventually pushed back into Catalonia, giving the Nationalists a decisive victory.

21st September

Juan Negrín announces the unconditional withdrawal of the International Brigades from Spain.

4th October

The International Brigades are withdrawn from front line positions.

29th October

A farewell parade of the International Brigades takes place through the streets of Barcelona.

1939 25th January

The Republican government moves from Barcelona to Figueras in the very northeast of Spain.

26th January

Barcelona is captured by the Nationalists.

10th February

Catalonia falls to the Nationalists.

27th February

France and Britain recognise Franco’s government.

12th March

Juan Negrín, the Spanish Prime Minister, and his advisers, fly out of Spain.

28th March

The Nationalist Army enters Madrid after a siege of nearly three years.

30th March

Valencia is captured by the Nationalists.

1st April

Francisco Franco announces the end of the Spanish Civil War.

1st September

Germany invades Poland – start of World War Two.

17

PART TWO

Chapter 3

On Trenches and Field Fortifications Being situated between the two World Wars, the conduct of military operations and the use of field fortifications in the Spanish Civil War was indeed a hybrid. Manuals existed in Spain which extolled the virtues of trench warfare, and the Spanish military, specifically the Army of Africa, had recently spent five years (1921-1926) fighting a brutal colonial war in Northern Morocco. The combination of pre and Great War field fortification theory and practice, and the experience of colonial war, was married with the quickly developing technologies of tanks and warplanes (along with the participation of forwardthinking German war strategists) making Spain a unique crucible in which many of the field tactics of World War Two were initially played out. Due to the climate of Spain being semi-arid for much of its landmass, and with limited rainfall and scrub vegetation in many regions, the remains of the Civil War are clearly visible across very large tracts of countryside. Unlike in Flanders, where farming has obliterated a very large proportion of First World War remains, Spain’s terrain and climate has preserved the entrenchments and warscapes of the Civil War. Being literally inscribed on the surface of the earth, many of these remains can be found and viewed on Google Earth and Bing Maps, as well as through the website of Spain’s National Geographic Institute (the Instituto Geográfico Nacional).1 The entrenched front lines, and the trenches and dugouts associated with specific battlespaces, can appear to present a continuous front from the north of the country to the south (save where modern developments and agricultural fields have obliterated them), but when looked at closely, it is a disjointed front. The Western Front of World War One, was virtually static, and in a short time at the end of 1914 it became a truly continuous linear arrangement of parallel lines from the English Channel to Switzerland. In contrast, the front between Spanish Republican forces and those of the Nationalist rebels shifted from initially outlining large enclaves in the western half of the country, to a line of fortifications from the Pyrenees, splitting Aragón, then arcing to the west and then eastwards to Madrid, before arcing westwards again and then eastwards to Cordoba, and then to the sea south of Granada. This line was to shift eastwards throughout the war, with the Nationalists eventually reaching the Mediterranean on the 15th of April of 1938, just south of the delta of the River Ebro, dividing the remaining territory of Republican Spain in two and creating a new two-part front line (see Figure 3.1). The continuous and linked up nature of the trenches of the Great War in Flanders and France, can be easily appreciated through contemporary trench maps and aerial imagery. But when looked at comparatively, there were real differences in the overall character and make-up of the various field fortifications constructed across Spain. The country’s changing terrain and geomorphology, and the contingencies of the different military and paramilitary units constructing trenches across the country affected the way in which entrenchments and strong points were fortified, and this created a disjointed series of field defences – both Nationalist and Republican. Though linear in most instances, the front line trenches in Spain were area specific, with both concentrations and gaps of variable areas and lengths. The variable nature of the Spanish trench systems can be seen in the complexity of both the investing and defending trenches associated with a besieged city, like Madrid (see Figure 3.2), compared to the less consistently built and occupied trenches in the greater countryside, such as those on the Aragón front, discussed in Chapter 4. This variability was in stark contrast to the trenches along the Western Front, which overall, were continuous, articulated, and complex. In both instances, these reflected the mindsets of the trench designers, the terrain, and the evolving battle tactics and concepts of survival under fire in the warscape.

1 

IGNE.

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Conflict Landscapes

Figure 3.1: Maps showing how the front line of the Spanish Civil War changed from 1936 (top), to the latter part of 1938 (below). Sources: top map, ‘Creative Commons GCE frente en nov 1936.svg’; bottom map, ‘Creative Commons GCE-Frente en nov 1938.svg’. Both from https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerra_civil_espa%C3%B1ola.

20

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

Figure 3.2: Plan showing the complexity of Republican and Nationalist entrenchments in the University City during the siege of Madrid. Nationalist trenches are shown as dotted, while solid lines represent Republican entrenchments. Source: González-Ruibal 2016: plate 10.

Trench Systems as Architecture ‘Digging in’ – entrenching – was not a new idea in the 20th century. Excavated field defences became increasingly commonplace in the wars of the second half of the 19th century with armaments becoming more sophisticated and industrially lethal by the end of the century. Nevertheless, they existed even further back in time through the trench works that were integral to the besieging of towns, cities and fortresses. The architectural theoretician Paul Hirst has described the entrenchments associated with Renaissance period sieges as an architecture little appreciated by architectural historians. Pointing out that sieges were the most common form of warfare between 1500 and 1800, Hirst noted that besiegers had to behave as if they were besieged and to erect fortifications that were often as elaborate, if temporary, as those they confronted. Sieges thus involved an immense amount of digging. They created ephemeral structures that are fascinating in their own right but that have been ignored by architectural historians.2 2 

Hirst 2005: 199.

21

Conflict Landscapes

As such, he places them under the rubrics of ‘provisional’ architecture, and ‘anti-architecture’, even comparing them to ‘radical’ architecture of the 1960s.3 First, as ‘provisional’, entrenchments were relatively short lived, and as such, their character and form was set by the unique events of their creation and to what purpose they served, and by who and how they were occupied.4 As ‘anti-architecture’, trench systems shift into the realm of deconstructivist architecture. Their contingent nature produces imperfections, flaws that are inherent to their make up. These reflect the people digging them and the minds of the engineers and others directing – designing – the works. They adjust to the circumstances in which they are created, and this, in architectural terms, gives them an anti-architectural integrity.5 The ‘spider’s web’6 of siege works that threatened a renaissance town or fortress evolved, by the middle of the 19th century, into temporary earthworks excavated by one army facing another. These kinds of field defences reached their apogee in the densely intricate trench systems that made up the Western Front of the First World War. The ‘new’ trench systems were simply versions of the saps and parallels of the old siegeworks. Over time they became more and more elaborate, and concrete bunkers began to appear as the core of the strong points. Essentially, a sixteenth-century technology was adapted to the demands of industrialised warfare.7 Importantly, as a design solution, the trenches of the Great War could be realised relatively easily with basic tools, and using soldiers as unskilled labourers. In fact, some soldiers might have even been navvies in civilian life. The military had engineers, but architects would have been thin on the ground, so as Hirst points out, trench digging became part of the military’s ‘folk wisdom’. The shapes the trenches copied were first determined by Renaissance intellectuals for the fortress built in stone, and were then mirrored in the earth by the military engineers who conducted sieges. Four hundred years later they were still in use: an architectural legacy that almost no one saw as such.8 As constructions – as architecture – the trenches of the Western Front created a sense of place, an environment lived in as well as fought over. There was a relatively consistent form or layout, with the very front serving the contingencies of battle, while the rear supported the front line and served as a settlement, though martial and utilitarian in character, wherein the soldiers of both opposing armies lived out their daily lives and routines. In architectural terms, the trenches of the Great War developed over time, with the Germans making some of the most crucial changes. This had to do with their development of the concept of defence in depth, and with their use of permanent concrete structures which eventually their opponents came to emulate. If we accept the notion that Europe was in the throws of a thirty years war from 1914 to 1945 (see Chapter 1), and that the elements of warfare in the field changed throughout those three decades, then the field techniques employed in Spain can be seen as one stage in that process of change. How Trench Systems Worked The trench systems of the Western Front were monumental, being 720 kilometres long9 and with a depth, along the British lines for instance, of two to six miles.10 Superimposed upon an earlier, pastoral (and in places urban) landscape, they were an alien and new type of linear built environment: a ribbon of two Hirst 2005: 198-199. Alter 1996. 5  Wigley 1988. 6  Hirst 2005: 199. 7  Hirst 2005: 205. 8  Hirst 2005: 205-206. 9  Wilson 2012: 53. 10  Simpson 1984. 3  4 

22

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

linear fortresses facing each other, and extending from Dunkirk to Switzerland. Their like had not been seen before. Manuals existed prior to 1914 on how to create field defences. In the Anglophone world, there were manuals that sprang out of the crucible of the American Civil War,11 while in Britain, in particular, the experience of colonial wars and then the trauma of the Boer War – where the British military had to confront a European adversary, albeit in a colonial context – influenced its manuals on field operations and fortification.12 Strikingly, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, was a conflict that turned out to be a precursor to the Great War in terms of trench warfare. Although the theory and practical applications of trench, or ‘positional’, warfare was expounded upon since the second half of the 18th century,13 its critics in the first half of the 20th century were wary of the defensive posture that entrenchments represented. They believed that armies should behave offensively and strike out, relying on esprit de corps, the inherent fighting capabilities of the soldier, and the élan of field commanders. This was evident in the opening battles of the First World War, and described by a young Charles de Gaulle: Everywhere, always, one should have a single idea: to advance. As soon as the fighting begins everybody in the French Army, the general in command, the officers and the troops have only one thing in their heads – advancing, advancing to the attack, reaching for the Germans. And running them through or making them run away.14 Nevertheless, there were practical military men who were quite disposed towards positional, or defensive warfare, and saw it as more or less inevitable that the type of war that was fought between the Russians and the Japanese would take place in Europe.15 Both the Japanese and Russian armies were modern in the context of the early 20th century. They employed up-to-date weaponry and armaments, and they both embraced a reliance on extensive field entrenchments. But the ways in which the opponents disposed and employed their trenches turned out to be quite different indeed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War were not taken into account by the opposing armies at the beginning of the Great War.16 Though after the battle along the River Aisne17 (in the middle days of September 1914) when the Germans ‘dug in’ and the French and British followed suit,18 trench warfare was to evolve from provisional diggings for cover into the elaborate matrix of multiple lines, redoubts, tunnels, and bunkers that epitomised the Western Front and its four years of overwhelmingly attritional warfare. The Western Front in Flanders and France The first volume of Britain’s Official History of the Great War, put into context the employment of entrenchments along the River Aisne, along with earlier deployments of entrenchments over the previous half century. Recognising, as some writers already had, that modern warfare could turn into field-based siege warfare, the Official History cited the extensive and successful use of trenches in other theatres of war. These were, the Wilderness Campaign of the American Civil War (1861-1865); the battle of Plevna in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; the Russo-Japanese War (where trench warfare was noted as being developed ‘to a very high degree’); and the First Balkan War of 1912-13.19 Nevertheless, with the presumed fore-knowledge of these precedents, both the French and British, and to a lesser extent the Germans, were unprepared for ‘digging in’. For an example, see Wheeler 1893. Thuillier 1902 and War Office 1911. For a sideways look on field operations in the Boer War see, Swinton [1904] 1949. 13  Murray 2013: chap. 1. 14  Cited in Murland 2012: 140, from Ousby 2002: 37. 15  Murland 2012: 139. 16  Murray 2013. 17  The River Aisne runs east to west roughly halfway between Paris and the Belgian border, 18  Murland 2012: 140. 19  Edmunds 1935: 431-432. 11  12 

23

Conflict Landscapes

Tools for digging, along with other stores such as sand bags and barbed wire, were thin on the ground, and for the British, they had to improvise the best they could. This meant, to start, that all they could do was to dig rudimentary cover. Where the earth was firm in the River Aisne district, they could dig trenches without revetments and even under cut them to produce ‘funk holes’ to shelter in – being a practice that was supposed to have come from the Boer War.20 But the trenches created had little resemblance to the earthworks that would come to represent the warscape of the Western Front. The trenches dug at this period were rarely continuous, usually a succession of pits capable of holding a few men. Generally, they were of the narrow type, eighteen inches to two feet wide, with tiny traverses, three to six feet wide. These days were afterword spoken of in jest as the ‘Augustan Period’ (August 1914) of field fortification. The narrow trenches, though giving good cover, were easily knocked in by high-explosive shell, and proved the graves of some of the defenders, for men were occasionally buried alive in them.21 Eventually, by 1916,22 the opposing armies along the Western Front developed their rudimentary entrenchments of late 1914 into relatively similar, multiple lines of defence arrayed in depth, and with a structural permanency unimagined by the adversaries at the start of the war. The British lines, for instance, primarily consisted of three parallel components.23 The first, directly facing the enemy, was a front line made up of a ‘fire’ trench, with a network of linked ‘supervision’ (or command) trenches running parallel and behind it by around 30 to 60 feet. These additional trenches facilitated access for officers and NCOs, to observe and give orders to the soldiers along the firing lines.24 The fire trench could also include extensions to an advanced line and/or observation posts. However, some sections of the front line could be discontinuous, with T-shaped, or L-shaped fire bays jutting forward from a supervision trench. Behind the front line, by about 50 to 100 yards, and linked by numerous communication trenches was a support line. These were designed in a similar fashion to the fire trench, but without supervision trenches. Their purpose was to hold troops supporting those in the frontal, fire trench, and to serve as a defensible fall-back position. Both the fire and support trenches had barbed wire barriers in front of them. The support trench could also include small strong points. However, it was along the support trench where dugouts and other shelters (including kitchens and latrines) for the troops and officers could be found. At anywhere from 400 to 600 yards behind the fire trenches, and connected by further and frequent communication trenches, was the reserve line. This could be a continuous trench, or series of trenches, but also, it could be a line of dug-outs incorporating natural features that could be improved for cover. Here, further accommodation was constructed for men, services and stores, and it was the place where reserve troops would be stationed. The fire and support trenches could be laid out with traverses, that is, with right-angled bends in it giving the appearance in plan of crenelations, or they could be zigzagged. This was to counter enfilade fire if the enemy occupied the trenches, and it afforded protection from explosions in different parts of the trench. Also, if the enemy succeeded in occupying a portion of a trench, they could be confined by the bulwarks of the traverses. Communication trenches could also be zigzagged or wavey. Auxiliary trenches, or pits, were constructed behind the lines and these could include ‘bombing’ trenches, from which defenders could hurl grenades at enemy troops who occupied the fire trench, and slit trenches, which could offer cover from bombardment for the troops occupying the lines. There were also strong points which served as keeps or redoubts. These could be amidst or behind the lines, self contained and surrounded by barbed wire, and able to break a hostile penetration of the front line and to facilitate a counter attack. Defended localities along the front were also created. These were areas that either afforded naturally good defence, or they were areas that if broken through, could hold the defensive line. The defence of A ‘funk hole’ was a small dugout shelter excavated out of the wall of a fortified trench, large enough only for a single soldier to sit in, for shelter from enemy fire, the weather, and to rest. 21  Edmonds 1935: 433-434. 22  Wilson 2012: 66. 23  All of the following observations on British trenches are taken from War Office 1916. 24  Wilson 2012: 68. 20 

24

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

such locales or ‘centres of resistance’ were complex, and as a French manual put it, their fronts could be 600 metres wide with a depth of 800 metres, and made up of ‘first-line’ (fire) trenches, support trenches, ‘intermediate’ (reserve) trenches, and redoubts in the rear. There were also ‘points of support’ made up of localised salients and re-entrant trenches that could give mutual covering fire along the first-line and support trenches, both of which could be made up of double lines of trenches. Additionally, all of the linear components in this kind of scheme, and the redoubts in the rear, were treated as self contained compartments and each was surrounded by barbed wire.25 German lines were not much different from those of the French and British armies, but their field manual of 191726 was less prescriptive than, for example, British directives, when it came to the number and frequency of trenches. The German manual emphasised adaptability in relation to the local lie of the land, and the contingencies of the troops in the field. Nevertheless, it recommended that parallel lines of trenches be approximately 150 to 200 yards apart, and that communication trenches could never be too frequent. The areas between the trenches (and even behind the rear most positions) were to be filled with as many defensive features as possible, with an aim of hindering any enemy troops who might break through the lines. These were to incorporate naturally obstructive features (such as copses, thickets and hedges) as well as constructed strong points and additional small trenches. Ruined houses and craters were also to be utilised. This all indicated a great awareness of defence in depth. All entrenchments had the spoil created from their excavation disposed on the ground on either side, though in fighting trenches, a parapet was prepared from the spoil, often with sandbags raised along the front of the trench, while higher than the parapet, and to the rear, was a parados. Narrow trenches were preferred to broad ones since they gave better protective cover from gunfire and bombardment. But trenches were not to be so narrow as to hinder troop movement along them. Fighting trenches had a step for soldiers to fire from, and this had to be comfortable enough for a man to stand so as to aim and fire his gun – often 18 inches or so in width. British and French trenches were narrower than German ones, at around three and a half feet wide and with an overall depth of six feet. British communication trenches were around two feet wide while traverses along the British lines were around nine to 12 feet thick with gaps of 18 to 30 feet between them. The recommended width of German trenches by 1916 went from five feet and three inches wide, with a cover of six and a half feet, to eleven and a half feet wide, with a cover of eight feet. German traverses went from lengths of 10 to 13 feet, up to 16 to 20 feet. While all the combatant armies on the Western Front dug fixed fighting positions – gun pits, bunkers, shelters, and the like – the Germans were adept at incorporating concrete (both reinforced and non-reinforced) in their construction. This was different from the French and British who, though occasionally using concrete, mainly relied on wood, corrugated metal sheeting, sandbags and earth. The Russo-Japanese War The tactics of the Russo-Japanese War were studied obsessively in the years prior to World War One. The advanced nations of the time sent many military observers to either the Russian or Japanese armies, and they produced comprehensive reports that were distributed widely and assiduously read. As already noted, the war was a precursor to the Great War, but though entrenchments were a major factor in the ways in which both the Japanese and Russians pursued the war, their employment differed between the two nations. Because of this, their use in Manchuria was not precisely the same as their use on the Western Front. As already pointed out, the Western Front consisted, essentially, of two great linear fortresses facing each other. The analogy of the fortress is appropriate, since by taking on the qualities of a fortress, the entrenchments of all the warring parties were intrinsically defensive. The Germans wanted to hold, and defend the terrain they captured early on in the war, while the French and British wanted to protect, to 25  26 

All of the following observations on French fieldworks are taken from French Army n.d. All of the following observations on German fieldworks are taken from Prussian War Ministry 1917.

25

Conflict Landscapes

‘defend’, themselves from German forces and artillery in their attempts at pushing the Germans back, or defeating them in the field. The Russian approach to war in 1904 was also essentially defensive, and this was reflected in their field fortifications and entrenchments. They were already occupying parts of Manchuria before the war started, and like the Germans in World War One, they wanted to hold on to their possessions. In contrast, the Japanese army took a much more offensive stance, and this was reflected in the way in which they ‘dug in’ and constructed trenches. It has been aptly observed by one researcher that Japanese infantrymen, ‘entrenched while on the offensive’.27 With the Russians taking a defensive posture in the design and use of field defences, the Japanese, instead, designed field fortifications to support their offensive operations. One British observer, a Captain D.S. Robertson, compared the Japanese and Russian approaches to field fortifications by noting that the Russians, were not satisfied with one strong line… well-covered by efficient obstacles, they created a veritable labyrinth of works, expending immense labour on making redoubts, mines, and military pits, and constructing miles of deep approaches. Indeed, it may be said that the works of both sides exemplify, in a singular manner, the military characteristics of the two nations: those of the Russians built solely for defence, their many lines encouraging the inclination to retire; those of the Japanese mere footholds, whence to spring forward when the moment came.28 The defences of both the Russians and Japanese did evolve over the 19 months of the conflict (from February 1904 to September 1905), and though the numerous military observers attached to either side noted both good and bad examples of field fortifications from their respective viewpoints, the war still presaged the warscape of World War One.29 Nevertheless, the Japanese did attach an importance to speed in being able to move along and out of their trenches so as to attack the Russians. They aimed to keep up momentum, to keep up ‘tempo’,30 and their field defences facilitated this. The American observer, Major J.E. Kuhn observed that the Japanese generally dug wider trenches with lower parapets than their opponents. These afforded good lateral movement within the trenches, and a good deal of concealment from without, but their greater width exposed the troops manning them to Russian shrapnel fire. The Japanese also dug forward trenches, around 20 to 30 feet in front of their fire trenches. These allowed their troops to assume offensive operations more quickly then the defence oriented Russians. In fact, as Major Kuhn additionally pointed out, when on the offensive, Japanese infantry would dig hasty entrenchments using the entrenching tools that they all carried. Such digging would be simple, but ample enough to give basic cover, and after they advanced, their diggings would be occupied by further troops and improved upon to become forward and reserve lines in turn.31 Major Kuhn also recorded the dimensions of fire and communication trenches at a number of locations along Japanese defences. Fire trenches averaged around seven feet deep (including a raised parapet) by six feet wide, while his example of a communication trench was six feet deep by six feet wide. Of these, the trenches at Liaoyang were seven feet wide by well over eight feet deep, 32 while examples of the Russian trenches up to and including the battle of Liayang, were described as simple, standing trenches by Captain J.F. Morrison, and averaging four and a half feet deep (including the raised parapet).33 Nevertheless, after the battle, Russian trenches were improved, and as noted by Colonel W.S. Schuyler, supposedly made to emulate Japanese trenches by being deep and narrow.34 Payne 1990: 38. War Office 1908: 19. Murray 2013. 30  Milloy 2014: 28 and 39. 31  War Department 1906 (Part III): 111-112. 32  War Department 1906 (Part III): plate IX. 33  War Department 1906 (Part I): 79-80. 34  The idea of Japanese trenches being narrow is in contrast to the dimensions recorded by Major Kuhn. However, the observations made about the improved Russian trenches after the battle of Liaoyang might very well be a relative statement. Though the idea of greater trench depth was obviously adopted by the Russians. See: War Department 1906 (Part I): 135. 27  28  29 

26

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

Both the Russians and Japanese furnished their entrenchments with shelters and machine gun positions. Artillery positions were constructed in the rear, and the improvements in modern field guns made entrenchments ever more necessary. As it is noted in modern military jargon, ‘survivability’ in the battlespace is of the utmost importance,35 but armies have to choose between defensive or offensive survivability, and the Japanese choice of the latter affected the way in which they entrenched and pursued the war in Manchuria. The Spanish Civil War Though Spain did not take part in the carnage of the Great War, it was a country whose military had its own experience of employing entrenched defences. Spain divided its colony of Cuba with territorially extensive trench barriers (trochas), incorporating barbed wire and blockhouses during the Cuban insurgencies of 1868-1878 and 1895-1898.36 Also, during the Spanish-American War of 1898, its military employed entrenched field fortifications with barbed wire, and again, strategically placed blockhouses. In fact, at the battle of El Caney near Santiago, Cuba, American troops experienced trench warfare for the first time and the carnage that can result from a frontal assault on entrenched positions. There, a force of 520 Spaniards held their trenches for more than nine hours against a force of 5400 Americans. The Spanish were resolute in their defence with 235 killed or wounded, while American losses of dead or wounded totalled 441.37 In the first quarter of the 20th century, persistent hostilities between both Spain and France, with the Berber tribesmen of the Rif region of Northern Morocco, culminated in the bitter Rif War of 1921-1926. Here, as part of their strategy to control the countryside and subdue the insurgents, the Spanish, later joined by the French, employed strings of blockhouses on high ground. These were surrounded by barbed wire and, where possible, positioned in small groupings for mutual support.38 Where the ground was favourable to digging, these posts could be linked by trenches.39 But nothing of their making matched the complexity of the field defences of the Great War, less than a decade earlier. Nevertheless, in the interwar years, and drawing upon the manuals already in existence from World War One, the Spanish government produced manuals on trench based defences.40 These showed little, if any, deviation from the entrenching tactics of the Great War, and they were still being produced as late as 1938, during the Civil War itself.41 Even the International Brigades in the same year were teaching their soldiers, of all grades, defensive field organisation that mirrored the trench systems of the First World War.42 When looking through the Spanish manuals, it is clear that they are virtual copies of the instruction manuals produced by the main combatants of the Great War (see Figure 3.3). Contrarily though, the material remains of the warscapes of the Spanish Civil War indicate that field commanders and engineers deviated from their prescriptive manuals, improvising and creating territory wide defensive ensembles that adapted to, and reflected, the character of the Spanish landscape, and even the character of the Nationalist and Republican armies. To generalise, the opposing armies in the Civil War assumed two different approaches to field fortifications. The Nationalist army, the backbone of which was the Army of Africa, drew upon its experiences of colonial warfare in Morocco. There, redoubts and blockhouses, virtually ‘neo-medieval’ in nature, were disposed to command the countryside and to support each other. With clear views from hill-top locations over the surrounding terrain, they could observe and interdict Riffian enemy movements.43 This was an approach to military occupation and conquest that was played out by all the European imperial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was an approach to field fortification and troop disposition that assumed the enemy could attack from any direction. Such a stance was held even as late as the 1960s and 70s by the U.S. Department of Defence 1985. Tone 2006. 37  Smith 2013: 136-137. 38  Álvarez 2001: 37-38; Jensen 2005: 29; and for an account of Spanish operations during the Rif War, see Southern: 2007. 39  Windrow 2011: fig. 43, caption p. xxxvi. 40  See Bartolomé Fernández 1932; and Ministerio de la Guerra 1933 41  Capdevila 1938. 42  Johnson 1938: 7-8. 43  Peinado Gil et al 2012. 35  36 

27

Conflict Landscapes

Figure 3.3: Comparative diagrams illustrating the similarities between the Spanish Army’s approach to entrenching during the Spanish Civil War, and the British Army’s prescribed method of laying out entrenchments in World War One. Sources: upper diagram, Capdevila 1938: 24, fig. 10; lower diagram, War Office 1916: fig. 1.

28

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

American military in Vietnam, where there was no ‘front line’ as it would be commonly understood. An enemy attack could ‘erupt’ from almost any location, so American and Australian fire support bases, often situated on hill-tops and serving similar, though considerably enhanced roles to the much earlier block houses and redoubts, were mainly disposed in a network of locations with the ability to give interlocking and supportive artillery fire.44 This mentality, where military tacticians felt that they could position their troops perched on hill-tops, and in command of all that could be surveyed, was brought to peninsular Spain by the officers of the Army of Africa. But such an approach to field fortifications did not take into account the risk of air and artillery bombardment which was not an issue in the colonial environment of Morocco (though the Rif opponents did have some artillery45). Because of this, the Nationalist high command issued instructions before the end of 1937, that to minimise the effects of Republican artillery and aerial bombardment, their field fortifications were to consist of small islands of resistance. This concept was not alien to the Nationalist officers from their African experience, but the instructions also directed that such positions should be disposed in protected, low lying ground or valleys so as not be be seen within a visual range of fire from the enemy. Hill-tops and summits were to be used only for observation posts.46 Chapter 4 will illustrate how these instructions were not always adhered to by the Nationalist troops in the field, and that hill-top fortification could take precedence over other positions, either as redoubts or linear entrenchments. This, to González-Ruibal, indicated the colonial mindset of the commanders of the Army of Africa: Franco and his generals explicitly conducted the war as if it was a colonial campaign (as a Cruzada Nacional, ‘National Crusade’), in which the ubiquitous ‘Reds’ played the role of indigenous peoples in Morocco… Undoubtedly, the isolated fortifications in which hundreds of thousands of [Nationalist] soldiers passed months or years had to determine to some degree their perception of the enemy and their own country – a land to be reconquered from the savages.47 This does not mean that continuous linear entrenchments were never employed by the Nationalist Army. Madrid was invested with a complex network of trenches that would not have been out of place in the Great War, but they also created distinct redoubts, such as the hill-top defences of Mount Garabitas in the Casa de Campo (see Figures 3.2 and 3.4). The Nationalist army also integrated the developments in field fortification that occurred during, and especially by, the end of the Great War – initially instigated by the Germans. They incorporated concrete bunkers and pillboxes in numerous defensive ensembles, and they reinforced long-term entrenchments with concrete walls and battlements. As has already been pointed out, the Republican government was still producing guidance for the use of linear field fortifications as late as 1938. But as the archaeology presented in Chapter 4 will illustrate, the practicalities of adhering to a scheme of completely articulated and linear defences deep within the Spanish countryside was not always possible. The local topography could be very hilly and mountainous in far too many places, forcing Republican commanders and engineers to compromise by using disarticulated entrenchments and fighting positions, and even redoubts and centres of resistance. By the latter part of the war, Republican commanders were developing in depth defensive zones, as noted by the American military observer Col. Stephen O. Fuqua. He visited the Government lines on the Ebro front in 1938, and wrote the following on August 9th of that year: The Balaguer bridgehead is being organised in ‘defense areas’, with good depth, honeycombed with ‘strong points’ and ‘centers of resistance’, with sufficient ‘switch positions’. It remains to be seen whether these ground defenses will be occupied by determined troops, efficiently trained and Foster 2007: 14. For example, The Riffians used captured artillery against the Spanish forces landing on the beaches of Alhucemas Bay in 1925. See Alvarez 2001: 175. 46  González-Ruibal 2011. 47  González-Ruibal 2011. 44  45 

29

Figure 3.4: Plan of the Nationalist hill-top defences on Mount Garabitas in the Casa de Campo, a park delimiting the western limit of Madrid. The encircling entrenchments are clear with extended fighting positions. There are trenches within the fortified hill-top, along with many dugouts (shown by grey diamonds) which would have served numerous functions.

Conflict Landscapes

30

On Trenches and Field Fortifications

properly armed. The corps area commander, not having had any past experience in this particular field of the military art, informed the undersigned, ‘that he believed this manner of ground defense’ – getting away from the old continuous trench line – was one of the great lessons of the Spanish War.48 Conclusion The Spanish Civil War was a conflict in which field fortifications took on new dimensions. The Nationalists drew upon their colonial experience in Morocco and developed a system that, in effect, was not very different from that devised by the Germans near the end of the First World War. This was an elastic defence in depth, conceptualised as a ‘web’ and consisting of a front line of scattered outposts with strong points behind and with further reserve forces behind them.49 The Republicans eventually followed suit, and by the latter part of the war both sides created warscape architecture that would not have been out of place in World War Two – in particular, in North Africa and the Eastern Front, where matrices of strong points and centres of resistance were accepted as the most effective form of field fortification50 – and this even became the case in both the Korean51 and Vietnam Wars. But the built martial environments of both the Nationalists and the Republicans were filled with flesh and blood soldiers, and they had to dwell in the martial landscape that they, at the behest of their commanders, literally carved out of the ground. They created settlements in which they lived, fought and died, and the characteristics of those communities can be examined (as in the next chapter) through the prism of landscape and settlement archaeology.

