Love Thy Neighbour

A French Refugee Camp for Spanish Refugees

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Spanish Refugees entering France February 1939





A couple of days after my last blog, on the death of the trades union stalwart Jack Jones, I read a long article in a local journal on the plight of the Spanish Civil War Refugees who flooded into France in February 1939. After a four year struggle Spanish Republican forces had been overcome, and General Franco declared himself El Caudillo, a position he held for nearly 40 years.

It is the 70th anniversary of that great flood of humanity that poured over the Pyrenees into South West France, known as la Retirada. There have been a crop of books and newspaper articles produced in honour of this anniversary, and as most of them are written for French consumption they are slightly skewed (to say the least) in their analysis of the event. I suppose the expression ‘distance lends enchantment’ can be applied to this reportage. After all, seventy years is a long time, and those, like Jack Jones, who were eyewitnesses to the events of the Civil War are becoming scarcer as these old combatants die off.

In too many cases the warm welcome that the Spanish soldiers and civilians had anticipated from their neighbour was sadly lacking. Instead , the soldiers were immediately marched off to concentration camps on arrival , and those unfortunate civilians who had no friends or family to offer them shelter found themselves in miserable tented camps in the back-end of a bitter winter.

From the last few months of 1938 to February 1939, something like half a million Republican refugees crossed the border into the Basque region of France, where 17,000 were herded into the concentration camp at Gurs; and into the Pyrenees Oriental on the Mediterranean coast where the camp at Prat de Mollo, just inland from the fashionable town of Collioure, was a sea of displaced humanity.

In the months that followed this exodus more than 20,000 emigrated, by various means to America,but when Hitler invaded France thousands were sent to German concentration camps. Many of those that managed to evade the Nazi round-ups joined the French Resistance and continued their struggle against fascism.

The Civil War itself drew sympathisers from all over the world. One of the many women who volunteered to join the International Brigades as nurses was a girl from. England. - Lillian Urmston.

Born in 1914, Lillian lived in Stalybridge and attended St. Paul's Elementary School. She trained as a nurse at Lake Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne and at the age of 22, in 1936 Lillian applied to the Spanish Medical Aid Unit after reading how Government troops were short of doctors and nurses. In June 1937 she left for the Spanish Medical Aid in London where she and another nurse left for Paris and journeyed through France to the Aragon front in Spain, where they rendered medical assistance to injured government troops and civilians.
In September 1938, Lillian returned to England to raise funds for medical supplies and food for the wounded in Spain. She was sent with an ambulance, from which she addressed many groups in surrounding towns. Some were very sceptical, even when they saw the ambulance, but she had deliberately left it as it was; blood stained inside.
In response, the people of Stalybridge started the ‘Nurse Urmston Fund’ in support of the Spanish Medical Aid Unit. There were house to house collections and money was donated at various meetings; the fund itself raised approximately £700.
Lillian accompanied some of the refugees into France where she herself was interned and she recorded her thoughts in a collection of writings from women who served at the front in the Civil War:

The things seen during the last days of our retreat from Spain, and the experiences undergone in the concentration camp of St Cyprian, near Perpignan, I shall never forget... The last few days spent in Spain, working close to the front, yet within sight of the Pyrenees, were utterly ghastly. Operating work was done, and efficiently, just inside houses by the roadside. In innumerable instances, we came upon families of refugees wounded whilst fleeing to safety. We cared for them and kept them with us if they were seriously wounded... On the late evening of the 8th we received orders to go into France. Although sad at leaving our Spain, we all realised that this had to be and looked forward to a rapid reorganisation in France which would result in our going back to another sector of Spain to carry on the struggle against Fascist aggression.
But we were soon disillusioned... We were led to believe that France had opened her frontiers to receive our soldier refugees and wounded, thus preventing a complete massacre. We expected sympathy and humane treatment. We had neither. The vigilance of hundreds of armed guards made sure that all people entering France entered the concentration camp. Ours was a stretch of sandy desert land, surrounded by the usual formidable barbed wire. Wounded men were even without treatment for about six days. We were not allowed to tend our sick comrades. One small spring supplied water for about 15,000 to 20,000people. Food was not supplied until the fifth day... Men attempting to dodge out to buy bread and send letters were treated brutally by the guards. Our comrades received bayonet wounds at the hands of these soldiers of the French army.
My friends turned to me and said: 'Would we be treated like this in England?' And I wonder, would they? Spanish soldiers told our men to return to Franco Spain and then they would get away from all this. Our soldiers felt deeply about this, and called out to those men who were collected to be sent to Barcelona, deploring their conduct. Then the camp resounded with 'Viva la Republica! Viva nuestra Independencia!'


