CHAPTER VIII. The Durruti Column

People crowded around to watch the Column pass through the villages. After seeing Durruti, more than one person exclaimed:

“But he can’t be the boss! He’s not wearing stripes!”

Others, better informed, replied that “an anarchist is never a boss and so wouldn’t wear stripes.”

Elsewhere peasants received the Column with shouts of joy and cheers to the CNT-FAI. Wherever the Column stopped, Durruti got out of his car to speak to the town’s residents, who gathered around the new arrivals:

Have you organized your collective? Don’t wait any longer. Occupy the land. Organize yourselves without bosses or parasites among you. If you don’t do that, there’s no reason for us to continue forward. We have to create a new world, different from the one that we’re destroying. Otherwise, youth will die on the battlefield for no reason. We’re fighting for the revolution.[555]

They were creating a new world in this way, while the Column traveled to Zaragoza and even before engaging the insurgent soldiers in battle. That and nothing else was why they were fighting.

Their first encounter with the fascists occurred in Caspe, which rebel Civil Guard Captain Negrete had seized. On July 23, a group of militiamen, including the Subirats brothers, left Barcelona on its own initiative to begin the battle. They were fighting when the Column arrived and Caspe was liberated thanks to its intervention. The Column had already begun to grow by the time of that victory. The villages of Fraga, Candasnos, Peñalba, La Almanda, and others now lay behind them. The Column reached Bujaraloz on July 27, where they temporarily set up the War Committee. [556]

The Column took off for the Ebro River the following day, with targets in Pina and Osera, on its way to Zaragoza. The Column came into contact with the reality of war shortly after they left, just a few kilometers from Bujaraloz. They suffered a fascist aerial bombardment, which terrified more than a few militiamen, who panicked and began to run. The bombing, to their surprise, had been lethal: it killed a dozen and injured more than twenty, including Artillery Commander Claudín, who led the Column’s three batteries.

A group of Column members instinctively jumped in the way of those who were fleeing and held them there. This prevented the panic from spreading and the expedition from ending in a retreat.

After this blow, Durruti decided that it would be better to go back and learn more about the enemy’s positions, to avoid being caught in another ambush. While returning to Bujaraloz, Durruti learned that Emilienne was on one of the trucks. He looked at her, smiling, without making any comment. About the encounter, Mimi writes:

It was in that now historical town [Bujaraloz] that I found my compañero, after two weeks of separation. Once the initial excitement passed, we immediately organized the Column’s headquarters. In a dark and humid room, we undertook the first tasks and, with empty hands, built the initial administrative framework of the rapidly growing Column. It was in that small, austere town that the whole structure of our Column emerged, which was quite imperfect at first, but little by little, as far as was possible, satisfied the enormous needs of the several thousand men.[557]

Durruti argued with Pérez Farràs when they returned to Bujaraloz. Pérez Farràs, a professional soldier who disapproved of Durruti’s methods, took advantage of the turmoil to try to convince Durruti to restructure his Column and revise his plan of attack on Zaragoza. Normally Durruti would have taken his comments in good grace, but they injured his pride under the circumstances. And he knew that Pérez Farràs was not making disinterested observations, but implicitly criticizing his anarchist approach. Durruti replied that anyone, libertarian or not, would have run in terror from the attack. The difference was that “the men who ran today will fight like lions tomorrow, but only if they’re treated like surprised workers and not deserting soldiers.” [558]

Durruti spoke to his men from the balcony of Town Hall. His comments were severe, but also deeply heartfelt:

Friends, no one forced you to join the Column. You chose your fate freely and the fate of the first CNT-FAI Column is quite thankless indeed. García Oliver said it over the radio in Barcelona: we’re going to take Zaragoza or die in the attempt. And I’m saying the same thing today: we’ll give our lives before retreating. Zaragoza is in fascist hands and there are hundreds, thousands of workers under the threat of their rifles. Didn’t we leave Barcelona to liberate them?! They’re waiting for us and yet we ran in the face of the first enemy attack. That’s a beautiful way to show the world and our comrades the courage of the anarchists; filled with fear by three airplanes!