Cortada 2012: 290. Griffith 1990: 98. For an overview of field fortifications in North Africa and the Eastern Front, though limited to German and Soviet Russian forces, see: Rottman 2004 and Rottman 2007. 51  The Korean War saw a revival of linear entrenchments on hill-tops. This was not very different from the deployment of entrenchments in many parts of Spain in the Civil War. For an overview of American field defences in Korea see: Rottman 2005. 48  49  50 

31

Chapter 4

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón War shapes landscapes, and in conflicts where armies ‘dig in’, then the land is refashioned to serve the armies occupying it. They dig and build field fortifications and trenches of various types, along with access routes and service areas in the rear. After a time, the armies may have to move on, but while they are in their fashioned landscape, they are settled. They have created a settlement, albeit a martial one. Archaeological writings rarely, if ever, make a point of actually defining the word ‘settlement’ – yet the word is ubiquitous in the extreme. Even Nick Aston who, with Trevor Rowley, brought into common usage the term ‘landscape archaeology’,1 has evaded defining the term. ‘Settlement’, he wrote back in 1985, is simply ‘a difficult word with many meanings’.2 So without a hint of what those many meanings could be, a ‘settlement’ can be simply defined as a place where people have come to live, to ‘settle’, and to shape the land and construct habitations – homes, dwellings, and abodes. But undoubtedly there is more. According to the pioneer town planner and architect Constantinos Doxiadis, writing in the 1960s and 70s, the relationship of people with the environment includes ‘nature, society, shells (buildings and houses of all sorts), and networks (ranging from roads to telecommunications)’.3 These are all interlinked in a complex way and make up what Doxiadis termed the ‘anthropocosmos’, or the world of man. Humans and nature are deemed to occur naturally in this model, while ‘society’ (meaning its institutions), ‘shells’ and ‘networks’, are culturally constructed and ‘interconnected through natural (ecological) and cultural (economic, political and social) functions’; the way in which they are arranged territorially is the basis of human settlements.4 To borrow from the geographer Brian Roberts, such arrangements can manifest themselves in three types of settlement space: private, public, and communal.5 ‘Institutions’, as social constructs, can permeate in varying degrees all types of space in a settlement, while ‘shells’ are undoubtedly the constructed edifices which can represent private, public and communal spaces, with ‘networks’ as linkages and route-ways which can be, in the main, public or communal. This world of man, in an idealised way as put forward by Doxiadis, or in a more material (or pragmatic) way, as by Roberts, can be found within the varied systems of fortification of any warscape. As such, the ‘institution’ of an army creates and orders space by constructing the habitations of soldiers. These include fighting positions and bunkers, redoubts (strong points), outworks and observation posts, habitations (shelters and refuges) and mess areas, stores areas, command posts, artillery batteries, billets, and field hospitals – all being ‘shells’ – and with ‘networks’ represented by the roads and tracks leading to the entrenchments, as well as the trenches themselves acting as avenues, linkages, and activity areas, be they for living, communication, support, or fighting. The holistic nature of trench systems as built environments – material places – made up of privateto-public spaces manifested as activity areas and constructions (‘shells’), and as linkages (‘networks’) is laid out in Table 4.1. Most of the components listed can be found in the Mediana salient, and it is an archaeological investigation of that unique landscape as a martial settlement that follows. First the topography of the immediate region in which the Mediana entrenchments – the lines – are situated will be discussed, followed by a description of surveys I carried out in 2014 and 2015, including field methods and mapping. The findings of the surveys will then be presented as a description and characterisation of their make-up, or ‘anatomy’.

Darvill 2016: 60. Aston [1985] 2002: 11. 3  Doxiadis 1970: 394. 4  Pertsemlidis 2007. 5  Roberts 1996: 66-68. 1  2 

32

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Topography of the Region of the Mediana Lines The remains of the opposing trench systems south and southwest of Mediana de Aragón – the Mediana Lines – extend, as has already been indicated, over an area of at least 56 square kilometres.6 They were a part of the Aragón front which had a bulge southeast of Zaragoza, and they represent the front line and subsequently the fall back positions held by Nationalist forces after the fall of Quinto to the Republican army on the 26th of August, 1937 (see Figure 4.1). The Nationalists dug in defensively, aiming to hold the new front, while the Republicans invested them with there own opposing entrenchments. The lines were fortified and maintained from August-September 1937 until the Nationalist offensive through Aragón in March 1938 (with International Brigade units fighting along the lines at both the beginning and end of this six month period).

Figure 4.1: Map of a portion of the Aragon front showing the position of Belchite and Mediana, and the Mediana Lines study area. The map also shows how the front line east of Zaragoza changed in the late Summer of 1937. Sources: main map,’Creative Commons Batalla de Belchite català.jpg’ from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Batalla_de_Belchite_catal%C3%A0.jpg; inset map, ‘Public Domain Spain-Map.png’ from http://gta.wikia.com/wiki/File:Spain-Map.png. 6 

González-Ruibal et al 2015: 80.

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Conflict Landscapes

The areas within this front line bulge, where IBAP worked in 2014 and 2015 (see Figure 4.2) are located in a region that extends southwards from the Rio Ginel (on the south side of Mediana de Aragón) to the seasonal watercourse of the Vaguada del Forcino, which runs west to east and more or less reflects the northern limit of the municipal jurisdiction of the Campo de Belchite.7 From here – all of the way southwards to Belchite – the terrain is slightly undulating and characterised by extensive agricultural fields, while north of the Vaguarda del Forcino, the ground rises and it is scoured by relatively deep, and steep sided valleys (with equally steep, deep and narrow subsidiary valleys). This area, along the .

Figure 4.2: Location map of the areas southwest of Mediana de Aragón (Mediana) where IBAP carried out fieldwork in 2014 and 2015. The map also indicates, with dot-dash lines, the specific survey area dealt with in this volume. The indication and spelling of all place names and geographic features described herein, within the Campo de Belchite, are derived from the 1937, 1/50,000 scale map of of the area: Talleres del Instituto Geográfico y Catastral 1937. 7 

34

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Belchite-Mediana road (the modern A222) is very much an indicative example of the terrain of the socalled ‘desert of Aragón’. It is essentially a plateau of limestone and gypsum sediments, heavily dissected and covered with coarse scrub. Cultivation now takes place in the valley bottoms, but the presence of numerous, ruined parideras (lambing and kidding sheds with attached enclosures – corrals) signifies that the area used to be one of sheep and goat pastoral farming. The 1937, 1/50,000 scale map of the area testifies to this by describing the area as uncultivated land set to pasture (erials pastos).8 From the high ground on the northern flank of the Vaguada del Forcino, there are water drainage courses that head northwards to the valley of the Rio Ginel. These natural, seasonal watercourses, now flow through terraced, cultivated fields, sharing their steep sided valley bottoms with trackways that predate the present fields, as can be seen in the 1937 map of the area (see Figure 4.3). Some of these tracks were

Figure 4.3: Portion of 1937 map showing the historical context of the area surveyed in 2014 and 2015, southwest of Mediana. Source: Map sheet 412, Pina, 1/50,000: Talleres del Instituto Geográfico y Catastral: 1937; IGNE. Talleres del Instituto Geográfico y Catastral 1937. However, the 1945-46 aerial photos of the region taken by the USAF, known as ‘Series A’, show almost as many cultivated fields as there are today: for this imagery, see the Fototeca Digital website. 8 

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Conflict Landscapes

Figure 4.4: Map showing the survey areas dealt with in this volume, numbered in sequence of fieldwork. The areas numbered ‘1’ and ‘2’ were surveyed in 2014, while the area numbered ‘3’ was surveyed in 2015. The area numbered ‘4’ was visited in 2017.

also recorded on Republican Army sketch maps of the area in 19379 and they have been transcribed and indicated on Figure 4.2. A portion of this rough, steeply dissected ground, immediately to the west of the Belchite-Mediana road was the area selected for fieldwork in 2014 and 2015. 9 

González-Ruibal et al 2015: 79, map.

36

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

2014 and 2015 Landscape Surveys of the Mediana Lines IBAP’s 2014 fieldwork along the Mediana entrenchments started as targeted excavations examining Republican defensive features situated around 650 metres west of the Belchite-Mediana road, the modern A222 (see Figure 4.4).10 The features initially excavated – a sizeable fighting position and a soldiers’ dug out shelter –were situated on an entrenched crest of high ground on a southeast to northwest alignment, facing a Nationalist defensive line around 700 metres to the northwest, where a Nationalist fighting position, or pit, was also excavated (see Figures 4.5 and 5.4). There are steep sided subsidiary valleys on both sides of the crest, which lead into one of the south to north valleys that head towards the Rio Ginel, and includes a track noted in 1937 as the Camino de la Valhonda. On the far side of the valley, on the northeast side of the crest, is a long stretch of high ground that stretches northwards with a steep sided and parallel valley on its eastern side. In it is another track, noted in 1937 as the Camino de Valdelacarrera. It was in this valley that a dense concentration of shelters for Republican soldiers was found. These were mainly dug out of the valley’s steep sided slopes, but strikingly, along the western side of the valley, there was a considerable number of shelters partly dug into embayments in the hillside, and with a sizeable number having external side and front walls made up of stone rubble masonry. As such, they would have been partly free standing and roofed. In fact, at least two such structures, close to the valley bottom were virtually free standing, and the largest of these was chosen for excavation. Additionally, four further shelters nearby and higher up the slopes were also excavated, and the whole area was mapped.11 This unique area, noted informally at the time as ‘Little Gallipoli’ – because the arrangement of the structures in terraces one above the other, brought to mind images of the shelters built and dug out by

Figure 4.5: Plans of fighting positions excavated in 2014. ‘A’ is an orthophoto of a relatively large Republican fighting position, probably for a machine gun, whose location is noted as (01) in Fig. 4.4. ‘B’ is a plan of a small Nationalist fighting position, or pit, located at (FP) in Fig. 4.4. Source: González-Ruibal et al 2015: 87 and 117. 10  11 

González-Ruibal et al 2015: 85-98. González-Ruibal et al 2015: 98-114.

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Conflict Landscapes

British and ANZAC soldiers along the steep coastal hillsides of the Gallipoli peninsular in World War One12 – suggested that further survey work should be undertaken along the valley and up onto the high ground further to the east, and extending to the Belchite-Mediana road. In consequence, it was agreed that I would systematically walk over all of the ground eastwards, from Little Gallipoli to the BelchiteMediana road, and northwards from the approximate position of the old Kilometre 15 (or K15) marker along the road (see Figure 4.3). The eventual extent of this area, surveyed in two phases, first in 2014 and then extended northwards in 2015 is shown in Figure 4.4. The total area covered extends over two kilometres north to south, by approximately one kilometre east to west at its broadest, and less than half a kilometre at its narrowest. The 2014 survey area measured 300,422 square metres while the 2015 survey area covered 375,734 square metres (totalling 676,156 square metres in all). Field Methodology It became obvious very early on that there was a vast number of soldiers’ shelters, and associated structures, distributed across the area chosen for survey. Some were adjacent to, and on specific entrenchments, while others were simply situated in protected locations: mostly along steep valley sides behind the trenches. Because of this, and since IBAP field seasons were short (two weeks), the method of survey had to be simple, straightforward, and rapid. Every shelter, and other feature type, such as fighting positions, both detached and on trench lines, was therefore spot recorded with a handheld GPS and given a rudimentary identification code. The trenches themselves were not recorded, since it was deemed that a detailed plot of their traces could be compiled from publicly available satellite imagery after the field season. In fact, the coding of features was aimed to assist in the interpretation of the trenches during their transcription (digitising) from satellite imagery. The coding applied to the shelters behind and along the lines, and the fighting positions (either independent of the trenches or incorporated within them) was designed solely to identify the different types of structures associated with both the Republican and Nationalist trenches in the quickest way possible and to facilitate post-fieldwork analyses in a GIS. Because of this, few dimensions were recorded, nor much descriptive text. This information was recorded manually in 2014, along with some limited observations, while in 2015, all recording was carried out with the GPS in which waypoints were saved with their codes inputted. In all, the aim of the fieldwork was to record the distribution of the different types of features associated with the opposing trench systems, so that their character and relationships could be understood. During the 2014 and 2015 surveys, 894 shelters and defensive trench related features were spot recorded over a total of eleven days in the field. Feature Coding The simple alphabetic codes applied to the features associated with the trenches in the survey areas were quite generalised; and the codes described below have been derived from those initially used in the field. They fall within two overarching categories, being either ‘shelters’ or ‘fighting’ related features. Shelters For both the Republican and Nationalist troops at Mediana, sheltering features – almost always dug outs – could be virtually any size, and they were found along fighting and other trenches, and in the reserve areas in the valleys behind the trenches. Mostly serving as bivouacs, they ranged from being a simple hollow for one person dug into a hill or trench side to dug outs that could accommodate two or more soldiers, and with some requiring an added, external roof (roofing materials were found on the ground in some places). Since their depths and heights could not be recorded due to infill from erosion and collapse, their external entrances were recorded at around 0.7 to one metre wide for 12 

Steel and Hart 1994: plate no. 23.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

shelters that might have housed one individual, to 1.7 to more than two metres for those that might have accommodated two to three people, and maybe even more. Some were also free standing, or nearly free standing, and relatively large at around two to four metres wide by two to six metres long, or deep, and probably used for either specialised activities or stores – be they victuals or armaments – or for accommodating more men. It goes without saying that distinguishing the types, and uses, of any given group of shelters could be problematic while only surveying, so their interpretation had to rely on their disposition in relation to the terrain and nearby trenches, and the other shelters with which they were associated. Saying that, the following codes for shelters were derived at as a result of the 2014 and 2015 field surveys: ‘LSH’ A shelter attached to and part of the make up of a frontal trench line – a fire trench. Its size could vary to include small niches along a trench wall as well as multi-personnel shelters. ‘SLSH’ A shelter just like an LSH but located along a support or communication trench. ‘SH’

A shelter of any kind, and of variable size, not attached to a trench line.

‘BSH’ A large shelter, also not attached to a trench line. However, this is a very subjective category based on comparing the size of any given shelter to its neighbour, so in the end it was only used in the field in situations where the differences in size between specific shelters was very obvious. Fighting Positions ‘Fighting positions’ is a catch all term for dug out features (also, as with trenches, occasionally incorporating dry stone parapets) that essentially served either an offensive or defensive purpose. They could include observation posts on, or in front of trench lines, as well as individual and multiple soldier fighting positions, and specialised fighting positions such as machine gun and mortar pits. Often, their real purpose could only be interpreted from their relationship with the trench lines they were associated with, and with the local topography. The dimensions of fighting positions for both the Nationalists and Republicans could be quite variable, being as small as one metre square for one soldier, or ranging up to 2.5 metres wide with a variable depth (or length) for multiple fighters. They could also be niche-like or L-shaped, and even dug out as a hammerhead. The following codes for fighting positions were derived at as a result of the 2014 and 2015 field surveys: ‘LFP’ A fighting position created as an integral part of a frontal or fire trench line. An in-line fighting position. This could also include fighting positions, or in some cases, observation positions, situated at the extended front, or end, of a trench line – a sap. ‘SLFP’ A fighting position, in-line, along a support or communication trench. ‘FP’

A fighting position not situated on a trench line. A detached position. These could include frontal fighting or observation positions, and even individual machine gun posts. FPs could also be found between support and front line trenches, and in these instances, some could be mortar positions.

On Fieldwork, Data Collection and ‘Para-empiricism’ With distributional field data collected on the features associated with both the Republican and Nationalist trenches in the 2014 and 2015 survey areas, it was now incumbent to map the entire system of entrenchments in and around the survey areas from satellite imagery. But first, it is worth taking note of the nature of data acquisition through both fieldwork and indirect methods. By field walking, identifying features, and learning through that process how features are emplaced within the landscape, an understanding of the composition of the features at Mediana soon became formed. It can be said that 39

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archaeologists ‘dwell’13 within a landscape while they encounter, examine and explore as much of the ground as possible within any area in which they work. By becoming intimate with the materiality of the landscape in which they work, they can acquire more than enough knowledge and awareness to make sense of any indirect resources for studying their areas and regions of interest when away from the field; and in the context of this study, those indirect resources are remotely sensed data – satellite imagery. The data recorded in the field and/or observed through satellite or aerial imagery is a re-presentation of real things. The architect Laura Kurgan refers to such data as ‘para-empirical’. To her, ‘data’… means nothing more or less than representations, delegates or emissaries of reality... only that: not presentations of the things themselves, but representations, figures, meditations – subject, then to all the conventions and aesthetics and rhetorics that we have come to expect of our images and narratives. All data, then, are not empirical, not irreducible facts about the world, but exist as not quite or almost, alongside the world: they are para-empirical.14 To Kurgan, there is no such thing as raw or neutral data. It is always collected with a specific purpose in mind – it is translated. In archaeology, we start with a research design. The collection of data in the field gets translated – re-presented – through up-to-date digital technologies of recording, or through the timeless skills of drawing and good note taking. This para-empirical approach draws us deep into the data we deal with. While we enquire of it, looking critically and asking one question after another, it can exhilarate and disorient us.15 This is what happens when we interrogate satellite imagery. We compare it with our foreknowledge and what we have learned in the field. We examine it through a kind of dialogue, a dialectic even, and we create a narrative about the landscape; and in this study that narrative – by employing a para-empirical approach – is aimed at understanding the materiality of the warscape entrenchments near Mediana de Aragón. Satellite Imagery Analysis of the 2014 and 2015 Landscape Survey Areas Single line transcriptions from satellite imagery of the trenches southwest of Mediana were compiled before and after IBAP’s 2014 field season as part of the preparatory, and continual, acquisition of base line data for the project.16 However, as Birger Stichelbaut17 points out, simple line transcriptions can serve well as locators of entrenchments, but digitising them as polygons in a GIS allows, at the very least, their planar dimensions to be recorded, and therefore their morphology. So with this in mind, the Mediana trenches within the 2014 and 2015 survey areas were re-digitised for this study. Although satellite imagery has been used, the approach employed has been one of treating the imagery (available in the visible spectra) as if it were geo-referenced vertical air photography. Publicly available imagery downloaded from the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGNE)18 website was consulted in the first instance, along with Google Earth imagery. Satellite imagery on Bing Maps was also consulted, and it turned out that both Google Earth and Bing Maps had imagery that appeared clearer than that available through the IGNE. Bing Maps imagery was captured when the Sun was relatively low in the sky, so this produced more shadows which highlighted features very well. Unfortunately, the imagery could only be zoomed into up to a certain point, and it was not as sharp as the available Google Earth imagery. Even though it soon became apparent that shadows were extremely slight on the Google Earth imagery, and therefore the imagery was relatively flat in comparison to the Bing imagery, in the end, it was felt that Google Earth had the best imagery overall, and it was the sharpest for digitising purposes. This being said, Bing Maps imagery was still used for cross checking and comparative purposes, and for identifying Ingold 2010. Kurgan 2013: 35. 15  Kurgan 2013: 35-36. 16  Most, if not all, of the base line data for the IBAP fieldwork at Mediana and Belchite was compiled by the project’s co-director, Pedro Rodríguez Simón. 17  Stichelbaut 2009: 200. 18  IGNE. 13  14 

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trench alignments where they were unclear on Google Earth – usually due to the lack of obvious shadows. Also, in a few instances, digitisation was carried out directly from Bing imagery. With shadows being slight on the available Google Earth imagery, then the highlights of trench edges and the shadows indicating their preserved depths could not be used as transcription guides, so instead, the digitising of the Mediana trenches relied on their recognition through the foliage growing within them. As linear hollows, they undoubtedly served as basins in which water collected during rains, thereby fostering relatively substantial plant growth. So, by following the scrub growing in the trenches, the digitisation process in this survey turned into one more akin to following crop marks as opposed to earthworks per se. Because the scrub grows differentially in the entrenchments, this means that the completed digitisation shows the trench lines as discontinuous and incomplete in places, but this phenomenon is not unusual in general air photo interpretation. It is the overall indications of the trenches’ spread and morphology that counts, and this outweighs the differential character of the digitisation based on scrub growth. This also outweighs the usually accepted fact that Google Earth imagery may not be georeferenced as well as it could be. In fact, historical Google Earth imagery of the same location is often slightly misaligned. In this study, all of the available imagery does not match perfectly, and the Google Earth imagery is slightly out of alignment with Bing Map imagery as well as IGNE imagery, and even the location of features recorded in the field with a GPS. Digitising the entrenchments in Google Earth was straightforward. With the application’s ‘add polygon’ tool, features could be traced over and coded, and the resulting file of individual features could be saved and loaded into a GIS where it could be coded further, edited, and used in spatial analysis. But digitising (tracing or transcribing) is not an end in itself, and the very act of digitising is a way of learning about the terrain under study in an intimate way. Mapping the Mediana Survey Areas Once the trenches in the study area were recorded as polygons, they were inputted into a GIS. This study has relied on free GISs, in particular, QGIS, while also employing Whitebox GIS for some specific tasks. Historical and contemporary mapping and elevation data was added from the IGNE website, as well as data on modern mapped features, including amongst others, roads and tracks, watercourses and drainage, and boundaries. Both Google Earth and Bing mapping was also incorporated into the GIS. All of the feature point data collected in the field in both 2014 and 2015 was also categorized and inputted into the GIS, as well as similar, where appropriate, feature point data interpreted solely from satellite imagery. Additionally, with the two season’s survey areas amounting to 676,156 square metres, it has been overlaid with a graticule of 40 by 40 metre squares calculated as an optimum quadrat size,19 as a framework for spatial description and analysis (see Figure 4.4). Towards an Anatomy of the Mediana Lines The zenith of trench warfare was reached in the First World War. As already pointed out, the trenches of the Western Front reached an architectural (or an ‘anti-architectural’ and ‘provisional’) complexity and extensiveness, that was unmatched in any preceding period. The French and British, and their allies, faced the Germans in opposing linear fortresses made up of trench systems with multiple parallels and connecting trenches producing matrices of complexity that were new geographies in their own right. These were places for living as well as fighting, though most front line positions were quiet for much of the time.20

This quadrat size is based on the square root of the total survey area (0.68 square kilometres) being multiplied by two and divided by the number of surveyed features (894) resulting in a quadrat with sides measuring ca. 40 metres. This is based on the formula in Griffith and Amrhein 1991, cited in Al-Shorman 2006: 66. 20  For commentaries on this see Corrigan 2003; and Ellis 1977. For the situation in Spain during the Civil War, see Seidman 1999. 19 

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As explained in detail in Chapter 3, the layout, design, and construction of the trench systems were very similar for all of the armies involved. The Germans may have relied more on fixed and concrete bunkers, and other similar installations, and they may have preferred a defence in depth greater than that of the British and French, but in summary, all of the combatants’ fortifications included the following elements: •• A continuous fire or fighting trench delineating the front line. This could incorporate supervision trenches just behind, and extensions outward for observation and/or fighting. Fire trenches could also be discontinuous in some places, but always attached to the rest of the trench system. •• Support trenches were set behind the fire trenches. These also had fighting positions for defence, and accommodation for troops manning the front line. There could also be associated, self contained strong points or redoubts. •• The last line of trenches were the reserve trenches, and here, troops could be fully accommodated with all of the services required for an army in the field. •• All of the trench lines were linked by communication trenches, and these too could be defended. Amidst these, and between the longitudinal trenches were slit trenches for cover, and ‘bombing’ trenches for use in countering any enemy incursion behind the lines. Provisional Architectures in Opposition After the taking of Quinto by Republican forces at the end of August 1937, the Aragón front shifted northwards to a Nationalist held line that extended from the towns of Fuentes de Ebro (east southeast of Zaragoza) to Mediana (due north of Belchite) and then to the southwest towards Fuendetodos. While the Nationalist garrison at Belchite was isolated from this line and under siege by Republican forces, further Republican forces including the British Battalion of the 15th International Brigade were sent to confront the Nationalist troops positioned at Mediana. Although the British battalion only stayed at the front for six days, both the Nationalist and Republican entrenchments became consolidated after fierce fighting, with sections of the two armies ‘digging in’ and facing each other off for approximately six months. The extent of both the Nationalist and Republican trenches southwest of Mediana is shown in Figure 4.6. But it is the ensemble of trenches and rear support features in the 2014 and 2015 survey areas (Figure 4.4) that will now be examined in detail, with an aim at understanding their character and make up, and the way in which the opposing fortifications ‘worked’. Because of the disposition of the entrenchments, especially with Nationalist and Republican trenches closely facing each other in the north of the survey areas, the features in the 2015 survey zone will be looked at first. The Disposition of the Nationalist Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’ Looking at Figure 4.6, it is easy to see the context in which the Nationalists created a salient just to the west of the Belchite-Mediana road (approximately 2.8 kilometres south-southwest of Mediana de Aragón). During the fighting in this area, that part of the salient nearest the Belchite-Mediana road was known as the ‘Parapet of Death’.21 At its closest, the salient was only around 290 metres to the west of the road (though at this location the alignment of the road has been shifted to the east in recent decades by a further 40 metres or so). It overlooked the road with the obvious intention of commanding it, while its southern and western portions were laid out to secure the rocky and scrub covered valleys, and the tracks within them, in the rough ground making up the hinterland to the south and west of the road. As such, the trenches were positioned on a portion of terrain separated from the rest of the Nationalist lines, to the west and north, by the valleys in which the Caminos del Monte Belchite and de la Valhonde are situated. Being situated on an eminence with steep sided valleys behind and to the immediate north and south, and with a relatively gentle sloping field of fire extending eastwards, the trenches were intended to control the Belchite-Mediana Road. Disposed in more or less an arc and jutting out eastwards, they were created as an area of resistance, with a strong point at its core, made up of fire trenches, support

21 

González-Ruibal et al 2015: 82.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.6: Map showing the overall extent of the Nationalist and Republican entrenchments in the salient southwest of Mediana. The 2014 and 2015 survey areas are also shown. Source: compilation of GIS plots (transcriptions) by P. Rodrígues Simón with additions by S. Garfi.

trenches, communication trenches and linked reserve areas consisting of hundreds of shelters and storage facilities in the minor, though steep sided valleys to the rear. Figures 4.7 and 4.8 illustrate the disposition of the Nationalist trenches closest to the Belchite-Mediana Road with the strong point in the most salient position. The overall area of resistance extended within 27 quadrats, covering a total area of 43,200 square metres. It consisted of a nearly continuous frontal fire trench, around 561 metres long and at a maximum elevation of 408 metres. Its lowest elevation was at its northern end at 392 metres. There were outlying trenches immediately to the north (at 109 metres in length) and south (at only 38 metres long) positioned on adjacent fingers of high ground, and these would have extended and protected the northern and southern flanks of the main fire trench. An even further outlying trench to the north was located just outside the survey area. The traces of the trenches were dictated by the local topography with only one trench segment, the outlier to the immediate north (and just within the survey area boundary), having the kind of zigzag pattern 43

Figure 4.7: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing the disposition of Nationalist and Republican trenches at the so-called ‘Parapet of Death’. The Nationalist strong point is indicated in the inset.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.8: 2015 Survey Area. Detailed plan of the opposing Nationalist and Republican trenches, where they are their closest, at the Parapet of Death.

that could be found in the field manuals of the day. Where the Nationalist trenches were closest to the Republican lines, there were numerous fighting positions, or pits, at the ends of short saps extending out from the main fire trench as firing bays (disposed similarly to listening or observation posts, and indeed, some of these features would have served that purpose too). Along the rest of the fire trenches were further niche-like fighting positions, while shelters for the soldiers occupying the lines were integrated into the rear walls of the trenches. The strong point, itself (with a front of 180 metres and extending within 11 quadrats, equalling 17,600 square metres), included obvious support trenches with numerous shelters dug into their sides, and linked to the frontal fire trench by communication trenches which also included some shelters and occasional passing niches. A small number of support trenches – linked by communication trenches – were also integral to those portions of the line to the north and south of the strong point, including the disconnected outlying trenches. The areas visible, or the ‘viewshed’, from the Nationalist defences along the Parapet of Death can be seen in Figure 4.9. As the map shows, the Nationalist’s could only see clearly in a southeasterly direction to the Belchite-Mediana road, while their view due east was patchy and included a swathe of dead ground that they could not command without extending their trenches directly eastwards to the road. The Republicans exploited this and filled the dead ground with their own trenches and saps. The Structure of the Nationalist Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’ It goes without saying, that even to the casual observer visiting today, the entrenchments at the Parapet of Death – both Nationalist and Republican – stand out as being well preserved and easy to follow on the ground, especially since they have not been obscured by excessive overgrowth. Nevertheless, being 45

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Figure 4.9: 2015 Survey Area. Viewshed from the Nationalist trenches looking towards the opposing Republican lines and the Belchite-Mediana Road.

exposed, and at 80 years old, the trenches and their associated features have suffered from inevitable erosion with subsequent infill and sidewall collapse, so their present form can only be a reflection of what they were like when they were constructed and occupied. There is a relative uniformity in the construction of the Nationalist trenches. Where they are best preserved, they can have very clear vertical sides, but with very low parapets made up of the spoil from their digging spread out in front of them. This spoil consists of clods of earth, along with stones and small 46

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.10: 2015 Survey Area. Disposition of fighting positions along both the Nationalist and Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death.

boulders, making the ground in front of the trenches very uneven. Also, there is little evidence that a parados was ever raised along the rear of the trenches. Where best preserved, the trenches have a depth in the region of 1.3 metres, with a width of around 0.6 to 0.8 metres. Table 4.2 lists the types and lengths of trenches making up the Nationalist positions in the area of the Parapet of Death, along with the types and numbers of features associated with the trenches and the occupation areas in the rear. Obviously, the features associated with the trenches are fighting positions (for individual solders or groups of soldiers and/or for specialised armaments) and shelters. Fighting positions (see Figure 4.10) face outwards from the trenches, but often, they are poorly preserved (with partial infill and collapsed 47

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Figure 4.11: 2015 Survey Area. Density of Nationalist and Republican fighting positions by quadrats at the Parapet of Death.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.12: 2015 Survey Area. Examples of Nationalist trenches and some trench features. ‘A’ shows a right angled fighting position that extends out of a fire trench. ‘B’ shows a support trench with a communication trench in the distance going uphill. In ‘C’, in-line soldiers’ shelters in a fire trench are clearly visible along with a fighting position in front of them. ‘D’ shows a narrow section of a communication trench.

sides) and their exact depth and shapes can be hard to discern without excavation. Nevertheless, as has already been noted, they can be as small as one metre square, or range up to 2.5 metres wide, and in some instances, extend outwards by more than three metres. They can also extend outwards as L-shapes or even hammerheads. In all, 92 in-line fighting positions (and 11 detached positions) were recorded along the Nationalist fire trenches that extend for a total of 708 metres in the 2015 survey area (located within 21 quadrats with an area of 33,600 square metres, see Figure 4.11). Taking into account the further statistics in Table 4.2, there was, on average, one in-line fighting position for every 6.4 metres of trench along the frontage of the Nationalist strong point, and one similar position for every 7.7 metres of trench along the rest of the entrenchments. Examples of Nationalist trenches and fighting positions are shown in Figure 4.12. Shelters along the entrenchments, both the fire trenches and along those in the rear, could be of similar size to fighting positions. Many were dug as a cavity in a wall of the trench in which they were positioned, preserving a roof of natural earth and rock strata, while others could have been cut and then covered over, presumably with timbers or branches and then covered with earth and sandbags, and even corrugated sheeting – ‘uralite’22 – and/or tarpaulins. This was probably the case for the large shelters situated along the support trenches and at the ends of, short, L-shaped subsidiary trenches. Contrary to the methods of field defence prescribed at the time, shelters built along the Nationalist front lines were usually constructed along the rear, or parados side of the trenches, and with their openings facing the enemy. 22 

‘Uralite’ is a fibro-cement corrugated roofing material, presumably named after the Spanish building materials firm Uralita, founded in 1907.