Extract from Lillian Urmston from the book ‘Voice of Women’

Hero, or Dinosaur ?

The Valley of the Fallen The Escorial

Do you ever hear on a news item that someone has died who you imagined had died some time ago? That happened to me this week when I heard of the death of Jack Jones.
Born on the eve of the Great War of 1914-18 Jack was one of the last ‘old style’ union leaders; some would say a political dinosaur, but I would prefer to call him a true Socialist, a vanishing breed in the UK perhaps, but unlike the dinosaur, not quite extinct.

Whatever one’s own politics Jack Jones’ solidarity to a cause was something you just had to admire. He doggedly resisted the lure of champagne socialism, the chattering classes of Hampstead Heath, and trendy wine bars so beloved of New Labour. Instead, at trade unions conferences in particular, he shunned the four and five star accommodation of his fellow delegates and stuck to his favourite B&Bs in Eastbourne, Blackpool or wherever, travelling back and forth to the conference hall by bus. His familiar cloth cap wasn’t something invented by spin doctors, it was Jack being Jack,

When he retired from the hurly-burly of the trades union world he still couldn’t leave it entirely, and he became the senior citizens champion, riding into battle for pensioners rights and becoming the first president of the National Pensioners Convention.

In the mid 1930’s Jack’s left wing politics were to take him far from his Liverpool roots, across the Pyrenees to Catalonia where he joined the International Brigade and fought for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He was eventually wounded in the battle of Ebro, repatriated and spent the rest of the war organising aid for the Republicans.

His loathing of Franco and the Nationalist government was to endure until the General’s death in 1975, and he was vociferous in his condemnation of Labour and TUC leaders who took holidays to Spain while the Franco regime was in power.


I have long had a sort of morbid fascination with the Spanish Civil War, ever since my first visits to the country in the early 70’s. In the centre of the country, not far from Madrid, is the Valley of the Fallen, or the Valle de los Caidos. It’s difficult to describe the effect this monolithic monstrosity has on the unwary visitor. You really have to know the background to this bloody episode in Spanish history to appreciate just how unwittingly this piece of grandiose mawkishness illustrates the oppressiveness of the Franco regime

You can see the building miles away; it’s difficult to miss a 500 ft concrete cross. It stands atop a huge crypt carved out from granite cliffs by the losing side (the Republicans) after the Civil War, and is the final resting place of El Caudillo …Francisco Franco. Some tomb!

It is now classed as a national monument, and it can be combined with an excursion to the Escorial, the huge palace built by Philip II of Spain, as the two places are only a few miles from each other. It is worth a visit if only to provide time for reflection on the futility of war, and the complete madness of civil war.
Jack Jones’ journey from the International Brigade to the National Pensioners’ Convention was a long and momentous one, and the next time you use your free bus pass, or receive your winter fuel payment remember who it was who pushed the government to make life a bit easier for senior citizens, and say …’Thanks, Jack’

Something to Make Your Mouth Water

Last week we had a flyer in our mailbox advertising the annual hunter’s lunch next Saturday. These lunches occur all over rural France at the end of the hunting season, and, in our case they are long, multi-coursed and alcohol driven.

Like everything else in France the price has crept up, this year to 20€ ,but for that you get six courses and as much to drink as can be considered polite. And entertainment.

