Operation Garbo (5 page)

I found a shallow ditch about the width of my body and slid in, covering myself over with leaves and twigs. I could have thrown my two hand grenades at the Republican patrol who were only a few feet below me, but my conscience held me back: although I was desperate, I recoiled at the carnage. The patrol stopped for a smoke and, just before some rain clouds obscured the moon, I caught a glimpse of their silhouettes, they were so close. There were six of them. I lay there shaking with fear and covered in sweat, waiting for them to return to their lines.

As soon as I heard the Nationalists start their
customary
evening banter, ‘Hey, Reds, what’ve they given you to eat today?’, I decided to move, using their voices as a guide. I took off my boots, so as to get a better grip on the slippery gravel slope, and left them and my hand grenades in the ditch.

Slowly, taking great care, I began to clamber up the hill, across some terraced fields and over a couple of walls. Suddenly, I heard voices very close. I got such a fright, I must have passed out, for phrases seemed to echo through my head as if in a nightmare: ‘Don’t worry now, lad’ and ‘We’re coming to you’. Recovering, I raced to the top where I found my two
companion
escapers. They’d made it across in a matter of minutes, while I was exhausted, hungry and bleeding.

They told me that when the Republicans started firing the rebels had asked them what was going on and they had said that there was a third person out there trying to escape. Whereupon
the rebels had begun their nightly exchange of views while they sent out a patrol to search for me, presuming I had got lost.

For two days we slept in our new trenches and ate and ate. When another escapee joined us, he told us that the Republican patrol had eventually found the ditch where I’d been hiding and had discovered my boots and hand grenades. It had been a wild and suicidal idea to escape and I swore never to embark on anything so dangerous again ‘… world without end. Amen’.

My naive hopes that, after a few explanations, I would be sent to the rear were shallow fantasies. Endless hours of
interrogation
followed before we ex-Republicans were put in goods train wagons for Saragossa. Once there, we spent the night in the corridors of the military academy before being taken by passenger train to a concentration camp at Deusto in the Basque area of northern Spain.

We were imprisioned in the university and slept on the bare floorboards of the lecture halls. Every morning we would wake up to find ourselves covered in lice of every shape and size. There was a real plague of them: they would creep into the folds of our skin, burrow into private crevices and roam around inside our clothes. The only place we had to wash in was the ornamental fountain in the middle of the university campus and, given the number of people in the place, it was always packed to capacity. Every morning we would push and shove and struggle to get a little trickle of water. Lice races were a common pastime, some even betting their food on the results since Republican coins were not recognised currency to the Nationalist rebels.

I had been eating as much as I could get hold of since changing sides but, after such a long period of semi-starvation, my stomach reacted violently and I could hold nothing down. Wracked with pain, I took refuge in the infirmary where they fed me light broths and milk.

However, I didn’t give up. I had managed to preserve my fountain pen throughout all my escapades and I now sold this to
one of the camp guards at a slight loss. With the rebel currency he gave me I bought a cheap pen, paper, envelopes and stamps and began to write to all my friends and relatives, especially those on my mother’s side who were living in Grenada. I asked them for financial help and if they would vouch for me so that I could be let out. Some wrote back with vague propositions, a few made equivocal promises, while fewer still enclosed money but never enough to be of much help.

But one person to whom I had written did respond
positively
: he was the Reverend Father Caledonio Ocen, Brother Superior of the Order of St John of God, a very old friend of my father’s and head of the psychiatric hospital at Palencia, near Santander. He made the long journey to the camp and personally presented himself to the authorities, where he spoke on my behalf, making himself answerable for my actions and vouching on oath that I was honest, apolitical and a Christian.

