JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

REVIEWSJoe Monks was among the earlier Irish anti-fascistvolunteers in Spain who went into action during Christmas1936. His reminiscences, entitled With the Reds inAndalusia, provide a detailed account of the militarysignificance of· that campaign combined with veryvaluable portraits of some of its participants. Again,Frank Ryan looms large and aside from what theaccount reveals of Monks' own background and battleexperiences, the Irish volunteer whose heroism is bestrelated is Frank Edwards. Indeed this is a powerfullyevocative portrait of that Waterford teacher whoseplace in Irish labour history was earned on so manyfronts, with many illustrations of Frank's sharp-tonguedwit.It has taken over fifty years since the death in Spainof Charlie Donnelly for his collected poems to at lastreceive publication. In Charlie Donnelly, the Life andPoems his brother Joseph Donnelly has also broughttogether most, but not all, the tributes to Donnelly fromhis fellow poets - the one from his Republican Congresscolleague· Leslie Daiken being a notable omission.What is particularly valuable about this edition is thatthe collected poems are preceded by a very personalmemoir written by the younger brother which consti~tutes over half of the book. While not sharing hisbrother's politics he nonetheless gives us a very honestinsight into how Charlie Donnelly, coming as he didfrom a comfortable middle class home, became moreand more socially conscious and ultimately involved inthe fight against the oppressive conditions confrontingthe Dublin workirtg-class during the 1930s. When thebook turns to Spain itself the author has performed anexcellent job in drawing on a combination of CharlieDonnelly 's own correspondence and accounts from hisfellow-combatants to provide a very vivid account ofthe course of action which ultimately led to his death atJarama.If Joseph Donnelly's account contains a passingcriticism of some of the military decisions on theRepublican side which resulted in the doomed offensivein which Char lie Donnelly was killed, this is anissue that is gone into with a vengeance in Our Fight­Writings o/Veterans o/the AbrahamLincolnBrigade.The American volunteer Captain Robert Merriman hadloyally implemented -while vigorousl y protesting-someof these decisions at Jarama. His widow, MarionMerriman Wachtel, who herself fought alongside himin Spain, now recounts that controversy in one of thearticles in this collection of reminiscences. During thecourse of preparing this anthology its first editor AlvahBessie died in 1985 (as we were to lose Joe Monks inJanuary of this year), highlighting the manner in whichtime is now increasingly an enemy in securing a comprehensiverange of accounts from participants in thatanti-fascist struggle. Happily Bessie's successor aseditor, fellow International Brigade veteran Al Prago,was able to bring this particular project to completion.It is indeed a remarkably wide-ranging collection ofAmerican veterans' accounts of the struggle to get toSpain in the first place as well as of successive battleson the various fronts. Given the multi-ethnic characterof the Lincoln volunteers themselves, not to mentionthe International Brigades as such, one would understandablyexpect to fmd something particularly Irishamong such accounts. The Irish-American volunteerPaul Bums has provided a very vivid portrait of SergeantMick Kelly of County G al way, commander of theLincoln Battalion's James Connolly Section. Kellyhad been wounded on the Jarama front the same day asCharlie Donnelly was killed. Despite being certified aspartially disabled, however, he ignored doctors' ordersand returned to front-line combat. 'No doubt the wordwent round in the fascist lines that Michael Kelly wasback', writes Bums, 'hearing which General O'Duffyand his blue-shirted Irish legion slunk ignominiouslyinto the last pages of history'. Not a historicallyverifiable detail of cause and effect, of course, butBums knows that such imagery expresses a deeperhistorical truth. And he ends his tribute with a movingaccount of the death in action at Villanueva de laCanada of the Galwaymanofficially confined to 'dutiesof a clerical nature'. .It was also in the Lincoln Batallion that BlackAmericans achieved the historical breakthrough ofcommanding mixed units, something which had beendenied to them in their own country's army. FromMississippi to Madrid represents the memoirs of JamesYates who narrates how Black volunteers like himself,the grandson of a slave, experienced the Spanish Republicas the first place where they ever felt likefreemen. Yates provides us with a frightening pictureof what it was like to be the child of a Black worker inAmerica's Deep South seventy years ago. Indeed theonly white to come to his family's aid during an attackby a Ku Klux Klan lynching party was a sawmill workerwhom he recalls as follows' He had an unusual way ofspeaking English. I could only catch one or two wordsout of ten ... I often heard him talk about a place I'dnever heard of before - Ireland' .Becoming a worker in the industrial North andjoining the Communist Party, Yates volunteered forSpain. There he would meet many Irish, includingFrank Ryan, and be present at a very special Black-Irishevent during a lull from the fight: 'Among the Blackvolunteers on the medical team, Salaria Kee crossed mypath shortly after she arrived in Spain. She was the onlyBlack nurse to serve in the International Brigades ..,Some time before she was wounded, a young ambulancedriver, John Joseph 0' Reilly from Thurles, CountyTipperary in Ireland, discovered the courageous nurse.He was a member of the Connolly Column. The twowere marrried at Villa Paz, an ancient Bourbon estatepressed into service as a hospital for the Republic'.The diversity of nationalities within the Interna-57