It’s mostly of the impromptu variety, fuelled by several glasses of wine and a fire-water digestif and it can go on a bit. There are hunting songs, and mountain choruses that I quite enjoy. In fact, the shepherd songs can be beautiful, especially when sung by our local male voice choir, the Chanteurs de Mont Royal. A ancient old boy always totters to the microphone and sings an obscure ditty with at least ten verses, and choruses to which everyone (except us) joins in - con brio !

It’s when one of the local ladies decides (as she always does) to give us her tribute to Edith Piaf that it all begins to soar into the realms of farce. We try not to wince as she renders (murders) ‘La Vie en Rose,’ and then find ourselves heading for the door as, to tumultuous cheers, she launches into ‘Mon Legionnaire’.
We are usually amongst the first to leave, at about four o’clock, but, as we live close to the Salle de Fete we are still seeing people drifting home at six.
This year’s menu, which is always included on the flyer is as mouth-watering as ever .:

Salade Gasconne
Panache de salads,tomates, gésiers,lardons et magrets fumés
Salad of duck gizzards, bacon pieces and smoked duck breast.
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Pavé de Saumon sauce paprika et estragon
Fillet of salmon with tarragon and paprika
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Civet de Sanglier et pomme de terre vapeur
Wild boar casserole with mashed potatoes
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Cuisse de canard confit et ses legumes
Duck leg confit and vegetables (usually the ubiquitous haricot vert)

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Fromage de pays
Local cheeses
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Tarte aux Pommes tiède et sa glace vanille

Warm Apple pie with vanilla icecream
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Café
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Digestif

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Vin rouge et rosé
Vin mousseaux
Aperitif tout inclusive.

I mustn’t forget to stock up on the indigestion tablets.

Where Does the Time Go?

All though I have three calenders in the kitchen time still seems to run away with me. I've only to look at the date of my last blog to prove that to myself. I haven't been idle though.

After 25-30,000 words I seem to have driven the plot of my thriller into a cul de sac and at the moment I can't seem to back it out, so I'm going to have to let it sit there until I can start the engine again - or I'll have to call the breakdown vehicle and get it towed away to the scrap yard. Fellow writers will know what I mean!

To relieve the tension I started to to jot down some humorous recollections of my adolescence... a teenager in the late fifties and early sixties. I had been listening to Emma Kennedy's new book, 'The Tent, The Bucket and Me'. on Radio 4's Book of the Week. It was hilariously funny, and for once, very popular with the listeners....just lately some of the choices have been panned on the R4 message board and not without justification.

Ms. Kennedy's book had a very simple premise which could be a bit of a turn-off for readers, including me.Family holidays!

'Oh, another self-indulgent ramble', I thought. We'd had a few of those in the past few months as BOTW....usually upper class somebodies who could take six months off and wander around Europe, India, Outer Mongolia with 6 kids, a backpack, and a desire to 'find themselves'. Oh, and sell the resulting book to a publisher who happens to be a friend/ close relative, when they get back. ( I'm just jealous really)

But it was the way in which 'The Tent' was written that made it stand out from the rest. It was just so funny, and self deprecating. I do like people who 'self-deprecate' rather than write some precious book about how wonderful it all was, and how enlightened all their children had become from the whole life-changing experience. When we all know the kids had spent most of the time plugged into their MP3 players, bemoaning the fact that they couldn't keep in touch with their friends on Facebook, and why isn't there a Macdonalds in the Hindu Kush? Well I'm sure that's what most of them do...kids are kids after all.

Some of Ms. Kennedy's mishaps had happened to me....her parents were avid campers ( that scenario's got plenty of mileage in it for a writer )...mine were of the caravanning variety but we shared similar toilet incidents.

And this set me off on a journey of my own. When I started, I thought it would be hopeless as I grew up in probably the most boring town in Britain, and I seemed, on the face of it, to have a fairly averagely boring childhood, but the further I've got into it the more I've discovered that, written as a comedy, it actually works.
Far from being stuck for what to write next, the incidents just keep coming.

