Company One Mac-Paps By a Member of the 1st Company The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 2, No. 21, June 15, 1938 It was a year ago this month the first company was formed. For a while it was the only company in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. The Washington Battalion had left for the front, and...
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Tags: Blast from the Past, MacKenzie-Papineau
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 3, January 29, 1938 A ghost story of the war has come our way. Readers may interpret it as they please; the comrade who tells it offers no explanation, nor shall we. Here it is. . Comrade C. went into the Brunete offensive...
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Tags: Blast from the Past, Brunete Offensive
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More than eighty years after Bob Smillie’s mysterious death in Valencia during the Spanish Civil War, his prison dossier has finally surfaced. Robert Ramsay “Bob” Smillie was a Scottish volunteer who joined the Spanish Civil War in the contingent of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and who died in 1937 under strange circumstances. Although...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V.2, No. 31, September 5, 1938. The kid looks and acts about eighteen but when you ask him how old he is he says he’s 23. “”so you’re 23 are you?” said...
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Tags: Blast from the Past, Ebro Offensive
Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Sam by A. C. B. [Alvah Cecil Bessie]
The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 31, September 5, 1938. The Company Commissar was harassed. The boys had been beefing; the grub line was snarled up and sounded like the Chicago stockyards in a thunderstorm. Up walks Comrade S… Said...
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Tags: Blast from the Past
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The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond is the title of ALBA’s professional-development program for high school teachers in Social Studies, Spanish, Art, and Language Arts. Join us this Tuesday, November 6 at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (53 Washington Square South, New...
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Remember This, William P. Smith, Jr., Lincoln Battalion The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 1, No. 9, August 9, 1937 REMEMBER THIS I’ve heard you sobbing in the night And know your fears are not for fright But for the dead. Those Comrades lost...
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Tags: Blast from the Past, Brunete Offensive, Poem
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 25, July 19, 1938 This anniversary wouldn’t seem complete to me without some mention of the “Vancouver Stiffs” who are fighting side by side with the rest of the International against fascism. It isn’t strange when...
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Tags: MacKenzie-Papineau, On To Ottowa
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V.2, No. 30, August 26, 1938 The special Brigade machine gun company came up to reinforce the 58th Battalion on July 28th. Saully Wellman its commissar had already been forced out of action by a shrapnel wound; and when on his very first day with the Lincolns the commander Capt....
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Tags: Ebro Offensive, Jack Cooper
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Information about the Iraqi volunteers was brought to light in the memoir of Flint water crisis whistleblower Mona Hanna-Attisha in her new book What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (Random House 2018). She devotes a number of pages to the Iraqi volunteers, especially to her...
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Tags: Ebro Offensive, Iraq, The Retreats
Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Far from Baghdad, Two Iraqi Volunteers in the XVth International Brigade