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Figure. 4.13: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing the distribution of Nationalist and Republican shelters along and behind the trenches at the Parapet of Death.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

This was also the case for the opposing Republican trenches, and this type of shelter-trench layout was common in many field defences of the Spanish Civil War. Approximately 37 shelters, distributed along all of the 708 metres of the Nationalist fire trenches were recorded in the 2015 survey area, representing one shelter for every 19 metres of trench. Of these, 13 are distributed along the 180 metres of fire trench fronting the nationalist strong point, and these work out at a distribution of one shelter every 14 metres. The purpose of these would have been to give short-term cover and shelter to troops manning the fire trench, while support and reserve troops would have used the shelters in the rear. Those shelters along the support trenches would have been positioned for, and by, troops kept behind in readiness to take their turn along the fire trench, or to swell the ranks of the fire trench when it came under attack. Thirty-two shelters in the support and communication trenches were recorded, with 12 of them situated along the support trenches within the strong point itself. Figure 4.13 shows the distribution of Nationalist shelters along and behind the Parapet of Death. They number 388 and the density of their distribution by quadrats is shown in Figure 4.14. In all, the Nationalist shelters can be found in 42 quadrats which cover 67,200 square metres. But the most striking group of shelters are the 319 spread out behind, and detached from the Nationalist trenches. These were linked to the support and front line trenches by around 11 communication trenches, all of variable lengths. In total, they are located within 35 of the 42 quadrats, and as such, distributed across an area of 56,000 square metres. The disposition of the shelters along four steep sided valleys – with two of them expanding into a total of five further, though smaller, valleys at their upper reaches – gave them a good deal of protection, with the majority of shelters being dug into the valley sides. As already noted, it is very difficult to gauge the size of the shelters since they were mostly subterranean, or semi-subterranean, and they are now filled in by collapse, but their approximate openings (entries) varied from under one metre to more than two metres in width. Shelters with external stone walls were recorded in a number of places (and with similar entries) their lengths, and/or depths, could be more than three metres (for examples of Nationalist shelters, trenches and trench features, see Figures 4.12 and 4.15). Although relatively large shelters were occasionally found within all the occupation areas, there were two distinct areas which stood out by having very noticeable concentrations of larger shelters. The most obvious of these was a collection of dugouts outlining a roughly triangular area at the lowest reaches of a valley just where it broadens out into what is now relatively flat agricultural land in the valley of the Camino de la Valhonda. The area is located just to the east of the 343 metre spot height shown on Figure 4.13, and measures around 40 metres at its broadest, western end, and extends southeastwards for 80 metres where it narrows down to roughly 10 metres, and heads steeply upwards to the further shelters and entrenchments above. In all, this roughly triangular area includes more than 20 large, relatively rectangular shelters outlining its limits. They were dug into the sides of the valley bottom and their remains range in size from 2.5 to three metres wide by three to five metres long, or deep (see Figure 4.16). There are some shelters on their own or in detached groups associated with them, but this group of structures is surprisingly separate from the rest of the accommodation and support shelters found behind the Nationalist lines. The ground within the triangular area is relatively flat, and clear of obstacles so it is not unfeasible to view this area as a marshalling yard or mustering area. The large shelters could represent very utilitarian structures such as stores, field kitchens and even wound dressing areas, as well as accommodation for personnel and even officers. Many of the remains probably represent only the external portions of shelters dug well into the valley sides. Trucks and mule-trains could easily access the area from the Camino de la Valhonda, and there would have been enough space to unload, load, and service them, and for troops to arrive and depart.

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Figure 4.14: 2015 Survey Area. Density of Nationalist and Republican soldiers’ shelters by quadrats along and behind the trenches at the Parapet of Death.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.15: 2015 Survey Area. Two images from behind the Nationalist trenches along the Parapet of Death. The upper photo shows the remains of dugout shelters in the flank of a hill, while the lower image shows semi-subterranean shelters with drystone walls that have been constructed close to the top of high ground.

The second, distinctive concentration of larger dugout shelters can be found at 190 metres to the east-southeast. Here, there were 11 dug outs including seven quite large rectangular shelters roughly measuring 2.5 to 2.8 metres wide by more than three to four metres long, or deep, and well tucked into a steep convex valley side, at an elevation of around 380 metres. They were also more than 36 metres above the valley bottom at the western end of the marshalling area, and 26 metres below the closest fighting trenches. There is a level, narrow path following the curve of the hill and linking the dugouts, including the four smaller shelters close by. With these shelters located only around 100 metres from the nearest trenches (making up the Nationalist strong point), and being protected by their situation, it could be envisaged that these were some kind of rear command area or accommodation for officers (see Figures 4.13 and 4.17), with the associated smaller dugouts perhaps sheltering runners and ‘batmen’, and the like. In summary, as the different trenches along the front line served different purposes, there was a clear differentiation of use, and even an expression of hierarchy, within the shelters behind the lines accommodating the Nationalist troops. The shelters were linked to the front lines by the steep valleys in which they were located, which gave them protective cover and served as natural valley bottom routeways. These led to the communication trenches and slit trenches on the higher ground above, facilitating 53

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Figure 4.16: 2015 Survey Area. View of the south side of the triangular area behind the Nationalist trenches at the Parapet of Death that might represent a marshalling or mustering area.

Figure 4.17: 2015 Survey Area. View to the east showing the disposition of a group of possible Nationalist officers’ accommodation/ shelters, dug out behind their fighting trenches that are on the high ground in the rear, at the Parapet of Death.

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a relatively easy approach to the front lines. There was probably at least one large area for marshalling stores and victualing troops, as well as mustering them, and there was at least one area where field commanders may very well have been accommodated, also with relatively easy access to the front lines. The Republican Trenches As with the Nationalist trenches, Figure 4.6 puts the Republican features recorded in the 2014 and 2015 survey areas into context. Unlike the Nationalist trenches, however, the Republican lines extend throughout both survey areas. They are not as complex as the trenches and support features created by the Nationalists, but taking into account the areas outside the two survey zones, it is clear that the Republican lines in the region of the Parapet of Death have a greater depth than elsewhere along their frontage. Obviously, since the Nationalists put a good deal of effort into fortifying the higher ground close to and to the west of the Belchite-Mediana road, the Republicans responded by doing the same, to counter them and to secure the road. The Republican trenches and associated features recorded in 2014 and 2015 are situated to the east and south-southeast of the Nationalist area of resistance, and on ground that slopes downwards, with a drop in elevation of roughly 23 metres to the old Belchite-Mediana road, at an elevation of 380 metres. This ground, on the immediate western side of the road, also rises to an elevation of 428 metres, at the southern-most limit of the 2014 survey area, but with a steep valley running south to north immediately to the west in which the Camino de Valdelacarrera is situated (at an average of 25 metres lower than the Belchite-Mediana road). The Republican trenches in this area are much more intermittent than the Nationalist ones. In the main, their disposition has been dictated by the local terrain, so they consist of relatively short sections of fire trenches, and in places fighting positions or pits, linked to support trenches by communication trenches which also head eastwards from them to the Belchite-Mediana road. As already noted, with reference to the Nationalist lines along the Parapet of Death, the Republican fire trenches jut-out westwards, to a point directly opposite the east-most point of the Nationalist salient, where the two front lines are very close indeed, by 40 metres (though this was reduced to 32 metres by a Republican sap as shown in Figures 4.7 and 4.8). To the south, in the 2014 survey area, there are further Republican trenches situated on the high ground between the valley of the Camino de Valdelacarrera and the Belchite-Mediana road. Here, many detached fighting positions disposed on rocky spurs face towards substantial Nationalist fire trenches at around 500 to 600 metres distant, and situated northwest of the valley of the Camino de la Valhonda. There was also a great number of shelters housing the Republican soldiers fighting here – situated in both the eastern and western slopes of the valley of the Camino de Valdelacarrera and below the BelchiteMediana road. These were well protected, being tucked away into the valleys, or embayments, between the spurs of high ground. Many further shelters were situated on the more level ground immediately west of the Belchite-Mediana road. Some of these were associated with fire trenches while the majority were linked to support and communication trenches. One substantial group of shelters was associated with an encircling trench linked to a paridera, and this might have been a Republican command centre. The Disposition of the Republican Defences: 2014 and 2015 Survey Areas As already noted, the trenches and associated features within and outside the 2014 and 2015 study areas can be easily followed on satellite imagery, and on the ground. However, they have suffered from differential erosion due to being open and exposed to the elements for eight decades. Because of this, it is hard to be consistently precise in describing their form and dimensions. Also, and particularly when describing the Republican entrenchments, the differentiation between trench types can be hard to discern, so their descriptions should be seen as indicative only. Nevertheless, it is striking how different the Republican trenches are from Nationalist ones, and they differ most markedly in the area of the Parapet of Death. 55

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While the Nationalist entrenchments (even outside the survey areas) appear more or less continuous, the Republican trenches exhibit a structure that can best be described as ad hoc. The Nationalist forces facing the Belchite-Mediana road put much effort into the disposition of their lines, and judging from the construction of their entrenchments, they had enough men, and an adequate amount of time to ‘dig in’ and fortify (and for the soldiers themselves to prepare their own shelters). Also, they could be safely reinforced and supplied along the route-ways in the valleys behind them. In contrast, any comparability in the construction of the Republican lines appears lacking, and in particular, that is suggested by there being no easily recognizable, or nucleated, strong points or areas of resistance. The Republican entrenchments on both sides of the main road are mainly located on spurs of high rocky ground jutting out north-westwards, like fingers, towards the Nationalist lines. The fire trenches are much shorter than the Nationalist ones, and with fewer fighting positions. Also, there are a number of spurs occupied only by detached fighting positions, or pits, associated with short lengths of trenching. Where the ground is more level, on the western side of the Belchite-Mediana road, the road is linked by communication and support trenches with associated shelters. But as already noted, the most striking Republican entrenchments are those immediately opposite the Nationalist area of resistance along the socalled Parapet of Death (see Figure 4.7). Here, the Nationalist entrenchments were protected along their northern and southern flanks by ground that drops steeply into valleys, making them approachable only from the front. In fact, the flanking valleys extend eastwards to within 30 to 40 metres of the main road (on its old alignment) and thereby created a confined space which was the only place from which this most salient part of the Nationalist lines could be confronted. This well defined zone gave the Nationalists a good view over the Belchite-Mediana road, but only to the southeast. Again, Figure 4.9 shows the visibility from the Nationalist trenches, and it illustrates the dead ground where a distinctive salient in the Republican lines was pushed forward, even with a short extended sap, as indicated in Figure 4.8. The Structure of the Republican Defences: 2015 Survey Area – the ‘Parapet of Death’ The Republican lines along the Parapet of Death were laid out like a siege-work, and with a V-shaped front pointing due west at the Nationalist area of resistance, and positioned just beyond the Nationalist’s area of vision. The trenches are easy to follow on the ground, but in the main, they have characteristics quite different from those of the Nationalist lines. First, the communication trenches are long and relatively straight, though still exhibiting a slight zig-zag pattern in at least one of them. They have profile measurements that vary from just under one metre to two metres wide, by a depth not too dissimilar to the Nationalist trenches which were preserved at around 1.3 metres deep. There are still substantial bank-like spreads of spoil on either side of the trenches which would have given them additional protection along their flanks. These communication trenches were presumably laid out to get a sizeable number of troops up to the front-most fighting positions as quickly as possible. They were, in effect, more like ‘corridors’ of approach as opposed to slit-like defensive trenches, and they bring to mind some of the foreign observers’ comments on the Japanese trenches in the Russo-Japanese War. In that conflict, the Russians held firm and dug in defensively, as the Nationalists have obviously done, while the Japanese would advance by digging their way forward, which seems to be the case for the Republicans here. The longest of these communication trenches link the Republican fire trenches with the BelchiteMediana road (the obvious Republican access route for vehicles, troops and supplies), but they and other communication trenches also link up numerous field shelters with the front line and support trenches, though the latter are few in number (for examples of Republican trenches and associated features see Figures 4.18 and 4.19). The fire trenches making up the V-shaped salient, facing the Nationalist lines, are also distinctive in their construction. The trench along the northern side of the ‘V’ is irregularly disposed and was dug with many shelters and the odd individual fighting position, while to its east there was another fire trench also with shelters and fighting positions, and leading to a further line of unlinked shelters slightly protected by being positioned on a reverse slope. In all, the dimensions of fighting positions and shelters more or less matched those along the Nationalist lines. But the southern front line of the ‘V’ (at around five metres 56

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

Figure 4.18: 2015 Survey Area. Examples of Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death. ‘A’ is a fighting trench which also has hollows in its right side that represent the denuded remains of soldiers’ in-line shelters. ‘B’ is a communication trench with spoil clearly visible on both of its sides. ‘C’ is a fighting trench, ad hoc in nature: it is essentially a shallow trench with an enhanced parapet. ‘D’ illustrates how the trenches could include walls or revetments of stone set in a mud mortar made from the local gypsum.

Figure 4.19: 2015 Survey Area. Two views of features along the Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death. ‘A’ is a well dug out fighting position, or pit, accessed from a fighting trench, with ‘B’ showing dugout shelters in the parapet side of a support trench.

lower than the highest point in the Nationalist lines) was made up of a series of short, distinctively dug out fighting positions, essentially as hollows in the ground rising to the west, and given individual parapets from their spoil. Being larger than the usual fighting positions, their measurements varied from three by two metres, to five by more than two metres in area. The greater size of these positions would have made it easy for troops to move in and out of them, to mass fire power, and for groups of troops to 57

Conflict Landscapes

muster before leaving the entrenchments to attack the Nationalist lines. However, their openness must have made them vulnerable to artillery and air bombardment. As already noted, at the western apex of the salient there was a sap extending out, towards the Nationalist lines. It was eight metres long (and narrow at less than a metre wide) and extended as close as 32 metres to the enemy lines. In the fighting that took place at this location in September 1937, it was recorded that battalions of the 11th and 15th International Brigades occupied this part of the front. The British battalion of the 15th was sent here on August 31st and took up positions which soldiers from the 11th Brigade were expelled from the day before. Here the British fought hard against Nationalist attacks and bombardment for ‘three days and nights’,23 but they held the line. It was recorded that during the fighting the opposing trenches got to within 40 metres of each other, and the trenches surveyed here – along the Parapet of Death – are the only lines that are within that distance of each other. It is more than probable then, that these Republican trenches, just west of the Belchite-Mediana road, represent the very place that the British fought, and where they stayed afterwards to fortify the Republican lines until after Belchite was taken from the Nationalists and secured. This episode of fighting is described further in Chapter 5. In all (see Table 4.3), the length of the Republican frontage along the Parapet of Death, as surveyed in 2015, was around 742 metres, though this included gaps totalling approximately 318 metres (the total length of fire trenches was, therefore, only 424 metres). All of the trenches are located within 37 quadrats, having a total area of 59,200 square metres (see Figure 4.20). Fighting positions along the Republican fire trenches within the survey area numbered 46, and this averaged out at around one fighting position for every 9.2 metres. Additionally, there were two fighting positions along support trenches, and one lone position on a spur overlooking the southern outlier of the Nationalist salient. The fighting positions were distributed within thirteen quadrats totalling 20,800 square metres (twelve of the quadrats are visible in Figure 4.11). The fire trenches included 23 shelters, at around one shelter every 18.4 metres, with a further 38 similar shelters along the 970 metres of support and communication trenches averaging out at one shelter for every 25.5 metres. Also, there were 92 shelters not attached to any trenches, though 40 of these were positioned along a low lying ridge, partially filling a roughly 100 metre gap between fire and communication trenches, indicated in Figure 4.20. This gap is an interesting area, since at this location there are two rows of shelters, with the frontal western row dug into the edge of a ridge onto higher ground, which today serves as a terrace boundary between two fields. The terraced ridge would have given adequate cover to the troops occupying the shelters and they could easily have directed small arms fire from it. In fact, this ridge should be seen as part of one continuous front line, starting with a communication trench that heads off to the southwest from the main road, in the north, and ends with a fire trench overlooking the southern valley that delimits this fighting zone. This latter trench also has a communication trench heading towards it from the southeast, and the main road. All of the recorded Republican shelters along the Parapet of Death were disposed within 23 quadrats covering an area of 36,800 square metres (see Figure 4.14). The Structure of the Republican Defences: 2014 Survey Area – South of the ‘Parapet of Death’ The area of the Parapet of Death was a zone where fighting undoubtedly took place.24 In contrast, the area surveyed in 2014 (see Figure 4.4), though provided with defences, was an area where Republican soldiers could bivouac, and find shelter from the front line battlespace. Much of this zone, like the support areas behind the Nationalist salient, was one of habitations – living spaces. This southern zone also includes the area referred to as Little Gallipoli, which is separated from the eastern part of the 2014 survey area by the valley of the Camino de Valdelacarrera. For descriptive purposes, the eastern part of the survey area will be dealt with first, followed by an account of Little Gallipoli. It will be obvious, however, that the remains of the entrenchments and shelters on both sides of the Camino de Valdelacarrera make up a single whole. 23  24 

Rust [1939] 2007: 92-94. Rodrígues Simón et al 2015. See also Arqueología de la Guerra Civil Española.

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Figure 4.20: 2015 Survey Area. Plan showing all of the Republican trenches at the Parapet of Death.

Continuing southwards from the Parapet of Death and looking first at the eastern portion of the 2014 survey area (see Figures 4.4 and 4.21), this large sector is bounded on the west by the valley of the Camino de Valdelacarrera (with Little Gallipoli on the western flank of the valley) and on the east by the BelchiteMediana road, around 30 metres above the valley floor. This zone covers an area of, approximately, 350 metres east to west by 775 metres north to south. It includes the subsidiary valleys and the southeast to northwest spurs of rocky ground that extend out from the relatively flat ground immediately to the west of the Road. Also, the very southern limit of the 2014 survey area more or less coincides with the southern range of Republican defensive works adjacent to, and on the immediate western side of the Belchite-Mediana road (see Figure 4.6). In all, the trenches in this survey area are not as substantial as the Republican ones along the Parapet of Death. In terms of their dimensions they are not much different from the Nationalist trenches to the north and northwest, and the other Republican trenches above Little Gallipoli: being around a metre or less wide with a preserved maximum depth of around 1.3 metres. Most of the preserved trenches are located on the flat ground (rising slightly to the south) adjacent to the Belchite-Mediana Road. The most 59

Conflict Landscapes

Figure 4.21: 2014 Survey Area. Plan showing all trenches (Republican) divided into two zones. Zone 1 was surveyed first and encompasses ‘Little Gallipoli’, it was then followed by a further, larger area survey in Zone 2.

continuous entrenchments are communication trenches, with linkages to the main road, and support trenches. The total length of the support and communication trenches comes to around 1504 metres. There are also fire trenches, but these are relatively short and discontinuous, and not often connected to either support or communication trenches. They are stand-alone fire trenches positioned along or at the ends of the steep sided spurs of high ground that characterise the local terrain, and as such, it is not possible to compare them (and the distribution of features along them) to the fire trenches along the Parapet of Death, but in total, their combined lengths come to around 366 metres. All of the trenches in this eastern part of the survey area are distributed throughout 62 quadrats, covering an area of 99,200 square metres (see Figure 4.21). Table 4.4 lists the different types and lengths of trenches, and associated features in the survey area. 60

Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

There are numerous fighting positions, either on their own or integral with some of the fire and support trenches. Those on their own (detached) number 13, while those attached to trenches, of any length and type, amount to 16, with 12 of these located on fire trenches. In all the bulk of fighting positions (mainly

Figure 4.22: 2014 Survey Area. Plan showing all trenches, shelters and fighting positions.

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Conflict Landscapes

detached) are in the northern half of the 2014 survey area. They were obviously emplaced to look over the Camino de Valdelacrrera and to observe the Nationalist positions on the higher ground to the west, beyond the valley of the Camino de la Valhonda. They would also have given defensive cover to the many shelters positioned along the valley slopes beneath them. All of the fighting positions can be found within 19 quadrats with an area of 30,400 square metres. The disposition of the shelters, fighting positions and trenches, amidst the digitated terrain of the whole 2014 survey area, can be clearly seen in Figure 4.22 (with their density by quadrats shown in Figure 4.25). The communication trenches feed along the spur tops and sides to give access to the fighting positions and the shelters dug into the lower slopes beneath, and protected in the subsidiary valleys. There is a distinctive ensemble of trenches and shelters attached to a paridera, around 90 metres west of the Belchite-Mediana road. It is essentially a kidney shaped loop of a support trench jutting out from the southwest end of the paridera (see Figure 4.23). A communication trench extends out from the loop to the north, while to the south, there is a support trench with further shelters which, in turn, links up with further communication trenches. The loop, itself, is positioned at the top of one of the southeast to northwest spurs of high ground that characterise this area, and upon which there are detached fighting positions extending to the northwest. There are also detached fighting positions on the two spurs further to the north, and on the adjacent spur to the south. The paridera is poorly preserved, and measures around 18 by 47 metres in area. It is aligned southwest to northeast. The looped trench extends northwards out of it for approximately 79 metres, and it is

Figure 4.23: 2014 Survey Area. Plan of possible Republican command post.

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Trench Systems as Settlement Archaeology: The Salient at Mediana de Aragón

up to 25 metres at its widest. The trench itself is less than a metre to around 1.5 metres wide. Along its southwest facing side are at least 17 dug out shelters, many of sizeable proportions. The smallest is around 1.4 by 1.8 metres, while the largest measures three by six metres in area. Some shelters are at the ends of short trenches, and their rectangularity is well preserved in many instances. This is especially so, closest to the paridera, where the largest shelters are located. There are also two sizeable shelters located where the southwards extending support trench joins the paridera. There are at least three further shelters associated with the looped trench along its northeastern side, while there are at least four fighting positions along the north-most arc of the loop. There is a further fighting position with a

Figure 4.24: 2014 and 2015 Survey Areas. Viewshed from Republican trenches (and possible Republican command post) looking north and over the Parapet of Death.

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short entrenchment located around 15 metres to the northwest. The intervening ground appears filled in now, and it might have been connected to the looped trench, serving as an observation post. In fact, this trench-paridera complex has a good view over the Republican trenches near it and to the north, and over the Nationalist trenches to the west and northwest (see Figure 4.24). As such, and with an elevation of 426 metres, it was probably a command, support, and observation post. It could also have been easily

Figure 4.25: 2014 Survey Area. Density of Republican fighting positions and shelters by quadrats.

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served from the Belchite-Mediana road, since the ground eastwards to it has a gentle and relatively level downward slope. With the four spurs in the northern portion of the 2014 survey area occupied by 14 ridge-top fighting and observation posts, the spurs to the south had 49 shelters dug into their south facing sides (see Figure 4.22). Many of these were linked by fighting and communication trenches and they were often found midway up – though in some instances relatively close – to the top of their steep valley sides. All of them are now obscured by collapsed entrances and scrub, so their details cannot be known, but their disposition and remains are virtually identical to almost all of the shelters dug by Nationalist soldiers in the subsidiary valleys behind the Parapet of Death. There are also fighting or observation positions associated with the shelters, positioned at the extreme ends of the spurs beneath which they are are located, and some of these are linked by trenches. Overall, there are 85 Republican shelters, detached or linked to trenches in the 2014 survey area adjacent to the Belchite-Mediana road. Like the fighting positions, they are located within 19 (though different) quadrats with an area of 30,400 square metres (see Figure 4.25). Republican Defences: 2014 Survey Area – ‘Little Gallipoli’ As already noted, Little Gallipoli is located in the southwest corner of the 2014 survey area, and it is an integral part of the Republican zone of soldiers’ shelters in this part of the Mediana front. Its remains extend over an area around 320 metres north to south by 50 to 65 metres east to west. It is demarcated on its eastern side by the valley of the Camino de Valdelacarrera, while above it to the immediate west there is relatively flat ground with numerous Republican trenches, at around 20 metres above the valley floor (see Figures 4.21 and 4.22). While the eastern slopes of the valley included dug out shelters laid out in relatively level, string-like arrangements, contouring along the south facing slopes of the spurs upon which they were situated, the shelters on the western side of the valley, in Little Gallipoli, were disposed in a markedly different way (see Figure 4.22). Here, the shelters were disposed vertically (as opposed to laterally) along much shallower embayments, though still facing to the south. Their vertical distribution ranged from eight to well over 15 metres – in up to three tiers or more in places – while the shelters east

Figure 4.26: 2014 Survey Area. View looking northeast into one of the embayments of Little Gallipoli, showing soldiers’ shelters disposed in tiers. The shelters visible in the central tier are semi-dugouts with external stone walls (a view of their excavation and plan is shown in Fig. 4.29).

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Figure 4.27: 2014 Survey Area. Plan of Little Gallipoli (bounded by a dot-dash line) showing embayments with soldiers’ shelters and excavated structures, indicated by numbers in brackets. Source: compilation of surveys and GIS plots (transcriptions) by P. Rodrígues Simón and S. Garfi derived from an earlier version by Rodrígues Simón in González-Ruibal et al 2015: 100.

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of the Camino de Valdelacarrera were only distributed vertically within a few metres of each other. As Figures 4.22 and 4.25 show, Little Gallipoli has the highest density of Republican shelters south of the Parapet of Death, working out at 87 shelters in 12 quadrats over an an area of 19,200 square metres. See Table 4.5 for a listing of the types of shelters and associated trenches recorded in this survey area. In all, the shelters that make up Little Gallipoli were situated in tiered clusters within seven embayments (see Figures 4.26 and 4.27). They were linked by communication trenches that followed the contours of the embayments (see Figure 4.28), and which linked up with the support and fire trenches to the immediate west, on the flat and higher ground. When surveyed, many, if not most of the shelters were poorly preserved. Like the shelters east of the Camino de Valdelacarrera, most were dug out of the local, soft rock of friable limestone and gypsum, and in most instances their roofs had collapsed. Besides dugout refuges, there were 18 shelters with obvious sections of free standing walls. Most of these were partly dug into the steep sides of the embayments, or built up against a naturally exposed rock face. Their walls were made up of local stone and could be a good half metre thick, if not more, and preserved up to a metre in height, sometimes more. Their internal dimensions could vary from around one metre to two metres in width, with a depth of more than 2.5 metres. Four such shelters were excavated in 2014 (see Figure 4.29). One large, nearly free standing rectangular shelter near the valley bottom was also excavated, and it measured 6.8 metres long by 4.6m wide and with walls up to 0.7 metres thick (see Fig 4.30). It is probable that this shelter, along with another, smaller and unexcavated one, nearby, were field structures constructed before the war as field stores or shepherd’s huts. Various materials were probably used to roof these structures, but a fair amount of roof tile fragments were strewn about them as well as fragments of ‘uralite’. These were probably taken from the parideras in the vicinity (probably even with roofing timbers), and would have given the shelters relatively sound roofs.25 The much more numerous, dug out shelters in Little Gallipoli, had similar dimensions to the Republican and Nationalist ones recorded throughout the other survey areas. With internal dimensions unrecorded due to internal collapse, their openings varied from 0.7 metres for what might have been a single soldier’s shelter, to up to two metres in width for a two or three soldier shelter. Assuming that the entirety of the shelters in Little Gallipoli were occupied at the same time, then the 87 habitations with one to three soldiers in each could have housed an army company of 100 to 200 men.26

Figure 4.28: 2014 Survey Area. View looking north along a communication trench linking two embayments at Little Gallipoli. 25  26 

González-Ruibal et al 2015: 98-114. González-Ruibal et al 2015: 101.

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Figure 4.29: 2014 Survey Area. Views of excavated shelters in Little Gallipoli. ‘A’ is a view of two contiguous shelters (shown in the middle of Fig. 4.26) being excavated, while ’B’ is an orthophoto of their plan. ‘C’ shows another pair of shelters during excavation, with ‘D’ also being an orthophoto of their plan. The location of these features are indicated in Figs. 4.4, 4.21 and 4.27, with ‘A’ and ‘B’ noted as (04A/B), and ‘C’ and ‘D’ noted as (05/06). Source: González-Ruibal et al 2015: 108, 111, 112 and 113.

Figure 4.30: 2014 Survey Area. View of excavated, large, nearly free standing rectangular shelter near the valley bottom at Little Gallipoli. The location of this feature is indicated at (03) in Figs. 4.4, 4.21 and 4.27. Source: González-Ruibal et al 2015: 106.

