Part historical survey, part experiential retelling, Mine Were of Trouble stands as one of the few works in English that describes the international fighters, politics, and events of the Nationalist coalition first-hand. Here are a few more quotes to give you an idea, but you should really read the whole book if you’re interested in the topic. At least”, he tells a friend on the day of his departure, “the experience is bound to be useful, and anyway I’ve nothing to lose.

Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp | Goodreads

At this point, Francisco Franco had not yet assumed supreme command, nor had he amalgamated the different political factions of the Nationalists under his personal control. That is, how I became, in the words of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” “rich—yes, richer than a king. It was a war in which the Republican government (a popularly elected leftist government which drew support from workers and the Communist Party) in Madrid was pitted against a coterie of high ranking Spanish Army officers who formed the Nationalist faction, which was dedicated to overthrowing the Republicans and putting Spain back on a more conservative and traditional footing. It is Peter Kemp's memoir detailing his experiences as a officer in the Nationalist Army during the Spanish Civil War.There were atrocities committed by both sides, and in the end, far more by the Nationalists than by the “reds”. No doubt Guernica was a wholly legitimate target, and the bombing wholly appropriate, if not executed entirely competently. The schizophrenia the nation suffered as a consequence of Communist forces destabilizing Spain found a strange mirror in the schizophrenia with which the war itself played out. This is the attention-grabbing opening line of Red Rising, the first book in a popular young-adult science. Franco goes on to warn of the communist threat, especially to British education, spreading “subversive influences among our youth”.

Reddit [Poem] I to my perils by A.E. Housman : r/Poetry - Reddit

The good result of this was that looting and rape, commonly committed by Republican forces, was nonexistent. The bright sun shone golden on the fields and the olives; it shone also on the huddled corpses of the Frenchmen, heaped around the bridge where we had expected to find them.Kemp simply got a letter from a newspaper editor friend saying that he was authorized to send back wire copy, as a cover story, and off he went across the French frontier. In fact, he thinks (like many people did at the time) that the Spanish Civil War was going to last just a few months –he’s worried it’ll all be over by the time he makes it to Spain. This, Carl Schmitt’s best-known work, first published in 1932, is a crucial book for our present moment.

Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish

I used to think that was a pretty ridiculous take, but situations like the 1934 Revolution, in which the PSOE organized a revolutionary general strike in an attempt to take down the government, seem to lend it some credibility. Do you see them as embodying the same sort of spirit that people like Kemp had, or do you find the situations too different – the enemies, the times, the causes? By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. You’d be surprised at how shocked and angered some people can be if you (for example) make fun of that crappy Picasso painting “Guernica” (OK composition, but it’s a lie to claim that it’s some sort of immortal masterpiece).

I was conscious of Father Vicente beside me; his spiritual duties finished, he was bent on seeing that we did not allow the fleeing enemy to escape unpunished. This led to the development of the International Brigades, who fought bravely in battle for the Republican government. First, however, Franco asked to see him, and he had a thirty-minute interview, consisting mostly of Franco talking about the dangers of Communism.