Spanish Civil War
He flew on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War with Bert Acosta and Eddie August Schneider in the Yankee Squadron.
I've had a wing fold up at a thousand feet while sitting on a dud parachute. I've been backed up against a wall looking down the rifle barrels of a firing squad. I've felt the automatic of my own commanding officer poked in my ribs. While being smuggled from Spain into France to visit my wife, I've had a speed boat pilot killed by Fascist bullets in the Bay of Biscay. I've fought half a dozen German pursuit planes in the air with an orchestra leader as a gunner. And of all places to be during a bomb raid I was there - locked up in jail - and with my wife. And these events have not been an accumulation of my war service in France, or Russia, or Mexico, but happened during the past few months while serving as a pilot with the Government forces in Spain. ... A Spanish pilot, Jose Galarza, bailed out from a crippled ship, during a fight, and landed safely in Franco's line. But the next day a Junker bomber droned over our field and dropped a box. It contained the chopped up cadaver of Jose ... Lafayette! Pulaski! Rochambeau! Who were they? Glorious foreign volunteers who aided us in time of need. We name bridges, boats, and towns after them now. Our kids read about them in our histories. ... And over in Spain foreign volunteers are fighting that a friendly democratic nation may survive. In most instances those volunteers came from the army of unemployed in their countries where they were without hope. In all cases they are highly skilled technical men. Their hope is a new lease on life; but the usual reward has been a nameless grave. ...
Read more about this topic: Frederic Ives Lord
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, spanish civil, spanish, civil and/or war:
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Stiller ... took part in the Spanish Civil War ... It is not clear what impelled him to this military gesture. Probably many factors were combined—a rather romantic Communism, such as was common among bourgeois intellectuals at that time.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“The French courage proceeds from vanity—the German from phlegm—the Turkish from fanaticism & opium—the Spanish from pride—the English from coolness—the Dutch from obstinacy—the Russian from insensibility—but the Italian from anger.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“He was one whose glory was an inner glory, one who placed culture above prosperity, fairness above profit, generosity above possessions, hospitality above comfort, courtesy above triumph, courage above safety, kindness above personal welfare, honor above success.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)