The fact that I had a mother who was to cooking as Les Dawson was to piano playing, gives me quite a lot of material to work on. She was also one of those delightful working class snobs who considered herself to be 'upper working class' to lower middle. Oh, it's all wonderful grist to the mill.

I've no time for the current thirst for 'misery memoirs' Ms. Kennedy could be starting a trend for 'merry memoirs' so I'm going to join the crowd. And it's pretty good therapy as well as going back fifty years and recalling incidents one had thought forgotten is a great exercise for the brain. So even if it all comes to nought(as it probably will) at least it can be filed under 'Self Improvement' so all is not lost.

Winter Visitors

At this time of year, even a shopping trip can be an ornithologist’s delight. The French have long been accused of eating all their small birds, and to a certain extent this has been the case. Nevertheless, France has come into line with general thinking and small songbirds are not slaughtered in the numbers that they were thirty years ago. Old habits (or cuisines) die hard however. As recently as 1996, a dying Francois Mitterand (the former French President) ordered a dish of ortalon as a final treat.

This lovely little songbird, a member of the bunting family, was considered the 'hautest' of haute cuisine, and as such its capture and cooking was shrouded in tradition and myth. I'll not sicken you with the details of the preparation, but for some bizarre reason, which seems to have no sensible explanation, the dish is eaten whilst the diner covers his head with a white cloth. Legend has it that a gluttonous priest, who was anxious that God should not recognise him, first practiced this. He must have missed the vital piece of information in his theological teaching that nothing can be hidden from God.

Fortunately, these barbarically arcane traditions only survive now amongst the very oldest French gourmands. In nearly ten years, I have never come across thrush pate or lark's tongues on a village meal menu. Thank God!

But to return to our shopping trips. We are almost guaranteed to see a couple of heron, usually in the same place...a field bounded by a swift running water channel that takes the snow melt from the mountains, and for the last two winters our cattle have been joined in their pastures by an influx of cattle egrets. They spend a few weeks with us every winter now, and the cows seem very unfazed by them. I wonder why they choose to share accommodation with such big animals? They're never seen with the sheep, or in a field of horses, cattle are obviously their soul mates. Very strange.

The colder, snowy foothills of the Pyrenees bring down the birds of prey at this time of year. There really does seem to be a buzzard on every telegraph pole. The red and black kites circle endlessly round, as they do in the summer, but in winter, they seem to be higher in the sky.

There's quite a few small birds around too, fieldfares swooping and swarming, and of course the starlings who seem able to survive anywhere. We were lucky enough to see a swarm one day as we were driving towards Narbonne. What I thought was someone burning old tyres was in fact a cloud of starlings performing an aerial ballet over the flat terrain of the Minervois vineyards.

We never see any gulls as we're too far from the coast. For this reason, we never see wild duck or geese. I do miss the geese. The eerie sound of a skein of pinkfoot heading inland on the North Norfolk coast (to drive farmers ballistic!)is one of those experiences you never forget however far away you travel.

Another visitor in the skies over us isn't a bird, but nearly as exciting, well to Captain Sensible of course. It's rather larger than a bird; in fact, the Airbus 380 is rather larger than any other plane. So frequently does it appear that I hardly bother to look up now when I hear it droning over en route to the mountains, where the crew test the cockpit instruments for magnetic interference. We actually saw it on its maiden test flight. Well, I saw it ... in the distance. The Captain didn't because he was driving at the time. I said nothing for fear of looking stupid (I have been known to confuse large birds with planes and vice versa due to my short-sightedness) so it wasn't until I saw it on the telly that night that I realised what I had been looking at.
"I saw that this morning on the road from Le Cuing" I said. I was not popular.

Snow, Floods,Fires, What Next?

