Merriman’s diary is particularly dense on these two days.  He wakes to find that Dougher and Rogers probably are still not back from their “dates” at Madrigueras on the 28th.  He chews them out.   Bill Lawrence was in Tarazona to check to see if the Battalion was ready for the “Socialist Competition”.   Socialist Competition or Socialist Emulation was practiced in many collectives whereby workers would compete to meet the goals of production set for the society.  Typically placed on important holidays, it had a flavor of a sporting competition with, typically, badges or flags of a political nature being awarded.

Merriman and Marion and Joe Dallet left for Albacete to meet with Bill Lawrence who was leaving for the Cordoba front.   He meets with George Nathan who would be under Jock Cunningham and with Hourihan and Wattis.  What looks like “final drunk” may be a transcription error.   Merriman gets a side meeting with Vidal and Schalbroeck and asks his first big favor…. “Don’t give me Wattis”.  Clearly, there was no love lost between these men.

Merriman rounds up ammo and weapons.  He gains “tent telephones” and “1 central” (probably a switchboard with battery for the phones).  He picks up maps, binoculars,  Ross rifles.   He gets a secret memo for a Thibault.  Frenchman Raymond Thibault had been accused of desertion in May, 1937, and this may be the resolution of his case.  Merriman may have made a mistake (or else someone else made a mistake) and showed him a new Light and heavy machine gun combination.   Merriman really wanted one of those.  He gets a call from Pierre Lamotte who says he lost a weapon.  Merriman goes out to the Auto Parc and replaces it but is frustrated when he cannot get these new light machine guns.

Merriman drives out to La Roda which is on the Albacete – Madrid highway to the southwest of Madrigueras.  He looks for a “Marsly” or similar name who apparently is in communications.   He sees new rangefinders and periscopes there and wants some of those as well.  A long day in procuring supplies for the Battalion but he seems pleased with his bounty.

On the last day of June,  Merriman got the Battalion gathered early for an inspection by Clerc of the Madrigueras camp and two youth delegations who were out to see the Socialist Competition.  Company 1, with Bob Thompson as Commissar, stood out and won a new Battalion banner with the Mackenzie-Papineau name on it.   Even during the games, Merriman is dealing with complaints and in order to improve the food, he asks the men to kick back five pesetas each payday so that he can get better food and he adds another cook.

Merriman says that Louis Fischer contacted him.   Fischer was a writer for The Nation and apparently wished to join the brigades in some sort of position in the rear.   Fischer, 41 in 1937, was in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s and probably at the Lenin School.

Merriman is trading men with Pozo Rubio for them to attend the Officers and NCO schools.   In this group from Tarazona, Jack Cooper, Saul Wellman, Otto Reeves, John Skifstrom, Burt Jackson, Ernie Kozlowski, John Macrel, Canadian Hugh McGregor, Canadian Bill Skinner, Albert Wallach and Frank Rogers will go to the school.¹  Tom Winteringham came over from Pozo Rubio to lecture on maps.   Merriman has some difficulty with Harry Zeintz.   Merriman says that a Russian named “Ivanov” is in camp and Zeintz tells him his troubles.

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¹ RGASPI, Fond 545/Opis 2/Delo 52, page 255.

Between the time that Harry Haywood had his face to face meeting challenging Vladimir Copic to resign and the 25th, we know from Mirko Marcovic’s remembrances that General Gal threw a party at his Ambite villa.   Eby relates the story:

In an unusual obeisance to camaraderie among his inferiors, General Gal held a banquet for his staff and the six battalion commanders and commissars at his riverside dacha.  Having been briefed on the aborted mutiny, he poured healing glasses of vodka on troubled waters, outlined his expectations for the coming offensive, and received from his retainers toasts to his health and continued success.  He explained his 15th Division would also include the XIIIth Brigade, the Dombrowski, which was on the way from a hard campaign in the South.  The camaraderie ended with an abrupt explosion of epithets in Russian and Hungarian.  The general had just discovered that Lieutenant Colonel Hans Klaus, Copic’s second in command, had — for reasons never explained — boycotted the banquet.  Gal dispatched a messenger with an order for him to present himself at once.  Marcovicz recorded the embarrassing finale: “Throughout the banquet Klaus was put on the spot, General Gal berating him both directly and indirectly”.¹

This reference is probably more important in placing the Brigade commanders than the specific dust-up with Klaus. There are several very interesting photos in the Tamiment Library from this event.  The first which we dub “The Officer’s Photo” is a who’s-who of the leadership.

“The Ambite Officers” photo (Numbered) – This is photo ALBA 177_175034, Tamiment Library, NYU   — Known faces:   2- Egan Schmidt, 5 Hans Klaus, 6  Harry Haywood, 7 Vladimir Copic, 9 General Gal (Janucz Galicz), 10 George Aitken, 11 Adles Bebler, 14 Miklos Szalway (“Captain Chapayev”), 15 Gabriel Fort, 16 Tadeusz Oppman (tentative), 17 Max Milman, 18 Fred Copeman, 19 Bert Williams, 23 Steve Nelson, 24 Martin Hourihan, 25 Mirko Markovich, 26 David Mates.

Approximately a dozen important photos were taken at the event including Copic in a tete-a-tete with General Gal, the first photos of David Doran in Spain, and a very interesting photo of a number of the people on a log over the river:

This last photograph’s caption is clearly problematic as Vidal and Gal were no longer with the Brigade in November 1937, the weather does not look like November, and the people are the same as in the “Officer’s Photo”.  George Aitken who looks to be #6 in this photo was back in England in October 1937.  He also could not have been there on that date.  Untangling, these identifications in these two photos will help with some potential misidentifications in the Tamiment Archive.   These two photos are still, after 77 years, a work in progress.