The bourgeoisie won’t let us create a libertarian communist society just because we want to. They’ll fight back and defend their privileges. The only way we can establish libertarian communism is by destroying the bourgeoisie. Our ideal has a clear path, but we must follow it with resolve. The peasants that we’ve left behind, and who have begun to put our theories into practice, see our rifles as a guarantee of their harvest. Letting the enemy pass would mean that all their initiatives are in vain. And, even worse, the victors will make them pay for their audacity with death. We must defend them. It’s a thankless struggle, unlike any we have fought thus far. What happened today is only a warning. Now the battle will really begin. They will bathe us in shrapnel and we will have to respond with hand grenades and even knives. The enemy will strike out like a cornered beast. And it will strike hard. But we haven’t gotten to that point yet; now it struggles not to fall under the weight of our arms. It also has support from Germany and Italy, and we have nothing more than faith in our ideal. But all the enemies’ teeth have broken upon that faith. Now the fascists will break theirs as well.

We count our victory in Barcelona in our favor and must rapidly use it to our advantage. If not, the enemy will grow stronger than us and subject us to its merciless rage.

Our victory depends on how quickly we act. The sooner we attack, the greater our chances of success. Right now, victory is on our side, but we have to consolidate it by taking Zaragoza at once. What happened today cannot happen again. There are no cowards in the ranks of the CNT and FAI. We don’t want people among us who tremble at the first signs of combat. To those who ran today and stopped the column from advancing, I ask you to have the courage to drop your rifle, so that another, firmer hand can pick it up. Those of us who remain will continue our march. We will conquer Zaragoza, we will free the workers of Pamplona, and we will join our Asturian miner comrades. We will win and give our country a new world. To those who return, I ask you not to tell anyone about what happened today, because it fills us with shame.[559]

An eyewitness says: “No one dropped their rifle, although those who had fled cried furiously before their comrades. The lesson had been hard, but the men were reborn that day. Many of them became excellent guerrilla fighters and many also died in the course of the thirty-two months of desperate struggle.” [560]

Vicente Guarner adds:

The Durruti Column set off for the Ebro River, taking Pina and Osera in quite determined onslaughts. It got approximately twenty kilometers from Zaragoza, but the river and resistance from the troops in the city stopped its progress. Durruti’s forces established an effective web of trenches and machine-gun nests in their most advanced positions. The Central Committee of Anti-fascist Militias ordered the column to halt its advance and stabilize itself while the Ortiz Column, to the south of the Ebro, took Quinto and Belchite. Days earlier, forces from that Column had waded across the river with considerable difficulty and seized a cavalry regiment with a captain and two lieutenants in the town of Quinto, while continually repelling counterattacks from the troops in Zaragoza.

Information obtained by this Column was very useful. Almost every night workers from Zaragoza left the city and armed militiamen entered. That was how we found out that many of the officers from Navarre had been trained in Italy and that General Germán Gil Yuste had succeeded General Cabanellas as commander of the Fifth Division in late July.[561]

The previous quote shows the origin of the order to stop the Column twenty kilometers outside of Zaragoza. The military advisers all agreed that it was necessary to wait for other Columns to arrive before attacking Zaragoza head-on. Durruti, after consulting with Colonel Villalba (a CCAMC officer) in Bujaraloz and other military men, seemed to accept that idea. In the meantime, he improved his positions, with the conquest of Pina and Osera, and worked on restructuring the Column. Nevertheless, distinguished militants from Aragón such as José Alberola thought the Column should have tried to take Zaragoza immediately, given the psychological advantages offered by their victories in Catalonia. Also, instead of a frontal assault, it could have launched the attack through Calatayud, to the left of Zaragoza. [562] Later, when it became clear that it would be impossible to capture the city, Durruti had to recognize his error, which he justified by pointing out that such an operation could have decimated the Column.

The CCAMC continued organizing columns in Barcelona. The Black and Red Column (also known as the South-Ebro Column) took off for the front. Antonio Ortiz, a cabinetmaker and Nosotros group member, led the Column and Commander Fernando Salavera Campos was its military adviser. It left Barcelona with approximately two thousand men and three artillery batteries on July 25. Its duty was to occupy the region south of the Ebro River.

The Del Barrio Column (PSUC) departed on July 26, with Del Barrio as its leader and infantry Commander Sacanell as military adviser. [563] It had a force of some two thousand men, with three artillery batteries. The CCAMC ordered it to occupy the area between the city of Tardienta and the Alcubierre mountain range, establishing its command post in Grañén, and then to pass through southern Huesca and take Zuera. This Column was unique because it had a foreign group composed of German anti-fascist exiles who had come to participate in the Popular Olympics that had been scheduled to begin on July 19. The Germans named their group “Thaelmann” and it was led by Hans Beimler, a well-known German Communist Party militant.

