---
title: "Homage to Catalonia"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 4 of 14
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-homage-catalonia-fp20181044/4/
cite: "George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, section 4. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-homage-catalonia-fp20181044/4/"
---

# Homage to Catalonia

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Homage to Catalonia
Date of first publication: 1938
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Oct. 23, 2018
Date last updated: Oct. 23, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20181044

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Homage to Catalonia_

> Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest
             thou be like unto him.
             Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he
             be wise in his own conceit.
                                        PROVERBS, XXVI, 4-5

> Copyright 1938 by Eric Blair

> TRANSCRIBER NOTES

> Hyphenation of words has been made consistent.

> [The end of _Homage to Catalonia_ by George Orwell]

## 4. IV

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-homage-catalonia-fp20181044/4/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-homage-catalonia-fp20181044/4/#p-N

[¶0] When I had been about three weeks in the line a contingent of twenty or
thirty men, sent out from England by the ILP, arrived at Alcubierre, and
in order to keep the English on this front together Williams and I were
sent to join them. Our new position was at Monte Trazo, several miles
further west and within sight of Saragossa.

[¶1] The position was perched on a sort of razor-back of limestone with
dug-outs driven horizontally into the cliff like sand-martins' nests.
They went into the ground for prodigious distances, and inside they were
pitch dark and so low that you could not even kneel in them, let alone
stand. On the peaks to the left of us there were two more POUM
positions, one of them an object of fascination to every man in the
line, because there were three militia-women there who did the cooking.
These women were not exactly beautiful, but it was found necessary to
put the position out of bounds to men of other companies. Five hundred
yards to our right there was a PSUC post at the bend of the Alcubierre
road. It was just here that the road changed hands. At night you could
watch the lamps of our supply-lorries winding out from Alcubierre and,
simultaneously, those of the Fascists coming from Saragossa. You could
see Saragossa itself, a thin string of lights like the lighted
port-holes of a ship, twelve miles south-westward. The Government troops
had gazed at it from that distance since August 1936, and they are
gazing at it still.

[¶2] There were about thirty of ourselves, including one Spaniard (Ramón,
Williams's brother-in-law), and there were a dozen Spanish
machine-gunners. Apart from the one or two inevitable nuisances—for, as
everyone knows, war attracts riff-raff—the English were an
exceptionally good crowd, both physically and mentally. Perhaps the best
of the bunch was Bob Smillie—the grandson of the famous miners'
leader—who afterwards died such an evil and meaningless death in
Valencia. It says a lot for the Spanish character that the English and
the Spaniards always got on well together, in spite of the language
difficulty. All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions.
One was 'OK, baby,' the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in
their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors
would not print it.

[¶3] Once again there was nothing happening all along the line: only the
random crack of bullets and, very rarely, the crash of a Fascist mortar
that sent everyone running to the top trench to see which hill the
shells were bursting on. The enemy was somewhat closer to us here,
perhaps three or four hundred yards away. Their nearest position was
exactly opposite ours, with a machine-gun nest whose loopholes
constantly tempted one to waste cartridges. The Fascists seldom bothered
with rifle-shots, but sent bursts of accurate machine-gun fire at anyone
who exposed himself. Nevertheless it was ten days or more before we had
our first casualty. The troops opposite us were Spaniards, but according
to the deserters there were a few German NCOs among them. At some time
in the past there had also been Moors there—poor devils, how they must
have felt the cold!—for out in no-man's-land there was a dead Moor who
was one of the sights of the locality. A mile or two to the left of us
the line ceased to be continuous and there was a tract of country,
lower-lying and thickly wooded, which belonged neither to the Fascists
nor ourselves. Both we and they used to make daylight patrols there. It
was not bad fun in a Boy Scoutish way, though I never saw a Fascist
patrol nearer than several hundred yards. By a lot of crawling on your
belly you could work your way partly through the Fascist lines and could
even see the farm-house flying the monarchist flag, which was the local
Fascist headquarters. Occasionally we gave it a rifle-volley and then
slipped into cover before the machine-guns could locate us. I hope we
broke a few windows, but it was a good eight hundred metres away, and
with our rifles you could not make sure of hitting even a house at that
range.

