[QUOTE=Foolonthehill]
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Men talk/don’t talk about combat for many reasons.
1). Was the combat culturally acceptable? Was it a good war?
2). How many Vets are left from your particular conflict? How many share your memories?
3). How close are you to other men you served with?
4). How active are you in Vet organizations?
From my own experience the older the Vet the more he is willing to speak, especially as his generation starts to fade.
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Possibly what I am about to tell might not fit in this thread, but I guess it has to do with the “what makes veterans talk about their combat experiences”. Warning, long story with a longer establishing narration…
My father was a veteran from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He fought for the Republican side (anti-Franco). In other words, the side that lost. His experiences post-war were not nice, to say the least.
He spent 3 years in hiding in a windowless attic until 1942, when he was denounced and arrested. During his detention the head of the local Phalanx had him beaten to within an inch of his life (this particular individual owed his life to my father, but that’s another story that I might tell later on). Afterwards he was tried for “military rebellion” and sentenced to death; he spent one month in death row expecting every morning to be taken out and shot. In the end his sentence was commuted to 30 years in jail, after some friends interceded on his behalf, pointing out that he was a doctor and there was a shortage of them. Finally, in 1948, there was an amnesty and he was put out of jail, but blacklisted: He could not work in any hospital in the land. Fortunately, he was good enough as a doctor to be able to make a living with a private practice (go figure: The Franco authorities are incompetent enough to think that barring someone who is a doctor from working in hospitals will be enough to ruin his livelihood).
Anyway. When I was born my father was already 59, and by the time I was 7, I noticed that there was one other man who would come to our home once a year. My father would get together with him, a big pot of coffee, a bottle of brandy and two glasses, go into his desk room with him, and the two of them would be there alone for several hours. No one was to bother them. The visit would leave later in the evening, the coffee and brandy having been drunk.
Then, when I was 16, the day after the yearly visit of this man, my father took me to his side and told me: “Son, you must have been asking yourself why this old man comes every year to visit your father, and why we lock ourselves in my desk to drink brandy and coffee for hours”. He then told me the story I am about to tell you.
In late 1938 the Republican armies were retreating all over Spain. The forces of Franco were advancing; the last desperate offensive of the Republic (The Battle of the Ebro) was in its last throes, having failed. My father was in a unit that was retreating from that battle from the Teruel area towards the south, towards Republican territory.
The area where my father’s unit was was mountainous and wooded. His unit was doing what amounted to a fighting retreat, with the enemy very close after them, “biting at their heels” so to speak. The path for their retreat was relatively “safe” (through the woods) except in one place, where they were forced to go through a pass that was an open area, some 150 metres wide, between two stretches of forest cover. The Republican command had promised that there would be forces protecting that stretch, so that they could pass.
During all that trek, the unit my father was in (I don’t know what the technical term for it would be) had shrunk in size, between casualties and desertions, from 800 men to roughly 200 by the time they arrived to that particular point.
The officer in charge of the remaining men of my father’s unit (he might have been a colonel, but I don’t know how to translate military ranks from one language -or, more precisely, from one country- to another) sent a few soldiers to cross and check the situation. They couldn’t see how it was from under all those trees.
Possibly those poor guys were really surprised, in their last seconds alive, to see that, instead of their own people, the enemy was there, some distance away, with a few heavy machine guns, a few light cannon and other things. As soon as they saw some guys from the other side getting out of the forest, they started lobbing mortar rounds in the area of the forest from where they saw them come out.
Surrender was not considered. The Spanish Civil War was rather uncivil in that neither side took many prisoners. Going back was not an option, because they had the enemy behind as well, somewhere.
The colonel in charge said, essentially: “Guys, we have to take our chances. Let’s try to run to safety on the other side of the gap, and good luck”. And they set off, to go through the worst lottery cum gauntlet imaginable. Stakes: Your life.
200 men began the mad dash.
16 made it to the other side. One of them, obviously, my father. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.
They managed, by some miracle, to make it back to Republican-held territory. Their fates and stories diverge afterwards.
By the time my father and the other old man met at my home, they were the last two left of that group of 16. They gathered every year on the anniversary of that event, to remember their comrades and drink to them.
My father died a couple of weeks after he told me this story. I am grateful that he did, so that it wouldn’t be lost.
Just my 2 eurocent!
JoseB
P.S.: As a tragicomic detail, the man who came to visit my place had an “interesting” postscriptum to this incident. After making it “home” from that massacre, he was given a furlough (well deserved, I think). Unfortunately, transportation was totally chaotic, and he had to change buses several times. More unfortunately still, the man was illiterate, and at a certain point he got in the wrong bus because he couldn’t read the destination.
He ended up back in the frontlines, where he spent the rest of the war.
But, obviously, he survived. That’s some consolation.
P.P.S.: Sorry for my mistakes in English ortography and grammar.