Readers of the double issue of Revolutionary History on the Spanish Civil War (Volume 4, nosl/2) maybe interested in the following small postscript.

It is common knowledge that the soldiers of the defeated anti-Fascist forces who escaped over the border to Spain in 1939 were disarmed by the French authorities, and interned in what were no better than concentration camps. We are seldom told what happened to them subsequently. We know that many of them found their way into the resistance movements when France was occupied. I want to tell readers of Revolutionary History what happened to some others.

Faced with the prospect of indefinite internment and possible deportation back to Spain, they were offered the alternative of joining the French Foreign Legion. Many opted for this ‘lesser evil’. When the Germans invaded Norway, a battalion of the French Foreign Legion, which included a number of these Republican Spaniards, was part of the Anglo-French Expeditionary Force that was defeated at Narvik and evacuated back to Britain. The reactionary French Military Mission in Britain, anxious to rid themselves of what they saw as a ‘politically unreliably’ nucleus in their army, and, no doubt as a gesture of goodwill to the Franco government, decided to separate the Republican Spaniards from the rest of their army, and send them back to Franco Spain. This must have had the compliance of the British Churchill government, as a boat was made ready at Avonmouth docks, and it is unlikely that this could have been arranged without the cooperation of the British authorities.

When marched to the dockside, the Spanish Republican soldiers mutinied and refused to board. The French Military Mission in London reacted by ordering that one in every three of the mutineers be shot. At this stage, the British authorities intervened, and the French officers were relieved of their command.

Eventually, the mutineers were incorporated into the British army as No 1 (Spanish) Company of the Pioneer Corps under the command of British officers and NCOs. They fought in France and Belgium in 1944. I myself fought in this corps at the time in the same theatre of operations, and heard about this unit of Spanish Republicans. I met some of these soldiers, and it was from them that I heard the story of the mutiny.

I have only just read a corroboration of this episode, including the threat to shoot one in three of the mutineers, in Major EH Rhodes-Wood’s semi-official War History of the Royal Pioneer Corps (Gale and Polden, 1960, p76).

Another confirmation - if one were needed - of the spurious nature of the claim that the Allies, including the ‘Free French’ (of which the French Military Mission became part) were fighting Fascism!

Fraternally Harry Ratner