They Fought in Spain

The photo shows six Australian volunteers, carrying the Spanish Republican flag, as they were welcomed back to Sydney on16 February 1939.  From left to right they are Jim McNeill, Charley McIlroy, Charley Riley, Charley Walters, Jack Franklin and Jo Carter. 

There were sixty Australian volunteers in the International Brigades whose names are known with probably at least an additional unnamed dozen. There were also ten Spanish-Australian volunteers. The daily papers in early 1939 claimed there had been 24 deaths, though it is nearly impossible to determine precise numbers. A group of Australians, perhaps ten, went down with the ship Ciudad de Barcelona when it was torpedoed by an Italian submarine off Valencia in May 1937, while carrying more than 300 new International Brigade recruits.  

The Australians faced formidable logistical difficulties in reaching Spain. The sea voyage took over a month and cost 38 British pounds, at a time when the weekly wage was 3 pounds 10 shillings. There were similar obstacles in volunteer communications within Australia. When several north Queenslanders travelled to Melbourne in the hope of finding a passage to Europe, the distance covered from Innisfail to Melbourne, as the crow flies, was the equivalent of a trip from Minsk to Barcelona. 

It is not surprising therefore that a great many of the Australians in Spain were seamen, wharf labourers, or men with some family or political connection with the maritime unions. Some worked their passage; others were able to buy a seaman’s book with papers for a return passage to Europe that substituted for a passport and personal identification. A number of others stowed away on vessels with sympathetic masters. Much like the comrades they met in Spain, Australians were working class in origin, unionist in politics or members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA).  

With the exception of the four individuals who fought in the Great War, most young Australian volunteers had not previously raised a rifle in wartime. Similarly, Spain was their first foreign travel and their first real brush with another culture. Sam Aarons, a founding member of the CPA, whose Australian drivers’ licence placed him in a fleet of military trucks taking men up to the front and bringing back the wounded, was shocked by the lack of internationalism among some of his international comrades.  

Jim McNeill, who had served in a series of hard-fought battles, wrote to his mother about his despair at leaving Spain without victory; and the overwhelming sadness of departure as his unit dipped the flag in the final march past before La Pasionaria and Prime Minister Negrín. There were however other consolations to be found there. He and his Australian mate were delighted by the shower of thrown flowers as they marched through Barcelona and even more so by the ‘hundreds of beautiful Spanish girls who rushed from the pavement to give them farewell kisses’.