A POUM Column also left Barcelona on July 25. José Rovira was in command and it had Italian ex-captain Russo as its military adviser. It had two thousand men, with the same artillery endowment as the others. Its position was to the north of the Del Barrio Column and its command post was in the town of Leciñena.

There were also other columns of lesser importance. One, led by CNT militant Saturnino Carod, was made up by natives of Aragón who had escaped from Zaragoza. It was organized in the zone where Antonio Ortiz’s column was going to operate. There was also a squad led by anarchist Hilario Zamora that left from Lérida. These two groups eventually merged with the Ortiz Column. This also was true of the six hundred soldiers arriving from Tarragona under the command of Martínez Peñalver. This occurred after Peñalver decided to return to Barcelona because, he claimed, he couldn’t get along with the anarchist Ortiz.

Meanwhile, a small POUM Column and the Ascaso Column—led by Gregorio Jover and Domingo Ascaso (Francisco’s brother)—reached the Huesca sector. These forces, and a column of three thousand men commanded by Colonel Villalba (whose headquarters were in Barbastro), [564] began the siege of Huesca.

The Durruti Column was largely inactive, although it had advanced its lines up to Pina and Osera. It established its headquarters in the Santa Lucía Inn on Zaragoza’s main road, in the heart of Los Monegros, the granary of Aragón. In the middle of August, the Durruti Column looked like this:

War Committee. Durruti, Ricardo Rionda, Miguel Yoldi, Antonio Carreño, and Luis Ruano.

The greater unit, the Agrupación, was composed of five centurias of one hundred men and divided into four groups of twenty-five. Each one of these units had a recallable representative, whom the rank and file appointed and who had no privilege or special authority to command.

Military Council. Commander Pérez Farràs led this body, which was made up by men who had been military officers before the revolution. Its mission was to advise the War Committee. It had no privilege or command authority.

Autonomous groups. The international group (French, Germans, Italians, Moroccans, British, and Americans) grew to approximately four hundred men. Its leader was the French artillery Captain Berthomieu, who will die in action in September.

Guerrilla Groups. Their mission was to penetrate the enemy line. They were formed by: Los Hijos de la Noche, La Banda Negra, Los Dinamiteros, Los Metalúrgicos, and others.

Strategy. The shortage of weapons and ammunition conditioned the Column’s activity. It established a seventy-eight kilometer defensive line in front of Zaragoza, from Velilla de Ebro to Monte Oscuro (Leciñena). As for offensive efforts, surprise attacks from the guerrilla groups enabled the Column to slowly move its positions forward. The Column had approximately six thousand men.

War Materiel. Sixteen machine-guns (most of which they had seized from the enemy), nine mortars, and twelve artillery pieces. They had three thousand rifles, which meant that not all militants could bear arms simultaneously.

Mode of life. The Column was the image of the classless society that they were fighting for. Peasant collectives emerged in its vicinity, which abolished money, wage labor, and private property. Column members who were unable to serve on the frontlines due to the scarcity of arms helped the peasants while they waited for their shift in the trenches. This prevented the parasitism that usually exists among soldiers.

Discipline. Discipline reflected the voluntary character of the Column: freely agreed to and based on class solidarity. Orders went from comrade to comrade. The leaders did not have any privileges. The principle was equal rights and responsibilities. The moral pressure in the social environment made up for the absence of punitive military regulations.

Cultural action. Cultural sections educated the militiamen. A transmitter disseminated readings and lectures on diverse subjects and broadcast calls to the soldiers fighting in Franco’s ranks. A bulletin named El Frente was published on a truck equipped with a mobile printing press. It reported on Column life and served as a bulletin board for ideas and criticism.

Various services were concentrated around the War Committee, such as the administrative services, in which Emilienne Morin worked among others. The Subirats brothers ran the column’s bakery. Antonio Roda led the mechanics’ group. There was an excellent health service, whose two surgeons—Dr. Santamaría and Dr. Fraile—were supported by a team of nurses, some of whom had come from abroad in solidarity with the Spanish revolution.