Merriman’s diary is helpful with the dates of Gal’s party.  He says on the 25th, Marty Hourihan has returned to Tarazona and others in those photos have come back as well.   Winkler and the Chief of Staff of the 13th Brigade are among them.  Merriman says on the 23rd that men at the front sense that Gal has bawled out Hans Klaus.  This would tend to put this party on the 23rd or sooner.   Since on the previous diary page that the “men sense Gal bawled out Klaus”, it would indicated that the Ambite banquet was on the 23rd.

Merriman did not attend the party (nor did Dallet or Thompson or Allan Johnson).  He has Company 1 of the third battalion out on maneuvers and they get lost by going to a house where Merriman picks them up.  Meeting the residents, he finds a family who have been socialists for many years.

Back in Tarazona he meets with Winkler, the Chief of Staff of the 13th Dombrowski brigade and possibly with Sam Baron, who we last met in early May.    The last name is tentative and could also be read as “Visited barracks”. New men keep pouring in and Merriman mentions John Quigley Robinson and Steve Nelson who will train them.   He notes that there was a swap of Robinson for Frank Rogers in the Washington Battalion.

In increasing the staffing at the front, some more Americans and Canadians will be moving to the front.  There was a description of a “Canadian company” in the Washington Battalion during the upcoming battle of Brunete in July.  Beeching says that this Canadian “section” was led first by Canadians Paddy O’Neill then by Tom Traynor then by Bill Brennan and later by Paddy O’Daire.²  Bob Kerr, the Canadian in Albacete tasked with steering Canadians to Merriman’s third battalion said that in one Lincoln Company over half of the soldiers were Canadian and 30 Canadians were in one Washington company prior to Brunete.³  These partial companies caused a lot of confusion with historians who mixed them up with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion which remained in Tarazona under Merriman for training.  Some Canadians will go to the front and others to the Officers’ School.  RGASPI’s archives help considerably in untangling this confusion.  The “2nd Instruction Battalion in Tarazona” has detailed lists of the companies and sections.  There is an American, a Canadian and a British company in Tarazona in July.   Men were pulled out of Tarazona to restock the Lincolns in late June and some of them were Canadians.  The 3rd Battalion will not be fully formed and trained until August.

The next morning the exercise was to protect Tarazona.  Ruby Kaufman is identified by Merriman as a problem because of a tendency to dominate the exercises.   Ed Bender, Marty Hourihan and Bill Lawrence got themselves an automobile which has been under the use of General Gal.   After a lecture and a hair cut, Merriman met with Ernest Amatniek.  Amatniek is likely sent back to Tarazona to train the Battalion in transmissions.  He will serve with the Mac-Paps.  After a grueling bridge game with Dallet and Mullinger against Marion and Bob Merriman, Merriman deals with Tom Hyde again who got a “permission” which allows him to stay with the Battalion and he requests to go to Officer Training School.   Marion Merriman says in “American Commander in Spain” that they often played bridge and that Merriman could not concentrate because he had other more pressing things on his mind.   That event could have been June 26.

Merriman says that there was an election in the camp and the best man did not win and he makes the notation (1st Co 2nd Section).  The leader of Company 1 Section 2 in July will be William Neure.⁴   It does not mean, however, that this is the man being discussed since the Company and Section leadership were fluid and unlikely to be retained for a full month.

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¹  Eby, Comrades and Commissars, ibid., p. 174.

² William Beeching, Canadian Volunteers in Spain: 1936-1939, U. Regina Press, 1989, pp 44-63.

³ Michael Petrou, Renegades, ibid. pg 65.

⁴ RGASPI Fond 545/Opis 2/Delo 265, pg 13.

Merriman’s diary is fairly skimpy for these two days.  He gave a few lectures to the men during the day and decided on some personnel matters.   Moran is Marsden Moran.  Marsden Moran became the Alfarez in the 2nd Battalion of Instruction in Tarazona in August.¹ Previously we had identified the next line as saying “Lamb – Roger practice”,  but now we think the first word is simply “Lunch”.  Leonard Lamb was not in Tarazona at this time.  Frank Rogers we saw previously is a new arrival and he will become a Commissar in the Mac-Paps.

Marty Hourihan was to have given a lecture in the evening but he did not appear so Merriman gave his “history of the Lincolns” lecture.   Merriman announces an upcoming “Socialist competition”.  He also disciplines Tom Brown who is refusing to obey orders.   Brown would become a base instructor, be captured in Spring of 1938 during the Retreats, and be repatriated from Burgos Prison in April 1939.   Pierre Lamotte continues to struggle in finding a role in the Battalion.   He clearly did not do well on his exam on the machine gun.

In the evening or overnight hours, Merriman had a discussion with Allan Johnson and Bill Lawrence.  Likely that they were still debriefing about Harry Haywood’s attempt to represent American discontent with Vladomir Copic.  In an interesting revelation, Merriman says that the men sense that General Gal has bawled out Colonel Hans Klaus, who continues to fall in responsibility from the Brigade to the Battalion level.   Merriman does not reveal what the issue is with Klaus but we know from Eby and others that General Gal will throw a party on the 25th at his Ambite Mill villa and Colonel Klaus was a no-show.

Merriman tries to connect with Tom Wintringham but doesn’t so returns to Tarazona to play bridge in the evening with Bob Thompson and Jack Mullinger.  Mullinger should have been preparing his lectures for the following day since he apparently got in trouble the next day  because he wasn’t.

Tom Hyde continues to draw Merriman’s attention.   In this episode it appears that Hyde wishes to go to the front, since he apparently cannot work effectively in the rear without having the experience of having been in battle.  This may be a matter of gaining respect from the other men.

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¹ RGASPI Fond 545/Opis 2/Delo 265, pg 35.