Subject: adolescent revulsion

From: "Hilary Dodson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 21:31:35 +0200

I watched one of them beingfed in a peasants house.
But I admit that at first sight the state of affairs at the front horrifiedme. In a workers army discipline istheoretically voluntary.
Nothing will convince a Spaniard, at least a young Spaniard, thatfire-arms are dangerous.
I cowered behind a bush that suddenly seemed very small, and triedto cock my rifle without noise.
Chaff is not bad to sleep in when it is clean, not so good as hay but betterthan straw. Practically the alternatives are stagnation or suicide.
The things that one normally thinks of as thehorrors of war seldom happened to me. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important inthat order, with the enemy a bad last.
However, they branched off and did not comewithin sight of me.
I hope it went near enough to make him jump.
But I admit that at first sight the state of affairs at the front horrifiedme. TheSpanish-made cartridges were all refills and would jam even the best rifles.
And we were hardly even in touch with the enemy! TheMexican cartridges were better and were therefore reserved for the machine-guns. Now that I had seen the front I was profoundly disgusted. Allforeigners alike are appalled by their inefficiency, above all their maddeningunpunctuality.
You went ongathering reeds, however; nothing mattered in comparison with firewood.
A life as uneventful as a city clerks, andalmost as regular.
You cannotpossibly conceive what a rabble we looked. But I admit I am unusually sensitiveto cold.
At the beginning it was almost impossible tokeep our position properly guarded at night.
It needs an effort to realize how badly the militias were armed atthis time.
And in the darkness the rawrecruits were always firing at one another.
The hillsopposite us were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants. Beyond this we hadonly rifles, and the majority of the rifles were scrap-iron.
But at this moment there was ashout of excitement. The essential point of the system was social equality betweenofficers and men. The enemy was somewhat closer to us here, perhaps three or four hundredyards away.