The structure of the Column emerged as it went along, and what didn’t work was abandoned and replaced by something that functioned better. It was an experimental process that had begun on July 22 when the first volunteers started to come to the unions. It wasn’t any one person’s creation: it was truly a collective project. [565]

Below, with a list of the respective representatives, is a breakdown of the Durruti Column’s forces:

First sector. Representative Ruano

1 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative José Mira

2 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative Liberto Roig

3 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative José Esplugas

Second Sector. Representative Miguel Yoldi

4 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative José Gómez Talón

5 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative José Tarín

6 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative J. Silvestre

Third Sector. Representative Mora

7 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative Subirats

8 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative Edo

9 Agrupación (five centurias). Representative R. García

International Group. Representative Louis Berthomieu

Composition: in five groups of fifty. Total 250

Representatives: Ridel, Fortin, Charpenteir, Cottin, and Carles

Summary

General Representative of centurias: José Esplugas Agrupaciones: Miguel Yoldi

Sectors: Rionda (Rico)

Artillery: Capitan Botet

Tanks (Armored): Bonilla

Military Advisers: Commander Pérez Farràs and Sergeant Manzana

Column Representative: Buenaventura Durruti

War Committee: Miguel Yoldi, José Esplugas, Rionda, Ruano, Mora, and Durruti

War Committee, Head of Information: Francisco Carreño

Military Advisers: Commander Pérez Farràs, Artillery Sergeant Manzana, and Artillery Captains Botet and Canciller.[566]

The deep revolutionary process in Spain attracted the most varied people to its lands: militants, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, historians, and of course schemers and adventurers. The majority brought a certain template, through which they self-confidently judged events on the Peninsula, often without knowing the history of our country or the reasons for war. Few could accept that the anarchist movement—which had been on the decline worldwide—was still a dynamic presence in Spain and played such an important role in the country’s affairs. Indeed, the debate between Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin that occurred seventy years earlier was going to reappear in Spain. It made sense that the Marxists would follow Stalin’s orders and denigrate whatever was not their work, particularly if those responsible were anarchists. With respect to the militias on Aragón front, Stalinists and Trotskyists tried to imprint a militarist spirit on their forces, but were forced to give up after the militiamen themselves resisted. Indeed, the POUM attempted to structure militia life with rigid military codes, but had to abandon the effort. [567] The social physiognomy of Aragón had changed, due to the presence of four hundred agrarian collectives and sixteen thousand CNT- FAI fighters, and it was impossible to turn back.

The militias’ “military” structure displeased many foreign visitors, who deemed it ineffective and doomed to fail. Koltsov, a correspondent for Pravda, the Bolshevik’s Moscow newspaper, visited the Aragón front in mid-August and mocked the proletarian militias in the same terms as his bourgeois colleagues. Nevertheless, others writers were better prepared to understand the revolution’s problems and they celebrated the revolutionary forces that had pushed back the rebels.

George Orwell, who fought in Aragón—and not among the anarchists— is the most significant among the latter group of commentators:

The journalists who sneered at the militia system scarcely remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was trained in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of the ‘revolutionary’ discipline that the militias stayed in the field at all. For until about June 1937 there was nothing to keep them, except class loyalty.

Orwell could have been even more pointed by asking those journalists: What would have happened if those men, instead of setting off for Aragón, had stayed in the barracks and marked time receiving military “instruction” when the uprising occurred? One doesn’t need to be a genius to know, with the Army being discharged by the Republic on July 20 and three quarters of its officers going over to the enemy, that the rebels would have taken over Spain in twenty-four hours. There was no army to prevent them from doing so. It was the militias who stopped the rebel advance. After a year of struggle, when a Stalinist-infiltrated half army existed, it was time, writes Orwell, to attack not the militias but the foundations upon which they rested:

Later it became fashionable to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to the lack of training and weapons were the result of the egalitarian system.... In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers’ army, discipline is theoretically voluntary.... In the militias, the bullying and abuses that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment.... The normal military punishments existed, but they were only invoked for very serious offenses.... ‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness—on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square.... They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.[568]

Although there was some Column activity in early August, it wasn’t enough to satisfy Durruti. He was not the type of man who could sit still or pass the time in the innocuous conversations. He made the rounds endlessly, visiting advanced positions and taking an interest in every detail of the enemy’s movements. Dawn was the most important moment for him, because it was then that comrades who had gone on special missions into enemy territory returned to the Column. The Column used their reports to reinforce its defensive lines and sent information of a more general character on to the CCAMC. [569]

Surprise attacks on the enemy also bore fruit, whether in the form of prisoners, dynamited enemy positions, or swiped arms and munitions. Despite all this, Durruti was still restless, so he fixed his attention on the peasant collectives that were sprouting up all over liberated Aragón. Relations between the collectives and the Column were exceedingly fraternal. [570] Peasants visited the Column to bring supplies or to ask Durruti to visit their collectives and offer his opinion on how things were progressing. Durruti generally consented readily but, if for some reason he was unable to go, he sent Carreño or another comrade in his place.

