The Walking Dead

23 July 1938

In three hours we advance.

We are at the Ebro river. We have barges and rafts that have been brought up since dusk and they will take us across. We do not know if the enemy expects us or whether we will achieve surprise.

Our battalion has been given the target of taking Hill 421, and we have called it the Pimple. I looked across the width of the river at it this afternoon, when the sun was behind it and in my eyes, but I could see that it was well named. It is nothing: it is just a target. I cannot believe, if we take it, that the course of the war will be changed…but I have not said that, my doubt, because I no longer have friends that I would trust — to say it would be treason. Behind us are machine-guns. They will not fire at the enemy, but at us if we break and retreat, if we turn and run.

Opposite us is the Army of Africa, the Moors. Our commissars have told us that we cannot surrender to them, even if we have no ammunition left and are surrounded. The Moors — it is what the commissars say — have orders to kill any prisoners who are volunteers of the International Brigade. They will slice off our genitals and then they will slit our throats. That is the encouragement we have from the commissars: we cannot fall back and we cannot surrender. We must fight to the death, or be victorious.

So, we must take Hill 421, or it is over.

I wonder, dear Enid, if this will be the last entry in my diary.

All through this day, since we were moved forward to our start line, there has been a great quiet among our people. Are we doomed? Or damned? I believe so.

It is a clear night. When we advance to cross the Ebro river, we are promised that a mist will be over the water that will help us. This morning there was such a mist, but it was brief. The sun burned it away within two hours of dawn. When the mist has gone, the Moors will hit us with their artillery and mortars, and the German and Italian aircraft will fly against us, and the Pimple — should we have reached it — will be an easy place for them to find us.

I try to tell myself not to be afraid. I had no fear when Daniel and Ralph were with me. Without them, now, I have no friend to give me strength. I am not afraid of death, nor am I afraid of a wound, however awful. I am, however, afraid off fear. There were men at Brunete, on Mosquito Hill, and at Suicide Hill, above the Jarama valley, who froze in fear; some lay on the ground and cried, and some threw away their rifles and ran back. We have seen the consequence of that fear. It is a post, it is a cigarette, it is a blindfold, it is an order to aim and to shoot given to a squad of comrades — it is the most ignominious and shameful of deaths.

The light has gone out. None of us, I believe, has heart left in this war.

To end it against a post, with a cloth across my eyes, would be the worst.

I am thinking of Mr Rammage and his clerks at their ledgers — and of the members of my Poetry Group who will be meeting tomorrow evening — and of you, my dear Enid. Thinking of all that was secure in my life, where there is no Hill 421…Better with them and with you than here? I cannot say that.

We are all destined to face challenges. Mine, after dawn, is the Pimple.