Songs of the War

I decided to explore music about the war, and one song that struck me in particular was a song in which the soldiers pleaded that they wanted to go home. I found this very interesting, because most of the volunteers went there on their own free will. Likewise, I don't think that the people who went voluntarily to Spain understood what they were getting themselves into; they were blindly going there without any knowledge. It makes me wonder that if they had previously known of their conditions and what was going to happen if they would have even gone in the first place. Also, if they had known how the war was going to turn out, would they have even made the long trek in which a lot of them lost their loves and were disconnected with their families?

When the War was over

After watching the video on what had happened when the war was over, I can better relate to how the generation of the people who were alive during the Spanish Civil War felt. According to one lady, people went to her door and remarked that Franco had won and that they did not know how they were going to react with Fascism. They also talked about how lucky they were if they or anyone they know made it out of Spain alive.

There were also pleads as to why nobody stood up against Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. People were also wondering why the United States did not intervene more. Also, there was a sense of fear in the people's voices, because they did not know what to expect in the future.

Why did the US not intervene more?
Why did they let Hitler and Mussolini get as much recognition with their iseas as they did?

A short letter by Selma Chadwick

I immediately skipped over this folder, I will be honest with you there. But upon further examination of it, I realized that there was more than meets the eye.

In Selma Chadwick's folder, there were three sole pieces of paper in it: a letter to Freddie. Though the letter is very short, it allows for lots of interpretation as follows:

1. Many times correspondence between soldiers in Spain and their families was elongated and the letters were thus not timely.
2. People felt bad about abandoning their home and their family and friends, but often felt it was necessary to do so.
3. Many military nurses were always overwhelmed with the amount of patients that they had to take care of.
4. The people who volunteered certainly did not live in the lap of luxury.
5. People try their hardest to forget the tragedies of war and somehow take glory in the things around them.

Rose Freed

Before going to work in Spain, Rose Freed, unlike many women during the Spanish Civil War, worked as a laboratory technician in none other than New York City, simultaneously taking classes at dare I say it, Columbia University. She remarks that her pay and her job was going very well when she decided to join the American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy.

She claims that she is not a member of any political organization, but rather she understands "the suffering and misery of the oppressed and have always been with them." Yet, Freed admits that she went to Spain an anti-fascist, and that a year later, her beliefs were even stronger.

Because of her background in laboratories, Freed was put in charge of building a laboratory in order to give the doctors and nurses a place to do blood transfusions etc. Yet, like many other nurses, Freed argues that due to the lack of supplies, their work was always somewhat handicapped.

What was most interesting about Rose Freed's folder was the following phrase: "Every member of our groups has participated, not only in the duties of their professions, but in others as well. Doctors have assisted with road building and carpentry, and have acted as chauffeurs and stretcher-bearers when necessity demanded. Nurses have scrubbed the floors of the wards have done cooking dish washing, serving, yes, and road building too."

I fin that last statement absolutely astounding, because all of the other accounts of medical professionals do not give way to the fact that these men and women were more than what they appeared to be. Not only did they help aid the Spanish soldiers, but they also tried to help build back and give to Spanish society. It is incredible that these people had so much compassion for people that they barely, if even, knew.

**The picture attached is of Rose Frees and Langston Hughes. **

Continuation of the Frances Patai Papers

As I am browsing through the Frances Patai Papers, I come across a woman named Cleo Duncan. When I open the folder on her, the first thing that pops up about her says "seems like a koook" Obviously, whoever wrote this did not believe in the legitimacy of Cleo Duncan; on the same page, the author remarked that there was not a lot known about her, just very vicious gossip. Of course, this prompted me to look further into the folder.

Cleo Duncan was, like most women involved in the Spanish Civil War, a nurse. As claimed by a telegram, she was "neither poised, serious nor cultured and is entirely innocent of political convictions. But wait...wasn't everyone involved in the Spanish Civil War involved somehow politically with the Communist Party?

Reading on, it spoke about how Cleo Duncan was a relatively useless nurse, as she didn't speak Spanish, nor did she really contribute much to the war effort. On the second page of this telegram, however, it says that she was leaving Spain, and as she was awaiting transportation her arrest took place. Why would they arrest such a seemingly worthless person?? It just didn't make much sense.

Apparently, however, foreigners who desired to leave Spain in such a manner aroused suspicions in authorities, such as in the case of Cleo Duncan. Upon search of Miss Duncan, authorities found a letter addressed to a soldier in Spain.

Here are some question that Miss Duncan answered upon her questioning as given by her statement:

Why did you come to Spain? - Humanitarian reasons only.
How does Roosevelt send his info to America?- What information?
Is the Mayor a Fascist?- I don't know.


I think I am very interested in Espionage during the Spanish Civil War.

Marjorie Polon

So, I decided to read more about Marjorie Polon from the essay Professor Fernandez wrote and had published. I am very interested in women in the Spanish Civil War, and I thought that this would be a great start. Interestingly enough, though Polon was only 14 years old at the time, she was corresponding with men much older, some possibly twice her age. One thing that bothered me was the fact that the men wrote to her so roughly and crudely, treating her as an object rather than a person. Also, there does not seem to be a sense of personal divide; for example, the soldiers seem to pry into her business, expecting her to be so open with them as they are with her. The article continues to describe the relationship between Marjorie and the men, each of whom wrote differently to her; some wrote love letters, some wrote to her as a friend, and others just asked her simply for cigarettes. it is just so astounding to me how a 14 year old girl could keep up this facade for so long, and how the men she wrote to never realized her real age.

Roll Call

As I was stumbling through website links, I came across a list of all of the United States military men who fought in the Spanish Civil War. While I was looking over it, I began to notice that a lot of siblings, particularly brothers, often went off to war together. This brought a couple of questions to my mind:

1. How did these brothers leave and when they did how did their family take it?
2. Were they deployed to the same place; did they have the same reasons for going?
3. Whom did they tell they were going and why?
4. Did they both come back together?
5. Did they have the same similar symptoms and side affects of war as many of our present day war heroes have such as PTSD?