Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings has part two of his fascinating look at Peter Kemp, an English Protestant who fought with the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War:
Kemp would spend several weeks being trained and shunted from Requete cavalry to infantry, until finally he entered the front line with a Carlist infantry unit on New Year’s Day 1937. His company commander was a former lawyer and Basque Carlist who enlisted when the rising occurred. Kemp speaks well of the man, who had also went through an officer training school–which added a much-needed level of professionalism to the Requete unit.
The Spanish Civil War is often described as a “dress rehearsal” for the Second World War. This “common knowledge” is at best misleading and usually dead wrong. Yes, the fascist and communist powers would learn lessons from the Spanish conflict: e.g., machine-gun armed tanks were virtually worthless and control of the air was essential. And the Soviet Union learned the most, in the form of the design process which led to the T-34 tank. [As an aside, the subtitle for the above-linked book is among the worst you will read–author Steven Zaloga flatly states that the war in Spain was not a proving ground for tank warfare, let alone blitzkrieg tactics. But putting “blitzkrieg” in the title will sell more books, so.]
For the most part, however, the totalitarian advisors for each side would spend most of their time grinding their teeth down to the roots when it came to large-scale operations: the Spaniards on each side had their own agendas and approaches, and were not usually interested in the newest tactics or operational ideas–outside of heavy artillery and aerial bombardments.
In fact, the Spanish war was a lot more like the First World War, only without the dense lines of entrenchments. Between the difficulty of entrenching in the oft-stony soil and the dislike of entrenching by both Republican and Nationalist soldiers, such tended to be rudimentary, outside of the front lines near Madrid. But, like Europe’s 1914-1918 suicide attempt, it would be primarily a conflict between foot-mobile infantry and artillery.
Kemp’s first combat assignment was near Madrid–and thus it would be the most he would see of entrenchments.
His Requete unit held half of a village near the capital, with Republican militiamen from Asturias holding the other half. The front line literally ran through the avenues, with Kemp’s position being a larger building surrounded on three sides by Republican forces. And which could only be reached by crawling through a sandbag tunnel.
Which brings me to another feature of the War–neither side liked to give up ground, even when it made much more tactical sense to do so.
So the Requetes held it, despite regular assaults and no obvious benefit to holding it. Kemp’s depiction of the chaos of night attacks and the danger of being sniped or mortared are harrowing, delivered in an effective, economical writing style.
And then the dread began: the Requetes could tell that the Asturians, with plenty of miners in their ranks, were tunneling toward their position, planning to take it out with an underground detonation. But there was no way to stop the process. And then the unit was given orders to rotate out of the lines to a new position to the north.
A week later, the Asturians detonated their mine and took out the entire company that had taken their place.
Kemp and his fellow Requetes were moved into position just in time to receive a major Republican counterattack at the Battle of Jarama. Again, Kemp serves the reader well with his description of the narrow victory of his unit.
But while Kemp loved the Carlists, he wanted to be a part of a unit with a more professional ethos. And in Spain, then as now, the Legion Espaniola was the most professional of them all.
A tradition of the modern Legion:
Legionnaires participating in the Holy Week procession in Malaga.
The Spanish Legion was and is much like the French Foreign Legion, only the majority have always been Spaniards. Today, it is Spain’s “rapid deployment force.” In the Spanish Civil War, the Legion was the best-equipped and most experienced force in the Spanish Army. It saved the rising and enabled the Nationalists to go immediately onto the offensive.
Kemp gravitated to the Legion and, after pulling some strings, was inducted as an alferez, or second lieutenant.
Legion discipline then was harsh, with the officers having the right to summarily execute Legionnaires for disobedience. As Kemp was to learn on two occasions during his exemplary service with the “Bridegrooms of Death,” life as a Legionnaire meant obedience above all else.
As with his stint in the Requetes, Kemp was given the gimlet eye for his Protestantism–again because of the assumed association with Freemasonry. As an Irish Legionnaire told him, membership in any Masonic order was the end of your rise in the Legion. And other foreigners in the Legion had assorted grudges with England, and made sure Kemp was aware of their disdain. But otherwise, “Mister Peter” was accepted and admired for his ability to fight.
The first of Kemp’s firsthand encounters with the Legion’s “obey or else” culture occurred when he ordered the arrest of a lower-ranking Legionnaire for disobeying orders.
While the officers were angry with disobedience, Kemp’s Colonel was almost as angry for how he handled it. The Colonel berated him: “You have a pistol–you should have used it! Now we have to waste time on a trial!”
The second involved an Irish prisoner from the International Brigades. The Brigades were full of brave men, to be sure–but Communist propaganda and pro-Republic revisionism have slathered on layers of mythic heroic gloss which do not hold up to serious scrutiny. They were largely Communist, and Communism would have done to Spain what Communism does had they prevailed.
One day during the decisive campaign for Teruel, an Irish prisoner from the Brigades was captured. He insisted he had been forcibly drafted by Republican authorities into one of the British brigade units. Kemp deemed the man credible, and asked where they should send the prisoner.
“He has to be shot.”
Kemp recoiled in horror, and his immediate superior, in an effort to soften the blow for an admired officer, told him to take the matter–and the prisoner–up the command chain. Maybe something could be done?
It could not. The Legion Colonel told Kemp that the prisoner had to be shot–and that Kemp had to order it be done.
Numb with horror, Kemp began to transport the man back, and delivered the fatal verdict to the Irishman. Resignedly, the latter requested that it be quick.
Kemp gave the order, and the two Legionnaire sergeants who had accompanied Kemp and the prisoner shot the poor man dead.