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Mediana Revisited – 2017 In the Summer of 2017 I went back to the Mediana entrenchments. It was a very short visit, but my aim was to walk over the ground to the east of the Belchite-Mediana road – the A222 (see Figure 4.4). From here, Republican entrenchments extend north-northeastwards along the high interdigitated ground towards Mediana de Aragón and beyond, following the valley of the Rio Ginel towards the town of Fuentes de Ebro. This broad area includes the ruins of the hill-top village of Rodén which, like Belchite, was destroyed during the Civil War through intense bombardment and left as a ruin.27 At around 500 metres east of the A222, opposite the Parapet of Death, where there is a subsidiary valley running northwards to the Rio Ginel, I came upon the remains of numerous soldiers’ field shelters at five locations in four shallow embayments in the valley’s western flank. The shelters were disposed in the same way as those at Little Gallipoli, being mainly tucked into the north side of the embayments, in tiers and facing south, and at an average elevation of 372 metres. They were a mix of dugout and built up shelters, and some had well preserved sections of drystone walling. Obviously, these were bivouacs for Republican troops manning the fortifications on the high ground between them and the BelchiteMediana road, looking towards the Parapet of Death, from a maximum elevation of 402 metres.

Figure 4.31: Four views of Republican trenches and features east of the Belchite-Mediana Road, visited in 2017. ‘A’ shows well constructed, soldiers’ shelters with substantial remains of walls situated amidst other shelters, in a valley with embayments and further structures, similar to Little Gallipoli. ‘B’ is a hill top fighting trench with a fighting or observation position to the left, and with a clear view towards the Parapet of Death, which is situated on the high ground behind the trees in the distance. ‘C’ is a support trench with dugout soldiers’ shelters, while ‘D’ shows the earthen parapet of a possible artillery gun position behind the Republican lines.

27 

Garcia Enquita 2014: 142.

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The fortifications on the high ground included some in-line shelters along the entrenchments, and unsurprisingly these were positioned on the parados side of the trenches, so their entries faced outwards towards the enemy. To the south, however, by more than 80 metres, and on ground dropping by around six metres, there were the possible earthwork remains of at least two artillery gun pits. These were more or less aligned at an angle of 145 degrees from north, and they would only have been able to provide indirect fire for the Republican forces opposing the Nationalists positioned along the Parapet of Death. Views of some of these features can be seen in seen in Figure 4.31. The north-most of the two possible gun positions is a subrectangular hollow dug out of the ground with earth embankments on its north, west and southern sides, and roughly eight metres square. There are around nine smaller hollows nearby which, if this is an artillery gun pit, could represent dug out shelters and stores. The position is around 420 metres due east of the A222 and more than 700 metres southeast of the Parapet of Death. To the south, by a further 65 metres or so, there is another dug out and embanked hollow that might represent a further gun pit. It is sub-rectangular with an open eastern side and measures approximately five metres (north to south) by seven metres (east to west). There is a disconnected trench nearby with some shelters or fighting positions that extend to the west-southwest. A very short section of a zigzagged trench is located further to the southwest. To the south of these positions, by approximately 150 metres, there is an area that seems to have undergone recent earth moving activities, but surprisingly, there are no traces or tracks of any kind of machinery. In all, the area is characterised by a substantial southwest to northeast embankment on the highest ground, along with heaps of spoil, and linear hollows. To the south, by about 60 metres, there is a further subrectangular dugout, measuring five by four metres and this might represent the remains of a third gun pit. But this is far from certain since the feature might be associated with the earth moving to its north. The two north-most features that might represent Republican gun pits do not, however, conform to the prescribed layout for gun emplacements as advised by the military manuals of the day.28 Such positions were supposed to be trapezoidal, with the narrowest part facing towards the field of fire. But saying that, it has already been observed that the prescriptions of contemporary field manuals were often not adhered to, by both the Nationalist and Republican armies (for example, in the case of the positioning of shelters in trenches), so it is probable, that gun positions could also have been laid out in an ad hoc fashion, adjusting to the conditions and contingencies in the field at the time. Conclusion – A ‘Geometric Personality’ The foregoing has provided an overall description of a portion of the warscape near Mediana de Aragón occupied by both sides from the onset of the Republican offensive towards Zaragoza in August 1937, and then vacated in the Nationalist counter offensive of March, 1938. This was an area of opposing front lines, manned by Nationalist and Republican soldiers, including soldiers of the International Brigades, and literally inscribed on the land. Digging is the one thing that soldiers have always done in virtually any theatre of modern war, and that was no different at Mediana. By digging, the armies of both sides created a landscape in which to dwell, undoubtedly in periods of calm as well as in periods of intense fighting. Soldiering, like any other human activity takes place in space, and in a warscape of trenches – a space of an army’s own creation – it, like any other space, becomes a network of distinct places. These places are purposefully constructed, and considering the way in which armies can transform the ground through digging and building, even sculptural. As such, they are objects of a kind – objects that are spatially extant, and spread out along the ground, and in which the soldiers of both sides were actors. They are an architectural confection representing a created ‘anthropocosmos’ (or world of man) with the equivalent of public spaces, communal or shared spaces, and private spaces, which can be characterised further as ‘shells’ and ‘networks’. The former can include individual or shared soldiers’ shelters or dugouts, a variety 28 

Capdevila 1938: 199-203. For a contemporary comparison see: War Department 1940: 186-193.

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of specialised field constructions from fighting positions to mess areas and command posts, stores areas, and further specialised support and service facilities, while the latter can be made up of trenches (along the front line and behind), and access tracks and roads. These objects and features as places, defined the Mediana warscape and gave it, as the geographer Y-Fu Tuan would say, a ‘geometric personality’. They became for the soldiers, ‘centers of value’,29 and as such, their disposition and character became intense foci of experience. It is an exploration of these, as places of experience, that now follows in Part Two.

29 

Tuan 1977: 17.

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PART THREE

Chapter 5

Experiencing the Mediana Lines On the 26th of August, 1937, the day that Quinto fell to Republican troops, and in particular the Americans and British of the 15th International Brigade, Nationalist reinforcements from the Madrid front arrived in Zaragoza. Their numbers were so substantial that they arrived in overly packed trains with, reputedly, some soldiers actually suffocating to death. Additionally, artillery and aircraft were transferred from General Franco’s northern offensive to support them. After a failed Republican offensive at Fuentes de Ebro, northeast of Mediana de Aragón, the Nationalists were now able to amass ‘enormous firepower behind an increasingly formidable line’,1 and part of that new line included the Nationalist entrenchments at Mediana. After the fighting at Quinto, the 15th International Brigade found itself resting at Piña (around 15 kilometres east of Mediana) and there they were joined by Spanish reinforcements that arrived on August 30th. Immediately afterwards, the 15th was sent to take part in the siege of Belchite,2 around 17 kilometres south of the new front line near Mediana. However, on their way there, at Codo, the British Battalion was sent north to the Mediana lines. This was to support Spanish units and the 11th International Brigade, whose positions had been broken by the reinforced Nationalists in their attempt to send relief to Belchite.3 The British Battalion headed towards the Mediana lines during the night of the 31st of August.4 They left Codo on trucks,5 though presumably, they must have travelled along the tracks (some of which are now back-country lanes) that head north and northwest from Codo across agricultural fields before joining the Belchite-Mediana road south of the battle lines.6 On route, they came under long range enemy fire, so the British had to scramble out of their lorries and advance on foot.7 They almost collided with a convoy of Nationalists heading south,8 who, surprised to see them approaching, retreated northwards. William Rust recounts, writing in 1939, that there was a skirmish, and the British occupied two hills above Mediana that had recently been taken by the Nationalists, but there was an immediate Nationalist counter-attack: The fighting at Mediana was not heavy but the whole experience was wearying and nerve-racking. The sleep-starved men had to be always on the alert against surprise attacks in a wide sector that was but thinly held by a depleted Battalion; for three days and nights, the Republican troops were subjected to a continuous aerial and artillery bombardment; twice they had to repulse night attacks and there was much skirmishing between the rival outposts which in some cases were only forty yards apart. In addition, there were terrific electric storms which, during the night, illuminated the country for miles around. But the men stuck it out and got down to the monotonous work of constructing fortifications with a right good-will, and with such success that the casualties were only slight.9 As already discussed in Chapter 4, it is probable that the so-called Parapet of Death in the 2015 survey area is the very place where the British faced and fought the Nationalists at Mediana, since it is only there where the forward positions of the Nationalist and Republican lines are around 40 yards (or metres) from each other. Eby 2007: 218. RGASPI. F. 545. Op. 3. Д [D] 474. 3  Alexander 1986, p. 150, and RGASPI. F. 545. Op. 3. Д [D] 474. 4  This specific date for the movement of the British Battalion is not noted in the official diary of operations of the 35th Division (i.e., the ‘Diario de Operaciones Belchite del 27-8-37 a 17-9-37’), but it must be the date of departure for the British since they fought for three days and nights along with the 11th Brigade to secure the Mediana positions, and the diary states that those positions were secured by the night of September 4th. 5  Rust [1939] 2007: 94. 6  See route-ways shown on map sheet 412, Pina, 1/50,000: Talleres del Instituto Geográfico y Catastral: 1937. 7  Alexander 1986: 150. 8  Gregory, p. 81. 9  Rust [1939] 2007: 94. The Diario de Operaciones Belchite... states that by 9:00 pm on September 4th, the 11th IB was able to keep its position by being reinforced by the British Battalion. 1  2 

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Bill Alexander, a British veteran of the Republic’s Aragón offensive (though he was with the anti-tank battery at Belchite at the time) noted10 that the British battalion was able to dig in well at Mediana, so they were protected from enemy shelling and aerial strafing. He also noted that the ‘continuous night patrols and skirmishes in the broken ravines and gulleys’, which he described as an ‘active defence’, was sufficient to prevent a Nationalist advance towards Belchite.11 But to describe the Mediana front as one of ‘broken ravines and gulleys’ is perhaps an understatement. The so-called ‘desert of Aragón’ is a harsh and semi-arid environment, described as a land hard to live off of by the brigader David Stirrat, and made up of nothing but stone, ‘absolute stone’,12 with the British brigader, Walter Gregory writing: the terrain there was the very worst: bleak, exposed, unproductive, treeless hillsides which offered no protection from the elements and scant cover from enemy fire. It was a dreadful and dreary landscape which seemed to gnaw into one and erode the spirit.13 At Huesca, also on the Aragón front but around 75 kilometres north of Mediana, Ronald Liversedge of the Canadian MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion described the Aragónese terrain in the Autumn of 1937 as …very rough; the country hilly and broken up into into arroyos, barrancas and ridges, with some flat plains. It was hard, brown and mostly treeless. Away from the coastal plain.., Spain always seemed to me to have a vast brown smudge of a landscape: dry, with a hard blue and white sky, in which the villages were obscured by reason of their similarity of colour with the landscape.14 While John Cornford, also at Huesca but writing in the summer of 1936, bemoaned the climate in Aragón as ‘nothing else but a sun so hot that I am almost ill’, and adding that due to it, he could ‘eat very little, and scarcely work at all’.15 However, the fighter who has provided perhaps the best description of a sector of the Republican front line in Aragón, through the eyes of a foreign volunteer, is Eric Blair – George Orwell. Though not a member of the International Brigades, and instead, a member of the POUM militia (as was John Cornford when he was in Aragón), his experiences of the materiality of the trenches along the Huesca front are vividly described in Homage to Catalonia. They chime almost perfectly with the archaeology of the front lines at Mediana, and his experiences would undoubtedly have resonated with the many soldiers occupying the trenches along the Mediana salient, especially when the line was stabilised after the fighting of September 1937. While the international brigaders only stayed at Mediana for six days (but with the 12th Brigade returning to defend the lines in March 193816), the trenches and landscape they encountered was occupied by other Republican units for around six months, so their experiences too can in all likelihood be appreciated through Orwell’s memoir. Orwell has been criticised for his affiliation with the revolutionary POUM anarchist (Trotskyist) militia, and for his account of the street fighting and power struggle in Barcelona between Catalonia’s revolutionary anarchist groups and the Republican government during the ‘May Days’ of 1937.17 The revolutionary groups were suppressed, and Orwell himself risked arrest, but the events in Barcelona turned him steadfastly against ‘Stalinism and its apologists’; though it did not diminish in any way his clear ‘commitment to both working class struggle and to socialism’, and his steadfast opposition to totalitarianism.18 It is not an aim here to analyse and review what Orwell’s detractors have said and written about him, but criticisms range from, for instance, Hugh Thomas’ benign comments of 1962 about Homage to Catalonia: ‘it is written with great lucidity and sincerity. It is very perceptive Darman 2009: 122-124. Alexander 1986: 150-151. 12  Interview with David Stirrat in MacDougall 1986: 270. 13  Gregory 1986: 77. 14  Liversedge 2013: 81. 15  Cornford, cited in Stansky and Abrahams 1966: 331. 16  Hurtada 2013: 56. 17  See Alexander 1984; Norris 1984; and Stradling 1984. 18  Newsinger 1994. 10  11 

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about war. Nevertheless it is very misleading about the Spanish Civil War’,19 to what John Newsinger called, a ‘Communist vendetta against the book and its author’ in the Lawrence and Wishart collection of essays published in 1984, Inside the Myth.20 Here, the most vociferous detractor of Orwell is the former International Brigader, Bill Alexander,21 who, as Valentine Cunningham notes, ‘rather fumes and foams’, exclaiming that: Orwell is ‘ignorant of the background, situation and the forces involved’. He lacked ‘understanding’ of the Popular Front and the world significance of the Spanish struggle that made the Popular Front policies necessary. He was remote, detached, aloof, a loner who gives a ‘romanticised’, ‘fantasised’ account, especially of that memorable initial encounter with the Italian soldier.22 A critic like Alexander, however, looks at Homage to Catalonia too simplistically. As Cunningham, holding no punches, points out : Alexander is (in the matter of Spain) a fairly unreconstructed advancer of the old Stalinist and antiPOUM line whose readings of the Civil War haven’t really altered since the time when he was himself a Commander in the International Brigades.23 Alexander apparently aims, like all of the contributors to Inside the Myth, to ‘demythologize Orwell’, to ‘see more clearly the nature of that “common-sense” ideology which lends itself so willingly to propaganda purposes’,24 and to understand that the ‘honest George’ style of plain, no-nonsense reportage has to be patiently deconstructed if we want to resist its more insidious rhetorical effects. Otherwise that style will continue to impose its bogus common-sense ‘values’ in the service of every kind of reactionary populist creed.25 But such a fear of how Orwell could be appropriated by reactionary and right wing forces ignores the fact that Orwell was indeed a highly observant writer, and as one critic put it, ‘he wrote excellent accounts of his own experiences, somewhere between investigative journalism and sociological participant observation’.26 Paul Preston, more recently writing in the Guardian, described Orwell’s account as ‘priceless… reportage’, and that his description of what it was like to occupy front lines in the Civil War was ‘a vivid account of the experiences of a militiaman on “a quiet sector of a quiet front” in Aragón, evoking the fear, the cold and, above all, the squalor, excrement and lice of the rat-infested trenches’.27 Cunningham includes Orwell in the documentary movement of the 1930s,28 and as Valerie Meyers makes clear, referring to Orwell’s manifesto ‘Why I Write’:29 Orwell wanted to write long, entertaining novels full of characters and descriptions in the nineteenthcentury mode. But his true talents lay elsewhere. His ‘power of facing unpleasant facts’, interest in apparently ‘useless’ information’, powerful synthetic mind, and gift for collecting information and making sense out of it, made him an excellent reporter.30 Miquel Berga adds that Orwell described his experiences in Spain with ‘precision and exactitude’. Homage to Catalonia ‘seems to try to situate its central truth within a framework of meticulously detailed peripheral Thomas 1962, cited in Meyers 1975. Newsinger 1994. 21  Alexander 1984: 85-102. 22  Cunningham 1987: 509. 23  Cunningham 1987: 507. 24  Norris 1984: 8. 25  Norris 1984: 9. 26  Steele 2003: 47. 27  Preston 2017a, and see Preston 2017b. 28  Cunningham 1987: 512. 29  Orwell 1946. 30  Meyers 1991: 1. 19  20 

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truths’. By speaking to the reader ‘as an eyewitness’ and with ‘first-hand knowledge’, Orwell presents a ‘minutious account’ of his time at the front.31 To Orwell, a good piece of literature should open ‘up a new world not by revealing what is strange, but by revealing what is familiar’.32 And from a relatively young age, he felt compelled to describe things, and to do so in full detail. He had, in his own words, a ‘desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed’, and as he continued in ‘Why I Write’: So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.33 What Orwell felt about writing corresponds uncannily with the aims of archaeology as it is practised today. As John Schofield points out, archaeology is not a ‘thing’, it is ‘a way of looking at the past’.34 It is a way of looking at the little things, the mundane things, the familiar and overly familiar, the taken for granted, and those things that are so humble that we do not even see them.35 It is this aspect of Homage to Catalonia which makes Orwell’s memoir of his one hundred and fifteen days at the front in Catalonia36 extremely relevant to this study. George Orwell at the Front The front line positions that Orwell occupied, from January to May, 1937, were under the control of the Catalan militias and situated northeast of Zaragoza in the Monegros region, and outside Huesca (see Figure 4.1). The militias very quickly positioned themselves in Aragón soon after the Nationalist rebellion in July 1936. They created a front line that was poorly defined,37 and noted by Tom Wintringham while at Huesca in September 1936, as consisting of shallow trenches giving poor protection and with haphazardly positioned militiamen’s shelters that could be easily seen from the Nationalist lines and sniped at. In contrast, Wintringham wrote that the German, Thaelmann Centuria, also at Huesca at the time, had well camouflaged positions with ‘real trenches and shelters in the sides of the trenches’. Conscious efforts by the Germans were made to make them safe, and the volunteers exhibited a marked degree of discipline, organisation and tidiness.38 Around a month later, Esmond Romilly described the Thaelmann positions he occupied in the defence of Madrid as consisting of well made dugouts with ‘proper firing positions’.39 He also stated that for good reasons, the Thaelmanns (now known as the Thaelmann Battalion) were reputed to be the ‘finest fighting unit of the International Brigade’.40 Orwell arrived in Spain in late December, 1936. After rudimentary training in Barcelona, he, and fellow POUM militiamen, were sent to the front along the Sierra de Alcubierre in the Monegros region of Aragón. This was in January 1937, and their destination was Monte Pucero (around 37 kilometres northeast of Zaragoza) where a north to south front line existed along the boundary between the provinces of Zaragoza and Huesca. Around three weeks later he moved further south-southwest to Monte Oscuro, at an elevation of 822 metres and closer to Zaragoza. Being around 30 kilometres east-northeast of the city, Orwell could see it as ‘a thin string of lights like the lighted port-holes of a ship’.41 He moved again, back north, in mid-February, to the Republican lines besieging the town of Huesca itself (around 64 kilometres northeast of Zaragoza), where he stayed until late April. He was given leave in Barcelona just a few days before the violence of the Barcelona May Days which erupted on the 3rd of May (and continued until the 8th) when the POUM and other revolutionary factions were suppressed by the Republican government. Berga 2001:63. Orwell 1940. 33  Orwell 1946. 34  Schofield 2005: 28. 35  Attfield 2000; Buchli, and Lucas 2001; and Graves-Brown 2000. 36  Orwell [1938] 1974: 101 and 135. 37  Liversedge 2013: 81. 38  Wintringham [1939] 2011: 20-21. 39  Romilly [1937] 1971: 114. 40  Romilly [1937] 1971: 130. 41  Orwell [1953] 1974: 39. However, Orwell incorrectly describes Zaragoza as being only 12 miles distant (around 19 kilometres) from his position on the Monte Oscuro. 31  32 

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He returned to the Huesca lines soon afterwards, but was shot in the neck by a Nationalist sniper around May 22nd, and he was invalided out of the front to be hospitalised. With the suppressing of the anarchists in Catalonia, it was not safe for Orwell to remain in Spain, so he ‘escaped’ to France on June 23rd, 1937. Throughout Orwell’s time at the front his writings tell us of what he saw and felt, ‘the physical memories, the sounds, the smells and the surfaces of things’.42 His narrative in Homage to Catalonia is phenomenological as well as descriptive, making his account of the Aragónese front lines very applicable to archaeology, and it gives this study a pertinent, foreign volunteer’s point of view. To begin with, after leaving Barcelona with his unit by train and then lorry, Orwell recounts what Ross Wilson describes as the ‘process and procession’ of a soldier approaching a battle zone. From his study of British soldiers encountering the warscapes of the First World War, Wilson writes that there was a process of change and awareness on the part of the men, both as individuals and as groups when moving up to the front lines, and as such, the soldiers became part of a procession. From the calm of their bivouacs, well behind the front lines, each soldier would process ever deeper into a landscape transformed by war. They would pass returning troops and confront ruined villages, perhaps even with remaining, haggard and shocked local people. While the front shifted, desperate refugees would be encountered moving away from the fighting. The landscape would change with the seasons – be they cold and wet or dry and hot – and with fields, woods and route-ways altered beyond recognition by artillery bombardment and/or dissected by the routes and communication trenches up to the front line – a land appropriated by fighting armies.43 Orwell’s own journey up to the front was a reflection of this kind of procession. He passed through the fought over village of Siétamo, east of Huesca, parts of which ‘were smashed to pieces by shell-fire’ and with most of the remaining houses ‘pockmocked by rifle-bullets’. At an altitude of 1500 feet there were dense, swirling mists, and ‘it was beastly cold’. It rained and ‘the narrow earth roads had been churned into a sea of mud, in places two feet deep’.44 At Alcubierre, very close to the front line: the constant come-and-go of troops had reduced the village to a state of unspeakable filth. It did not possess and never had possessed such a thing as a lavatory or a drain of any kind, and there was not a square yard anywhere where you could tread without watching your step. The church had long been used as a latrine; so had all the fields for a quarter of a mile round. I never think of my first two months at war without thinking of wintry stubble fields whose edges are crusted with dung.45 After receiving arms and ammunition in Alcubierre, Orwell’s militia column marched off to the Monte Pucero. Half of his comrades were ragged boys which he surmised as being no older than sixteen. They were happy and joyous, though, keen to get at the fascist, Nationalist foe, but they were ill armed with worn out weapons which they did not know how to use. The column wound its way into the sierra, straggling ‘along with far less cohesion than a flock of sheep’, and before going two miles the soldiers in the rear were out of sight.46 After leaving the road, the column climbed a mule track, and upon reaching the front line, Orwell characterised the landscape he encountered in such a way that it is a near perfect description of the kind of rugged landscape in which the Mediana lines are disposed. He wrote: The hills in that part of Spain are of a queer formation, horse-shoe shaped with flattish tops and very steep sides running down into immense ravines. On the higher slopes nothing grows except stunted shrubs and heath, with the white bones of the limestone sticking out everywhere.47 This epitomises the digitated landscape in which the 2014-2015 IBAP surveys took place, and in fact the whole of the Mediana salient. It can be clearly seen in Figure 5.1 (and in many of the figures of Chapter 4). Orwell also experienced, as did we, the IBAP team, during the rainfalls that occured while we were Orwell [1953] 1974: 225. Wilson 2012: 112-116. Orwell [1938] 1974: 18-19. 45  Orwell [1938] 1974: 19. 46  Orwell [1938] 1974: 21-22. 47  Orwell [1938] 1974: 22. 42  43  44 

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working in the field, that the friable gypsum and limestone on the surface of the ground could all too easily turn into ‘a slippery grease’, and as Orwell noted: since ‘you were always walking on a slope it was impossible to keep your footing. On dark nights I have often fallen half a dozen times in twenty yards’.48 Walter Gregory also wrote about the rain in Aragón: I shall always remember the weather, which changed quite remarkably during the fighting in Aragon. After days of blazing heat we were subjected to terrific thunderstorms with no real prospect of gaining shelter from the torrential rain which accompanied them. One evening, with the land brilliantly lit by sheets of continuous lightning, I took shelter under an isolated tree… I was leaning on an entrenching tool feeling far from happy with my soaking uniform.., when the tree under which I was standing was struck by lightning.49 Members of IBAP experienced exactly this kind of weather in both 2014 and 2015. A lightning bolt even hit the ground within sight of one of the excavation trenches near Belchite in 2015. Both Orwell, and later, the Canadian Ronald Liversedge, described the trenches in the Huesca sector as being quite distant from each other. To Liversedge, ‘there were places where the front lines were a mile apart, and some places where they were much closer’,50 while Orwell compared his preconceived ideas about trench warfare with the reality: According to my ideas of trench warfare the Fascists would be fifty or a hundred yards away. I could see nothing – seemingly their trenches were very well concealed. Then with a shock of dismay I saw where Benjamin was pointing; on the opposite hill-top, beyond the ravine, seven hundred metres

Figure 5.1: A view of the so-called ‘Desert of Aragon’, where IBAP undertook its fieldwork at Mediana in 2014 and 2015. Source: González-Ruibal et al 2015: 79. Orwell [1938] 1974: 31. Gregory 1986: 84. 50  Liversedge 2013: 81. 48  49 

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away at the very least, the tiny outline of a parapet and a red-and-yellow flag – the Fascist position. I was indescribably disappointed. We were nowhere near them!51 The overall extent of the trenches southwest of Mediana is shown in Figure 4.5, and Orwell’s and Liversedge’s descriptions would not have been out of place there. Save for the Parapet of Death, the Nationalist and Republican trenches were as much as 700 metres apart. The overall disposition of the trenches near Mediana and in the 2014-2015 survey areas are also mirrored in the Monte Pucero lines well described in Orwell’s writing: The front line here was not a continuous line of trenches, which would have been impossible in such mountainous country; it was simply a chain of fortified posts, always known as ‘positions’, perched on each hill-top. In the distance you could see our ‘position’ at the crown of the horseshoe; a ragged barricade of sand-bags, a red flag fluttering, the smoke of dug-out fires. A little nearer, and you could smell a sickening sweetish stink that lived in my nostrils for weeks afterwards. Into the cleft immediately behind the position all the refuse of months had been tipped – a deep festering bed of breadcrusts, excrement, and rusty tins.52 He went on to characterise the ‘so-called’ front line as a zigzag pattern of similar hilltop outposts which would have been ‘unintelligible if every position had not flown a flag’.53 Nevertheless, Orwell was impressed by the near impregnability of both the Republican and Nationalist lines. With each position situated on hilltops, each of ‘immense natural strength’, they could only in the main be approached from one side. Provided a few trenches have been dug, such places cannot be taken by infantry, except in overwhelming numbers. In our own position or most of those round us a dozen men with two machine-guns could have held off a battalion.54 An unknown German anarchist militiaman who was a near contemporary of Orwell on the Huesca front, from April to June 1937, has provided a description of the POUM entrenchments there. What he depicts is not location specific but it is a very good overview of that part of the front which he occupied. He described the lines as being well maintained and around 200 to 800 metres from the opposing Nationalist positions. The trenches were between 1.6 and 1.8 metres deep. The loopholes for guns were built with sandbags… The nature of the soil enabled proper underground dug-outs to be built, four or five metres deep, and able to contain between six and 15 men. These ‘refugios’ [shelters] were strengthened by gothic arches of earth, or planks… The refugios gave effective protection to the trench garrison from shrapnel or grenades.., or aerial bombs, as they were built in a semi-circular form in the ground. They also had two exits, thus lessening the danger of people being buried by collapse… The forward trenches were dug in zigzags.., the very extensive trench system was constructed with the experiences of the [First] World War in mind. However, the security of the perimeter of the forward trenches was amazingly careless. It was partly equipped with trip-wires, barbed wire and simple alarm devices. There were few advanced outpost holes for the forward lines. This was all the more incomprehensible as the terrain, with its numerous undulations, crevices and scrub, offers protection to friend and foe alike, and allows anybody to sneak unnoticed right up to the trenches…

Orwell [1938] 1974: 23-24. Orwell [1938] 1974: 22. 53  Orwell [1938] 1974: 26. 54  Orwell [1938] 1974:.34. 51  52 

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The staff was linked to the forward lines via communication trenches… Our battalion staff stayed about 150 metres behind the forward lines… The trenches did not form an uninterrupted belt. There were gaps of some kilometres in length, because of advantages provided by the terrain. A small troop on one of the many hillocks could effectively dominate the trench-free terrain with a machine gun…55 Overall, this account chimes with Orwell’s, but while the German militiaman’s description is broad brush, Orwell’s own account is much more to the point, and he homes in on the very locations he found himself in. His first posting, on a high point at the northern end of the Monte Pucero is noted on maps as cota 684.56 It is only around one kilometre north of the Monte Irazo, where militia entrenchments have been restored as a heritage site known as the ‘Ruta Orwell’ in memory of the author.57 In fact, the Monte Irazo is now referred to as the ‘Loma Orwell’ – the Orwell hillock, and the restored trenches (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3) are disposed in an uncannily similar way to those described by Orwell on the Monte Pucero. The position was a semi-circular enclosure about fifty yards across, with a parapet that was partly sand-bags and partly lumps of limestone. There were thirty to forty dug-outs running into the ground like rat-holes… In front of the parapet there ran a system of narrow trenches hewn out of the rock, with extremely primitive loopholes made of piles of limestone. There were twelve sentries, placed at various points in the trench and behind the inner parapet. In front of the trench was the barbed wire, and then the hillside slid down into a seemingly bottomless ravine; opposite was naked hills, in places mere cliffs of rock, all grey and wintry, with no life anywhere, not even a bird.58 Orwell’s description of the Monte Pucero position is very specific: with more than one line of defences, including a parapet and rock-cut trenches, loopholed fighting positions, and barbed wire. But his depiction of their being 30 to 40 rat-hole-like dugouts running into the ground is quite striking, since this is an extremely apt way of referring to the dugouts disposed along the steep valley sides at Mediana. The Republican shelter excavated in 2014, which was dug into the northeastern flank of a fortified spur (see Figure 5.4) was one such ‘rat-hole’. It had an entrance around 1 metre wide by 1.2 metres long, dug into the hillside and opening up into a bell-shaped hollow, 2.25 metres wide by 3.5 metres long.59 A person would have had to crouch when inside it, though the dug-out probably housed at least two to three Republican combatants. Orwell described his own shelter when he was in the trenches opposite Huesca as housing four men.60 Of the 325 dugout shelters along both the Republican and Nationalist positions recorded in 2014 and 2015 at Mediana, the visible remains of their obscured entrances varied from around one to two metres in width (heights of the entrances could not be recorded due to erosion and infill due to collapse). Orwell spent only around three weeks on the Monte Pucero, but his descriptions of how he and his comrades interacted with the physical attributes of the land tells us much about soldiers as actors. To begin with, his warscape was quiet. The Huesca front, when he was there, was relatively static. This was emphasised by the German militiaman already quoted,61 and the contemporary American communist activist Albert Weisbord who described the Aragón front as the ‘ghost front of the war’.62 Orwell wrote that very little happened between January and March of 1937. It was boring, and uncomfortable stationary warfare: a life as uneventful as a city clerk’s, and almost as regular. Sentry-go, patrols, digging; digging, patrols, sentry-go. On every hill-top, Fascist or Loyalist, a knot of ragged, dirty men shivering round their flag, A Brandlerite Militant 1987. Benito 2009: 71, map. A cota is a survey recorded height: 684 is the height in metres above sea level. 57  Lorenzo Lizalde and Salvatella Fauré 2008: 85. 58  Orwell [1938] 1974: 23. 59  González-Ruibal et al 2015: 94-97. 60  Orwell [1938] 1974: 98. 61  A Blanderite Militant 1987. 62  Weisbord n.d. 55  56 

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Figure 5.2: Plan of restored Republican defences occupied by the POUM anarchist militia along the Huesca Front. This site is on the Monte Irazo, part of the ‘Ruta Orwell’, and located around one kilometre south of where George Orwell was actually posted when his unit was first sent to Aragon. Source: http://www.losmonegros.com/sitios/guerracivil/ruta-orwell.html.

and trying to keep warm. And all day and night the meaningless bullets wandering across the empty valleys and only by some rare improbable chance getting home on a human body.63 This was not unusual. Soldiers occupying front line trenches were almost never on a continual battle footing. This was the case along the Western Front in the First World War,64 just as it was in Spain. Michael Seidman notes that Spanish soldiers spent much more time on quiet fronts than in battle, and that for every active fighter there could be fifteen resting ‘on inactive fronts or at peace in the rear’. In spatial terms ‘calmness also ruled. Every meter of active trench was matched by kilometres of quiet and even unguarded lines throughout Andalucía, Extramadura, Aragón, and even Castile’.65 Orwell depicted – in fact he painted a picture – of what it was like to dwell in a warscape, even though his was a quiet one. As he wrote: ‘the scenery was stupendous, if you could forget that every mountain-top was occupied by troops and therefore littered with tin cans and crusted with dung’. In many mornings, Orwell [1938] 1974: 25-26. Corrigan 2003: 89-94. 65  Seidman 1999: 821. 63  64 

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Figure 5.3: Views of the reconstructed trenches on the ‘Loma Orwell’ (‘Ruta Orwell’). ‘A’ is a view looking down the forward fighting trench. ‘B’ is a communication trench. ‘C’ and ‘D’ are views of a reconstructed shelter accessed from a communication trench.

