Chapter 44

In Albacete we were given personnel forms printed part in French, part in Spanish to fill out, listing name, age, origin, occupation, etc. To the question asking party affiliation I put down “Communist.” That was corrected to “Anti-Fascist.” I did not know any such party but it was O.K. with me. We were next lined up at the rather depleted supply depot for uniforms. All I could find to fit me were a used pair of flimsy khaki pants and a khaki shirt, an overcoat, one thin blanket. No underwear, socks, or tunic were issued.

Next we formed up and the base commissar made a speech to us in French, which was translated simultaneously into a number of tongues. It was the usual party speech on imperialism, Fascism, defense of the Soviet Union, and concluded with a paean to that idol of the French working class, the beloved leader of the heroic International Brigades—Comrade André Marty! Tired as we were we cheered and clapped at the right places. Then we were told we would not be required to swear loyalty to the Spanish government because that might jeopardize the citizenship of many volunteers. I had been worried about that, and now I felt relieved. We sang the lnternationale and raised our clenched fists, shouting slogans such as:

Viva la Republica Española!
Muerte al Fascismo!
No Pasarán!

We also “Viva“-d Stalin, General Miaja, the International Brigades, Staline, the Glorious Spanish Army, Stalin, André Marty, and a number of others until we got tired and hoarse. That made us all officially Internationals and we were quite elated.

That ceremony over, all volunteers with previous military training were ordered to step forward. I was surprised that out of close to a hundred Americans only eight of us stepped forward, including myself; while in the other groups those with previous military training formed the majority. They had come from countries where military training was compulsory.

Next, those with previous artillery experience were ordered to step forward. Of the Americans, I alone stepped forward and then, when the order was repeated, another American about my age joined me. He was from Oklahoma and he was gloriously drunk. I wondered where he got his liquor, I had seen no cantina anywhere.

There were only twenty-two of us with previous artillery training. We were to be transported to Almansa, the International Brigades (I.B.) artillery base. Before leaving I took the comrade from the American base commissariat aside, told him who I was, and asked him to tell Bill Laurence, the American Base Commissar in Albacete about my arrival. I would have preferred to see Bill Laurence in person but since I was being shipped out, there was no opportunity for that.

Almansa was about 80 kilometers from Albacete. We traveled in a one and a half ton open Soviet truck built on the Ford model. The truck was sturdy and designed for the poor Russian roads. Since the Spanish roads were just as bad they stood up very well in Spain. The trip took over three hours. We started out at dusk and we were soon traveling in the dark, seeing little of the countryside. All we had been fed that day was some coffee and bread in the morning and we were hungry, yet our spirit was high. We were singing revolutionary songs, the same tunes but different words, in a half-dozen languages. Oklahoma was still gloriously drunk, he was sitting next to me in the truck and I wondered how he was able to keep that glow from dying out.

Oklahoma had attached himself to me from the start but spoke very little, almost in monosyllables. All I could get out of him was that he was half Indian, had worked mostly in the oil fields, had served in the artillery in the U.S. Army at the tail-end of the First World War.

He was not a Communist, in fact knew very little about politics and cared less. He had been in a bar in Seattle, heard some seamen talking about going to Spain to fight the Fascists, thought that was a good idea. He left with them, joined up, was transported to Paris where he became drunk and got lost. Finally he had made contact just before a transport left for Marseilles, was drunk on the boat until he had found himself in the water, clung to something until he was rescued. When I asked him where he got the money to get drunk on, he said “shooting craps.” He pulled out a fistful of francs and wanted to give me some but I refused. Now he was sitting next to me: not asleep nor joining in the singing, just drunk and content. He was of medium height, with the most peculiar face I had ever seen on a man. His head seemed flattened as if in infancy someone had put his skull between two palms and squeezed hard. Anthropologists speak of long heads and round heads. Well, his was a squashed head, twice as broad as long, with an extremely wide mouth and a broad flattened nose, a broad forehead no higher than an inch—take a rubber doll, pull her cheeks apart as far as they will go and you will get the effect.

He squatted hunched over his knees for quite a while when suddenly he spoke up in a flat drawl.

“Comra-aa-de, is this the International Bri-ig-a-ade?”

I assured him it was. He contemplated it for a while then asked,

“How come there is only two of us Americans and the rest all Greeks?”

