Fleming Sheridan’s Death Certificate

On October 16, 1938, Don Antonio Cordon Garcia, Artillery Colonel and Undersecretary of the Army of the Ministry of National Defense for the Spanish Republic, issued a death certificate for a Canadian named Fleming Sheridan. A 23-year-old lumberjack from Cochran, Ontario, Sheridan was a member of the Canadian Communist Party who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War in December of 1937 and died of his wounds in a military hospital on July 30, 1938. He died during the Ebro Offensive, which was the final Republican offensive of the war.  The Republican forces were already significantly weakened, and supply trucks could not reach the front by July 27 and 28, 1938. With only two ambulances, a successful evacuation was not possible. The casualties from this offensive were high, and amongst them was Sheridan, who seemingly was evacuated from the front but succumbed to his injuries a few days later in hospital.  

Sheridan’s is one of several death certificates issued by the Spanish Republican government for the casualties of the Canadian Mackenzie Papineau Battalion. Examples of other volunteers found in these certificates are William Stanley Henderson, a 33-year-old truck driver who lived in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta, and was killed in action during the retreats in April 1938; James MacCallum, a 31-year-old Canadian born in Scotland who was also killed in April 1938; James Cochrane, a 34-year-old who had lived in Brussels and Windsor, Ontario and was killed in action in Segura de los Baños in February 1938; and George Cambell, a 38-year-old who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia and was killed in action in Gandesa on July 27, 1938.  

Sheridan and the others whose names were recorded in these death certificates were some of the many Canadian fatalities of the Spanish Civil War. Of the 1,681 Canadian volunteers, it is impossible to obtain exact casualty statistics. More than 400 volunteers were presumed dead, either killed or missing in action. However, countless bodies were never found, so precise numbers are impossible. Moreover, none of the Canadian casualties have a marked grave. While these death certificates contain limited details, are impersonal government documents, and are written in Spanish, which presumably many of the families and loved ones of the dead could not read, they do offer official confirmation of the Canadian volunteer’s death, which is something many of the dead or missing volunteer’s loved ones did not receive. The Canadian causalities of the conflict also continued after the war, with at least four volunteers committing suicide. Few survivors expressed regret about their involvement in the war, but many carried what they saw in Spain with them for the rest of their lives, and they continued to remember their friends and fellow volunteers who had not made it back home with them to Canada.