Figure 5.4: View of a soldiers’ shelter excavated in 2014 by IBAP close to the Republican fighting/machine gun position shown in Fig. 4.5. A hollow in the ground to the left of the shelter indicates another dugout whose roof collapsed. The location of these features is indicated at (02) in Fig. 4.4. Source: González-Ruibal et al 2015: 96.

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the valleys beneath the entrenchments would be sheathed in ‘seas of cloud’. In the distance, beyond Huesca, the hills were ‘streaked with a pattern of snow which altered day by day’. While the Pyrenees, visible in the far distance, was made up of ‘monstrous peaks’, where ‘the snow never melts’ and seemed to ‘float upon nothing’. Closer to home, the hills opposite his position ‘were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants’, and to Orwell’s surprise, there were almost no birds in the sky save for some magpies and partridges, and the rare flight of eagles, ‘generally followed by rifle shots which they did not deign to notice’.66 The terrain in which Orwell found himself consisted of numerous and ‘huge jagged ravines’, where paths were non-existent and practicable routes were long and circuitous. It was also difficult to move along the steep hillsides, walking amidst ‘crackling shrubs’, and over ‘tinkling limestones’.67 This must have been the case at Mediana, where even the hillside dugouts behind the lines of both the Nationalists and Republicans had to be accessed by navigating over similar ground. In fact, it was the same for the IBAP members working in the field. And like them, when Orwell was on one of his patrols, he ‘came upon various relics of… earlier fighting – a pile of empty cartridge-cases, a leather cap with a bullet-hole in it, and a red flag.’ The flag was probably from his own unit, but his comrades ripped it up without a care and used it for cleaning.68 As would be expected, the remains of hearths have been found in a number of excavations of trenches and shelters from warscapes of the Spanish Civil War.69 This is also the case from excavations of the Western Front of the First World War.70 The cold was something that Orwell and his fellow militiamen suffered from, so hearths were undeniably crucial for keeping warm in and behind the trenches. He clearly recounts that it was always hard to find firewood. When we were not eating, sleeping, on guard, or on fatigue-duty we were in the valley behind the position, scrounging for fuel. All my memories of that time are memories of scrambling up and down the almost perpendicular slopes, over the jagged limestone that knocked one’s boots to pieces, pouncing eagerly on tiny twigs of wood. Three people searching for a couple of hours could collect enough fuel to keep the dug-out fire alight for about an hour.71 Orwell writes a scenario that was probably played out a myriad of times along the Mediana lines. Soldiers there undoubtedly had to scramble up and down exceedingly steep slopes just to access their shelters, let alone in the pursuit of firewood. After three weeks at the Monte Pucero sector, Orwell was moved westwards, and closer to Zaragoza, to a POUM position on the Monte Oscuro. He became part of a contingent of twenty to thirty men sent out from England. Again, he paints a scene that would not have been out of place at Mediana: The position was perched on a sort of razor-back of limestone with dug-outs driven horizontally into the cliff like sand-martins’ nests. They went into the ground for prodigious distances, and inside they were pitch dark and so low that you could not even kneel in them, let alone stand.72 By mid February, Orwell with all of the POUM troops in the Monte Oscuro sector was sent to join the army besieging Huesca. The front was still relatively quiet with occasional bouts of limited activity. His unit was relieved on the 25th of April, and he went to Barcelona, on leave, on the 26th.

Orwell [1938] 1974: 26-27. Orwell [1938] 1974: 27. 68  Orwell [1938] 1974: 27. 69  For references and some examples see González-Ruibal 2011 and 2012, and González-Ruibal et al 2017. 70  Brown and Osgood 2009: 108-110; and Robertson and Kenyon 2008: 102-103. 71  Orwell [1938] 1974: 32. 72  Orwell [1938] 1974: 39. 66  67 

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Concusion In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell hoped that he conveyed sufficiently, the atmosphere of the 115 days he spent at the front before the Barcelona May Day violence. To him, that period was one of ‘curious vividness’, all wrapped up with the cold of winter, the ragged militiamen, Spanish faces, ‘the morse-like tapping of machine-guns, the smells of urine and rotting bread’, and ‘the tinny taste of bean-stews wolfed hurriedly out of unclean pannikins’. When writing his memoir he re-lived ‘incidents that might seem too petty to be worth recalling’, relating to the reader: I am in the dug-out at Monte Pocero again, on the ledge of limestone that serves as a bed, and young Ramón is snoring with his nose flattened between my shoulder-blades. I am stumbling up the mucky trench, through the mist that swirls round me like cold steam. I am half-way up a crack in the mountainside, struggling to keep my balance and to tug a root of wild rosemary out of the ground. High overhead some meaningless bullets are singing… Up the naked hill to the right of us a string of fascists are climbing like ants. Close in front a bugle-call rings out from the fascist lines.73 Here, in this brief narrative, Orwell describes the sensory experience of war which is entwined with the materiality he interacted with – a materiality that would have been mirrored at the Mediana lines. He feels the cold and mist, he takes in the look of his comrades, and he hears the sound of machine-gun fire. He smells urine and food waste, and he feels the hardness of a stone bed while listening to the snores of his comrade huddled up against him to keep warm while sleeping. The trench is littered with muck and he stumbles through it. The hillsides are steep, and a struggle to walk along while seeking out scented wild rosemary. The enemy can be seen in the far distance while the martial sound of a bugle occasionally rings out. As a comparative source, Homage to Catalonia adds a very personal dimension to the archaeology of the Mediana entrenchments which can only enhance our understanding of the remains on the ground. Orwell illustrates all too well that the life of a front line soldier was in real terms a ‘kinesthetic interplay’ of the tactile, sonic and visual,74 and all situated within a constructed landscape of trenches, redoubts and dugouts. But there is another form of record, that can give a further dimension to our understanding of the archaeology of war on the ground, and that is the record created through contemporary photography – taken in the trenches and within the overall warscape – and it is that which is the subject of the next chapter.

73  74 

Orwell [1938] 1974: 103-104. Feld 2005: 181.

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Chapter 6 An Archaeology From Photographs: Imaging the Aragón Front Historical photographic imagery can be seen in a variety of published historical and archaeological works, but all too often, they are simply employed as passive illustrations. Portraits of individuals abound, along with photos that might illustrate a specific historical event or place, while in contemporary archaeology they are often used to show how the partial remains of features and built structures recorded through field work might actually have looked in the past. Such terrestrial photographs are employed essentially as reconstructions, but with the veracity of being representations of authentic examples from the comparatively recent past. Nevertheless, such photos are almost never fully interrogated for the details they hold on the material world, and culture, of the very pasts they illustrate or hail from. They, even in archaeology, are still used as simple illustrations of what might have been, or what the remains made known through archaeological excavation and survey might have looked like in the past. In short, archaeologists seem to stay clear of interpreting or analysing historical terrestrial photographs. They appear not to engage with them, yet such photographs can be a record of a material world that can be studied in the same way that features and artefacts exposed through excavation, and other field work, can be made sense of. They can be used more than to just put flesh on archaeological bones. As recognised by the cultural historian Peter Burke, historical images ‘record acts of eyewitnessing’. They can record ‘the everyday culture of ordinary people’, and ‘show details of material culture that people at the time would have taken for granted’ and not recorded in any textual form.1 In the latter 1970s, the innovative archaeologist Philip Barker wrote encouragingly about the use of historical illustrations in archaeological interpretation, especially artworks from the renaissance and later (when art became more naturalistic), saying that ‘the paintings and drawings of these centuries are a rich source of information on contemporary buildings, dress, furniture and pottery’,2 and adding, that if interrogated critically, ‘contemporary illustrations can be another and otherwise unparallelled form of evidence, especially helpful in areas where the written evidence fails’.3 Nevertheless, the most interrogative and analytical use of imagery within archaeology has been, and remains, with aerial and satellite photography, and the employment of the former in modern conflict archaeology is admirably elaborated on in Images of Conflict, edited by Birger Stichelbaut et al.4 When an archaeologist interprets an aerial photograph (or satellite image), she or he is mainly interested in primary para-empirical data (see Chapter 4) that can shed light on the palimpsest that is a landscape or townscape viewed from above. As such, stratigraphy is not so important, instead, the past and present are both visible and on the same surface, and this becomes the sole object of data acquisition and subsequent analysis.5 But this basic approach can be applied to terrestrial photographs too, and at least one anthropologist has done so – examining historical photographs with a critical eye for the ‘material’. In 1981, the anthropologist Margaret Blackman published Window on the Past: the Photographic Ethnohistory of the Northern and Kaigani Haida,6 wherein she examined the changes in the material culture of the Haida Native Americans of the Pacific coast of Canada and southern Alaska from the last quarter of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. By interrogating collections of historical photographs she was able to chart changes in settlement layouts, and architectural styles, including the effects of missionary activity and the impact of that on traditional settlement patterning. She also examined the relationships of material culture items within and around buildings, and the village-scapes that she studied. This was informed by fieldwork and interviews, archival research, and published ethnographic and historical Burke 2001: 14, 83 and 99. Barker 1977: 219. Barker 1977: 221. 4  Stichelbaut et al 2009. 5  For a standard text book on aerial archaeology and the interpretation of aerial photographs see Wilson [1982] 2000. 6  Blackman 1981. See also Blackman 1992. 1  2  3 

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accounts, but central to her thesis was the well held view that photographs could be a medium through which an ethnohistory could be written.7 Quoting Susan Sontag, that a ‘photograph is a thin slice of space as well as time’,8 Blackman went on to compare the ethnohistorical study of photographs to archaeological sampling: The photographs... can be regarded as sharing much in common with archaeological specimens. This similarity can be seen first of all in the fact that the photographs of the Haida are only a sample from the past of a population of photographs, much as archaeological specimens are only a sample from a past population of artefacts. The photographs constitute a sample because they represent neither all of the historic photos taken of Northern and Kaigani Haida people and villages, nor do they present in their entirety a total picture of Haida culture during the time period under study. The shortcoming of the photographic sample, its incompleteness, is the same shortcoming inherent in the archaeological record of a culture. Archaeologist and photo ethnohistorians share some of the same methodological problems. Both are attempting to reconstruct the dynamics of past cultures, but these cultures must be deduced from the study of only some of the parts.9 She then highlights how her ‘archaeological’ type of ethnohistory has, as its kernel, an emphasis on the material: The content of the photographs of Haida culture… is primarily artifactual as opposed to behavioural. The photographs comprise almost exclusively images of houses and totem poles, panoramas of villages, and a few shots of house interiors. Because of the artifactual orientation of the photographs, as in the reconstruction of archaeological cultures, the behavioural sphere of the culture must be derived largely from analysis of the material culture.10 Blackman’s study illustrated how historical photography could be utilised to make sense of past environments which people, both individually and in groups, constructed for themselves. As such, historical photographs of the Spanish Civil War can be used in the same way, and in the case of this study, they can be used to add an additional layer of para-empirical data to assist, in making sense of the constructed and architectural nature of the warscapes in which the volunteers of the International Brigades found themselves: as in those recorded in the field at Mediana, and as depicted by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia. There are a number of collections of photographs covering the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. In Britain, for instance, photos from the International Brigade Association Archives (part of the IBMT) are included in the Spanish Collection at the Marx Memorial Library, London. While the Imperial War Museum, also in London, holds a further stock of photographs from the conflict. But an extensive collection of photographs from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) can be found in the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, held in the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library of New York University. What is distinctive about this collection is that it holds a substantial body of images copied from the International Brigade Archive in Moscow,11 and in particular, it holds the images produced by the 15th International Brigade’s own photographic unit. Its chief supervisory photographer was Harry W. Randall Jr., and its photographs are commonly referred to as the ‘Randall Collection’.12 The collection includes 1832 images, while the Moscow photos in the ALBA archive amount to 1276. These photographs were the basis of an exhibition – The Aura of the Cause, held in Toronto and New York in 1997, and amplified in a published ‘photo album’ of the same name. The images included in the book provide Blackman 1981: 2. Sontag 1973: 22, cited in Blackman 1981: 48. 9  Blackman 1981: 48. 10  Blackman 1981: 49. 11  For information on the Moscow Collection see: Guide to the International Brigades Archive, Moscow: Selected Images ALBA.PHOTO.177. 12  For information on the Randall Collection see: Guide to the Harry Randall Collection: Fifteenth International Brigade Films and Photographs ALBA.PHOTO.011. 7  8 

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a unique visual window into the world of the volunteers of the 15th International Brigade from 1937 to 1938.13 The ALBA Harry Randall and Moscow Archive Collections The ALBA collections capture the daily life of the volunteers in combat, in field camps, and in towns and villages, and across the rugged terrain where the Brigade trained and participated in fighting. In addition, they document political assemblies, congresses and celebrations, and the everyday activities of the Spanish people. As such, the two collections present a unique visual record of the warscapes encountered by the mainly anglophone 15th International Brigade, and because of this, this study would be incomplete without an examination of a selection of them. All of the photographs were taken in most of the locations where the 15th International Brigade found itself between February 1937 to September 1938. But the photos of the Randall Collection commence only from August 1937, when the brigade’s photographic unit was officially founded. Although images of grand vistas and warscapes are included in the collections, there is an undoubted emphasis on people. Most of the photographs show brigaders and other soldiers, and occasionally local people, simply doing things and living out their daily lives. There is a clear emphasis on activities, be they soldiers fighting, observing the enemy, resting in front line trenches or in shelters in the rear, digging trenches, building shelters, preparing food and eating, training and exercising, showering and swimming, carrying out administrative chores and preparing camp sites. There are also many portraits, either of groups of men or of individuals. There is a narrative quality to many of the images, and by emphasising people, and in many instances, presenting vignettes of the lives of soldiers in the field, the photographs bring us face to face with real individuals who were willing to put their lives on the line to stem the spread of fascism in Europe, and to do so in a foreign land. When looking at these images, the people captured within them could have been dead within days, hours or minutes, and maybe even seconds after some of the photos were taken. This gives a unique immediacy to the photographs even though they were taken eighty years ago. Each photograph was taken in a ‘place’, in a real setting made up of natural or constructed features, and referring back to Sontag and Blackman, they are each a slice or a sample of space, as well as a slice or a moment of time. They can each be compared to an archaeological trench, or sondage, which is but a sample of an archaeological site, yielding limited and spatially confined information on the material world of the past. All too often that material world is only a backdrop in the images, and as such, the visible details of the settings that the International Brigaders found themselves become unfocused to the viewer, and at best (as already observed by Peter Burke), are simply taken for granted. What follows hopes to remedy this, and to position a small selection of the ALBA images within the context of the warscape created and experienced by soldiers of the International Brigades along the Aragón front. Mise-en-Scène Soldiers entering a warscape, or battlescape, and especially a constructed one, do so from the rear. They move in procession from a non-hostile zone to a hostile, life threatening one. This was obviously the case for George Orwell as described in Chapter 5. When considering the Mediana lines, these processional zones are quite clear. First, there are the route-ways behind the lines along with the salient BelchiteMediana Road. Second, linked to these routes are the reserve areas, with their concentrations of shelters, leading up to the communication and support trenches, also with shelters, and finally, the fire trenches themselves, with their own shelters and fighting positions. There are no easily identifiable photographs of the Mediana lines in the two ALBA collections accessed for this study, but the images taken in other parts of Aragón, and elsewhere, provide a great deal of comparative information on the materiality of the martial environment which the International Brigaders constructed, and dwelled within, while 13 

Nelson 1997.

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occupying sections of the Aragón front. In fact, they provide a mis-en-scène, especially when viewed in conjunction with the landscape archaeology of the Mediana lines. In the simplest of terms, mis-en-scène means ‘setting the stage’, or it describes that which a scene in a film or play is composed of and arranged. But in terms of film, a more complex meaning of mis-en-scène includes all the elements of a production, being the actors, the settings, costumes and props making up ‘what the viewer actually sees on the screen.., providing visual information about the world of a film’s narrative’.14 In essence, this is also what historical photographs can do, especially when their narratives are interwoven with the narratives attainable through memoirs and field archaeology. Sampling the ALBA Collections – Selection and Analysis With both ALBA collections amounting to just over 3100 images, and with only a very limited number recording what could be interpreted as the constructed environment of the volunteers of the 15th International Brigade, it was incumbent that some kind of sampling of images had to take place for this study. This could only be done by looking at all of the ALBA online thumbnail imagery available through the New York University Libraries website and making informed decisions as to which images best reflected the rear and front line environments fashioned by the International Brigaders in the warscapes of Spain, and choosing images not for their composition, but their content. An initial selection was made of 227 images which included almost all of the elements of the built environment that the international brigaders created while occupying the front lines, and in encampments in the rear (in a variety of geographic areas). But with many of these repeating similar visual elements, it was necessary to make a further selection, reducing the images to 91. With this smaller number of photographs, it was then possible to identify even further still, only those images that specifically included elements indicative of the fashioned martial world in which the international brigaders lived and fought, in similar surroundings to the environment of the Aragónese uplands at Mediana. The final selection made was not exhaustive, but it resulted in a practicable sample of 38 images whose basic details are listed in Table 6.1. Archaeological analyses of the selected photographs are provided below, but in something of a narrative fashion. The descriptions aim to keep in mind the notion of soldiers ‘processing’ through a warscape, and presenting, as far as possible, views and content that range from the general to the particular, and from broad scenes to views closer in. They start with zones in the Republican Army’s rear, looking at access and habitations, and then move on to examples of some of the features along the Republican support and fire trenches. Some Nationalist positions at the front are also examined. Each photograph has a figure reference made up of this chapter number, followed by a figure number, while any elements described in a given photograph are also numbered. These include the figure number, followed by the number of the element (both written in brackets […]). For example, figure 6.3, can include elements numbered [3.8], [3.9] and [3.19], while figure 6.16 can have elements numbered [16.3] and [16.4]. Images of Field Occupation – Zones in the Republican Rear Access to the Rear It has already been noted how the rear occupation zones and front lines at Mediana, could have been serviced by mule trains and lorries, especially with the former using mountain and valley tracks. Figure 6.1 illustrates this, and it was taken during the 15th Brigade’s retreat to Caspe, and further eastwards, dated to March 1938. The photograph shows a relatively narrow track – only wide enough for two animals to pass – running along a steep valley side, moderately covered with scrub, and strewn with large boulders. There is a detachment of Republican troops taking a rest, along with their pack mules. The photograph illustrates well what the tracks away from the main roads must have been like in many instances, leading the troops of both sides into, and out of, the field. It is probably very similar to the tracks that led to, and were behind, the Mediana lines. 14 

Kuhn and Westwell 2012.

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Figure 6.1: View of soldiers and pack animals resting along a valley trackway. Original caption: ‘A rest during march to Caspe’. Source: Item 11-0074, Mar. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

An example of such a location at the threshold of where a valley trackway would have met an army’s rear occupation zone, is the presumed ‘mustering area’ behind the Nationalist lines at Mediana (see Figures 4.11 and 4.13). A photograph that illustrates an area similar to this, though one behind Republican lines, can be seen in Figure 6.2. It was taken in October, 1937, and according to its caption it is a view of the 15th International Brigade’s headquarters at Fuentes de Ebro. The Mediana survey areas are around 11 kilometres southwest of Fuentes. The photograph shows a relatively flat, grassy area leading up to a track running horizontally across the image. The edge of the track can just be made out, and on it there is a saloon car [2.1]. To the left, in front of the track, is a wall tent with four soldiers in its open front [2.2]. Beyond the track and the car, there are at least four further wall tents [2.3]. Most of the tents have their gable ends facing forward, but just behind them, there are two relatively large semi-subterranean shelters dug into the hills that delimit the area shown [2.4 and 2.5]. They have been tunnelled into the slope, and an example of the type of profile created by their excavation can just be made out in the left hand shelter [2.4], which also appears to have been revetted. The shelters have extended-out entrance structures, with timber lintels and framed sand bag roofs. Above these, arcs in the surface of the hillside indicate that earth has been shifted, presumably shovelled down, over the extended shelter entrances, creating domed protective coverings [2.6]. The shelter [2.5] to the left of the car has a front elevation that is made up of a sandbag wall, and with a canvas (tarpaulin) hanging over its entrance. These shelters may or may not have served as accommodation, but judging by their size and entrance heights (compared to the heights of the tents), they may very well have served specialist functions. As such, this open area, accessible by motor car and including large dugout shelters at the bottom of a hillside, is a very good reflection of what the Nationalist mustering area at Mediana might have been like, though the density of shelters at Mediana was greater. 89

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Figure 6.2: View of tents and dugout shelters at the International Brigade headquarters at Fuentes de Ebro. Original caption: ‘Estado Mayor [Headquarters] at front, Fuentes de Ebro’. Source: Item 11-1234, Oct. 1937, Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

Figure 6.3: View of International Brigade camp behind the lines, probably at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Camp setup, car nearby’. Source: Item 177-196056, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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Valley Occupation in the Rear A photograph that illustrates a mix of shelters, both communal and for accommodation, and located in a valley accessible by motor car is the image in Figure 6.3. It was taken by a Major Vladimir Stefanovich, sometime between February 11th and March 7th, 1937.15 The image shows a number of dugout shelters dotted along a gently sloping hill. They can be identified from patches of pale ground indicating digging, and standing out from the darker, undisturbed and scrub covered ground around them. In the centre right, and right of the image (left of the camouflaged panel truck and above it), there are some clearly indicated shelters. One is just above the rear of the truck and it is a dugout surrounded by the lighter coloured spoil from its digging, and with an obvious lintel over its entrance [3.1]. This has also been covered by its spoil. A similar dugout is to its left, but its entrance is obscured by what is probably a blanket airing on a low bush or scrub-like tree [3.2]. Also, other hanging items seem to be indicated. At the bottom of the slope, to the immediate left of the truck, there is a large shelter with a broad canvas roof [3.3]. Its visible outline along its right side seems to be made up of piled earth and rubble, presumably revetted by drystone walling. In front of it is a ‘wall newspaper’ [3.4] (a close up view of one can be seen in Figure 6.4), so this structure must be some kind of communal building or even a field headquarters. Men are sitting in front of it (to the left of the wall newspaper), and someone is standing a few metres further to the left, and possibly cleaning himself, he is shirtless and there is a basin and bucket at his feet [3.5]. The large shelter has a central, though low, pitch to its roof, and its left side has a canvas (or blanket) hanging down in front of it. It is open where the men are sitting. Further to the left of this sizeable shelter is a man sitting on the ground, partly on a blanket or canvas which extends over stone rubble walling [3.6], or sandbags, that could represent another shelter. Further to the left is another pile of stones, with what might be more

Figure 6.4: View of soldiers holding a ‘wall newspaper’. Original caption: ‘2 soldiers with bulletin board’. Source: Item 11-1382, Mar. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. Vladimir Stefanovich, or Stefanovic, was a Captain at this time and the 15th International Brigade’s chef du controle des cadres, and in charge of counter espionage. See Eby 2007: 87. 15 

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than one canvas or blanket overlying it, and which probably represents another shelter, or maybe even a cairn of collected stones for the soldiers to draw upon to make their shelters [3.7]. The tree in the centre of the photo has blankets airing on it [3.8]. A man is walking up the hill [3.9], carrying some kind of item, perhaps a box or bucket, while above him and to the left, there is a construction in cleared ground that looks like an uncovered stone shelter [3.10], while just down hill from it, there appears to be a rectilinear hollow, probably also representing an uncovered, excavated shelter, or a shelter in the process of being built [3.11]. Because of the date range in which this image was taken, it is quite likely that it presents a view of soldiers of the 15th International Brigade settling in behind the lines at Jarama. As noted by the historian Cecil Eby: the back slopes at Jarama resembled Hoovervilles, but they were home. Like groundhogs, the men had dug subterranean chambers containing sleeping alcoves and chiseled staircases in the red clay. Some dugouts had corrugated iron roofs camouflaged by olive branches and sods.16 One photograph that shows such a ‘Hooverville’17 being created, that is, where shelters can be seen being dug out of the flank of a valley, is Figure 6.5. This image, like Figure 6.3, was taken by Major Stefanovich. Its precise location and date is not known, but it comes from an album of photographs from the Moscow archive noted as being made up of photos of the 15th International Brigade ‘in preparation’ for the offensive at Brunete. however, the content of the photo belies this. When the 15th left the Jarama entrenchments in mid-June 1937, they were sent to billets well behind the front, in, as was the case for

Figure 6.5: Dugout shelters being dug along the flank of a valley, probably at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Rugged hillside, soldiers in midshot’. Source: Item 177-179193, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. Eby 2007: 106. A ‘Hooverville’ was a shanty town built by unemployed and homeless men in the United States during the Great Depression and named after President Herbert Hoover. See Jackson 1944. 16  17 

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the British, ‘schools, barns and anywhere else that could be found’.18 The 15th then left their billets for the Brunete front at the beginning of July, so the photograph probably presents a view of a portion of the brigade, in the field, and prior to mid-June, when the soldiers would undoubtedly have been dug in behind the lines at Jarama, and well settled. In fact, Figure 6.5 shows an occupied valley reminiscent of a location visited for this study in the Summer of 2017, around 300 metres due east of the monument to the International Brigades set in the Jarama battlescape. The photograph clearly shows a valley in which a lot of activity is taking place. On the slopes of the valley, rising to the left, are numerous shelters. These are in the process of being dug, which is indicated by the pale spoil tips surrounding them [5.1]. One such shelter is clearly indicated at right of centre where there is a group of men, presumably working within the very spread of spoil they are creating [5.2]. There is an obvious gully in the valley bottom, with a good deal of scrub on either side of it [5.3]. To the left of the gully is an apparently well used footpath, which runs along the valley bottom and arcs to the right [5.4]. There are two men walking on it, in opposite directions, while there are further men milling around the gully itself. However, a closer-in view of this valley, and its shelters, taken from the opposite direction, can be seen in the next image. Figure 6.6 comes from the same album as the previous photograph (Figure 6.5) and it was also taken by Major Stefanovich. The valley side rises in the upper part of the photo where there are spoil tips of pale earth indicating dugout shelters [6.1], with one in the upper right being excavated by at least two men [6.2]. In fact, the craterlike spoil heap they are working in is the same as the spoil tip of the shelter being excavated in the left centre of Figure 6.5 ([5.2]), indicated by the apparently matching clods of earth on the top edge of the heap [6.3]. The ground in front of the excavation is relatively level and clear [6.4], and the fact that two men are walking on it, to the left, indicates that it is a common through-way within the encampment – being the same footpath visible in Figure 6.5 ([5.4]). This being the case, then the two shelters just visible and dug out of the vertical face beneath the footpath [6.5 and 6.6], and behind the two bare-chested men sitting and eating (though looking at the camera), could have been dug into the actual edge of the gully [6.7] visible in Figure 6.5 ([5.3]). One of the shelters has a blanket airing over its entrance [6.6]. The man standing, and the other writing a letter on two boxes, could actually be in the gulley [6.7], which 18 

Figure 6.6: A closer-in view of the valley in Fig. 6.5, but from the opposite direction. Original caption: ‘Three men eating, one man writing, outdoors’. Source: Item 177179088, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

Alexander 1983: 109.

