Mine Were of Trouble

Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp

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This is a most unusual book. It recounts the experiences of Peter Kemp, a young British man who like many went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War to fight for civilization. While there are probably many similar books - George Orwell's “Homage to Catalonia” was one such book - Kemp's book is different in that he decides to fight on the side of the Nationalists, i.e., the “fascists.”

This perspective alone is worth the price of the book. The books I've read have all been written from the perspective of the Leftist Republicans where the bestiality and depravity of the Naitonalists has been an assumed fact. Aside from the partisan bias, these books shortchange the Nationalist side. In “The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction,” for example, the author doesn't bother to explain what the “Carlists” were and where they came from.

Kemp's book makes up for this almost immediately by describing the Carlists and the Requetes forces, the history of the Carlist Wars, and other details. More importantly, he humanizes the Nationalists by showing them as human beings with motivations other than hatred and evil.

Kemp was around 22 and had recently graduated from university. He had been involved with the Conservative Union at university. Kemp's explanation for joining the Nationalists was (a) he thought he could use the seasoning of military action and (b) there was no way that he would fight for the left. The book does not reveal any interest in fascism or fascist politics on the part of Kemp. Similarly, Kemp is clearly opposed to Communism, but we don't hear vituperative condemnations of Communism from him.

Kemp entered Spain under the guise of a journalist. Once there he joined the Carlist Requetes as a soldier and was subsequently commissioned. Then, after discerning that he would get more experience as a Spanish Legionary, he transferred to the Spanish Legion. He describes the military actions he was involved in, and these descriptions make for some tense and fascinating reading.

Kemp comes across as a likable and dependable person. His narrative recounts how he was assisted in his various movements by people he met. He gives thumbnail sketches of the various soldiers he met and towns he visited along the way and the positive way he describes those people and places creates a picture in our own mind of Kemp being a positive and enthusiastic person.

We also get an inside look at the realities of the Spanish Civil War. The sense we get is that the Nationalists had substantial popular support among peasants and villages. This undoubtedly reflects that Kemp was on the winning Nationalist side and the villages captured by the Nationalists would hardly have indicated support for the Republic. However, Kemp's description of the starving and cowed village people suggests that the Republicans were not winning the hearts and minds of the Catholic peasants.

Kemp honestly admits to war crimes among the Nationalists. Captured International Brigade soldiers were shot out of hand by the Nationalists. These forces were particularly hated on the grounds that their intervention extended the destructive war to the injury of Spain. Kemp was ordered to execute a captured British Intenational Brigade member, which he does. Kemp's narrative speaks to his own emotional turmoil. On the other hand, Kemp notes that Republican forces were far more likely to kill Nationalist prisoners:

//Certainly the execution of prisoners was one of the ugliest aspects of the Civil War, and both sides were guilty of it in the early months. There were two main reasons for this: first, the belief, firmly held by each side, that the others were traitors to their country and enemies of humanity who fully deserved death; secondly, the fear of each side that unless they exterminated their adversaries these would rise again and destroy them. But it is a fact, observed by me personally, that as the war developed the Nationalists tended more and more to spare their prisoners, except those of the International Brigades: so that when, in 1938, the Non-Intervention Commission began to arrange exchanges of prisoners of war, they found large numbers of Republicans held by the Nationalists, but scarcely any Nationalist soldiers in Republican prison camps.//

Kemp fought with Italian and German forces. While, apparently, there is a myth that Russia only provided “humanitarian aid,” Kemp notes:

//The Russians did for the Republicans roughly what the Germans did for the Nationalists—they supplied technicians and war material of all kinds. In return they exacted a far greater measure of control over Republican policy and strategy than the Germans were able to obtain from Franco; the price of Russian co-operation was Russian direction of the war and the complete domination by the Communist Party of all Republican political and military organizations.//

One interesting bit of social history is how small the world seemed in 1938. Amazingly, Kemp would run into people he knew from college or who knew his friends. One of the most tantalizing bits is found in this passage:

//The New Year opened sadly for me. On January 31st a Press car containing four friends of mine—Dick Sheepshanks, Kim Philby, and two American correspondents, Eddie Neil and Bradish Johnson—was passing through the village of Caude, eight miles north-west of Teruel, during an enemy artillery bombardment, when a 12.40 cm. shell burst beside it. Sheepshanks and Johnson were killed outright. Neil died a few days later; Philby escaped with a wound in the head.//

So, Peter Kemp knew Kim Philby and Kim Philby was almost killed in the Spanish Civil War?!??!?!

Small world.

Kemp finishes his service for Spain was a meeting with Francisco Franco.

One thing worth contemplating is how the Spanish Civil War was also something of an English Civil War. Kemp fought against British members of the International Brigades. In England after the war, he often appeared at meetings with Republicans foreign volunteers, whom he would have been trying to kill in Spain. Within a year or two, of course, Kemp and those same men were fighting fascists for England.

This is a fascinating story told from a different viewpoint.