Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. Paul Preston
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of the Orléans family explanation for Ataúlfo’s disinclination to marry Pip: ‘she says that Princess Bea is terribly fond of me but Prince Ali is set on royalty and that Ataúlfo is not in love with me as he knows me too well, but is fonder of me than anyone else.’ Despite again being told that it was futile to hope, her interminable optimism came to the fore again. ‘I can’t help my feelings and unless something unexpected happens I shall just go on waiting until the day he marries someone else. I have bloody little hope but still a lot of patience and no other desire in life to fix myself to.’ At least she had the brief consolation that, at midnight on 31 December 1938, Ataúlfo kissed her for the first time in all the years that she had known him. They danced until dawn on New Year’s Day.109
By 2 January 1939, Pip and Consuelo were back at Monte Julia where there were no wounded since the Nationalist advance had moved on so rapidly towards Barcelona. The food was almost as poisonous as the atmosphere among staff with little else to do but gossip. The love-sick magallón had boasted to his wife Mercedes that he had slept with Pip. Mercedes, in turn, had discovered from Consuelo that this was untrue. Consuelo wanted Pip to confront him but she could not see the point of having a row. She wrote phlegmatically in her diary:
I would get him slung out willingly if it was not that I am fond of his wife and don’t see why I should hurt her for pride’s sake. God, what filthy swine men are. The trouble is the lousy brute is quite capable of getting angry and going to other people with the story. I would like to reassure his wife that I think him an ugly, slimy, oversexed little pimp so she need have no fear. I would also like to tell him just what I think of him and that one more word out of him and I will go straight to the Teniente Coronel.
She decided to sleep on it. In fact, she did nothing. In any case, she was too occupied with the altogether more exciting news that Princess Bea and Prince Ali were moving to Monzón, forty-eight kilometres to the northwest of Lérida, and barely half an hour’s drive away. Princess Bea asked her to help with the move and also to accompany her on an inspection of the front.110
Pip was even more delighted with the war news – ‘our advance is simply shooting along to Tarragona; each day is better than the other’. By the time that she set out with Princess Bea, the Nationalists had already captured Tarragona and Reus. Writing at Mora del Ebro of her satisfaction at the speed of the advance on Catalonia, she noted: ‘The amount of prisoners taken daily is colossal and there is hardly any fighting and very few wounded especially down here.’ They drove to Reus along tranquil lanes through ochre hills dotted with blossoming olive and almond trees. Their idyllic journey belied the fact that they were only a couple of days behind Franco’s forces. As they caught up with the troops marching on Barcelona, Pip began to record fascinating details. At a factory, the returning owner was greeted with pleasure – real or feigned? – by ‘all his workmen and servants’. Outside one of the factory sheds lay the corpses of six Republican soldiers: ‘They were killed yesterday evening so are quite harmless as they don’t smell or anything.’ The roads were packed with troops ‘in groups of about fifty, each with its flag, hundreds and hundreds, dirty, unshaven, carrying guns with their pack and blankets tied round them, all terribly tired, as they had averaged thirty kilometres per day for three days’. Through Pip’s innocently enthusiastic eyes a unique picture emerges.
It is fun to see newly taken big towns. Auxilio Social distributing bread from lorries, men sticking up anti-Red and up-with-Franco posters everywhere, people clearing up debris in the streets, putting down telephone wires, looking for houses for hospitals and offices, and dozens of simple sightseers. Unluckily the fun of a frantically pleased population waving flags and making whoopee was missing as all the Catalans are red so don’t look on us very much as heroic liberators.111
Despite the comfort of travelling as Princess Bea’s companion, Pip made the courageous decision to join a unit of Franco’s Moroccan Army Corps. It meant risking the Infanta’s displeasure and giving up the possibility of frequent meetings with Ataúlfo, but ‘after all, I came here to work’. To her chagrin, Mercedes Milá would not permit her friend Consuelo to join the same unit. ‘God knows that I don’t want to go all alone to a new equipo miles from Princess Bea and her family where I know no one and there is no one who can speak a word of English or has anything even distantly to do with my previous life.’ Her decision was all the more plucky given her own war-weariness.
This time last year I was in Ventosilla wildly excited that at last I was off to the front. How much one year can wear out one’s enthusiasm and vitality. It seems at least five years since I left Ventosilla and God how sick I have got of the war in that time … if I have to spend another wartime Christmas here I shall die of depression and worries and illnesses … If only the war could be over so that I could stop worrying about Ataúlfo and go away somewhere and never move, speak or think for a month. I am tired out both morally and physically.
Her new unit was in the agreeable surroundings of the elegant resort of Sitges to the south of the Catalan capital. Billeted in a fashionable hotel, the sun and the beach cheered her as did the news that Barcelona had fallen on 26 January 1939. The prospect of being among the first to enter the city excited her and her morale was further bolstered by the fact that she was the most competent of the nurses in her new unit and was given plenty of responsibility. On 27 January she visited Barcelona with the rest of her unit.
It is a lovely big spacious town and quite unharmed though very dirty. We drove madly all round it. The port is a shambles due to the hard work of aviation. The streets were crowded with people showing considerable enthusiasm. Everyone shouting and cheering and all the girls parading up the streets with flags. The troops marching through were surrounded by cheering crowds and everyone was in splendid form. And yet as soon as one was out of the main streets, where all the fun was going on, the people looked surly.
To her disappointment, her unit was ordered to stay in Sitges as the Moroccan Army Corps was not participating in the rest of the advance. There, with astonishing energy, she singlehandedly created a functioning hospital out of the chaos of broken beds, tangled bed linen and boxes of utensils dumped by a convoy of lorries. There being little military activity she was able to drive to the Orléans house in Monzón and to marvel at Ataúlfo’s brand-new grey Condor Legion uniform. In Barcelona, she was regaled with horror stories of the Communist ‘checas’, the dungeons in which political prisoners were tortured and interrogated. Her hospital was moved to a lunatic asylum at San Baudillo de Llobregat and Pip was delighted to be in sole charge. In fact, the war was virtually over in Catalonia and there was talk of her unit being sent to Extremadura.112
While awaiting orders, she spent her time ferrying the officers and nurses of her unit to and from Barcelona. Her description of a journey with one of the chaplains is worth repeating.
Matute is a dreadful bore and can’t see a car without getting into it. He always wants to go somewhere. We stopped in Vilanova i la Geltrú for petrol and my car was immediately surrounded by children as always. To my surprise, the priest, who had alighted leaps forward and starts to deal blows all around with his rolled-up newspaper. The little crowd dispersed in a moment. I was furious, as I thought it very unnecessary as they were doing no harm.
When the priest launched himself at the children a second time, Pip remonstrated with him. He skulked off while she entertained the children with a concert on her car radio. ‘They were sweet, all peering in through the windows and hushing each other and dancing and pretending to play the violin.’ On his return, he reaffirmed the marriage of Church and Francoist State by obliging the dumbfounded children to sing the Falangist hymn, ‘Cara al sol’ (face to the sun) and delivering a sermon on the meaning of its words.113
The extent to which Pip had changed was illustrated on one of her frequent journeys. She had always been intrepid and was not fazed by hair-raising trips alone across mountain tracks in thick fog or through floods. The war had hardened her. On 16 February, she had an accident. Driving into Barcelona, intent on manoeuvring her