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has apparently been blocked by spoil [6.8] from the excavation of the two dugouts, which is what the two bare-chested men are probably sitting on (the spoil would also serve as a protective barrier in front of the dugouts). This notion is reinforced by the fact that the face of the natural strata that the dugouts have been excavated out of, extends to the left hand edge of the photo [6.9], and behind the man standing on the left, and indicates the line of the gully. It might be considered odd to find shelters dug into the sides of a gully, along a valley bottom in which rain water could flow. But if these were dug after the Winter rains, and the shelters were presumed to be short lived, then the horizontal strata of the exposed valley bottom, naturally cut into by the gully, could have been seen as an easy spot in which to excavate a dugout shelter. In fact, some shelters were similarly excavated at Mediana in the valley bottoms behind the Nationalist lines. Another relevant photograph taken by Major Stefanovich, and probably also at Jarama, is Figure 6.7. Its caption describes it as ‘soldiers resting in a ditch on a hillside’, but this is ambiguous. Instead, it clearly shows three soldiers sitting in the sunken entrance of a hill or cliff-side dugout shelter [7.1], which could easily be in a narrow valley bottom or deep gully. There is another shelter just beyond the soldiers, separated from them by sandbags [7.2], though it is hard to make out since it is obscured by scrub. To the left of the standing soldier, there is another cut into the hillside indicating another shelter [7.3]. These shelters are not just dug into the hillside laterally, but as can be seen from the depression in which the soldiers in the centre are sitting [7.4], they are dug downwards. Shelters like these must be very similar to those at Mediana, and especially the ones at or near the valley bottoms. The images just described were taken in locations where the terrain was, and still is, roughly comparable to that at Mediana. However, there are further images from the ALBA collections of similar dugouts, and built-up or above ground shelters, that were taken in more disparate locations along the front lines,

Figure 6.7: View of soldiers sitting in the entrance of a dugout shelter, amidst a probable line of further shelters. Original caption: ‘Soldiers resting in a ditch on the hillside’. Source: Item 177-179074, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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Figure 6.8: View of shelters dug into a natural terrace, or ridge, probably at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Rugged hillside, soldier running by bottom right corner’. Source: Item 177-179066, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

and an examination of a selection of them can only increase our understanding of the disposition, and architecture, of the rear support and living areas of the International Brigades while in the field. The central dugout in Figure 6.7, with two barely visible dugouts on either side, was probably a small part of a string of dugouts along the bottom of the valley or gully in which it was situated. As such, a similar line of shelters disposed in a linear fashion, and dug into the ridge of a low-lying rise in the ground can be seen in Figure 6.8. In all likelihood, this image (also captured by Major Stefanovich) was taken behind the lines at Jarama, and it can be taken to be a good reflection of a similar string (though in part, of two parallel lines) of Republican shelters dug into a terrace between two agricultural fields at Mediana (recorded in the 2015 survey area). The image clearly shows a sizeable number of shelters [8.1], and almost all are equally spaced out. Some of them have soldiers in their entrances and there are blankets outside some of the dugouts for airing, or as entrance covers [8.2]. The shelters have had the spoil from their digging deposited in front of them, and there are thresholds through the heaps of earth [8.3]. Also, the visible entrances seem to be only large enough for one or two men to enter through. The ground in the middle of the photo, and into the foreground, appears irregularly stepped. There are further, low lying spoil heaps which might indicate further shelters, along with scrub which could have been used for their coverings [8.4]. There might also be some soldiers sleeping amidst the scrub. Some men can be seen milling around the dugouts, while clearly, a single soldier walks briskly off to the lower right [8.5]. A closer, elevational view of similar shelters can be seen in the background of Figure 6.9. This is an iconic photograph from the Jarama warscape,19 being a monument to dead brigaders, dated June 1937. Looking behind the memorial, it shows very well the tidy way in which excavated spoil from the dugouts was formed to create protective parapets in front of the shelters [9.1], with, as shown, a neat passageway 19 

Rolfe 1939: 52.

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Figure 6.9: A monument to fallen International Brigade volunteers at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Memorial marker: “To our fallen comrades our victory is your vengeance. June 1937”’. Source: Item 177-178081, Jun. 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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leading straight through, towards the entrance of the shelter on the left [9.2]. This photo, and the previous one, vividly brings to mind George Orwell’s description of the dugout shelters on the Huesca front being like ‘sand-martins’ nests’. A close up view of a shelter that was probably dug into a ridge as in Figure 6.8, and as at Mediana, can be seen in Figure 6.10. Its caption states, ‘Slavonivitch (Chief of Information at Jarama and Brunete), Sterling Rochester’, and these must be the two men clearly visible in the picture. A third man is partially visible to the left. The shelter in this picture has been dug into firm earth [10.1], and the right hand side of its entrance includes some sandbags [10.2]. The whole refuge, or perhaps just its front, has been created by ‘cut and cover’, that is, by being dug out and covered over with earth as opposed to being tunnelled. The roof has been constructed with tree branches (some of which are in shadow) which have been placed nearly horizontally [10.3], and upon which local scrub has been laid [10.4]. On top of this, further earth and stones have been deposited to thicken the roof [10.5], and presumably, to make the shelter blend in with the surrounding stony ground. A canvas is rolled back above the feature and it was probably used as an entrance covering [10.6]. It is held in place by stones and earth [10.7]. A further blanket has been deposited on top of the structure, probably to air [10.8]. Also, judging by the way the men are sitting, the entrance into the shelter has a threshold that is slightly lower than the ground outside of it [10.9]. In fact, the ground outside has been cleared and cut back [10.10], up to the shelter where a vertical face in the earth is clearly visible to the right of the soldiers. It is likely that this photograph was taken at Jarama because it is one of the two places mentioned in its caption, and as already noted, the 15th International Brigade was housed in billets well behind the entrenchments at the front, before proceeding to Brunete. Another dugout shelter, but roofed over with canvas, can be seen in Figure 6.11. It

Figure 6.10: A good view of a shelter, with three men sitting in front, and probably taken at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Slavonivitch (Chief of Information at Jarama and Brunete), Sterling Rochester’. Source: Item 177-178005, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

Figure 6.11: Good view of soldiers in a shelter that was made in a cut and cover fashion. Original caption: ‘Soldier[sic] sitting with rifles in improvised shelter’. Source: Item 177-180085, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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was taken sometime in either 1937 or 1938 and its caption simply states ‘soldier[s] sitting with rifles in improvised shelter’. In fact, the shelter is far from improvised. It is a moderately sized dugout, with a broadly open front, and entry into it is over an earthen ledge [11.1], making its open front smaller. Four men are seated well within the refuge, indicating its relative size, and there are guns and other items [11.2] leaning up against the sandbagged wall to the right [11.3]. The shelter has a pitched canvas roof [11.4], high enough for a man to stand under, and the open gable front visible to the camera is covered over with further canvas (tarpaulins, and even a ragged blanket) that could be pulled down to serve as an entrance cover [11.5]. This shelter was obviously a cut and cover structure, and perhaps similar to the larger shelters in more open ground at Mediana, such as those associated with the possible Republican command post. Free Standing Shelters There are images of further brigaders’ shelters from Aragón presented in the ALBA collections that were not necessarily dug out of the ground, but built-up (free standing), and/or only partly subterranean. A line of such structures can be clearly seen in Figure 6.12. This photo is dated to March 1938 and its caption reads: ‘Group in Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Valverde’. This is actually La Puebla de Valverde: a rear position occupied by the 15th International Brigade as a place to rest after the bitter fighting at Teruel. In fact there were already well established lines at La Peubla de Valverde, serving as secondary Republican defences southeast of Teruel.20 Figure 6.12 shows at least five shelters of mounded earth disposed in relatively open ground [12.1]. Setting the men in the left of the picture aside, this photo gives a relatively good view of how these shelters were constructed (and the rear of other shelters like these, probably from the same location, can be seen in the background of Figure 6.13 ([13.1]). The shelter right of centre, indicates that their construction was

Figure 6.12: Free standing shelters covered in mounded earth at La Puebla de Valverde. Original caption: ‘Group in Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Valverde’. Source: Item 11-1045, Mar. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. 20 

Rolfe 1939: 173; and Rust [1939] 2007: pp. 117-118.

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Figure 6.13: A rear view of shelters at La Puebla de Valverde, behind the five soldiers taking up most of the image. Original caption: ‘Group in Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Valverde’. Source: Item 11-1044, Mar. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

based around random rubble walls. The entrances could have relatively large, rough (though neatly laid) rectangular blocks outlining them [12.2], with side walls of smaller stones which might have been set in a mud mortar [12.3]. Horizontal logs [12.4] were set on top of these (see also Figure 6.13 [13.2]), on which some other wood or matting must have been laid, so that the earthen mounds making up the roofs would not fall into the living space below. The mounded earth on top of the structures is at least as thick as the side walls are high [12.5], and judging from the shelter at the right edge of the photo, they could also have their side walls completely buried [12.6] in a surrounding earth embankment (see Figure 6.13 [13.1]). In this shelter, there is a stone rubble retaining wall along the side of its entry-way [12.7], visible behind the man sitting down. In fact, judging from the man’s position, the entrance is slightly lower than the ground outside, so this points to the shelters being slightly subterranean. Also, the height of the man sitting is probably no more than eighty centimetres so the entrance may only be around ninety centimetres high. A close-up view of the kind of shelters just described can be seen in Figure 6.14. Dated to February 1938, it shows a hut at a Canadian, Mackenzie-Papineau position in the Segura de Los Baños. This is a location around 67 kilometres north of Teruel where, from February 16th to 19th, tough fighting took place in mountainous terrain and in wintry conditions. The image shows a free standing shelter built amidst scrubby pines, and made up of walls of dry-stone rubble [14.1] along with sandbags. In fact, the right hand side of the entry is made up almost entirely of sandbags [14.2]. The roof is supported by logs, and three of them are visible [14.3]. The sides, and presumably the rear, are buried beneath an earthen mound [14.4], and the roof apparently consists of loosely placed local roofing tiles [14.5], presumably on top of a layer of earth. A plank serves as a lintel [14.6] over the entrance, to which is attached a blanket serving as an entry covering [14.7]. There are three rifles [14.8] leaning up against the shelter, and quite likely, these belonged to the three men who might have occupied the refuge. The rifles provide a rough scale, suggesting that the shelter was around 1.2 to 1.3 metres high, and perhaps 1.5 metres high at the central, uppermost part of the roof. 99

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Figure 6.14: View of well constructed shelter at Seguro de Los Baños. Original caption: ‘MacKenzie-Papineau positions, Seguro de Los Baños’. Source: Item 11-0590, Feb. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

At the beginning of the Civil War, during the defence of Madrid, the British volunteer Esmond Romilly admired a string of Republican soldiers’ shelters near where he, and his comrades, were unsatisfactorily building their own. He imagined them as being like ‘Red Indian huts’, though he had to say that he had never seen any in his life.21 Nonetheless, it is possible that the free standing shelters shown in Figures 6.12 to 6.14 might be similar to the huts seen by Romilly – they do share superficial similarities with some of the huts constructed by Native Americans, especially outside of the American plains.22 Looking Inside The photograph with a tent covered dugout, Figure 6.11, is one of the few photos sampled for this study that provides the slightest glimpse of the interior of a dugout, or semi-dugout, shelter used as a habitation for a small group of soldiers. Presumably, such views were so taken for granted that they were never considered interesting enough to be photographed, or soldiers felt that their personal living spaces were 21  22 

Romilly [1937] 1971: 110. Nabokov and Easton: 1989.

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Figure 6.15: Internal view of a fair sized shelter used as a field office. Original caption: ‘Soldier works at typewriter, portraits of communist notables hang overhead’. Source: Item 177-178068, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

too private to be be intruded upon. Also, because they were small spaces, and they would have to be photographed from the outside looking in, they were perhaps considered just too awkward to record, due to factors such as very dark shadows. Saying that, the interiors of larger dugouts were occasionally photographed, and in those instances they often showed interiors that were used as some kind of work space. An example of one such photo can be seen in Figure 6.15. This photo is undated and with no location recorded. Its caption reads ‘Soldier works at type writer, portraits of communist notables hang overhead’. Besides the soldier at the desk writing on a typewriter, and with another person sitting in front and reading, the image clearly shows how spacious a dugout shelter could be, and how it could be used as an office. The shelter in this photo was probably dug out and then covered over, in a cut and cover fashion. The earth out of which it has been dug is obviously quite firm [15.1]. It could have been excavated out of a hillside, or maybe even along a support trench. The ceiling is supported by cut timbers and tree trunks, criss-crossing each other at right angles [15.2], and with at least one tree trunk (on the left) serving as a post [15.3] supporting the ceiling. It is unclear, but on top of the ceiling timbers there may be boards and/ or straw (or reed) matting. Presumably, on top of this and outside, there would have been a roof covering of earth and stones. But saying that, there is a small triangular chink of light coming through the ceiling in the upper left of the image [15.4]. Photos of communist political figures including Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the Republican general José Miaja (who led the defence of Madrid) hang from the rafters [15.5], while there is a probable military map [15.6] hanging over a blanket that hangs down the wall behind the soldier typing at the desk [15.7]. The blanket might be covering the entrance to another chamber, or perhaps an alcove for a soldier to sleep in, or for storing things. There are shelves supported by brackets 101

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attached to upright posts to the left of the men [15.8]. There might also be a cabinet of some kind but this is very far from clear [15.9]. There is a map of Spain hanging from the ceiling along the right hand edge of the photo [15.10], and beneath it there is an arched entrance to another chamber, dug out of the earth, and probably leading to a lower level [15.11]. This is clearly an example of a well built and multi-celled dug out shelter. As already noted, multi-chambered and multi-level shelters where far from unknown behind the lines,23 with complex shelters prescribed in contemporary field manuals.24 Another image from the ALBA collections that indicates one is shown in Figure 6.16. It provides a view into the entrance of a multi-celled shelter at the headquarters of the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion, at Gandesa, in August 1938. The image shows a chamber in a dugout shelter, large enough for at least seven men to sit in comfortably. The soldiers in the foreground are in partial shade, so this is probably a view through what must have been a very broad entrance into the shelter. The men are sitting on the floor as well as boxes [16.1], and there is a narrow ledge above the men on the right [16.2]. The shelter has obviously been dug out of firm earth that would not easily collapse. The front of the shelter is at a higher level than the rear. It steps down by the third man on the right [16.3], and there is an entry arch [16.4] into a compartment in the rear. This shelter may very well represent what some of the larger shelters at Mediana might have been like, especially those dug into the lower levels of the steep sided valleys, as in the Nationalist ‘mustering area’.

Figure 6.16: View into a large, multi-celled shelter at Gandesa. Original caption: ‘MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion Estado Mayor [Headquarters], Gandesa’. Source: Item 11-1685, Aug. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. 23  24 

A Brandlerite Militant 1987. Capdevila 1938.

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Images of Occupation at or Near the Front – Republican Trenches Digging-in As already discussed at length, armies dig-in in one way or another in all wars, especially modern ones. The International Brigades were no different. Digging shelters, fighting positions, and trenches, ensures that soldiers survive in the field. Not surprisingly, armies have even recorded and tabulated work rates and estimates, to indicate the quantity of cubic metres a man could dig in an hour so that officers and engineers could trace and plan field fortifications. The Republican army in 1938 estimated that one man, in one hour, could dig 0.27 to 2.0 cubic metres of earth, depending on the condition of the ground, ranging from very hard and compact to soft,25 while the 15th International Brigade’s own instructions battalion, estimated that a man in one hour could dig 1.3 to 2.6 cubic metres of earth, also with a consistency from hard to soft.26 In fact, George Orwell vividly described how on a cold April night in 1937, along the lines facing Huesca, trenches were silently dug by Spanish work parties. The only audible noise was the usual ‘chorus of frogs’, while just once during the night he heard ‘the familiar noise of a sand-bag being flattened with a spade’. But commenting on the capabilities of the work parties, he continued: The whole move was beautifully planned. In seven hours six hundred men constructed twelve hundred metres of trench and parapet, at distances of from a hundred and fifty to three hundred yards from the Fascist line, and all so silently that the Fascists heard nothing.27 Working parties can be seen in some photographs from the ALBA collections, excavating shelters and trenches. One, which specifically shows the digging-out of underground shelters is Figure 6.17. It is dated

Figure 6.17: Shelters being dug into the bottom of a slope at Letux. ‘Engineers building refugios, Lebux[sic]’. Source: Item 11-0889, Mar. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. Capdevila 1938: 35. Johnson 1938: 8. 27  Orwell [1938] 1974: 80. 25  26 

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to March 1938 and shows ‘engineers’28 digging refuges at Letux. At less than seven kilometres southwest of Belchite, this is where the MacKenzie-Papineau and Spanish units of the 15th International Brigade were positioned just before the Nationalist push into Aragón on March 9th 1938.29 The photograph is relatively clear, showing eight soldiers digging at least two shelters [17.1] into the bottom of a slight hill. The work is incomplete with spoil tips [17.2] around the hollows being excavated. The entrances into the dugouts have very straight sides, dug out of what must have been very dry and compacted earth. As such, they could hold their form as shown in the one clearly visible entrance, which has a near horizontal head with no lintel [17.3]. These shelters probably represent what many of the shelters in the rear, steep sided valleys at Mediana must have been like, and their form is mirrored in some of the images below, of shelters along the support and fighting trenches. Figure 6.18 is a photograph that shows men from the Lincoln-Washington battalion in the process of digging trenches. It was taken at a location known as the ‘North Pole’ in the uplands of the Altos de las Celadas, overlooking the town of Celadas which is around 15 kilometres north of Teruel. It is dated to January 1938, during a winter in which central Spain experienced its worse snow fall for twenty years.30 The image shows two working parties of four to five men digging neat and level sections of a trench, perhaps 80 centimetres wide [18.1]. There is snow on the ground [18.2] and the spoil is being deposited on what looks like slightly lower ground to the left of the image. This probably represents the direction of the enemy, and the spoil would have eventually been fashioned into a parapet [18.3]. A completed trench at the so called ‘North Pole’ can be seen in Figure 6.19 ([19.1]), also dated to January 1938. It is possible that this photograph actually records a trench soon after its digging, with a sense of scale given by the neat placement of three rifles [19.2]. If the trench is around 80 centimetres wide, then it has been dug to a depth of probably no more than 1.4 metres, with its earthen parapet [19.3] on the left hand side adding another half metre or so. There is a horizontal timber at the left hand edge of the photo [19.4], and it is tempting to think that it is a pickaxe handle, perhaps reinforcing the notion that the trench has only recently been dug. The picture does, however, show that the parapet is lower just before the point where the trench turns to the right [19.5], and that could either represent an observation point, or be just an indicator of a differentially raised breastwork. Nevertheless, a firing embrasure can just be made out to the left of the front-most rifle [19.6], and it appears to have a stone put in place over it as a lintel [19.7]. Strikingly, the snow covered terrain of southern Aragón can be seen in the distance [19.8].

Figure 6.18: Brigaders digging trenches near Teruel. Original caption: ‘Lincoln-Washington digging Battalion trench at North Pole, Teruel Sector’. Source: Item 11-1408, Jan. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

‘Engineers’ is perhaps a misnomer. Although there were sapper units, all soldiers, fighting and otherwise could, and did, dig shelters and trenches. These even included units of prisoners from civilian Republican prisons released (though guarded) to assist in the war effort, and often, as noted by Orwell, working at night. See also Liversedge 2013: 93. 29  Rolfe 1939: 183. 30  Rolfe 1939: 160-166. 28 

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Entrenched Staying at Teruel, a good photograph that shows an entrenched Republican position in the bare uplands there is Figure 6.20. This was also taken at the ‘North Pole’ in January 1938, and it shows members of the 2nd company of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion in a front line fire trench. The photographer’s subject matter was probably the six men in the trench, but it is the architectural details that make this image interesting. Four of the men are standing at the parapet side of the trench [20.1]. It is stony and covered with snow, and their rifles are resting on it. Two men are looking down, one man is looking to his left, while the one wearing a beret looks out over the countryside to the front. Two men are behind these four, looking away from the front, and their positions indicate that this is not a narrow, one metre or so wide fighting trench. It is relatively broad and could be more than two metres wide. Judging from the height of the men, the height of the front side of the trench and parapet might be around 1.4 metres. The rear of the trench has a parados Figure 6.19: A clear view down a trench near Teruel. Original caption: consisting of a low random rubble wall [20.2], ‘Lincoln-Washington Battalion trench at North Pole, Teruel Sector’. and it is connected to an earth and stone Source: Item 11-1399, Jan. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. structure [20.3] that takes up more than the lower left quarter of the image. The rear of this structure, in line with the parados, consists of a rubble wall set in an earthen mortar. It is higher than the parados and it is covered with straw, or perhaps overturned turf, upon which earth and stones have been deposited. This probably represents some kind of covered way along the trench, or it represents a well-built shelter or covered fighting position at what could be the dead end of the trench. Whatever the structure, it would have had timbers supporting its roof, though there are no indications of these. Strikingly, a somewhat similar structure can be seen jutting out, forward of the trench [20.4], and it is possible that this is a covered machine gun position. The structure appears rectangular and with walls made up of random rubble masonry [20.5]. Earth has been embanked along its outside, and its roof also has a layer of either straw or overturned turf with earth piled on top of it. At the right edge of the image, stones can be seen outlining the trench and parapet [20.6], and these can be seen placed on top of the original level of the ground [20.7] that was excavated to make the trench. The shadows and highlights of the stones suggest that there is a right hand turning [20.8] towards the jutting out structure, representing a covered way into it – also indicated by piled up earth [20.9] between the structure and the trench. It is even possible that there is a blanket covering the entrance into the passage [20.10] just visible above the man looking to the right and rear. The man behind him and looking to his left may also be standing in front of sandbags that indicate the left jamb [20.11] of the entrance to the earth covered passage, linking this possible machine gun position with the trench. Further views of trenches at the front can be seen in the following three photographs taken by Major Stefanovich at Jarama, again, sometime between February 11th and March 7th, 1937. They do not show men in fighting situations, but instead, present a picture that indicates the make-up and spatial relationship of soldiers, in the field, to their constructed world of linear entrenchments. 105

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Figure 6.20: A scene of men manning a fire trench at Teruel, also providing details of trench construction. Original caption: ‘Action Scene, Company 2, Lincoln-Washington, North Pole, Teruel Sector’. Source: Item 11-0064, Jan. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

Figure 6.21: A very good view down a trench manned by the International Brigades. It provides many trench details, and it was probably taken at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Man standing in trench with hands in pockets’. Source: Item 177-196050, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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The first of these is Figure 6.21. Its caption reads: ‘man standing in trench with hands in pockets’. This image (though over exposed along the centre bottom) shows how claustrophobic a trench [21.1] could be. It is very narrow and its trace was delineated by gentle curves as opposed to being excavated in a zigzag fashion or with traverses. Judging from the man standing in the centre, ‘with hands in pocket’, the trench was excavated to just under shoulder level, but obviously, the banked up spoil on either side has made the cutting much deeper. The spoil on the left side of the trench, being the parados [21.2], was heaped very irregularly, while the embankment on the right is the parapet [21.3]. It seems to have been provided with sandbagged niches as defensive fighting positions with two such positions just visible in the upper right corner [21.4], and Figure 6.22: Like the previous figure, this photo provides a good, detailed the right centre top [21.5], view down a trench, probably at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Soldier working of the photograph. Between in trench’. Source: Item 177-196073, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive them, the earth slopes in a (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. roughly similar way to that of the parados. There is a lower niche in the right wall of the trench in which a soldier is sitting and reading [21.6], and this could have served as a step up to the sandbagged fighting position in the upper right of the image [21.4]. There is also a ledge upon which some kind of hollow, rectilinear and possibly ceramic item has been placed [21.7], while in front of the sitting soldier, in the lower right, another man is entering a dugout shelter [21.8] which has a blanket covering its entrance kept in place with sandbags [21.9]. With the right hand flank of the trench being the parapet, then this shelter is an example of one that was dug correctly, and in the prescribed side of the trench. There is at least one wooden post [21.10] standing on the parados, while in the upper left hand corner of the image, a wall newspaper on a board can just about be made out [21.11]. Its shadow is cast down into the trench and the man standing seems to be talking to someone out of sight to the upper left.. There is some further activity in the trench, and the soldier with a helmet and a rifle over his shoulder [21.12] (along with another helmeted soldier just visible and beyond him and to his left) might be clearing the gangway. The second photo presenting a clear view down a trench is Figure 6.22. In it, there is a standing soldier centrally placed and looking at the camera, but behind him and extending into the background, the image presents a good deal of architectural trench detail [22.1]. The trench was originally dug to about a man’s 107

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shoulder height, and both the parapet and parados was heightened by the spoil from its digging. The parados side of the trench is to the right [22.2]. There, the light indicates niches that are roughly at knee height from the bottom of the trench, as indicated by the man walking away in the distance, in the middle background. The closest niche [22.3], which can only be slightly seen, has been cut into both the section of the trench [22.4] and its spoil [22.5], and it might represent the entrance into a shelter. Sandbags have been positioned just above it [22.6], which could represent its roof, and also indicate that the feature was created in a cutand-cover fashion. On either side of this feature, there are very small niches [22.7] cut into the vertical walls of the trench, presumably for storage (other examples can be seen in Figures 6.23 and 6.30). The parapet is to the left [22.8], opposite the parados. It has a ledge at the standing man’s mid-thigh height, which is probably a firing platform, and this widens the trench considerably. It seems to extend along the whole visible length of the line. Men can also be seen sitting on it into the background [22.9]. There are some dugout shelters in this side of the trench – the prescribed side – and in particular, the man standing and looking at the camera might be standing in the entrance to one [22.10]. This notion is supported by the presence of a tarpaulin or blanket that can be seen hanging at the very left hand edge of the photo [22.12], above which is a railway rail that could indicate the roof of the shelter [22.13]. There is a helmet and some other items, and a cooking pot just beyond the man [22.11], and perhaps this was a location where food was distributed along the line – in fact, he could even be preparing food. Slightly further beyond the man still, there is a blanket or canvas hanging from the top of the trench wall, possibly indicating another refuge [22.14], while next to it, there is a cloth bag hanging from a strap with other items [22.15]. There are further blankets or canvases hanging, presumably airing, along the parapet side of the trench, and draped over the firing step [22.9]. The trench was poorly constructed since it has no traverses or zigzags, but with its firing step and sandbags along the entire length of its parapet [22.8], it was probably a fighting trench. The trees in the background indicate that this entrenchment was dug in a fruit or nut grove. Figure 6.23: View of a soldier sitting in a niche along the parapet side of a fighting trench, probably at Jarama, with further details of small trench wall niches. Original caption: ‘Soldier in a trench’. Source: Item 177-196024, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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The third photograph is Figure 6.23 which, as captioned, shows a ‘soldier in a trench’. But the soldier is not central, being located at the left edge of the image and looking away from the camera. Instead, what makes this picture relevant is that it takes us closer into a front line entrenchment, presenting details of some of the small niches that were dug into its side walls. The soldier is, in fact, sitting on a ledge in a large niche [23.1], while in the lower two thirds of the image there are three small niches [23.2] that could either of held small items while men manned the trenches, or were ‘sortie steps’ for ‘going over the top’,31 or for standing up to look over the sandbagged parapet [23.3], under which there is a ledge [23.4]. The soldier’s sitting place is higher than the bottom of the trench [23.5], and it was cut out to be roughly vertically aligned [23.6] with the parapet. In all likelihood it was an observation and/or firing position. Also, the sandbags that dip down toward the soldier are possibly, temporarily filling a hollow in the parapet where there could have been a loophole [23.7]. If this trench was close to the Nationalist lines, then an open loophole could present a target for the enemy to shoot through when a soldier might stand behind it. The brigader Jason Gurney was shot and wounded by standing behind just such an exposed loophole.32 Fighting Positions A close-up view of the front of a covered machine gun position along the Republican lines in the Teruel sector can be seen in Figure 6.24. This photo, taken in January 1938, is captioned as showing a British Batallion machine gun ‘nest’, at a location listed as ‘Rillo’. There is a Rillo around 40 kilometres north of Teruel, but the British were stationed in and around Teruel itself during the fighting for the town in January 1938, so this may be a transcription mistake for the word ‘Rio’ (river) – presumably referring to the Rio Alfambra, over which the British positioned their machine guns in emplacements previously built by the Nationalists when they held Teruel.33 Nevertheless, the photograph clearly shows the architectural make-up of the front of an entrenched machine gun position. The embrasure has jambs [24.1] consisting

Figure 6.24: Photo providing details of the front of a machine gun position at Teruel. Original caption: ‘British Battalion, machine-gun nest, Rillo[sic]’. Source: Item 11-1245, Jan. 1938, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU. Bull 2002: 52. Gurney 1974: 166-167. 33  Alexander 1982: 164. 31  32 

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of sandbags with two courses visible above the earth that has been piled up in front of it [24.2] to absorb incoming projectiles. On top of the jambs is a lintel made up of wooden planks [24.3] with at least seven visible sandbags on top [24.4]. Over these, there is a layer of corrugated roofing material, probably uralite [24.5], and further still there is evidence for some kind of camouflaging of the position, in that tufts of grass (or straw) [24.6] have been put on top of the corrugated roof. A view of the interior of this kind of covered machine gun position can be had in Figure 6.25. This is an undated photograph and its location is unknown, but judging by the fact that the soldier is not dressed for a severe Winter, it was probably not taken at Teruel. Nevertheless, the image shows that this fighting position is made up of side walls of at least four courses of sandbags [25.1] (the baulk of a trench wall is in the lower left [25.2]) on top of which a transverse, square cut timber has been placed serving as a lintel [25.3]. Further still, two similarly proportioned timbers have been placed at right angles over this, and these have pointed ends [25.4]. It is possible that they were initially cut as fence posts, perhaps for barbed wire, but used instead as roof supports for this machine gun position. On top of these, the roof consists of uralite sheets along with sand bags [25.5]. Fighting positions along trenches for either machine guns or riflemen could also be open, and one such position can be seen in Figure 6.26. This photograph was also taken by Major Stefanovich in February or March 1937. Its location has not been recorded, but it is probably Jarama. The picture centres on an International Brigader sitting on the ledge [26.1] of a niche in a roughly half circle, dugout fighting position along a front line trench. There is a folded garment [26.2] to the left of the soldier, also on a ledge (though slightly higher then where the soldier is sitting), and it might represent the original ground level which, at differential levels, extends around the soldier from left to right across the image [26.3]. The