[¶4] The weather was mostly clear and cold; sometimes sunny at midday, but
always cold. Here and there in the soil of the hill-sides you found the
green beaks of wild crocuses or irises poking through; evidently spring
was coming, but coming very slowly. The nights were colder than ever.
Coming off guard in the small hours we used to rake together what was
left of the cook-house fire and then stand in the red-hot embers. It was
bad for your boots, but it was very good for your feet. But there were
mornings when the sight of the dawn among the mountain-tops made it
almost worthwhile to be out of bed at godless hours. I hate mountains,
even from a spectacular point of view. But sometimes the dawn breaking
behind the hill-tops in our rear, the first narrow streaks of gold, like
swords slitting the darkness, and then the growing light and the seas of
carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were worth
watching even when you had been up all night, when your legs were numb
from the knees down and you were sullenly reflecting that there was no
hope of food for another three hours. I saw the dawn oftener during this
campaign than during the rest of my life put together—or during the
part that is to come, I hope.

[¶5] We were short-handed here, which meant longer guards and more fatigues.
I was beginning to suffer a little from the lack of sleep which is
inevitable even in the quietest kind of war. Apart from guard-duties and
patrols there were constant night-alarms and stand-to's, and in any case
you can't sleep properly in a beastly hole in the ground with your feet
aching with the cold. In my first three or four months in the line I do
not suppose I had more than a dozen periods of twenty-four hours that
were completely without sleep; on the other hand I certainly did not
have a dozen nights of full sleep. Twenty or thirty hours' sleep in a
week was quite a normal amount. The effects of this were not so bad as
might be expected; one grew very stupid, and the job of climbing up and
down the hills grew harder instead of easier, but one felt well and one
was constantly hungry—heavens, how hungry! All food seemed good, even
the eternal haricot beans which everyone in Spain finally learned to
hate the sight of. Our water, what there was of it, came from miles
away, on the backs of mules or little persecuted donkeys. For some
reason the Aragón peasants treated their mules well but their donkeys
abominably. If a donkey refused to go it was quite usual to kick him in
the testicles. The issue of candles had ceased, and matches were running
short. The Spaniards taught us how to make olive oil lamps out of a
condensed milk tin, a cartridge-clip, and a bit of rag. When you had any
olive oil, which was not often, these things would burn with a smoky
flicker, about a quarter candle-power, just enough to find your rifle
by.

[¶6] There seemed no hope of any real fighting. When we left Monte Pocero I
had counted my cartridges and found that in nearly three weeks I had
fired just three shots at the enemy. They say it takes a thousand
bullets to kill a man, and at this rate it would be twenty years before
I killed my first Fascist. At Monte Trazo the lines were closer and one
fired oftener, but I am reasonably certain that I never hit anyone. As a
matter of fact, on this front and at this period of the war the real
weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being unable to kill your
enemy you shouted at him instead. This method of warfare is so
extraordinary that it needs explaining.

[¶7] Wherever the lines were within hailing distance of one another there was
always a good deal of shouting from trench to trench. From ourselves:
'_Fascistas—maricones!_' From the Fascists: _'Viva España! Viva
Franco!_'—or, when they knew that there were English opposite them: 'Go
home, you English! We don't want foreigners here!' On the Government
side, in the party militias, the shouting of propaganda to undermine the
enemy morale had been developed into a regular technique. In every
suitable position men, usually machine-gunners, were told off for
shouting-duty and provided with megaphones. Generally they shouted a
set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the
Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international
capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc. etc.,
and urged them to come over to our side. This was repeated over and over
by relays of men; sometimes it continued almost the whole night. There
is very little doubt that it had its effect; everyone agreed that the
trickle of Fascist deserters was partly caused by it. If one comes to
think of it, when some poor devil of a sentry—very likely a Socialist
or Anarchist trade union member who has been conscripted against his
will—is freezing at his post, the slogan 'Don't fight against your own
class!' ringing again and again through the darkness is bound to make an
impression on him. It might make just the difference between deserting
and not deserting. Of course such a proceeding does not fit in with the
English conception of war. I admit I was amazed and scandalised when I
first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of
shooting him! I now think that from any point of view it was a
legitimate manoeuvre. In ordinary trench warfare, when there is no
artillery, it is extremely difficult to inflict casualties on the enemy
without receiving an equal number yourself. If you can immobilise a
certain number of men by making them desert, so much the better;
deserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can
give information. But at the beginning it dismayed all of us; it made us
feel that the Spaniards were not taking this war of theirs sufficiently
seriously. The man who did the shouting at the PSUC post down on our
right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting
revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we
were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt
to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!'—you could hear his voice
echoing across the lonely valley—'We're just sitting down to buttered
toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that,
like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past,
but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a
Fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was
lying.

