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| Britain |
| Alun Menai Williams, Spanish civil war veteran, Dies at 93 |
| 2006-07-18 |
| The first attempt by Alun Menai Williams, who has died aged 93, to join the International Brigade and fight fascism in the Spanish civil war ended when the trawler he was travelling on was turned back by a gunboat. Then, a passage by ship from Marseilles to Barcelona was aborted. The third attempt, though successful, nearly cost Williams his life; his Barcelona-bound steamer was torpedoed by an Italian submarine, and he was rescued by a Spanish fishing boat. Williams was one of the last survivors of the 2,400 British volunteers in Spain; 526 died during the conflict and fewer than 20 are still alive. Once again, nobody writes an obituary like the british |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Plug for an old professor friend of mine: "Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia", by Gerald Kleinfeld An interesting read. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-07-18 19:02 |
| #2 There's a good article/interview with Williams in Military History magazine about 3 or 4 issues ago. |
| Posted by: Dreadnought 2006-07-18 12:54 |
| #1 Only problem is that it was not a choice between freedom and fascism but between a stalinist dictatorship (1) and Franco's. The difference being that except in the immediate post-war Franco killed few people. A lot fewerf than your average communist dictator (1) the "republican" government sent all of Spain's gold to Stalin. After the war Spaniards starved because quite simply Spain had zero gold or foreign currency and could buy neither food or industrial products. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-07-18 10:54 |