Bert Bryan at “Hill 418”, Gandesa

New Zealand is located as far from Spain as geographically possible. Nevertheless, when news reached distant New Zealand that volunteers were converging on Spain from throughout the world to support its besieged Republic, several New Zealanders joined them. Bert Bryan, shown in this photo in action on ‘Hill 481,’ Gandesa, late 1938, was one of them. 

Nearly all of the New Zealand volunteers were living elsewhere at that time, mainly in Britain. They included an exuberant young Aucklander named Griffith Maclaurin, who had studied mathematics at Cambridge University and was convinced to go to Spain in the first months of the war by a university friend, John Cornford. Maclaurin served with the mainly-French Commune de Paris Battalion alongside another New Zealander, Steve Yates. Both were killed on the same night in November 1936, defending the northwestern outskirts of Madrid.  

Wellington seaman William Madigan was also killed in action, probably during the battle of the Ebro. He had chosen to serve among US volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and died at his machine-gun, covering the retreat of his comrades. 

Several other New Zealand volunteers were injured in battle but survived. Tom Spiller, a tough railway man from Napier, survived ferocious fighting at the battles of Jarama and Brunete in 1937, was hit by several bullets, and returned home after his recovery to recruit more volunteers. The indestructible Charlie Riley had already received a bayonet wound in France during World War One. After that war he worked as a goldminer in Australia, and his knowledge of explosives was later put to use in Spain where he became a ‘shock brigader,’ bombing enemy tanks and destroying bridges. He was again severely wounded in Spain, during the Battle of Ebro. Like Spiller, Riley recovered from his injuries and returned home, speaking at public meetings around Australia and New Zealand and raising thousands of pounds for Republican Spain.