A moment of war

In December 1937 a naive young Englishman slipped across the Spanish frontier to fight for the Republican cause. In the third volume of his autobiographical trilogy, which began with "Cider With Rosie", Laurie Lee describes a winter fighting with the International Brigade. This is a view of the Spanish Civil War from below, a tragi-comic account of rivalry and ribaldry in the ranks. Lee's fellow volunteers were an ill-starred posse of Scots, Cockneys, Welsh miners and Frenchmen who drank, gambled and pursued women when not engaging the enemy. Lee himself fell for the ravishing Eulalia, a passionate young partisan who reappeared in his life with an almost miraculous sense of timing to ease his misfortunes. He was arrested and three times narrowly escaped execution in a war which claimed half a million lives. Reflecting on what had compelled him to fight, Lee reasoned that he had wanted "the chance to make one grand gesture of personal sacrifice and faith".