Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. Paul Preston
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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">86 In consequence, she was allowed a few days’ convalescence in Épila. She drove there in her car and it was severely damaged along the way by unmade roads. Princess Bea was back from the recently captured Lérida. As part of her work with Frentes y Hospitales, the relief organisation which provided welfare for the old, women and children, she would enter occupied areas with the Nationalist forces.87 Still very weak, Pip was able to stay because her car was not ready for the return journey. She managed some relaxation, gossiping with Princess Bea, playing cards and ping pong with visiting German and Italian aviators. She even had an evening out in Zaragoza with Ataúlfo. They went to a sleazy cabaret in ‘an old theatre with semi-naked women who came out on stage and who could neither dance nor sing. A fair smattering of peroxided tarts and swarms of dirty, tight and noisy soldiers all singing and shouting lewd remarks at everyone.’88
During her stay at Épila, Pip met Juan Antonio Ansaldo, one of Spain’s most famous aviators. Ansaldo was a monarchist air ace and playboy who had once organised Falangist terror squads. He had piloted the small De Havilland Puss Moth in which General Sanjurjo had perished on 20 July 1936 when leaving Portugal to take charge of the military uprising.89 Ansaldo now commanded one of the two Savoia Marchetti 79 squadrons of the First Brigade of the Nationalist Air Force (Primera Brigada Aérea Hispana) while Prince Alí commanded the other. Ansaldo’s wife Pilarón was both a flyer and a nurse who had just been asked to work in the Ciudad Universitaria on the outskirts of Madrid. On the very edge of the besieged capital, it was the most dangerous area and women were not usually allowed to work there. Pip hoped to find out how to volunteer to go too.90
Inevitably, after the pleasures of Épila – ping pong, music, decent food, whisky and even a flight in a Luftwaffe aircraft – the return to hospital duty was depressing: ‘Morella is the lousiest, most boring place in the world, and not a thing to do all day.’ She felt low because she was still suffering from paratyphoid. She was pleased, however, by the possibility that she and Consuelo, for their gallantry under fire, would both be proposed for the Cruz del Mérito Militar con Distintivo Rojo, the highest award for bravery that could be awarded to a woman. It was eventually awarded in May 1939.91 She was also cheered by a letter on 5 May from her mother who was delighted by some articles about Pip in the British press. Margot promised her a new car and a full bank account when she returned home and announced an imminent visit to Spain. In fact, Pip, always her best when the going was most difficult, perked up when the hospital got busy again about a week later. A stream of wounded saw her attend fourteen operations in thirteen hours. She was irritated by the petty jealousies among the nurses and felt put upon by the hostility of Captain Ramón Roldán, the hospital chief surgeon. As a Falangist, he deeply resented the aristocratic origins and monarchist connections of both Pip and Consuelo. Just as she got the news that her mother was arriving on 19 May, the entire hospital had to move with the advancing Nationalist forces nearer to the province of Castellón, to the village of La Iglesuela del Cid. When her martyred car got there, she and Consuelo were billeted by Ráldan in the most dingy dungeon just off the operating theatre. However, on the following day, 23 May, she was able to go on leave to see her mother who had arrived with her brother John at Princess Bea’s home in Épila.92
Margot was obliged to wait until Pip was ‘disinfected and de-loused’ before she could see her. When she remonstrated with Princess Bea about the horrors being experienced by Pip, the Infanta replied, ‘I promised you, dear Margot, that I would look after her as my own daughter; and if I had a daughter she would surely be at the front.’93 Pip spent ten days with her mother in Zaragoza with daily visits to Épila. One evening, she met Peter Kemp, the Englishman who had volunteered for Franco and was now a lieutenant in the Spanish Foreign Legion. He told her a gruesome tale about the sadism of his colonel. An Englishman had crossed the lines claiming plausibly to be a sailor who had ended up at the front after getting drunk in Valencia. When Peter Kemp requested permission to set him free, the colonel ordered him to shoot the sailor. When Kemp stared unbelievingly, the colonel shrieked, ‘What is more, shoot him yourself or I will have you shot.’ He duly took the man into the countryside, they shook hands and he was shot. Pip commented, ‘A nasty thing to have to do.’ Her account implies that Kemp shot the man himself94 There was a standing order from Franco that all captured foreigners be shot. This was rescinded on 1 April 1938 when he needed prisoners to exchange for the 497 Italians captured at Guadalajara.
On her return to her unit, still weak from the paratyphoid, Pip was driven by the constant humiliations to which Captain Roldán subjected her and Consuelo to contemplate leaving. Once more, her mind was taken off the problem by her work. She took part in an operation on a twelve-year-old girl who had been playing with a hand grenade that had exploded –
I think I minded seeing her being treated and operated on more than anything else I have seen so far. I can’t bear to see children hurt. She was blood from head to toe, her whole body one mass of burns and superficial wounds, both her knees had to be operated, one arm amputated above the wrist as her hand had been blown clean off, the thumb of the other hand (or what was left of it) amputated and two holes in her forehead and all one side of her face sewn up. Apart from which she is temporarily blind in one eye and permanently in the other. She is getting on quite well now but moans and shouts all day as she is in awful pain. I had a terrible quarrel with Roldán yesterday evening to get him to allow her aunt to stay with her all night.
To Pip’s horror, Roldán planned to leave Consuelo behind when the unit made its next move. However, Pip was prostrated with a fierce attack of the paratyphoid that had afflicted her for the previous two months. Left behind, she and Consuelo found refuge in another hospital and volunteered to work at an emergency clearing station right at the front. However, Pip’s delight at this opportunity was short-lived. With her temperature at 39.8°, she was sent to rest at Épila. She stayed there for a month and then, on 7 July, she returned to England for five weeks of convalescence. Exhaustion, the trauma of her front-line experiences and serious illness had at last brought her down.95
Pip reached England completely drained. She spent six weeks recuperating mainly at Chirk and more briefly in London. In the capital, she attended the lavish society wedding of her sister Gaenor and Richard Heathcoat-Amory on 18 July. She was the first of eight bridesmaids attired in ‘picture dresses of white chiffon, the bodices made with heart-shaped necklines and short, puffed sleeves, with narrow waist-belts of silver ribbon and headdresses of stephanotis with bows of blue ribbon’.96 With her health restored, Pip set off back for Spain on 19 August 1938, accompanied by Consuelo, who had joined her in London. They travelled by sea with sixteen pieces of luggage ‘including two packing cases’. Pip was heartened to have been told by a fortune-teller that, within six weeks, she would be engaged to be married. ‘I hope she is right because that is exactly what I intend.’ It was a slow and boring trip to Gibraltar where she was cheered by the prospect of seeing Princess Bea and even more delighted to collect a new car, ‘very large and impressive, black with pale brown leather inside and all its gadgets attached’. Her old car, already without wheels, had met an untimely end in Épila when the garage roof had collapsed on it. Spending time with Princess Bea and anticipating seeing Ataúlfo, her spirits soared. En route to Épila, they stayed at the ancient Roman town of Mérida in Badajoz. It was crammed with aviators who had been moved down because of the minor Republican counteroffensive in Extremadura. ‘I do love being back here. I adore seeing everyone in uniform and a vague atmosphere of war.’ In her absence, Prince Ali had been promoted to full colonel and was now in charge of the newly created Segunda Brigada Aérea Hispana, which was about to go into action on the Ebro front.97
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