Figure 6.25: An internal, detailed view of a machine gun position. Original caption: ‘Low angle soldier at a machine gun post’. Source: Item 177-190122, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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Figure 6.26: A good view of a soldier in a fighting position along a trench, probably at Jarama. It shows some of the various and ad hoc ways in which a trench could be revetted. Original caption: ‘Soldier in front of sandbag wall’. Source: Item 177-196047, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

rather large parapet [26.4] needed shoring up, and this is evidenced by the portions of wooden crates that have been used as shuttering, and held in place by stakes and horizontally placed branches [26.5]. Above the shuttering, wooden boxes –presumably redundant ammunition boxes – have been used as jambs for an embrasure with a base and lintel made up of boards [26.6]. On top of these, two to at least four courses of sandbags have been placed, and they appear to extend around the entirety of this large semi-circular position [26.7]. The distance between the embrasure and the ledge below is probably too great to have been able to accommodate a machine gun easily, so the position probably served as a rifleman’s fighting pit. Of course, such a position could be made to take a machine gun with the building up of the ledge with sandbags (this can be seen in the next photograph, Figure 6.27). At the very left of the image there is a cloth of some kind, also with some kind of box, perhaps made of metal. Additionally, just above and to the immediate right, there are at least four small boxes hanging from the trench wall. If not made of metal, it is possible that these are rectangular ammunition pouches made of leather [26.8]. Figure 6.27 is another photograph taken by Major Stefanovich, and it is captioned: ‘soldiers manning a machine gun in a trench’. The image shows a fighting position with the forward slope of its parapet levelled off with some sandbags [27.1], so that the machine gun (a Maxim) could be accommodated [27.2]. In this picture, the profile of the parapet [27.3] is clearly visible, and it is topped with a wall of irregularly placed sandbags [27.4]. The soldier at the machine gun, is standing under a tarpaulin shade tied to the sandbags [27.5]. The base of the niche [27.6] in which he is standing is higher than the floor of the trench, and the section of its cutting [27.7] is clearly visible, behind the ammunition box (placed on top of a smaller box), just behind the man [27.8]. There is something on top of the ammunition box that might be a cloth of some kind. A belt of ammunition and its storage box is adjacent to the machine gun [27.9]. The man standing in the trench itself is cleaning an item with a rag [27.10], and there are further rags between him and the sandbag with the ammunition belt [27.11]. He is also leaning on a blanket [27.12] which, from the way in which it is draped, indicates a further niche [27.13] in the trench for a soldier to rest, and/or to stand up and shoot from – presumably through either an embrasure or an ad hoc loophole in the sandbags. 111

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There is a further, slightly sloping ledge in front of the niche on which an empty tin has been left [27.14]. In-line Entrenched Shelters As the field surveys at Mediana show, besides those soldiers’ shelters found well behind the lines, in reserve positions, a good number were situated along both the front and rear support trenches. Indications of these have already appeared in Figures 6.21 and 6.22. The photograph in Figure 6.28 shows one such trench (probably a support trench) with a shelter in more detail, but its date and location is unknown. The image is an interesting one. It shows two men sitting and reading in the entrance of a shelter, along with a third soldier holding a rifle, and looking out over Figure 6.27: An overall view of a machine gun position, probably taken at the trench which curves to Jarama. Original caption: ‘Soldiers manning a machine gun in a trench’. the left behind him. This Source: Item 177-196026, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: might have been posed selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. since the trench is not very deep, and the standing soldier’s head is more or less just above, or at least level with, the ground in front of him. The shelter to his left has probably been constructed by digging-out and covering over with earth (cut and cover), and it may very well have been dug to a level slightly lower than the floor of the trench. Its roof is made up of scrub brush [28.1] probably laid over lateral timbers of some kind (not visible), with reinforcing tree trunks [28.2] laid at a right angle to the trench (evidenced by the end section of the tree trunk in the left of the photo). The clearly visible horizontal branch at the top edge of the shelter [28.3] may also represent a layer of further branches, or timbers, which would have been a base on which the mounded earth [28.4] covering the shelter was laid. Adjacent to the two men sitting on the ground, are upright branches [28.5], apparently put in place to hold back the scrub and earth making up part of the roof of the refuge, and in total, there are around seven of these that are visible. To the right of the picture, there is a cut in the rear wall of the trench [28.6] which might be an entrance into another shelter, represented by the scrub brush visible along the right edge of the photograph [28.7]. There is an upright branch outlining its left side, and next to it is a man’s hand [28.8]. The man’s head can be seen slightly higher up, and there is a cigarette in his mouth [28.9]. This is an odd, and exposed position for a shelter, but as such, it supports the notion that this scene was photographed along a support trench in the rear. 112

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Figure 6.28: A possibly posed photograph providing details of a shelter in the parapet side of a probable support trench. Original caption: ‘Soldier in trench’. Source: Item 177-178056, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

The type of soil and natural sub-strata that trenches and shelters were dug into dictated their final architectural form, with some appearing quite sculptural. A photograph that indicates this well is Figure 6.29. Its caption reads ‘Officer and troops near a dugout and a tree’. This image presents a view along a narrow trench with an officer and two soldiers in clear view. Strikingly, it shows in the left foreground, the entrance into a shelter dug down and into the left hand side of the trench [29.1]. The entrance to the dugout appears small and sub-rectangular with rounded edges, giving way into an interior that cannot be seen (because it is in heavy shade) but must have been larger than the aperture indicates. The threshold is higher than the floor of the trench [29.2] too, and it has been made smooth by people going in and out of the entry. A similar ridge-like threshold can be seen going across the trench [29.3] in front of the officer, and this suggests that the trench itself was compartmentalised in some way. This notion is supported by the fact that the area in front of the ridge [29.4], with a soldier standing to the left, seems to be broader than that part of the trench visible in the lower foreground of the image. The shelter entrance clearly has a patterned blanket draped over it as an entrance covering, and this is held in place by sandbags [29.5]. An additional folded blanket [29.6] hangs over these along with a cloth, or maybe a towel, hanging over the branches of the adjacent tree [29.7]. At the lower right of the image is an earthen baulk which represents the opposite side of the trench [29.8], and the blanket just visible and overlying it [29.9], probably represents the location of another shelter. There is a recess in the trench behind the officer [29.10], and on its far side, there might be a horizontally laid tree trunk [29.11]. This could be associated with a possible shelter just beyond the officer. Also, on the slope of the trench 113

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going up to the left behind the officer’s back, there are boxes (probably for ammunition) and other items [29.12]. The trench top is outlined by sandbags [29.13], and some of these hold in place either a draped blanket or tarpaulin, from the tree with two trunks in the right background, presumably covering another shelter [29.14]. The density of shelters in this image suggests that this is a support trench, and the trees would have been welcome cover for the soldiers in the field. These are probably olive or nut trees, so the location of the trench must have been in a relatively flat or slightly rolling countryside. A clearer view of shelters cut into the side of a trench, also within a landscape of fruit trees, can be seen in Figure 6.30. It was photographed by Major Stefanovich sometime between February 11th and March 7th, 1937, and probably at Jarama. Looking at it, this photo is almost archaeological in nature, all that is lacking is some kind of photographic scale. It shows a Figure 6.29: A very good view down a support trench showing details of shelter trench with two low lying shelters construction. The officer in the peaked cap is probably the commander of cut into its side. The earth is firm the 15th International Brigade, Vladimir Copic. Original caption: ‘Officer and and dry, so the baulks show little troops near a dugout and a tree’. Source: Item 177-178074, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. sign of collapsing. The shelter in the front [30.1] might have been a cut and cover feature. It was probably for one man and it was roofed over with turfs [30.2], and covered over with spoil [30.3]. The roof must have been supported by unseen timber or branches. Alongside it, on both sides, are two small square niches [30.4] neatly cut into the trench wall. These could have stored ammunition or other items. Just beyond this is another trench [30.5], or access way at a right angle to the main trench (in fact, it slopes down into the trench), and just beyond it, is another dugout shelter [30.6]. This second feature, like the first, has a neatly excavated entrance, though this one was not cut and covered. It seems to have been directly excavated through the side of the trench. It too was probably only for one man, and it has spoil piled up on top of it [30.7]. To the left of both shelters, along the other side of the trench, are indications of niches. The one in the bottom of the photo would probably have been big enough for a man to sit or stand in [30.8]. It might even represent the entrance into another shelter or a fighting position. The other two, just beyond, might have served as niches for storage of ammunition or other items [30.9]. In all, the trench does not seem to have been very deep, though the spoil over the shelters seems higher than the spoil making up what might have been the parapet [30.10], visible just beyond the shelters on the opposite side of the trench, where it turns to the right. This photograph must have been taken when the trench was 114

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unoccupied, since there are no blankets or tarpaulins covering the shelter entrances. A close-up view of a shelter for a single man in a trench, taken in 1937 at Jarama, and showing a member of the Dimitrov Battalion, is visible in Figure 6.31. The soldier in this picture, lying down and looking out of the shelter’s entrance, provides a sense of scale applicable to the image just described in Figure 6.30. The shelter is obviously larger than it looks from the outside, though the man could only lie down in it. It has been excavated out of very firm earth – almost rock-like – judging by the hard angular edge to the upper left of the opening into it [31.1]. The feature had a blanket or tarpaulin entrance cover which has been folded back [31.2]. It is possible that the wall of the shelter just behind the soldier’s head, might have been either built up or reinforced with at least two courses of local stone [31.3]. At the very right edge of the image, there is a canteen hanging down [31.4], and possibly the arm of a nearby man [31.5] and a part of a rifle [31.6], but these are hard to make out. An image that clearly shows a shelter cut into rock is Figure 6.32. It is another photograph taken by Major Stefanovich, again, sometime between February 11th and March 7th, and probably at Jarama. Figure 6.30: A very good view of dugout shelters and niches in the side walls of a The lower right of the image is partially trench, probably at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Caves in the rock’. Source: Item 177obscured by a shadow, but it shows a 196146, n.d., ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. well cut soldier’s shelter in the side of a trench. It has been cut into very firm substrate beneath what is probably a rock-like sedimentary strata, giving it a near straight lintel [32.1]. From the position of the arms of the soldier [32.2] it is likely that he is actually in the process of digging or cutting it out further, or perhaps finishing it off. The back of the shelter can be just barely seen, and the shadows [32.3] vaguely suggest that it has been excavated at more or less a right angle to the side of the trench. The neatness of this feature is reminiscent of some of the neat, and squarely cut shelters near the valley bottoms behind the Nationalist lines at Mediana. Another photograph taken at the same time by Major Stefanovich, and probably within one of the Jarama trenches, is Figure 6.33. The way in which the men in the picture appear to be queueing and walking up to the two men on the left, and the fact that one soldier is holding a tin mug [33.1], suggests that this photograph represents men being given beverages (or a meal) in what in all likelihood must be a support trench. The structure taking up most of the photograph is a large and very well constructed sandbagged shelter [33.2]. It is so large that its entrance [33.3] is considerably taller than the two men standing in front of it. It is constructed of well laid sandbags with a roof made up of logs, of which the ends of 13 can be seen [33.4], and on top of these are at least four layers of sandbags [33.5]. There are planks [33.6] just visible beneath the logs, and these appear to make up the lintel of the entrance. A cloth hangs over the entrance 115

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[33.7] and it seems to be gauze-like, with sandbags faintly visible behind it. It was probably a screen for insects. The photograph cuts off the lowest portion of the shelter, but behind the two men in the centre, it can be seen that the sandbags making up the far side of the structure sit on a firm baulk of earth [33.8], which also indicates the entrance. Blankets are hanging over the shelter to air [33.9], as are further blankets, laid over sandbags along the top of the trench to the right of the picture [33.10]. In summary, the shelter in this photograph could have served many purposes, but it was probably some kind of utilitarian Figure 6.31: View of a brigader lying in his shelter at Jarama. Original caption: ‘Dimitrov communal structure – a field kitchen Battalion at Jarama; Klein (man peers out of trench tunnel)’. Source: Item 177-183028, or a store – or perhaps even a localised 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. operations centre. Hill Top Locations – Nationalist Shelters The ALBA photo collections looked at for this study, provide virtually no images of Republican positions on, or near, hill tops. Nevertheless, photographic records were made of some Nationalist hill-top positions, and in particular, of those which were a part of the extensive defences at Quinto. One such image, of a Nationalist trench and shelter, can be seen in Figure 6.34. Its caption reads: ‘Fortified hill (Purburell) from which 15th International Brigade took 800 prisoners and a White Guard officer. Peter Daly killed here, Quinto’. Purburell hill was a heavily fortified Nationalist position on an eminence just south of Quinto, overlooking the town. It was taken by the British Battalion after brutal fighting on the 25th and 26th of August, 1937, during the Republican assault and capture of Quinto itself. Peter Daly was the British commander during the first day of the attack, when he was mortally wounded. Purburell hill is approximately 20 kilometres east of the survey areas at Figure 6.32: View of a shelter being dug, or enlarged, probably at Jarama. Original Mediana and around 24 kilometres caption: ‘Soldier in a dug-out cave in a trench’. Source: Item 177-196023, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU. northwest of Belchite. The terrain 116

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Figure 6.33: View down a support trench, probably at Jarama, showing a well constructed shelter built of sand bags. Original caption: ‘Men talking outside sandbag shelter’. Source: Item 177-196134, Feb. 11 to Mar. 7, 1937, ALBA Archive (Moscow: selected images), Tamiment Library, NYU.

reflects the character of the so-called desert of Aragón and is similar to that at Mediana, but the hills are higher and steeper. Figure 6.34 illustrates this well. It presents a scene after the fighting for the hill, and shows in the foreground a damaged shelter [34.2], and a trench filled with debris [34.1]. Judging from the size of the sandbags, and a small table [34.3] in the trench, it is probable that the entrenchment was dug to no deeper than a man’s chest height, with the parapet raised by two to four courses of sandbags [34.4]. In fact, these look like they were placed on top of a thin layer of earth – probably top soil [34.5]. During the digging of the position, it is highly likely that most of the excavated spoil would have been thrown down the steep slope, in front and below the parapet. Within the trench itself and below the sandbags (in the natural sub strata) there are nibs of earth appearing like little buttresses [34.6], which were probably the result of digging to create little niches as positions for individual soldiers to fire from. The space within the trench in the lower right widens out, and opening onto it is the shelter that is the main feature in the photograph. Judging by the extent of the sandbags making up its front façade, it was probably built as an almost free standing structure with its right corner turning back just by the small table in the trench. The entrance into the shelter is to the left [34.7], built up against a baulk of earth. The left hand jamb of the entrance consists of a single stack of sandbags [34.8] of which five or six are visible. The right hand jamb [34.9] is almost totally visible, and it has six courses of sandbags (two bags thick) which give the impression of being placed on a shallow baulk of unexcavated sub-strata [34.10]. This seems to continue to the right, supporting the whole of the visible wall of sandbags. The doorway into the shelter had a lintel made up of at least one wooden plank [34.11], with one layer of sandbags on top [34.12]. This layer made up the base of the roof, supported by timber joists, of which one is just visible to the left of the doorway [34.13]. The roof was completed by being covered over with earth [34.14], which also covered the left hand flank of the shelter [34.15]. This refuge must have been hit by a projectile during the fighting to take the position, since there is a hole in the roof where it joins with the front wall. The hole is not very large and sandbags making up the roof can be seen [34.16], presumably supported by timber roof joists. There is a further fortified position near the top of the hill in the background [34.17]. Its trenches are just visible, but the spread of the spoil from its excavation is clearly visible [34.18]. It is light in colour and overlies the scrub that covers the hill. There is a dugout, squarely cut in elevation immediately beneath it [34.19], and another group of dugouts in the profile of the hill towards the right [34.20]. These must have been quite large diggings since their associated spoil (also 117

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Figure 6.34: Nationalist hill-top defences at Purburell Hill, outside Quinto, after being taken by the 15th International Brigade. Original caption: ‘Fortified hill (Purburell) from which 15th International Brigade took 800 prisoners and a White Guard officer. Peter Daly killed here, Quinto’. Source: Item 11-1219, Aug. 1937, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

light in colour) is quite extant, and the way in which it has spread down the hill is well indicated [34.21]. The position shown in this photograph might very well mirror some of the Nationalist positions along and behind the Parapet of Death at Mediana. The Nationalist fortifications at Purburell Hill were undoubtedly complex, and their strength was a shock to the men of the British Battalion when they assaulted them on August 25th. As Figure 6.35 shows, besides entrenchments with their associated dugouts, the positions included rock-cut, almost cave-like architecture. But this photograph is striking, and as its caption states, it shows a ‘Fascist officer’s refugio, Quinto’ (dated, August 1937). Clearly, the image presents the viewer with the aftermath of a fierce fight. The position shown is relatively high up one of the steep slopes that make-up Purburell Hill, and there are the corpses of three pack animals, probably mules [35.1], close to the facade of the visible rock-cut shelter [35.2]. Such animals would have brought supplies to the troops in the fortifications, but they must have been brought up the hill by the time the fighting started at Quinto, so as not to be taken or killed, during the Republican assault. They were unsaddled, and they must have been huddled up against the visible rock face during the struggle for the hill. Debris is all around them, including their three pack saddles [35.3] (visible along the left of the picture), a pile of items that might be their harnesses [35.4] (next to the central corpse), ammunition and other boxes of various sizes and types [35.5], sacking, and some timber and wooden rods or branches [35.6], plus what looks like a door with an empty window frame, on the ground and in the lower right of the photo [35.7]. There is also a small framed item on a ledge in the rock face that might be a photograph or a mirror [35.8]. The shelter was probably created out of a hollow in the thick layer of rock [35.2], which is the lowest of the three sedimentary layers visible in the photograph. The natural slope of the hill is visible in the upper right of the photograph [35.9], and this location might have been chosen for a shelter, since the 118

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Figure 6.35: A post battle view of a partially rock-cut officers’ shelter at Purburell Hill, Quinto. Original caption: ‘Fascist officers refugio, Quinto’.Source: Item 11-1176, Aug. 1937, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

edge of the rock above the doorway [35.10] might very well have been exposed, creating a ridge in the hillside that could have facilitated ground clearance and digging. This notion can be supported by the fact that the upper two layers of rock (especially the upper-most one) are apparently darker than the lowest (and thickest) [35.2] which could indicate that they were exposed with their darker shades possibly representing a patina. The lower, paler rock was probably cut into to create, in effect, a vertical rock face with a slight hollow in the ground immediately in front of it, and this was partly revetted [35.11]. The ground to the left is relatively level and it is outlined by a low parapet [35.12]. This is indicated at the left edge of the photograph by the pack saddle that is on it, along with the third, dead animal nearby. The shelter was accessed by the full-height wooden door [35.13] to the right in the picture, which is ajar. It has been hung on its right side in a wooden frame, and it has a drop-latch on the opposite side. The door is made up of four planks of variable widths, and with three horizontal rails. Usually, such rails are found on the inside of doors, but in this instance the door was hung with them on the outside. Also, the ends of the nails used for attaching the boards to the rails are visible, and being longer than needed they were bent back in a clinker-like fashion [35.14]. There is a rectangular light in the upper half of the door [35.15]. To the right of it is a newly built random rubble wall, with a flush render of either cement or mud plaster [35.16]. It was built almost to the height of the door and it appears to have had a flat roof [35.17] extending to the upper, exposed rocks, adding additional space to the rock-cut shelter. There is a small hollow [35.18] between the upper and middle strata of rock, and perhaps it represents some kind of airway for ventilating the interior of the shelter. Additionally, the background in Figure 6.35 presents a very interesting mix of features. There, on the top of the hill, is an excavated horizontal terrace that represents a trench [35.19]. This links three well constructed dugouts and rock-cut shelters of considerable size, and built of stone rubble, concrete and sandbags (see below). Leading up to the trench, up the flank of the hill, is an earth-cut stairway [35.20] linking what is probably a lower terraced entrenchment [35.21], only slightly visible beyond the low parapet in which one of the dead pack animals is lying. Midway between the lower and upper terrace, there is an arc of warn grass representing a footpath [35.22]. This leads from the steps to the shelter in the upper left of the image. A similar path, also of worn grass, can be seen to the right of the steps [35.23]. This illustrates well, how the defences at Purburell hill linked multi-level occupation areas behind the 119

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fighting lines, with substantially built shelters which could also represent the social hierarchy of the army in the field. It also shows how the soldiers accessing this type of rear zone, created and used steps and pathways – linkages – that illustrate the settlement-like nature of an army’s field fortifications. Though laid out differently, this occupation area with its substantial shelters, and with laid out steps and paths, is reminiscent of the specific area behind the Parapet of Death at Mediana, that might very well represent a quarter for Nationalist officers (see Chapter 4). The hill-top shelters [35.24] in the background of Figure 6.35 can be seen in greater detail in the photographs that follow. The shelter on the hilltop to the upper left can be seen close-up in Figure 6.36. Its caption reads: ‘Purburell, Fascist officers quarters, Quinto’, and it provides a detailed view of the construction of what appears to have been a substantial shelter for Nationalist officers. It was constructed by being dug into the top of the hill, and in so doing, it was provided with a relatively broad and flat area to its front [36.1]. This was excavated out of the natural earth and rock strata visible in the exposed sections to the left and right of the image [36.2]. Judging by the form of the roof, the shelter was constructed in a cutand-cover fashion, and it was given a front wall of sandbags [36.3] set back within the shelter’s excavated hollow in the hill top [36.4]. The sandbags were set in a mortar, probably of mud or cement. The left hand side of the facade has a wooden framed, rectangular window [36.5], which probably has a screen, and ten of the sandbag courses making up the wall can be seen between the window and the door [36.6]. It also has two visible courses of sandbags above it [36.7]. In front of the wall, and just below the window, is a rubble stone platform [36.8], set in either a mud or cement mortar, and with a partly preserved render. This has a levelled off, rendered top, with a step in it [36.9], and there is a rendered batter extending from the platform to the bottom of the window [36.10]. There is a metal mug and other items on the platform [36.11], while in front of the door there is a large box with rope handles – probably a wooden ammunition box [36.12]. The door was made and hung the same way as the door in Figure 6.35 – of wooden planks and rails, with clinkered nails and a rectangular window in its upper half – and its frame is apparently well

Figure 6.36: Close-up view of a Nationalist shelter just visible in the left background of Fig. 6.35. Original caption: ‘Purburell, Fascist officers quarters, Quinto’. Source: Item 11-1177, Aug. 1937, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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made and set in mortar [36.13]. The render on top of its lintel is relatively flush, so it might be covering locally acquired bricks [36.14]. As such, they are relatively flat, and there might be two courses of them. On top of these are further sandbags [36.15), all irregularly laid, while over all of them, there is a batter of mud or cement mortar [36.16]. This extends a short distance up to a low, horizontal revetment, which appears to be the edge of the roof [36.17] of the dugout. This is made up of mounded earth and stones, roughly matching the hillside [36.18]. On top of the roof, and to its side, are three visible wooden posts [36.19]. Another view of this shelter is provided by Figure 6.37. It is also dated to August 1937 and captioned: ‘Purburell Hill (Fascist fortifications), Quinto’. Viewed at an angle – from the left of the previous image – it shows how the natural earth strata, has been dug through [37.1] to create the shelter. It makes clear the construction of the platform [37.2] in front of the shelter’s sandbagged wall, and there is something cylindrical in the wooden ammunition box [37.3]. The window in the opened door has a cloth tacked in place as a curtain [37.4], and above it, there is some debris and loose sandbags [37.5]. Visible just behind the shelter, where there is a short wooden post [37.6], is the outline of a further well constructed shelter [37.7]. It can be hazily made out in Figure 6.35, being slightly higher up and to the right of the earth cut steps in the background of the picture, but it was photographed at closer quarters as shown in Figure 6.38. The caption to Figure 6.38 simply states: ‘Purburell Hill, Fascist fortifications, Quinto’, and it was taken at the same time as the previous four photographs described. It probably represents further officers’ accommodation, associated with the shelter in Figures 6.36 and 6.37. In fact, the photograph shows two shelters [38.1] and [38.2], built more or less on top of the hill on which they are situated (see Figure 6.35). They are partly obscured by the slope of the hill in front of them [38.3], into which an access trench has

Figure 6.37: A further close-up view of the shelter shown in the preceding photograph. Original caption: ‘Purburell Hill (Fascist fortifications), Quinto’. Source: Item 11-1175, Aug. 1937, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

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Figure 6.38: A front-on view of Nationalist hill-top shelters also visible in the background of Fig 6.35. Original caption: ‘Purburell Hill, Fascist fortifications, Quinto’. Source: Item 11-1221, Aug. 1937, ALBA Archive (15th IB Photo Unit: Harry Randall Collection), Tamiment Library, NYU.

been cut [38.4] in front of them. There is a recess in the outline of the trench, at the left hand edge of the image, representing either a large niche or observation post, or a defensive fighting position [38.5]. There is also something which appears to be a blanket or tarpaulin [38.6], lying over the edge of the niche. Much of the left hand shelter [38.1] is not visible save for its roof and the upper part of its doorway. It has been dug into the near top of the hill in a cut-and-cover fashion, with baulks of the natural strata of the hill preserved on both sides of its entrance. These are overlain with further earth from the hill top diggings [38.7]. This re-deposited spoil obscures much of the roof of the shelter to the left of its entrance, but nevertheless, there are at least three timbers (possibly tree trunks) supporting the roof which can be made out [38.8]. The make up of the roof above the lintel [38.9] of the entry (presumably of wood), consists of three layers of sandbags overlain by earth [38.10]. The jambs of the entrance are made up of further sandbags [38.11]. To the right of this shelter, and just beyond the baulk of earth to the right of its entrance, is the doorway [38.12] into the other shelter [38.2]. The baulk of earth up against the outside of this second refuge has been revetted with a stone rubble wall [38.13] which appears to have been flush pointed – with either cement or mud mortar. The shelter itself is also built of random rubble, and flush pointed, and it is free standing along its right hand side [38.14]. Its walls are relatively straight and it, and the two previous shelters described, bring to mind some of the semi-subterranean and built-up stone shelters behind both the Nationalist and Republican lines at Mediana. In particular, those behind the northern portion of trenches, extending back from the Nationalist positions at the Parapet of Death, and of course, at the Republican Little Gallipoli. The entrance to the right hand shelter is framed with wooden posts and a large timber lintel [38.15], and the roof seems to consist of one layer of sandbags covered with a thin layer of earth [38.16]. There is a further stone revetment [38.17], with rubble behind it, to the right of the doorway and up against the corner of the shelter. Beyond that, there is embanked earth and rubble up against the right side of the refuge [38.18]. The structural differences between the two shelters, suggests that they were built at different times, or more probably, by different work parties, during the fortifying of Purburell hill. 122

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Conclusion The thirty-eight photographs just described present something of a mis-en-scène of the Spanish Civil War, and unquestionably, they are only a small selection of all of the photographs taken of men at war in all of the battlescapes, and other locations, of that conflict. To borrow from Margaret Blackman, they are ‘specimens’ – of an archaeological kind – taken from all of the potentially available photographs that exist in the numerous archives holding material on the Civil War. From an archaeological perspective, examining such a limited number of images should be seen as something akin to investigating a large and well documented archaeological site, by excavating only a relatively small number of test trenches or sondages, with an aim to acquire a basic understanding of the site’s history and composition. But another analogy can be found in the more specific context of urban archaeology, where the places archaeological field work can take place are mainly restricted to those parts of a city or town where the urban fabric is to be altered, or demolished and renewed. This means that urban development more-or-less dictates where excavations, of any size from narrow slit trenches to area excavations, can be carried out, leaving the archaeologist with a patchwork of trenches, sondages, and area examinations from which to chronicle the past materiality of a given city or town. This produces an historical picture that is something like a collage, with each location examined being confined to the limited spaces available in the urban fabric – usually being construction sites and the curtilage of property plots bounded by roads and other buildings. To quote Susan Sontag again, like photographs, such diggings are each a ‘slice of space as well as time’, and importantly, in the context of urban archaeology, the number of those ‘slices of space and time’ can increase over time through the ongoing process of urban development, providing opportunities for further excavations and fieldwork through which our varied understandings of the past can be enriched. The photographs examined here are just like those relatively small portions of space in which archaeologists can examine the past in any urban landscape, and as such, the photographic ‘sample’ just described can be enlarged through further work – the equivalent of further archaeological fieldwork – in photographic archives. Then, when conjoined with traditional archaeological fieldwork, as at Mediana and elsewhere, along with contemporary accounts and memoirs, as in the case of George Orwell, a holistic evocation of the materiality of a past can be compiled: with that ‘evocation’ in this instance, being one of the Spanish Civil War.