You can imagine my joy at seeing him: it was an
unforgettable
moment. Although he died a fair number of years ago, I remain eternally grateful to him for what he did and always hold the fondest memories of his kindness toward me. On his way back to Palencia he called in at Burgos, the Nationalist capital, and stirred matters up to such an extent that three days later the order for my release arrived at the camp. At his request, I spent a week in his hospital at Palencia and was then sent to join the Nationalist troops at the St Marcial barracks in Burgos. This time I enlisted under my true age.

At my first medical examination they diagnosed acute bronchitis and sent me back to the hospital for twelve days. Then they allowed me to convalesce at a
Frente y Hospitales
rest centre in Burgos, where I sat about playing cards and
gossiping
. Many local girls of good standing contributed to the war effort by helping with the wounded there, and one in particular interested me greatly for she was good looking and played the piano extremely well. Although my knowledge of music was rudimentary, my ear was good, so I would sit beside her and
we played duets. We soon became great friends and I would accompany her to mass each morning. Eventually, I asked her to become my ‘war mother’, which she accepted, and we saw even more of each other. I discovered that she worked as a clerk in the war ministry for General Dávila.

When I had enlisted at the St Marcial barracks in Burgos I had not only given my true age but I had also told them that I had originally been conscripted in 1933, had served six months and had ended up as a second lieutenant in the reserve. On learning this, my case was forwarded to the army’s legal
department
and I was placed under the command of a lieutenant colonel in charge of investigating my anomalous position.

While I waited to take up my commission, I was
temporarily
awarded three stripes, but was only given a third of a full officer’s pay, which was very little. So in order to cut down on my expenses, I decided to sleep in the St Marcial barracks, which meant that I had to report to the commanding officer, a martinet, every evening for roll call.

Somewhere around the beginning of November 1938, the people of Burgos decided to hold a demonstration in honour of Francisco Franco and his rebel Nationalist army to celebrate the opening of his attack on the Catalan front. I was asked to join a group from
Frente y Hospitales
and surged along with the throng. During all the excitement, an enthusiastic Catalan soldier exchanged his Carlist red beret for my military cap. It was strictly forbidden for a regular army soldier to wear any political insignia and such behaviour was always severely punished, even though the Carlists were one of the motley band of militia which made up the Nationalist army. I was well aware of the rule, but had not thought that it applied that day as it was not a military
occasion
. Unfortunately, however, the commanding officer of the St Marcial barracks had seen me exchanging headgear from the balcony of the Burgos military headquarters.

That evening, when I returned to the barracks for roll call, the duty Sergeant asked me to report to the arms hall, where
an officer was waiting for me. He led me to the commander’s room. I went in and stood at attention. The commander then asked me if I had been wearing a Carlist red beret during the demonstration earlier that afternoon. I replied that I had, and explained that a Catalan had swapped my cap for his beret. He asked me to hand over the beret and, when I told him I didn’t have it, he gave me two vicious slaps to the face which nearly knocked me over. Shouting insults, he tore the stripes off my uniform and sent me to a prison cell for the night.

Admittedly, I was at fault, but I did not feel that I’d done anything heinous enough to deserve having my face slapped and the stripes torn off my uniform.

I was rudely awakened before dawn and taken to a
dormitory
where about fifty soldiers were putting on full battle kit. Without any explanation, I too was kitted out and issued with a rifle and ammunition. A corporal then marched us to the station. I asked the corporal where we were going, to which he replied that we were off to the front at Teruel. I couldn’t believe my ears and didn’t know what to do. I thought of telephoning my war mother, but she did not have a phone and, even if she had, I would never have dared ring her up at that early hour. Demoralised and frightened, I got on the train with the rest. They joked and laughed as we rumbled along, but I felt too miserable to join in; I just stood there, trying to think of a way out of my predicament. I kept badgering the corporal with questions. From him I gathered that we would change trains at Calatayud and continue on to a small village near Teruel, from where we would trek up the mountains by mule. I also tried to get some answers from some of the soldiers in my detachment. Although many were raw recruits, some were experienced veterans returning from leave. One of the latter told me that the part of the front line we were off to was cold and wild and overrun by rats. Any soldier who killed a hundred was automatically given a week’s leave. He’d obviously become quite an expert: he’d kept reporting to the quartermaster with
all the rodents he’d caught and so had managed to get two weeks’ leave in less than a year.

