IN THE DIMITROV BATTALION AT JARAMA by Lazar Udovick
The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and places are “best effort.” The full five-volume collection was entitled The Participants Write Spanija 1936-1939: Collection of Memories of Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish War. It was assembled by Editor-in-Chief Cedo Kapor and published by the Initiative Committee of the Association of Spanish Fighters, The War History of our Peoples, Book 130, Military Publishing Institute, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1971, 5 volumes.
IN THE DIMITROV BATTALION AT JARAMA
by Lazar Udovick
Spanija, Volume II, pp.415-420.
On February 4, 1937, our student group was assigned to the “Dimitrov” battalion, which at that time was located in the village of Mahora. We stayed there for three or four days, and then we received rifles and ammunition and set off on our journey. we knew exactly where we were going. We practiced assembling and disassembling rifles and handling weapons at the camp. It wasn’t until February 12 that we stopped at an olive grove near the village of Morata de Tajuña, where the battalion commander, Grebenarov, gave us a speech and said that we would soon go into battle. Then we started towards a hill. While we were still climbing to the top, the command to lie down came. Enemy planes appeared and started dropping bombs. When they flew away, we got off the bare hill and entered a larger one on the opposite side in an olive grove, we arranged ourselves in shooting rows and began to perform with rifles at the ready.
Soon, rifle bullets started whistling around us. We did not see the enemy, but we realized that it was not far and that we were going to have a fight. We are at the edge of the olive grove, on the hill above the river Jarama, they lay arranged as rows of shooters.
The fight has begun. I didn’t see anyone in front of me. Across the river I saw smoke from the explosion of cannon shells. Suddenly, hand grenades started falling around us. I realized that the enemy was very close. That’s where we, from the student platoon, fired a rifle for the first time. Thus began our baptism of fire. After half an hour I heard that Mirko Horvat, the commander of our student platoon, was wounded and that he had retreated to be bandaged. We ran ten meters forward, back, left and right. I heard the battalion commander shouting: “Well done, students, go ahead!” We somehow counted as students among everyone, since almost the entire platoon in that company was made up of students. In that running, we got separated from each other. He was wounded there and Ratko Pavlovic Čičko. So by dark, two of our platoon were wounded.
According to my own understanding of warfare, I thought that we would go down to a village somewhere, spend the night and come back again. However, we stayed where we found ourselves. It was quite cold that night, and there were comrades without overcoats. One or two of us went to the field in front of the olive grove to stand guard. We arranged to sleep around the trees. I remember being huddled around a tree with each other’s backs turned. We were talking, but I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t see his face, since it was dark. We only got a closer look the next day.
The fighting in the olive grove lasted, as I remember, from February 12 to 17 or 18, during which time we moved back and forth for about 2 kilometers. Next to us was the French “February 6″ battalion. I had no clear idea where the enemy was. When his tanks appeared, we would retreat 100-200 meters back, then switch left and right, again. Rose and retreated 200-300 meters. On the third or fourth day it was very critical. The enemy threw us back on the road leading to Madrid, but after a few hours of fighting we returned to the olive grove. In such a rush, we were not it was clear where the front was. We had great losses. Every day 50-80 people were thrown out of the fighting, so that on the fifth day there were about 150 left of the battalion that had about 600 people. I heard that on the third day Veljko Vlahović, who was completely separated from Brac Vajs on the right wing, was also wounded.
I remember one case. While I was lying under one olive tree, there was a Bulgarian man five or six meters away from me under another. I noticed how he suddenly cringed. He was wounded. I leaned towards him and looked, but I don’t see a wound anywhere. Only when I lifted his right hand did I see that the bullet had entered his armpit, but at first I couldn’t find where it came out. A little later I saw it sticking out on the left side of the small stomach. As he was lying down, the grain hit him from the right side and went through the entire torso. He was fully aware. At that speed, I almost cut the skin to take out the bullet. However, someone approached and stopped me. Then we took him down on the road.
I remember that Comrade Čopić, the brigade commander, was there, as well as several of our fighters. Čopić appealed more than ordered us to go back. I remember that at one point only Marko Spahić, Fetahagić, Branko Krsmanović and I remained in that part of the position. We remained completely separated, having no connection with anyone. Somehow, we got lost on the field as well. We went to look for the others. We were afraid that the enemy would take the road leading to Madrid. In that wandering, we reached the village of Morata, which was about 2-3 kilometers behind us. There we encountered our quartermasters, which was managed by the Bulgarian Angelov. He told us that he didn’t know the situation either, but that our units had not passed through there yet. We slept there on his advice and returned early in the morning with some other stray fighters.
Otherwise, during those 5-6 days of fighting, we were only once pulled behind a hill for a few hours of rest. When this chase stopped and when we started to stabilize, after a week we went down to Morata and there we shaved and washed for the first time. We were black from the helmets, placed on the inside with some kind of leather, dyed black, which soaked with sweat and seeped down our faces. We barely recognized each other. And we also had grown beards.
All the time, especially in the first days, we only ate canned goods, which we had in our bags or were brought in from the rear. I remember very well that I especially liked the canned ham. It weighed about 5 kilograms and was very tasty. We also had apricot jams and the like. It was clear that the enemy could not throw us off the hill, and we couldn’t move him across the river either, so we started to dig in. We dug trenches mostly at night. In the beginning, we dug the for ourselves, wherever we happened to be. Then we extended the trenches on flat land that was exposed for us and the enemy. We heard that the enemy was also digging. Particularly we hurried to dig before the moon rose, but we were discovered by our pickaxe blows.
