The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

‘The field hospital [for tankists and the International Brigades] is stationed in a big room in one of the houses in a forest nature reserve. Double mattresses with clean linen and blankets have been put on the floor. There is a stove, they feed firewood into it, keeping up the temperature which is important for those who had come back from the front. During the whole operation near Las Rosas there had been a severe fog, penetrating one’s entire system…Besides water and soap, the hospital has petrol and alcohol–to wash the tankists’ faces and hands…The doctor and I go to the main hospital, to look for our wounded men. The hospital in Escorial is overflowing with wounded…I take note of the types of wounds while passing through the wards and the hall where the wounded men are received. Most of the wounded men are infantry, wounded by artillery shells. Wounds from bullets–in the back and sides.

‘During the night of 14 January I found the corpse of a Frenchman in the room next to Starkov. He had been brought back from the battle unconscious, with a heavy wound. The nurse told me that he had shouted in French, “Comrades, look out! Shells are coming from the left.” He then started to sing the “Internationale” and died. He had no documents on him. The nurse and I did not have a camera to take a photo of this dead unknown comrade. Upstairs, in an empty ward, lies a dying Italian, wounded in the neck. In the ward next to him there’s a wounded Moroccan, with a heavy wound in his leg. He does not talk and rejects food…It is unbelievably cold in the hospital. We cover Starkov [whose leg had been amputated] with several blankets, dress him in warm underwear which we’ve brought from brigade headquarters. The brigade commander asked if he could get anything for Starkov. I asked Starkov and then informed the brigade commander that he would like to have a watch. The brigade commander ordered us to take Starkov his own watch…All the wounded tankists who are now in hospitals in Madrid are sent food on a daily basis from brigade headquarters: canned milk, cocoa, oranges, apples, chocolates, sausage, cookies…In Madrid we have found the full collections of works by Gorky and Chekhov. The wounded men are supplied with newspapers and magazines, commissars keep visiting them.

‘Types of wounds varied from day to day at the front field hospitals and also at hospitals in Madrid. In the wards and operation theatres, which I visited directly after the battles, I happened to see some Spanish infantrymen who were wounded in the back, rear, backs of their legs, and shoulders. At first aid stations at the front we sometimes came across cases of “self-inflicted wounds” among Spanish infantrymen, who, while seized with animal fear, had shot through their own arms and legs, in order to be taken to hospital.’

The woman commissar also recounted the case of a tank crewman called Soloviev, with a broken right arm, who ‘developed abnormal psychic reactions’, clearly a euphemism for battle shock or what we know today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Soloviev was evacuated on 15 January to the Palace Hotel in Madrid, the Soviet fortress base. His ravings were perhaps an interesting product of propaganda. ‘Soloviev would become extremely agitated, he would talk and talk of his recollections. He spoke incessantly about his training and his time in the Red Army, mentioned the names of commanders, sites of their camps, location of units, then turned to the Spanish Civil War, matériel and people dispatched on ships, and about anarchists and Trotskyists. On the order of the brigade commander, Soloviev was moved into a separate room…On 20 January he showed symptoms of sharp delirium: “Anarchists came here during the night, and they took me upstairs!” “Anarchists will slaughter us all, they came for me, they told me about it last night!” The brigade commander ordered us to evacuate Soloviev from Madrid. Although his fits of delirium have become more frequent, we evacuate Soloviev in one of the brigade’s ambulances. We take him to a hospital in Archena. In this hospital, he can be isolated from the outside world and will get the necessary treatment. While he was at “Palas Hotel” [sic], no strangers were allowed into his ward. Political workers from the brigade kept visiting Soloviev and controlling his state.’⁷