José Luque at the Battle of Narvik

During the Retirada at the start of 1939, hundreds of thousands of Republican soldiers were interned in concentration camps in southern France. Most returned to Spain, but there were tens of thousands who did not want to or could not go back. Along with others who escaped via the port of Alicante in the final days of the war, they would make up the bulk of the Spanish soldiers who served in Allied military during World War II.

French authorities started to recruit Spaniards for the Foreign Legion in March 1939, and an estimated 6,000 Republicans joined. In April 1940, five hundred of them took part in the Battle of Narvik, in Norway, where they fought with the courage that would characterize them throughout the war. One of them, José Luque, is in the photo. About one hundred Spaniards are buried in Norway. Despite winning the battle, the Allies had to withdraw from Norway when the Germans invaded France in May.

At that time, most of the Spaniards in the French army, some 55,000, belonged to the Batallones de Marcha, military units commanded by French officers, and the Labour Companies, which performed support services. support. Most Spaniards served in the former. It is estimated that around 5,000 Spaniards died in the Battle of France. Many more ended up in concentration or prisoner of war camps. Those who managed to escape joined the maquis, the Free French, or the British army. This last group consisted of around 1,200 men, many of whom took part in the invasion of Normandy. Their uniforms had an “S” on the sleeve and the slogan “1940 to victory”.

The Spaniards’ reputation for bravery was cemented at the Battle of Bir Hakeim in Libya. For two weeks in May and June 1942, 3,700 men, of whom 1,000 were Spaniards, held of a much larger force commanded by General Rommel. This feat gave the British the opportunity to regroup and prepare for the decisive victory at El Alamein in October. This was the beginning of the Allied recovery. For the French, recovery this would culminate with the liberation of Paris in August 1944, in which the Spaniards belonging the 9th Company of General Leclerc’s army were in the vanguard.

Hundreds of Spaniards, a combination of Republican officers and enlisted men and adolescents who had been sent to the Soviet Union, served in the Red Army. Among them were dozens of pilots who even provided air escorts for Stalin.