The units dug towards each other and thus connected. First, there were shallow trenches, up to the knees, which only partially protected us. Every day someone would be wounded. There were also dead people that we carried along the trenches. I remember that once, while we were sitting in a half-dug trench, a bullet flew from somewhere and hit a Bulgarian in the head, who was sitting right next to me. He was dead on the spot. There was constant, although not so strong, shooting. It was stalking each other. They emerged from the trenches, and when the enemy ran across the shallow parts of the trench, we targeted that place. They also targeted our weak points. That’s why we hurried to dig the trenches as deep as possible until they were safe even for a standing position. We shifted the earth to the side towards the enemy and thus created a kind of bunker. We gradually connected the trenches to the neighboring ones on the left and right. Thus, we had a single trench, which could be used to all 33 kilometers, all the way to the Madrid fortifications. That was one unique line.
When we finished the trenches, we were left rather thin, on a wide front. I don’t think there was more than one fighter every ten meters. We also dug trenches to the posted guards. Because of the small number, the guard changed quite often, almost everyone 3-4 times a day. Until we got some replacements from the rear, we were so divided that we even went on watch every four hours. We were so tired from digging trenches during the day and standing guard at night that we really fell asleep on our feet. Ours and the enemy trenches were very close. In the place where I was, the distance was only 80-100 meters, so neither we nor they were allowed to fire artillery. There was shooting to the right and left of us, where the trenches were much further away. At that time, Franz Rozman, whom we met during our passage through Barcelona, came to our part of the trench. Since he was a corporal in the Yugoslav army, we took him as a platoon leader in our platoon.
The March rains have begun. While the weather was nice, we slept in a trench, but now we had to dig shelters. I remember that one night it rained so much that the water flowed over our ankles. I was on watch and in the dark, and I slipped and fell into the water. My entire left side was wet, and I couldn’t even dry myself or cover myself with anything. We started digging shelters, better to say, sleeping holes. We were constantly expanding them. We started to get puffiness in our faces from the humidity. Branko’s eyes were barely visible for a while. It would subside in the morning, and it would swell up again during the day and night.
On the day we went on vacation {Croatian for being relieved}, the last attempt was made to encircle the enemy closer to the Jarama River. It was an unnecessary action and we criticized it. The Americans’ battalion suffered in particular. I think about 200 of them were removed from action. As soon as they rose from the shallow trenches they had just begun to dig, they would be mowed down by a machine gun. Not even a third returned. For a while they lay between us and the enemy.
When warmer weather came, the problem of how to remove the corpses arose. For this
reason, we negotiated a truce with the enemy and through the spokesperson while we
removed the corpses. But we didn’t trust each other. That’s why we collected the corpses at night. Volunteers came forward. I remember that some Czechs came forward first. I also went with them. We collected them in the trenches, and then took them back to the rear.
Mirko, Laza and I brought a wire mattress from a bed into the little house we dug in the trench. We found it somewhere around the headquarters, when the situation calmed down a bit and when we started going out to the first little houses behind the line of trenches. We are fine. We no longer had to sleep on the ground. During that time we went to Morata where we washed and changed, otherwise we slept in this position all the time dressed, in overcoats, most of the time, with ammunition around the dogs and with a rifle next to him. The commander of our platoon was Bašić, until in March he was wounded. Every morning, he submitted a report to the company commander on the numerical situation. The company commander was Czech. As the rains were constantly bothering us, we made a small platoon headquarters under a piece of tarpaulin spread over two poles. We attached the other end of the tarpaulin to the parapets and thus made a canopy under which reports and other correspondence were written.
A group of our students who came from Prague. Standing from left to right: Mirko Kovačević, Ratko Pavlović, Lazar Udovički, Ilija Engel (the last); sitting from left to right: Slavko Čolić, Veljko Vlahović, Lazar Latinović and Branko Krsmanović
At that time, Radunović came to us. He was a young high school teacher from Montenegro, physically quite clumsy, but very good friend. He died later near Belchite, as far as I remember. On one ledge of the trench, which connected us with the forward sentries, there was a machine gun nest. On the morning of April 12, when I was returning from the dead watch {sentry duty}, I stopped for a moment at the machine gun. Just then, the enemy fired several bullets and one of them exploded on the shield of the machine gun and wounded me in the head and shoulder. I was in the hospital until my wound healed. I still have a piece in my shoulder today, and I only took it out of my head in 1946 in Novi Sad, when I returned to Yugoslavia.
I stayed in the “Dimitrov” battalion for three months – until mid-May. With me until April 1 were: Branko Krsmanovic, Laza Latinović and Mirko Kovačević, and then they went to the officers’ school in Pozorubio, where I also arrived on May 15. After me, only Ivan Turk, who was very brave, remained in the trench from the Prague students. Battalion commander Chapayev loved him very much. I heard at school that he was promoted to lieutenant and that he was killed in the Brunete offensive in the summer. Otherwise, no one from the student group remained in the trench. Ratko Vujović was there not far behind the front in a hospital, Janhuba was also in the hospital, Bastijančić was wounded in the leg. Horvat was also wounded. Ilija Engel was overcome by some kind of exhaustion. Braco Vajs went to join the tank crew not far from the “Dimitrov” battalion on the left wing. Fetahagić was wounded on the first day and so was Ratko. At the officers’ school in Pozorubio, I found Ratko Pavlović, who had returned from the hospital. He was wounded in the lower back and the bullet passed near his stomach. After finishing school, Branko, Mirko and Laza went to Albacete and were assigned to an anti-tank battery there.
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1 The memory of Lazar Udovički, taken from the tape that is kept in the archive of the
Association of Spanish Fighters, with the use of I druro material, prepared for the press by Zivojin Ljubinković