[¶8] One day in February we saw a Fascist aeroplane approaching. As usual, a
machine-gun was dragged into the open and its barrel cocked up, and
everyone lay on his back to get a good aim. Our isolated positions were
not worth bombing, and as a rule the few Fascist aeroplanes that passed
our way circled round to avoid machine-gun fire. This time the aeroplane
came straight over, too high up to be worth shooting at, and out of it
came tumbling not bombs but white glittering things that turned over and
over in the air. A few fluttered down into the position. They were
copies of a Fascist newspaper, the _Heraldo de Aragón_, announcing the
fall of Málaga.

[¶9] That night the Fascists made a sort of abortive attack. I was just
getting down into kip, half dead with sleep, when there was a heavy
stream of bullets overhead and someone shouted into the dug-out:
'They're attacking!' I grabbed my rifle and slithered up to my post,
which was at the top of the position, beside the machine-gun. There was
utter darkness and diabolical noise. The fire of, I think, five
machine-guns was pouring upon us, and there was a series of heavy
crashes caused by the Fascists flinging bombs over their own parapet in
the most idiotic manner. It was intensely dark. Down in the valley to
the left of us I could see the greenish flash of rifles where a small
party of Fascists, probably a patrol, were chipping in. The bullets were
flying round us in the darkness, crack—zip—crack. A few shells came
whistling over, but they fell nowhere near us and (as usual in this war)
most of them failed to explode. I had a bad moment when yet another
machine-gun opened fire from the hill-top in our rear—actually a gun
that had been brought up to support us, but at the time it looked as
though we were surrounded. Presently our own machine-gun jammed, as it
always did jam with those vile cartridges, and the ramrod was lost in
the impenetrable darkness. Apparently there was nothing that one could
do except stand still and be shot at. The Spanish machine-gunners
disdained to take cover, in fact exposed themselves deliberately, so I
had to do likewise. Petty though it was, the whole experience was very
interesting. It was the first time that I had been properly speaking
under fire, and to my humiliation I found that I was horribly
frightened. You always, I notice, feel the same when you are under heavy
fire—not so much afraid of being hit as afraid because you don't know
_where_ you will be hit. You are wondering all the while just where the
bullet will nip you, and it gives your whole body a most unpleasant
sensitiveness.

[¶10] After an hour or two the firing slowed down and died away. Meanwhile we
had had only one casualty. The Fascists had advanced a couple of
machine-guns into no-man's-land, but they had kept at a safe distance
and made no attempt to storm our parapet. They were in fact not
attacking, merely wasting cartridges and making a cheerful noise to
celebrate the fall of Málaga. The chief importance of the affair was
that it taught me to read the war news in the papers with a more
disbelieving eye. A day or two later the newspapers and the radio
published reports of a tremendous attack with cavalry and tanks (up a
perpendicular hill-side!) which had been beaten off by the heroic
English.

[¶11] When the Fascists told us that Málaga had fallen we set it down as a
lie, but next day there were more convincing rumours, and it must have
been a day or two later that it was admitted officially. By degrees the
whole disgraceful story leaked out—how the town had been evacuated
without firing a shot, and how the fury of the Italians had fallen not
upon the troops, who were gone, but upon the wretched civilian
population, some of whom were pursued and machine-gunned for a hundred
miles. The news sent a sort of chill all along the line, for, whatever
the truth may have been, every man in the militia believed that the loss
of Málaga was due to treachery. It was the first talk I had heard of
treachery or divided aims. It set up in my mind the first vague doubt
about this war in which, hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so
beautifully simple.

[¶12] In mid-February we left Monte Trazo and were sent, together with all the
POUM troops in this sector, to make a part of the army besieging Huesca.
It was a fifty-mile lorry journey across the wintry plain, where the
clipped vines were not yet budding and the blades of the winter barley
were just poking through the lumpy soil. Four kilometres from our new
trenches Huesca glittered small and clear like a city of dolls' houses.
Months earlier, when Siétamo was taken, the general commanding the
Government troops had said gaily: 'Tomorrow we'll have coffee in
Huesca.' It turned out that he was mistaken. There had been bloody
attacks, but the town did not fall, and 'Tomorrow we'll have coffee in
Huesca' had become a standing joke throughout the army. If I ever go
back to Spain I shall make a point of having a cup of coffee in Huesca.