Both of the sergeants then solicitously assured Kemp that death had been instantaneous and the man had suffered not at all. It was only later that Kemp learned that the Colonel had ordered Mister Peter to be tailed by another pair of Legionnaires, both of whom had orders to summarily execute Kemp if he refused to carry out the order.
When Kemp returned to his unit, he erupted at a Spanish colleague, who heard him out and then patiently explained the “problem” with his thinking. Namely, that the Spanish on both sides were not happy with foreign meddling in their war. Kemp then shot back with the obvious–what about German and Italian support for the Nationalists?
To paraphrase the Legion officer’s response: We are not delighted about that either, to be honest. Oh, sure–we’ll take the help–especially with the Soviets backing the Republic. And we are happy to have men like you and the other foreign volunteers fighting alongside us. But in truth, we are not even entirely comfortable with your presence, even if we like you as a soldier. This is a Spanish war, and foreigners meddling makes it worse.
Truth to tell, there is a lot of history underlying the Spaniard’s sentiment: between the long decline of Spain, foreign meddling in the War of the Spanish Succession, Napoleon’s invasion, Louis XVII’s invasion, the First Carlist War and America’s crushing humiliation of Spain in 1898, resentment of foreign machinations, “assistance” and outright degradation stoked a furnace of resentment. And in Espana, memories are long. Not to mention vindictive.
Besides, the Spanish Legionnaire responded: if the Republicans capture you, they’ll do the same.
Go here to read the rest. A few comments.
1. Especially early in the war both sides shot prisoners out of hand. Later both sides took prisoners after they realized, especially the Nationalists, that such prisoners would often be willing to enlist on the other side. As in any civil war, the enthusiasts on both sides were in the minority, and the average conscripted soldado simply wanted to survive the nightmare and get back to Maria and the kids.
2. Neither side really liked the foreigners who were helping them kill their fellow countrymen. Nationalist officers drank toasts to their Republican counterparts after they routed the Italians at Guadalajara. The International Brigades were used as cannon fodder by the Republican high command, who viewed the Communist half-trained foreigners as eminently expendable. Nazi officers often reported that Spanish officers looked down upon them as if they were untermenschen. Such a reaction is common in a civil war as to foreigners. Consider the hatred of the Hessians in our American Revolution, at least until it was discovered that they were quite beatable and that their soldiers were merely pawns, sold per head like so many cattle to fight in a war they had zero interest in.
3. Kemp had the fortune, good or ill, to serve in elite units. The Nationalist war effort was greatly aided by having large and formidable elite units: the Requetes, the Foreign Legion, the Moroccan Regulares, who could be depended upon to take objectives or die trying. They would lead the way and often cause Republican defenses to collapse by turning flanks. For the mass of both armies, such initiative and determination was largely foreign. The Republicans had a few elite units, the division sized Communist Fifth Regiment, and the International Brigades, who had fanaticism if nothing else, but these could never match the Nationalist elite units in either quantity or quality. The above video from the recent Spanish film While at War depicts a column of the Spanish Foreign legion early in the war marching and singing. The man in the car is General Jose Millan Astray, the half-mad and half-genius officer who founded the legion and gave it the ethos of redemption through death on the battle field. Against such troops half-trained, at best, Republican levies had little chance, even when they heavily outnumbered their opponents.
4. The Nationalists had the well earned reputation of holding terrain more effectively than their Republican counterparts, mostly due to better lower level leadership and better training, which was too often non-existent on the Republican side until fairly late in the war.
Go here to read my comments on the first part of Dale’s excellent look at the unjustly forgotten Peter Kemp.
Bonus:
Go here to read His Truth Goes Marching On, Jerry Pournelle’s caustic rendition of a futuristic Spanish Civil War and some of the foreigners who get caught up in it.
Thank you kindly, Don!
And I remember the Pournelle story from one of the “Mercenary” anthologies. Excellent stuff that stuck with me–like the rest of the Co-Dominium series.
His two Sparta collaborations with Steve Stirling are also truly excellent. I’d love to have seen more, but alas.
I’ll just add one thing about SCW: losing the best officers was a blow that the Spanish Republic never recovered from. Sure, they had some competent ones who stayed, and some fine commanders rose from the ranks of non-professionals (e.g., Enrique Lister).
But the reality is, the Republican levies distrusted officers and had notions of discipline which ran counter to military efficiency–and often, just good sense. The account of the deployment of the Soviet BT-5 tank by the Republicans reads like a meth-fueled carjacking, not an armored assault.
And the Republicans frequently hated each other, with good reason–Anarchists and Communists, devout Basques vs. most of the rest of the Republican coalition, etc. You can’t re-create a national officer corps and command structure under those circumstances.
The amateurs had to learn the hard way, and they were not given the time.
But the reality is, the Republican levies distrusted officers and had notions of discipline which ran counter to military efficiency–and often, just good sense.
Including often holding the families of officers as hostages. The commissars assigned to units sometimes would attempt to be helpful, but most of the time they were useless or continually attempted to undermine the professional officers. The Communists tended to have the best discipline and had enough intelligence to not interfere continually with the professional officers. The Anarchists all too often lived up to their name. The politicians on the Republican side were often more interested in “building the Revolution”, the usual political games of all politicians throughout history or evading responsibility to take the necessary steps to build up a disciplined military that could win the war. By 1938 the Republican Army was beginning to develop a glimmer of professionalism, but it was too little and too late.
In a bit of synchronicity I just ran across Kemp’s book a couple of days ago and made the resolution to pick it up in my next round of book purchases or the one after.