Death in the Making BY ROBERT CAPA PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBER T CAPA, GERDA TARO AND CHIM
CAPTIONS BY ROBER T CAPA, TRANSLATED BY JAY ALLEN PREFACE BY JAY ALLEN. ARRANGEMENT BY ANDRÉ KER TÉSZ
Start
When we reached Barcelona on August 5 the fighting was over. Shots no longer echoed in the streets. The dead had been taken away. For the people had triumphed; they had stormed the rebellious garrisons as they had done in Madrid. Franco’s coup had failed in Spain’s two greatest cities.
At the station the troop trains were ready to leave. The front in Spain’s military rebellion, become a civil war, had receded. The enemy, beaten through Catalonia, was off toward Aragon. There were songs, much laughter, clenched fists, and the old farewells. For they did not know that this was now a war. They could not have known what was in store for them. They could not have known that behind a military rebellion, great Powers had aligned themselves. The old mother, standing in the tracks might have had an intuition—who knows?—that the good-byes were good-byes.
On the highway outside Barcelona we met peasants streaming in to join in the defense of their country, muskets in hand. Here and there one sported a piece of military equipment, a trench helmet or a cartridge belt.
The war of the man on the Street On the highway there were still stone barricades, thrown up hurriedly when the garrisons first rose, and behind them the republicans of the countryside, peasants, workers, students still stood guard, not at all persuaded that the menace had been scotched in Catalonia. The workman (above), rifle ready, keeps a vigilant eye on the road. The farmer (below) points to the village on the horizon, that unknown distant world, and says, “It may be the front begins there, we aren’t sure.� Nobody was sure of anything in the first days.
We found the front at last, near a village called Santa Eulalia, like so many in Spain. The enemy was out of sight across a ravine. The defenders of the village, soldiers, peasants, young professional men, here and there a woman, lay in the cornfields without protection; the art of building trenches was unknown in this country without a military tradition.
Bullets sing past but the enemy keeps out of sight. The republican line moves forward to a better spot.
Reinforcements arrived from the capital, from Barcelona where the rebellion had been put down. Old friends meet again and clasp as men clasp each other in friendship in Spain, a mutual backslapping process. And they share their wine from a porrรณn which requires a certain technique on the part of the drinker.
The unit—“regiment” was hardly the word in those chaotic first days—has its dove. Doves have little symbolic value in Spain. But the dove, like the orphan lamb, is adopted.
An army is born
They call a meeting and talk it over. The regular army, the old discipline, such as it was, vanished with the rebellion. A people is in arms in its own defense, but clearly the thing has got to be done with method. One says, “We must build trenches.” Another says, “Such officers as have seemingly remained loyal to us are in reality traitors.” This was sometimes true. And another says, “There must be organization on a basis of larger groups or we’ll be out-maneuvered.” And still another, “We shouldn’t wear all these colored headbands and white skirts; they make good targets for the enemy.” They are serious about it. Why shouldn’t they be? For it’s life or death. They choose their first soldiers’ committees from among the trusted comrades. And later these men become the first officers of the People’s Army.
They listen attentively, these men on whom the burden of the defense of the Spanish republic has fallen. Theirs to do. Theirs to die. Theirs the ultimate victory.
They are Catalans, Andalusians, Aragonese, here and there a Castilian, a Basque, a Galician—the many breeds which
made
up
the
old
“invertebrate” Spain—united in a common cause at long last.
“ Tomorrow we take Madrid” – Franco
On November 12 we reached Madrid, capital of the stricken republic. In Madrid you take streetcars to the front. And we took a streetcar and paid our fare. End of the line is a street close by University City. Here among the splendid new buildings of the newest, most magnificent University in Europe, lie the dead. All about, only to be taken away at night or when the fire lessens. In these modern buildings, whose construction was spurred by the young republic, classes had been held for only two years. Now the occupants are soldiers and among them many of the students who, under other circumstances …
From a lecture hall in the Philosophy Building the defenders watch the rebel enemy across the way in the Hospital of the Medical School.
The word no longer dominates in the University of Madrid; lead from rifles, from machine-guns, from field artillery, is master now. Soldiers, spraying the grounds where once students dodged the strong sun of Castile, sit in the armchairs from which professors retailed the wisdom of the ages. On a library table an anti-tank cannon stands in readiness, just in case. ‌ In a chemical laboratory, sheltered from rebel fire, the defenders sleep and eat.
In the gardens down below where Madrid took cider on hot summer nights, barricades are thrown up with trunks and suitcases carted from the checkroom of the North Station nearby in the days of the peril.
To the University City sector one takes a streetcar. We went back and forth. But there are people in Madrid who need take no streetcar; their bedrooms give on the lines. And on the edge of town are isolated cottages which are your home and the front too. When you get up you put the mattress against the wall and shoot from behind it. Small detachments live in these houses, cut off in the early days from all communication except at night, living on two or three loaves of bread for days, fighting without command.