What a strange start to 2009 we are having. Right now I'm writing up my blog as large snow flakes drift down from the skies like white confetti. When I was little, I was told that somewhere up in the heavens an old lady was plucking a goose. What a load of old cobblers kids were told in my day. Parents would never get away with it these days. Kids are far too smart to be fooled by daft stories like that.

But back to the present century. Only 6 weeks into 2009 and what have we got? The most severe winter conditions in the UK for 20 years, (or 10, or 50 depending on what newspaper you're reading), horrendous fires in Australia, and here, three weeks ago, the most violent winds for years, the effects of which we are still discovering as we drive around, with hardly a wood without fallen trees somewhere in it, either flat on the ground or leaning at crazy angles on neighboring trees. Strangely most of our old houses still have their roofs on; they must be a lot tougher than they look. Like their inhabitants I guess.

And today, the snow is not only settling but piling up ...well it has snowed all day. The lights are flickering ominously as well, and although The Captain has bought new wicks for our emergency oil lamps, he hasn't tracked down the oil for them yet. When the electricity went off in the storms, like the foolish virgins that we were, our lamps hadn't been maintained properly, so we were caught out, and had to resort to candles.

I can't begin to imagine the full horror of the bush fires in Victoria. My own experience of wildfire was on a minute scale compared to the Australian disaster, and that was scary enough.

We were living just outside Carcassonne in the heat wave summer of 2003, and we had become accustomed to the daily patrols of the Canadair fire fighting planes droning over, and even when we noticed a puff of smoke on the other side of the hill we weren't unduly worried. We still didn’t worry too much when twenty or so fire engines were seen up on the main road, and smuts began to flutter down in the courtyard. We maintained our British sang-froid and took tea on the terrace, as usual, and watched the planes ‘water- bombing’ the woods on the other side of the hill. The Captain, who takes on the characteristics of a ten year-old when confronted by planes doing exciting things (well, things he considers exciting, anyway) enjoyed it all immensely. It wasn’t until I went into the kitchen at about ten o’clock for ice for my bedtime drink (well, it was stiflingly hot so a good excuse for a G&T) that I noticed the sky had turned red and the hilltop was flickering with flames. Simultaneously two battle-weary pompiers appeared at the front gate and announced we were to evacuate the cottage. Then it got scary. We grabbed our passports, the dog and prayed the cats, out on their evening hunt would be alright.
An hour later the wind changed direction and our little house and the cats were saved.
It was alarming at the time, but nothing to what the inhabitants of Victoria have had to deal with.

I wonder what the elements have in store for us all this year. And what the global warming-in-denial lobby will have to say about it.

Everybody Out!

Once again we're in the grip of a strike. It something of a national hobby, a good grève. In the UK the citizens tend to moan loudly about something they don't agree with; here in France they take to the streets to express their displeasure.
So hundreds of thousands of workers are protesting, 'comme d'habitude about a multitude of grievances.From wages,to working conditions,to redundancies, to lack of spending on education - but the bottom line is that the populace are fed-up with poor little Nicholas' handling of the econmic down-turn.
It's the first one he's had since he became president so that's pretty good by French standards.But public sector workers are letting him and his government know that they 'ain't going to stand for it! Like many countries in Europe right now they are feeling the pinch as unenployment and prices rise in unison.
So thousands are gathering at The Bastille in Paris today to send a sharp message to the Elysèes Palace.There's a feeling of anger mixed with malaise in France right now, so I fear this could be the first of many strikes this year.

I haven't been on strike. I've spent a fairly frustrating couple of days trying to set up a small website on which to showcase some of my writing. I think I've finally cracked it. I've set one up with google and I've downloaded a short story. I hope to put on excerpts from my other writings, but it's early days yet, both for me and the new Google service.
The link to the site is on the right hand side of this blog, entitled 'Jo's Writing Corner'.
If anyone would like to leave a comment please do so via this blogsite.
The website is a bit basic at the moment as I'm still finding my way round, and I think Google are adding features. I hope it improves...I've wasted quite enough serious writing time on the darned thing already!