“They are not Greeks,” I replied in surprise. “They are Czechs, and Poles, Serbs, Germans, Jews, and Austrians.”

“Then why the hell do they all speak Greek?” he said truculently. I explained how they all spoke in their native tongues but Oklahoma only shook his head.

“They all sound Greek to me.” Then he added an after thought. “Tell them to speak English, it will be easier on them.” I made an effort to enlighten him but he only shook his head, he couldn’t see why anyone wanted to speak any other language but English. Suddenly he pulled a bottle from under his shirt and said, “It ain’t whiskey, and it ain’t gin, they say it’s rhon but it tastes like rum. It’s better than nothing. Let’s drink to those poor bastards who don’t know better than speak Greek.”

The rum tasted good. “Where on earth did you manage to get hold of it?” I asked in amazement.

“I gave one of them Spanish in the barracks some francs while we were just doing nothing, told him ‘whiskey’ and he got it for me.”

Oklahoma was quite a man, cut from a different cloth than the average American volunteer who was generally either a Communist or a close Communist sympathizer. He was to have quite a lot of trouble later with the I.B., or to be precise, the I.B. leadership was to have trouble with him. He liked to drink and he liked to gamble, both of which were considered to be vices by the fanatics in the party who, like all fanatics, had a strong puritanical streak in them. In addition, when Oklahoma drank he would usually get drunk; when he gambled he would usually win and clean out the rest of the volunteers. He would then generously stand drinks to all losers who, although normally nondrinkers, would want to make the most of the opportunity to recoup their losses even if in liquid form and would drink themselves into insensibility. He was considered quite a problem by his commissars, fretting about the “morale” of their men. Oklahoma went from arrest to arrest and he would have been turned over to the SIM and shot, except that he was totally “nonpolitical” and a willing soldier who never grumbled and who accepted whatever hardships stoically.

I interceded a number of times in his behalf, pointing out in solemn Communist phraseology that he was representative of that vast stratum of the masses whom we wanted to win over, typifying that common denominator of the united front we wanted to establish all over the world; that he was the embodiment of those toilers kept in shameful ignorance by the capitalists of whom we demanded but one thing—to be against Fascism. Since no one could possibly maintain that Oklahoma was pro-Fascist, since the very fact that he had come to Spain proved that his sentiments were definitely anti-Fascist, I argued that we simply had to accept him as the product of his capitalist environment and the victim of our vicious colonial treatment of our Indians; that it was the job of the politically more advanced comrades to tutor him in Communism, to elevate his class consciousness. Expressed in those long-winded and stilted Marxist terms it always worked, no matter how vexed those party zealots were with him.

Oklahoma was always willing to co-operate in the elevation of his class consciousness. He could sit through, and would, without twitching a muscle, hours of the most tedious political harangue which was compulsory and went under the heading of political education. Those sessions were deadly, they consisted of an exasperating rehashing of all the inane party propaganda in an irritating Communist rah-rah fashion, extolling the virtues of the leadership until everyone rebelled against it. Oklahoma didn’t mind it a bit. They made him swear off liquor which he did cheerfully. The next time he would get drunk and be charged with breaking his anti-Fascist oath, he would cheer fully volunteer to take another oath, to swear on the spot that he would never touch another drop again.

He was transferred from unit to unit and the last time I came across him somewhere at the front he was company cook, and a conscientious one. It was during the retreat when every thing was in chaotic disorder and I had not eaten anything but scraps for days. He fed me from his secret stores until I could hardly move and when I was ready to leave he said he had something for me. He went to a potato sack and pulled out a bottle of cognac, an incredibly scarce item in those god-forsaken mountains. I demurred, but he pressed it on me, assuring me he had four more bottles left.

“Them muckin’ commissars who were after me for drinking are now coming around scared shitless, sucking for a drink,” he told me with quiet contempt. “I tell ’em I swore off drinking as they wanted me to. They don’t believe me and but I won’t let ’em catch me drinking. I do my drinking at night in the dark, enough to last me through the day.”

I still wonder whether he came through alive. I know his kitchen was hit twice, the second time completely demolished. Occasionally I still dream of coming across him unexpectedly in a dim bar in some out-of-the-way joint; ordering up two full pints for him but only single shots for me; the two of us just sitting there with nary a word but in blissful understanding until one of us rolls off his stool—Oklahoma, not me.