We finally reached Calatayud late in the morning and the corporal gave us permission to stretch our legs. I quickly found a phone and called my war mother in Burgos to tell her what had happened. She had been worried when I had not turned up that morning for mass and was relieved to hear my voice. Telling me not to worry, she said she would try to find out what could be done to help me. I then dashed off a letter to her giving her all the details again just to make doubly sure, and posted it before we caught the next train.

We got out at a little wayside station near Sierra de Santa Cruz in south-west Saragossa, where four mules were waiting to be loaded up with the various sacks and boxes we had brought with us. As we walked up the mountain, I chatted to the
muleteer
and asked him about conditions at the front; he told me that the captain was a young, well-educated man from a noble family, a monarchist who took a great interest in the welfare of his men.

It took us about five hours to reach the top in a biting wind. On an arid patch of bare, flat land we saw soldiers marching at the double in order to warm themselves up, for it was the end of November and an icy wind blew down the mountain ridge, lashing our faces and bringing the temperature during the night down to below zero. Later, I was to find out that sentries took shorter turns than was customary here, but even so some ended up with numb hands and feet and had to be given brandy on being relieved.

I went straight to the captain and, standing to attention, said: ‘Juan Pujol García, second lieutenant in the reserve, sir.’ Raising his head, he cut me short: ‘I haven’t asked for officers. Anyway, why do you call yourself that when your papers say you’re just a raw recruit?’

Briefly and bluntly, I explained what had happened, adding that my case was being looked into in Burgos and that I expected to be recalled any day. Puzzled, the captain pointed
out that there was nothing he could do for me; however, he was most sympathetic and suggested I sleep in the sergeant’s quarters. He put me in charge of a section and told me to keep them occupied.

I wrote to my war mother, giving her my new address. Twelve days later I received a parcel containing a pullover, a religious book, some sweets and a cake which she’d baked herself. But best of all there was an affectionate letter full of hope, assuring me that it wouldn’t be long before I received orders to return to Burgos.

Three weeks later the captain sent for me and handed me orders to report to the military judge in charge of my case in Burgos. The captain seemed pleased that what I’d told him initially had indeed been the truth and congratulated me on having got everything sorted out. Next day I accompanied the mules down the mountain by the same route I’d come up just over a month before, only this time I was alone with the
muleteer
and feeling much happier.

On arrival at Burgos, I reported to my lieutenant colonel, who told me that I could make an official complaint about the St Marcial barracks’ incident if I wished and explained to me exactly what this would entail, but he stressed that I must not forget that I would be reporting a commander… He had no need to finish as I understood exactly what he meant. I chose to take no action, merely making sure that I never entered the St Marcial barracks again. Instead, I rented a poorly furnished, but cheap, room by the San Pablo Bridge near the Espolón Promenade. Several times, while walking up and down the promenade in the evenings, I came face to face with the commander taking his wife to Our Lady of Carmel Church. I really enjoyed those encounters now that I had regained my stripes; I would look him straight in the eye as I saluted and then give a cheerful grin, as much as to say: ‘Here I am alive and kicking although you sent me to the front.’

I had managed not to fire a single bullet for either side by the time Madrid fell a few months later, bringing the war to an end.
Luck continued to protect me. The day of the victory parade found me on leave in Madrid. Three weeks later my lieutenant colonel also arrived, delighted to be working in the capital at the centre of influence. When we met as arranged, he said that he would continue to investigate my case, but meanwhile I could return to Barcelona.

Two months later I reported to him again in Madrid and he gave me back my graduation certificate, on which was written the rank I had been given when I left Barcelona’s Seventh Light Artillery Regiment.