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Chapter 7

History in ‘Three Dimensions’ In their book, Bloody Meadows, John and Patricia Carman argue their case for studying the landscape of battles as spatial phenomena. As they wrote: unlike other battlefield researchers, we do not focus on individual sites. Similarly, we do not focus upon the discovery of artefacts or artefact scatters at sites, but rather upon the shape of the land itself. We are also interested in relating sites to one another in an expressly comparative process, rather than identifying the thought processes of individual commanders in specific circumstances.1 Although the Carmans are interested in the comparative study of places of battle – battlefields – in truth, their approach transcends battle-spaces, and is eminently applicable to warscapes and other conflict, or contested landscapes, and it resonates with the approach I have taken in this study. Like them, I am attuned to the performance aspect of landscape archaeology, where over time, an archaeologist dwells within the place of study through what is in effect an experiential and sensual (and bodily) relationship.2 This relies on all of one’s senses, and the so-called ‘archaeologist’s eye’; an ability to ‘interpret space’ and to make sense of features on the land, both familiar and unfamiliar,3 with an aim at establishing a historicity of the place, or space, under study. To quote the Carmans again: The majority of archaeologists working on battlefields spend their time looking at the ground, trying to find the material left behind by the action. We instead spend time looking up and around us, at the shape of the space itself. A close focus on the shape of the space allows differences of choice across space and through time to become evident. [And] in the case of a historic battlefield, it is not an experience of ancient [and more recent] slaughter, but an experience of a particular place in the present as read through its history as manifested in material form.4 To the Carmans, it is not the events played out in a battle space that is of prime interest, but instead, establishing ‘a meaning for the historicity of a place’, or places of conflict, in the present, that drives their interest.5 This notion of historicity: looking at the human situation as located within ‘specific concrete, temporal and historical circumstances’,6 is what binds the three strands that make up this study; combining the landscape archaeology of the entrenchments at Mediana (Chapter 4) with the real life experiences of a participant like George Orwell (Chapter 5), and the ‘slices’ of time and place as witnessed by the photographers of the 15th International Brigade (Chapter 6). With historicity as a fulcrum, what can the aggregate of these strands – undoubtedly limited by the scope of this study – tell us about the materiality of modern conflict as manifested in the Spanish Civil War? The armies on both sides in the Spanish Civil War literally carved out of the ground an architectural (or anti-architectural) system of field fortifications and dwellings. Though not planned as permanent, these took on the characteristics of settlements with the equivalents of public spaces, communal or shared spaces, and private spaces. They created an ‘anthropocosmos’ – a world of man. As Table 4.1 indicates, these could be divided into shells; being individual or shared soldiers’ shelters or dugouts, a variety of specialised field constructions from fighting positions to mess areas and command posts, stores areas, and field hospitals (well behind the lines), and networks; being the links made up of trenches (along the front line and behind), and access tracks and roads. These linkages had a pedigree of sorts, particularly Carman and Carman 2006: 9. Hamilakis 2011: 218; and for a further and thorough examination of the potentialities of an archaeology centred around the senses (i.e., an archaeology of, and with, the senses), see Hamilakis 2013. 3  Carman and Carman 2006: 26. 4  Carman and Carman 2006: 24. 5  Carman and Carman 2006: 24. 6  Bunnin and Yu 2004: 308. 1  2 

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the entrenchments, since the works of both the Nationalist and Republican armies, more or less, drew upon the constructions of the First World War, which in turn were natural descendants of the siege works of a pre-industrial age. But the front line fighting trenches in Aragón, and elsewhere in Spain (save a city like Madrid), had a make up that was distinctly all their own. Fighting trenches, redoubts and detached fighting positions, though having perhaps one support trench, were backed up not by further tiers of support and reserve trenches, but by valleys filled with soldiers’ shelters, dug-in and stippled across the landscape, turning the soldiers on both sides in the war into modern day troglodytes. As the British volunteer John Scott Peet wrote in a letter home in 1938: I never thought I would become a cave dweller, but now I am one. We are lying at rest in a reserve position near enough to the front to hear the rumble of guns, and as it gets rather cold at night most of us have cut out caves in the side of the hill and made quite decent dug-outs.7 As George Orwell described (Chapter 5), such shelters appeared like ‘rat-holes’ or ‘sand marten’s nests’, populating the valley slopes behind the front lines. But at Jarama, during the so-called ‘long vigil’, from just after February 27th to June 17th, 1937, the International Brigaders eventually turned their collections of dugouts behind the lines, into a community – a settlement in real terms. Settling into a Martial ‘Anthropocosmos’ The photographs in Chapter 6 provide ‘eyewitness’ views of the 15th Brigade settling in along the front, and in the rear at Jarama and in Aragón. As already discussed, they provide a number of parallels for what the Mediana entrenchments, and rear support areas, must have been like in the six months that those lines were occupied. However, a reading of some of the accounts of the brigaders, particularly at Jarama, can, as in the case of George Orwell’s account, only magnify the archaeology (Chapter 4) and the image analyses presented in the preceding chapter. After the last attempt at a counter attack at Jarama, by the 15th Brigade on February 27th, the British brigader, Jason Gurney, described the situation along the Jarama front as one where he and his fellow soldiers ‘were now suffering the dreariness and misery of trench warfare in the rain’.8 In fact, the bitterness of the fighting and the high casualty rate in the preceding weeks, had a terrible impact on the brigades, with a severe degree of disgruntlement which extended even into the officer ranks. The food was bad, it was cold, and it rained far too often creating ‘lakes of mud’.9 The men could never stay dry or keep warm. As one American explained when on guard in the trenches the soldiers would try to stay warm by ‘taking a turn with a pick and shovel’, and when tired, sit down in a trench-side niche (see Figure 6.23) until the damp from the mud would make them cold again, and they would resume digging.10 As conditions deteriorated, hygiene was not maintained, and lice infestations became rife. Food waste was scattered around the trenches too,11 bringing to mind Orwell’s fixation on rubbish and its smells, and that of human waste, which he found constantly attending the trenches he occupied along the Huesca front. When Jason Gurney visited his friend George Nathan, then with the French 14th Brigade at Jarama, he was taken aback by the living conditions of the Quatorzième. This all French brigade, Gurney wrote, was as good as anything in Spain but its members seemed content to live in a state of utter squalor. When I found them they were scattered around all over the place, the ground was thick with discarded rubbish of all kinds, they were dirty and a fair percentage of them were drunk. The whole show looked utterly chaotic.12 Peet 1938. Gurney 1974: 129. Rust 1939: 58. 10  Rolfe 1939: 58. 11  Baxell 2007: 84-85. 12  Gurney 1974: 131. 7  8  9 

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This was early on after the fighting at Jarama, but later in the Spring, on May Day, when French units relieved the Americans and British for just twenty-four hours, they turned the 15th’s dugouts into latrines and littered the place with food, tin cans and broken bottles.13 In contrast, perhaps the best entrenchments at Jarama, seemed to be those of the Americans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Gurney described their system of dugouts as ‘magnificent’ and ‘in marked contrast to the miserable little burrows in which the British survived’. The American trenches were deep, making them some of the safest in the sector, and their machine gun positions were well fortified (see Figs. 6.21, 6.22, 6.26, 6.27 and 6.31). Dugouts or refuges needed no shoring, and they usually had substantial head room for standing. Bunks for sleeping were dug out of the walls of the in-trench shelters, and often lined with mattresses made from local bushes (see Figs. 6.30 to 6.32). The trenches were also clean, with latrine pits positioned at the ends of the communication trenches that were dug from the front line into the dead ground behind. But saying that, the trenches were not well disposed. As Gurney continued: From a purely military stand-point, the trench lines were not ideal. They had been dug in an absolutely straight line across the hillside [see Figs. 6.21 and 6.22], so that if one section had been overrun the remainder would have become untenable. No support line had been dug and if we had lost the trench which we held, there would have been no line to fall back on.14 With the coming of Spring, occupation of the Jarama lines became much more bearable for the volunteers of the 15th Brigade, and morale lifted. Where food had always arrived in the lines cold, it was now arriving by truck ‘within a few hundred yards of the trenches’, along a newly made road where previously there was only a mule track: ‘hot food warmed up damp bodies’.15 In fact, the road was initiated by the battalion doctor, creating access for ambulances and other service vehicles16 (see Fig. 6.3). With no advances by either the Nationalists or Republicans since the end of February, the Jarama front became static. No more than two thirds of the troops manned the fighting trenches at any time, while the remainder could rest behind the hills in the rear.17 As at Mediana, the communication trenches led down into the valleys behind the front line battlements to the ‘hoovervilles’ constructed by the soldiers (see Figs. 6.5 to 6.10). When the American brigader Harry Fisher arrived, he saw elements of a real settlement being created in the form of trenches being given street names. The trenches were no longer muddy; the rainy season was over. I noticed signs posted along different parts of the trenches with the names Marx, Lenin, and Molotov on them. Later we added Union Square, Fourteenth Street, Times Square, and more.18 This was a common practice in the First World War, where troops manning a sector for a long time would create a geography all their own. For the British and other troops along the Western Front, the trenches could be dis-orientating, and they were often described as a labyrinth.19 Fred Thomas wrote as much when he had his first look-over of the lines at Jarama. Most amazing labyrinth of lines, communicating trenches and dugouts. God knows how men stood four years of this in the Great War… It [war] is an incredibly stupid, filthy, primitive, barbaric business.20 By naming their trenches, especially with place-names from home, the soldiers created a sense of familiarity in an alien and hostile environment. In effect, these became ‘significant points in the comprehension of the war landscape and represented a means of survival and security both physical and mental in a threatening and monotonous environment’.21 Gurney 1974: 149. Gurney 1974: 138-139. 15  Rolfe 1939: 59. 16  Rolfe 1939: 66-67. 17  Landis 1967: 160. 18  Fisher 1998: 45. 19  Wilson 2012: 165. 20  Thomas 1996: 27. 21  Wilson 2012: 167 and 170. 13  14 

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The volunteers – or the Americans at least – became very house proud when it came to their personal space, and the shelters they made for themselves. Some ‘would scream with rage at a cigarette butt thrown on the ground and insisted on the use of an ashtray’.22 The correspondent of the New York Times, Herbert Matthews visited the Americans, and described some of the dugouts as ‘gems of comfort’ and ‘particularly snug’. When he complimented a New York Irishman on his subterranean home the man responded: ‘sure.., we aren’t going to pay rent after this war. We’ll just build dugouts in Battery Park’. Matthews also saw that with the arrival of Spring, the vineyard through which a part of the trenches was cut was coming into flower, and one brigader, presumably a farmer before volunteering, was so touched that he placed little warning signs at twenty yard intervals, one of which read, ‘Care for the grapes..! They suffer when you hit them’.23 By the time Spring arrived and the weather turned dry and warm, both sides at Jarama were well protected behind their sand bagged entrenchments with barbed wire barriers, dugouts, and machine gun posts. Bullets could fly overhead, but in the lower ground behind the lines, the men of the Brigade created spaces where they could congregate in the open and even play sports. As William Rust recounts, the men would place guards on the trench and retire to a quiet spot, where the ground dipped, in order to sunbathe, yarn, play cards, read papers and play football… It was no unusual sight to see a dozen chaps, pretty well naked save for their boots, playing away with perfect indifference, while a sharp artillery-tank duel was taking place just a few hundred yards away.24 Besides football, the brigaders played ping-pong and soft-ball, They could take classes in ‘mapping, scouting, marksmanship, in the Spanish language; and in all phases of infantry lore’. They had a canteen – a shop – to buy ‘incidental articles… such as candles, flashlights, writing material, etc.’ (in fact, the sand bagged structure in Figure 6.33 could be one such ‘canteen’), but this was not enough to meet the men’s needs. ‘The one thing the guys wanted most could not be obtained – American cigarettes!!’.25 A library was put together with books brought from Madrid and Valencia, and it included works by Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Fannie Hurst, John Dos Passos, and many other well-known writers. Magazines were passed out. Newspapers to meet the needs of practically every language group were available. There was so little reading material that the print was almost worn off the pages by constant thumbing.26 There was a barber, and the Dimitrov battalion even installed a ‘Hairdressing Saloon’.27 A radio was bought, and with three speakers disposed appropriately, many of the men could easily listen in.28 Wall newspapers were erected (see Figure 6.4). These included short stories, poems, accounts of men’s impressions, and even letters from home. Artwork was also posted, including cartoons, and what Edwin Rolfe described as ‘the haunting wash-drawings of Deyo Jacobs, the artist of the [American] battalion’.29 The American’s dubbed their wall paper The Daily Mañana and unsurprisingly it included humorous items as well as printed clippings, news of the day and special notices.30 A Hint of Hierarchy When Jason Gurney visited George Nathan at Jarama, who was then with the French 14th Brigade, he found the Major ‘in a short length of trench with a tented roof where he had made himself and his entourage reasonably comfortable’. His entourage consisted of a batman and chauffeur, an interpretor Gurney 1974: 139. Matthews 1938, cited in Rolfe 1939: 68-69. 24  Rust 1939: 58. 25  Anon. 1937, cited in Landis 1967; and Landis 1967: 160. 26  Anon. 1937, cited in Landis 1967: 160. 27  Rust 1939: 59. 28  Anon. 1937, cited in Landis 1967: 161. 29  Rolfe 1939: 73-74. 30  Anon. 1937, cited in Landis 1967: 161. 22  23 

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– all English – and two French ‘knockabout clowns’ who served as cooks and factotums. Their dugout position must have been similar to some of the short, dead end trench segments, that could be found off of some of the support trenches at Mediana. These types of positions could be easily covered over, perhaps in a way similar to the tented shelter in Figure 6.11. Of course, the space in these short trenches would have varied from place to place, but as a commanding officer, Nathan must have had adequate space to accommodate and entertain, with tasty and well cooked food for himself, Gurney and his five attendants.31 Commodious officers’ habitations undoubtedly existed at Mediana, behind both the Republican and Nationalist lines, and a good description of one along Nationalist positions in the Winter in southern Aragón has been provided by the Englishman Peter Kemp, an officer in the Spanish Foreign Legion: Those of us who were in reserve set about making ourselves as comfortable as possible, building dugouts in the side of a hill, where we slept warm at night and entertained each other with lavish supplies of drink brought from Zaragoza. My batman, Paulino, built me a roomy dug-out with an ingeniously constructed fireplace and chimney. In the wall he levelled out a wide ledge of earth, spreading it lavishly with dried grass and covering it with a blanket to make a comfortable bed; he hollowed out emaller recesses for seats all around and put a rough table of packing-cases in the middle of the floor. To me it seemed like a palace.32 However, like all soldiers in the field, Kemp’s accommodation could also be far less comfortable. During preparations for Franco’s push through Aragón in March 1938, his batman was only able to make him ‘a shelter of earth and brushwood’.33 This was probably a free standing structure, and it brings to mind Romilly’s observation that some Republican shelters were reminiscent of ‘Red Indian huts’ (see Figs. 6.12 and 6.13). In fact, as the visible archaeology at Mediana shows, there were virtually no differences between structures built for shelter by both the Nationalists and the Republicans. This was seen by the international volunteer John Peet, when in the Republican counter offensive across the River Ebro in 1938, his unit entered an abandoned Nationalist camp. As he wrote, it had obviously been evacuated only shortly before.., I was very forcibly struck by the similarity of the field conditions of the two opposing forces. Franco’s soldiers too had been camping out, obviously for a considerable period, without any proper shelter, and they had constructed chabolas [shelters] very similar to ours. Peet also observed, from the tin cans littering the camp, that the Nationalist troops were well fed with sardines and corned beef, and judging from the butts on the ground, there were no shortage of cigarettes.34 Conclusion This study has been an exploration and evocation of a martial anthropocosmos – a world of man – made up of architecturally defined places of experience, occupied by volunteers of the International Brigades, along with Spanish and other combatants making up the Republican and Nationalist armies in the Spanish Civil War. The three approaches I have taken, being (1) landscape archaeology – exploring the geometric personality of the Mediana lines – along with (2) the phenomenology of George Orwell’s personal commentary, and with (3), the slices of space and time witnessed through historical photographic imagery, have been marshalled in a para-empirical way, aiming to come to an appreciation of the materiality and spatial phenomena of conflict in the second quarter of the twentieth century. This may be seen as something akin to a ‘collage’, but I have no objection to this.

Gurney 1974: 131. Kemp 1957: 151. 33  Kemp 1957: 155. 34  Peet n.d.: 42-43. 31  32 

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Collage [is] often a method of paying attention to the left-overs of the world, of preserving their integrity and equipping them with dignity, of compounding matter of factness and cerebrality, as a convention and a breach of convention, [it] necessarily operates unexpectedly.35 This resonates with the view that an archaeology of the contemporary, or recent past, can foreground ‘those aspects of contemporary life at the margins that are constantly being overwritten by dominant narratives’,36 and this notion is applicable to all that this study has tried to encompass. It is also applicable to many aspects of military history itself, with its multi-vocality, and parallel narratives, and where people taking part in a battle or campaign, even physically next to one another, can describe events in utterly different and even piece meal ways. The military historian Richard Holmes had this impressed upon him when he was with the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in Iraq in 2004. About the book that he eventually published, he had this to say when writing about his experiences in the field with the regiment: This book taught me more than I thought I needed to know about the writing of military history. Most participants saw action through blinkers, often with little idea of what was happening even a short distance away, and when they recalled events they sometimes reassembled them in the wrong order, like an editor haphazardly reassembling film from the cutting-room floor… Even though I could telephone or email to check or question accounts, it was occasionally difficult to reconcile four versions of what happened at the same place and at the same time. If it was hard for an hour-long battle at the road junction known as Yellow 3 in Al Amarah, then it must have been correspondingly more difficult for the retreat from Moscow or the Battle of the Somme. 37 Wars can be, and often are, presented as a grand narrative, but when the nitty-gritty experiences of combatants in the field, along with their taken for granted (and usually unexamined) lived in environment and topography are given a presence, as in the strands of this study, then the historicity of human conflict can only be amplified. This sense of amplification was impressed upon one of the IBAP volunteers in 2015. He was in the process of completing his PhD in modern history at a UK university, and after digging in Francoist trenches at Belchite for a week or so, and handling artefacts from the Civil War that he, himself, unearthed, he came to what seemed to him to be a profound conclusion, and that was that all of his work in historical archives had been only two dimensional, and that the materiality he was now presented with was extra-dimensional, it was, to use his words as I remember them, ‘a history in 3D’.

Rowe and Koetter 1978: 142. Harrison and Schofield 2010: 11. 37  Holmes 2007: xxv-xxvi. 35  36 

129

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135

Appendix

Tables Table 2.1: The International Brigades and Battalions in the Spanish Civil War (taken and adapted from table ‘C’ in Bradley 1994: 8) No. of Int. Brigade (IB)

Name of IB

Date Formed

Constituent Battalions

Predominant Nationalities

11th

‘Hans Beimler’, 22 Oct 1936 later ‘Thaelmann’

Edgar André Commune de Paris Dombrowski

German Franco-Belgian Polish

12th

‘Garibaldi’

5 Nov 1936

Thaelmann Garibaldi Andre Marty

German Italian Franco-Belgian

13th

‘Dombrowski’

2 Dec 1936

Louise Michel Tchapiaev Henri Vuillemin Mickiewicz, Palafox

Franco-Belgian Balkan French Polish

14th

‘La Marseillaise’

2 Dec 1936

Nine Nations Battalion Domingo Germinal Henri Barbusse Pierre Brachet La Marseillaise

Spanish Anarchist French French French (No. 1 Co. British)

15th

Anglophone Brigade

31 Jan 1937

Dimitrov British Abraham Lincoln (& George Washington) Mackenzie-Papineau Sixth of February 59th Spanish Popular Army Battalion

Yugoslav British U.S. Canadian Franco-Belgian Spanish

86th

Mixed Brigade

13 Feb 1938

20th International Battalion, No. 2 Co.

British, U.S., Irish

13 Feb 1938

Mazaryck Dajakovich Dimitrov

Czechoslovak Bulgarian Bulgarian, Yugoslav & Albanian British, U.S.

129

th

35th Battery, 4th Artillery Group 150th

27th May 1937

Rakosi (NB: One other un-named battalion and possibly a third)

Hungarian

Table 4.1: Showing the relationships between private, communal and public space (after Roberts 1996) and the army (an institution), shells, and networks (after Doxiadis 1970). Institution – Society The Army Constructions Trench Systems as Architecture Private Space

Shells Soldiers individual habitations, shelters/dugouts

Communal (shared) Space

Shells Shared shelters/dugouts, fighting positions, observation posts, outworks, bunkers, strong points, artillery positions, mess areas, billets, field command posts

Networks Communication trenches, Reserve trenches, support trenches, fighting trenches, saps

Public Space

Shells Command HQs, stores areas, field hospitals

Networks Access tracks, roads, communication trenches

136

Tables

Table 4.2: Nationalist trenches and features along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Nationalist Trenches along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Indirect Record Dims (metres)

Fire Trenches*

Totals

%

Length of fire trenches of area of resistance (including 180 m of strongpoint frontage, equalling 11% of all trenches)

561

36

Length of outlying northern ‘zigzag’ fire trench

109

7

Length of outlying southern fire trench

38

2

Total Frontal Length of Nationalist Trenches

708

45

Trenches in the Rear* Length of support trenches

491

31

Length of communication trenches

368

23

Total Length of Support and Communication Trenches

859

55

Total length of all Nationalist Trenches

1567

100

Nationalist Defensive Positions and Shelters along and behind the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Direct Record Associated Trench Fighting Positions

Numbers

LFP – Fire trench fighting positions (including 28 LFPs along the strong point frontage)

92

89

11

11

-

-

Fighting positions not along fire trenches FP – Fighting positions detached from trenches SLFP – Support and communication trench fighting positions behind the fire trench Total Fighting Positions

103

100

Shelters associated with all trenches LSH – Shelter as part of a Fire Trench (including 13 along the Strong Point frontage)

37

10

SLSH – Shelter along support and communication trenches

32

8

SH – Shelter not attached to a trench line

273

70

BSH – Large shelter not attached to a trench line **

46

12

Total of SHs and BSHs

319

82

Total Shelters

388

100

* All trench lengths are estimations based on indirect measurements from satellite imagery ** This is a variation of a SH based on the relative size of individual, and neighbouring, SHs Notes: · There is one LFP for every 6.4 m of strong point fire trench frontage. · There is one LFP for every 7.7 m of total fire trench frontage. · There is one LSH for every 19 m of fire trench. · There is one SLSH for every 24.5 m of support and communication trenches.

137

Conflict Landscapes Table 4.3: Republican trenches and features along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Republican Trenches along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Indirect Record Dims (metres)

Fire Trenches* Length of fire trenches

Totals

%

424

(Length of gaps between the fire trenches)

30

(318)**

Total Frontal Length of Republican Trenches

424

30

Trenches in the Rear* Length of support trenches

184

13

Length of communication trenches

786

56

Total Length of Support and Communication Trenches

970

70

Total Length of all Republican Trenches

1394

100

Republican Defensive Positions and Shelters along the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2015 Survey Area) Direct Record Associated Trench Fighting Positions

Numbers

LFP – Fire trench fighting positions

46

94

SLFP – Support and communication trench fighting positions behind the fire trench

2

4

FP – Fighting positions detached from trenches

1

2

Total Fighting Positions

49

100

Shelters associated with all trenches LSH – Shelter as part of a Fire Trench

23

15

SLSH – Shelter along support and communication trenches

38

25

SH – Shelter not attached to a trench line

92

60

Total Shelters

153

100

* All trench lengths are estimations based on indirect measurements from satellite imagery ** The gaps between fire trenches increases the frontage to 742 m. However, this represents 43% of the Republican front facing the Nationalists as being undefended. Notes: · There is one LFP for every 9.2 m of fire trench. · There is one LSH for every 18.4 m of fire trench. · There is one SLSH for every 25.5 m of support and communication trenches.

138

Tables

Table 4.4: Republican trenches and features south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area) Republican Trenches south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area)* Indirect Record Dims (metres)

Fire Trenches** Length of Fire trenches

Totals

366

% 20

(Not recorded)

(Length of gaps between the fire trenches***) Total Frontal Length of Republican Lines

366

20

Trenches in the Rear** Length of support trenches

319

17

Length of communication trenches

1185

63

Total Length of Support and Communication Trenches

1504

80

Total Length of all Republican Trenches

1870

100

Republican Defensive Positions and Shelters south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area)* Direct Record Associated Trench Fighting Positions

Numbers

LFP – Fire trench fighting positions

12

41

SLFP – Support and communication trench fighting positions behind the fire trench

4

14

FP – Fighting positions detached from trenches

13

45

Total Fighting Positions

29

100

Shelters associated with all trenches LSH – Shelter as part of a Fire Trench

25

29

SLSH – Shelter along support and communication trenches

41

48

SH – Shelter not attached to a trench line

19

22

Total Shelters

85

100

* Excludes the overlap with ‘Little Gallipoli’ ** All trench lengths are estimations based on indirect measurements *** Gaps between the fire trenches have not been tabulated since the trenches were singularly emplaced on spurs of high ground with no indication of being designed to serve as a continuous front Notes: · There is one LFP for every 30.5 m of fire trench. · There is one LSH for every 14.6 m of fire trench. · There is one SLSH for every 36.7 m of support and communication trenches.

139

Conflict Landscapes Table 4.5: Republican trenches and features south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area – ‘Little Gallipoli’) Republican Trenches south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (2014 Survey Area – ‘Little Gallipoli’) Indirect Record Trenches* There are no fire trenches in Zone 2-E

Dims (metres)

Totals

%

--

--

--

Trenches in the Rear* Length of support trenches

94

21

Length of communication trenches

356

79

Total Length of Support and Communication Trenches

450

100

Republican Shelters south of the ‘Parapet of Death’ (‘Little Gallipoli’) Direct Record Shelters associated with all trenches

Numbers

SLSH – Shelter along support and communication trenches

3

3

SLSH – Shelter along support and communication trenches (with external stone walling)

1

1

Total SLSHs

4

5

SH – Shelter not attached to a trench line

60

69

SH – Shelter not attached to a trench line (with external stone walling)

23

26

Total SHs

83

95

Total Shelters

87

100

* All trench lengths are estimations based on indirect measurements

Table 6.1: Images from the ALBA Archive, Tamiment Library, New York University Pub Fig No

ALBA Ref. No.

Named Photographer

Date

Caption from Archive

Location (* = presumed)

6.1

11-0074

15th IB Photo Unit

Mar 1938

A rest during march to Caspe

Aragon

6.2

11-1234

15th IB Photo Unit

Oct 1937

Estado Mayor [Headquarters] at front, Fuentes de Ebro

Fuentes de Ebro

6.3

177-196056

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Camp setup, car nearby 1937

6.4

11-1382

15th IB Photo Unit

Mar 1938

2 soldiers with bulletin board

6.5

177-179193

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

n.d.

Rugged hillside, soldiers in midshot

6.6

177-179088

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

n.d.

Three men eating, one man writing, outdoors Jarama*

6.7

177-179074

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

n.d.

Soldiers resting in a ditch on the hillside

Jarama*

6.8

177-179066

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

n.d.

Rugged hillside, soldier running by bottom right corner

Jarama*

6.9

177-178081

Jun 1937

Memorial marker: “To our fallen comrades our victory is your vengeance. June 1937”

Jarama

140

Jarama*

Jarama*

Tables

Date

Caption from Archive

Location (* = presumed)

177-178005

n.d.

Slavonivitch (Chief of Information at Jarama and Brunete), Sterling Rochester

Jarama*

6.11

177-180085

1937-38

Soldier[sic] sitting with rifles in improvised shelter

6.12

11-1045

15th IB Photo Unit

Mar 1938

Group in Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Valverde

La Puebla de Valverde

6.13

11-1044

15th IB Photo Unit

Mar 1938

Group in Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Valverde

La Puebla de Valverde

6.14

11-0590

15th IB Photo Unit

Feb 1938

MacKenzie-Papineau positions, Seguro de Los Baños

Seguro de Los Baños

6.15

177-178068

n.d.

Soldier works at typewriter, portraits of communist notables hang overhead

6.16

11-1685

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1938

MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion Estado Mayor Gandesa [Headquarters], Gandesa

6.17

11-0889

15th IB Photo Unit

Mar 1938

Engineers building refugios, Lebux[sic]

Letux

6.18

11-1408

15th IB Photo Unit

Jan 1938

Lincoln-Washington digging Battalion trench at North Pole, Teruel Sector

Teruel

6.19

11-1399

15th IB Photo Unit

Jan 1938

Lincoln-Washington Battalion trench at North Pole, Teruel Sector

Teruel

6.20

11-0064

15th IB Photo Unit

Jan 1938

Action Scene, Company 2, LincolnWashington, North Pole, Teruel Sector

Teruel

6.21

177-196050

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Man standing in trench with hands in 1937 pockets

Jarama*

6.22

177-196073

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Soldier working in trench 1937

Jarama*

6.23

177-196024

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Soldier in a trench 1937

Jarama*

6.24

11-1245

15th IB Photo Unit

Jan 1938

British Battalion, machine-gun nest, Rillo[sic]

6.25

177-190122

n.d.

Low angle soldier at a machine gun post

6.26

177-196047

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Soldier in front of sandbag wall 1937

Jarama*

6.27

177-196026

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Soldiers manning a machine gun in a trench 1937

Jarama*

6.28

177-178056

n.d.

Soldier in trench

6.29

177-178074

n.d.

Officer and troops near a dugout and a tree

6.30

177-196146

6.31

177-183028

6.32

177-196023

Pub Fig No

ALBA Ref. No.

6.10

Named Photographer

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Caves in the rock 1937 Dimitrov Battalion at Jarama; Klein (man peers out of trench tunnel)

1937 Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Soldier in a dug-out cave in a trench 1937

141

Teruel*

Jarama* Jarama Jarama*

Conflict Landscapes

Pub Fig No

ALBA Ref. No.

Named Photographer

Date

6.33

177-196134

Major Vladimir Stefanovich

Feb 11 – Mar 7 Men talking outside sandbag shelter 1937

Caption from Archive

Location (* = presumed) Jarama*

6.34

11-1219

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1937

Fortified hill (Purburell) from which 15th International Brigade took 800 prisoners and a White Guard officer. Peter Daly killed here, Quinto

6.35

11-1176

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1937

Fascist officers refugio, Quinto

Quinto

6.36

11-1177

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1937

Purburell, Fascist officers quarters, Quinto

Quinto

6.37

11-1175

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1937

Purburell Hill (Fascist fortifications), Quinto

Quinto

6.38

11-1221

15th IB Photo Unit

Aug 1937

Purburell Hill, Fascist fortifications, Quinto

Quinto

142

Quinto

This book is an archaeological exploration of a conflict landscape encountered by the volunteers of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. A great deal is known about the Brigades in terms of inter-world war geopolitics, their history and make-up, but less is known about the materiality of the landscapes in which they lived, fought, and died.

The Spanish Civil War was a relatively static conflict. As in the First World War, it consisted of entrenched Republican government lines facing similarly entrenched Nationalist (rebel) lines, and these ran north to south across Spain. Fighting was intermittent, so the front line soldiers had to settle in, and make what was an attritional war-scape, a place to live in and survive. This research examines one such war-scape as a place of ‘settlement’, where soldiers lived their daily lives as well as confronting the rigours of war – and these were the volunteers of the International Brigades, both foreign and Spanish, who occupied a section of lines southeast of Zaragoza in Aragón in 1937 and 1938. This book is an archaeological exploration of a conflict landscape encountered Brigades in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. great deal This research draws, not only onInternational the techniques of landscape archaeology, butofalso on theAwritings of is know of inter-world geopolitics, their historyhistorical and make-up, but less is kno international volunteers in Spain terms – in particular, Georgewar Orwell – and it incorporates photography of the landscapes in which they lived, fought, and died. as a uniquely analytical, archaeological resource.

The Spanish Civil War was a relatively static conflict. As in the First World War, it Republican government lines facing similarly entrenched Nationalist (rebel) line Salvatore Garfi has been a professional archaeologist since 1974, on a range offront projects the had to south across Spain. Fighting wasworking intermittent, so the linefrom soldiers prehistoric to the contemporary.was Besides working war-scape, in Britain, he has worked in and Egypt, Southern an attritional a place to live in survive. This Arabia, research exam and elsewhere in the Middle East. 2010, he has specialised in the archaeology of modern as Since a place of ‘settlement’, where soldiers lived their daily lives asconflict, well as confron and his doctoral research was onand the late 20th Century conflict in Western Sahara. He was a post-doctoral these were the volunteers of the International Brigades, both foreign and Leverhulme Fellow in the School of Cultures, and Area Studies, University of Nottingham section of linesLanguages southeast of Zaragoza in Aragón in 1937 and 1938. (2015-2018), and co-founder of the International Brigades Archaeological Project (IBAP), which ran from This research draws, not only on the techniques of landscape archaeology, bu 2014 to 2015. international volunteers in Spain – in particular, George Orwell – and it incorporate as a uniquely analytical, archaeological resource.

Salvatore Garfi has been a professional archaeologist since 1974, working on a r prehistoric to the contemporary. Besides working in Britain, he has worked in and elsewhere in the Middle East. Since 2010, he has specialised in the archaeo and his doctoral research was on the late 20th Century conflict in Western Sahar Leverhulme Fellow in the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, U (2015-2018), and co-founder of the International Brigades Archaeological Proje 2014 to 2015.

Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com