His visits to the communities enabled him to appreciate the collectives’ importance for the revolution and also the dangers that would soon threaten them if they didn’t form a united body. He urged the peasants to create a federation that would link all the collectives in the region. Such a federation, he told them, would not only give them an organizational force but also permit them to outline more general plans for putting a libertarian socialist economy into action. Durruti thought it was extremely urgent that they take that step, particularly because some Stalinist Columns were deliberately trying to sabotage the collectives. A federation would build solidarity among the peasants, which would be the best defense against their enemies. After returning from one of those visits, he suggested that the War Committee inform the militiamen about the collectivizations and urge them to help the peasants take in the wheat harvest. That would build solidarity and also give the more educated combatants an opportunity to discuss libertarian communism with the peasantry. A leaflet was printed that documented the work being doing by numerous collectives and it was circulated among the centurias. The response to the leaflet was very positive. Groups of libertarian youth were the first to volunteer to play the role of soldier-producer. This was the beginning of what would shortly become the Aragón Federation of Collectives of the Aragón Defense Council.

But of course life was not idyllic. They were at war, in all its terrible brutality, and Durruti was acutely aware that the mode of life imposed upon them degraded even the most vigorous revolutionary. “Man’s purpose is not to lurk and kill, but to live! To live!” he burst out at times, while striding through the War Committee office. “If this continues, it will ruin the revolution, because the man it creates will be more beast than human. We have to end this as soon as possible.” [571]

These reflections gave birth to an all-consuming impatience in Durruti. Many nights, unable to sleep, he left his straw mattress and “went as far as the vanguard positions, passing hours with the sentries staring at the lights of Zaragoza. Daybreak often surprised him in that attitude.” [572]

As the Column’s leader, Durruti heard complaints from peasants who bemoaned the behavior of some his men in the villages. Usually they were minor things, but it was clear that even volunteer militiamen can succumb to the vices typical of soldiers. When this happened, Durruti tried to reprimand the person in question in front of as many people as possible in order to get the group as a whole to reflect.

But sometimes a simple reprimand was not enough. One day Durruti found a centuria leader far from his sector and asked him what he was doing. The man told him that five members of his centuria had left their sentry post and that he was looking for them. Durruti finally found the men drinking wine in a nearby village. He said: “Do realize you what you’ve done? Didn’t it occur to you that the fascists could have passed through the position that you abandoned and massacred the comrades who’ve entrusted you with their safety?! You don’t deserve to belong to the Column or the CNT! Give me your membership cards!”

They took the cards out of their pockets and handed them over. Durruti couldn’t really demand anything more.

“You aren’t CNT men or even workers! You’re shit, nothing more than shit! You cause deaths in the Column! Go home!”

Instead of being ashamed, they almost seemed bemused. This exasperated Durruti even more: “Don’t you know that the clothes you’re wearing belong to the people? Take off your pants.”

They were brought to Barcelona in their underwear. [573]

Durruti could pass quickly from extreme anger to perfect calm. When he returned to the War Committee, he told Mora to call Barcelona. He wanted to speak with Ricardo Sanz: “Ricardo, did you know that a political party in Sabadell has eight machine-guns hidden in its office? I give you forty-eight hours to have these machine-guns sent to me. And, listen, send me three agronomists too.” [574]

He hung up the phone. Mora was confused, surely no less so than Ricardo Sanz. He couldn’t figure out the connection between machine-guns and agronomists.

Durruti had visited several collectives that day and all complained about the lack of technical personnel. Some had asked for agronomists and specialists to help them with tests that they wanted to conduct on new crops. Others lamented that their best men had left the collective to enroll in the Column. Durruti noted the name of the militants in question and summoned them to the War Committee. When they arrived, he told them: “The Column no longer needs your services.”

Seeing the effect of his words, he changed his tone and, smiling, said: “No, it’s not what you think. I know you fight well, that you’re valiant and brave. But the comrades in your villages need you. They need you to carry forward the work that they’ve begun. What will all our bullets leave after the war? The work being performed in your villages is more important than killing fascists, because what’s being killed there is the bourgeois system. And what we create in that sense will be the only thing that history will register.” [575]