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Chapter Three: Coming of Age / Spain

I need to "speak" to Ted again. I want to ask him about an apparent contradiction. Arturo Barea, who was the Government censor in Madrid, says in his autobiography(1) that he didn't speak any English and that he left liaisons with the foreign journalist to his colleague, Ilsa. But as Ted tells the story, Barea met regularly with the foreign journalists in the restaurant of the Grand Via Hotel. There he held court and he would read to them despatches of special interest. This was an important feature of the correspondents' social life in war time Madrid. But Barea doesn't speak of this. While they may have eaten in the same restaurant, Barea seems to intimate that he rarely communicated directly with the foreign journalists, so why does Ted say...

"That's how he remembers it," says Johanna, irritated. "He doesn't invent things. You're mistaken if you think he invents things."

"But there's this apparent contradiction."

"Ted doesn't invent things. Everything he wrote is true, and so help him God."

"Then why..."

"Because one cannot be sure of his perception. Ted simply came to terms with his reality, and everything he said is true. He doesn't think he lied. He simply told it in his own words. Maybe when he was very young he wanted to know what was fiction and what was out there. If you think a woman is beautiful and she's only pretty, and you say she is beautiful, it's still the truth. That's his example, not mine."

"Then Barea did speak some English?"

"Yes. Who are you going to believe, Barea or your own father." Johanna continues with barely a pause, "This conversation is very unpleasant for him. He's really upset."

"Was that his comment?"

"And he thinks that your accusation is quite idiotic."

"Why?"

"That's what he says. People should have a choice how they want to be remembered, and you should be aware that you are not writing his biography, but his autobiography, and it's up to him how he should be remembered."

I wonder if the fact that Johanna was miffed with me (we had been squabbling again) coloured the session. And I wonder if I would be as harsh with another author, not my father? In her book on Hemingway's women(2) Bernice Kert writes of Martha Gellhorn: On January 5 (1937) Martha wrote Eleanor Roosevelt that she was seeing Hemingway, who was "an odd bird, very loveable and full of fire and a marvellous story teller. (In a writer this is imagination, in anyone else it's lying...)"

In January 1937 my father was on his way to Spain. He was to travel to France by boat embarking from New York with a group of North American volunteers. While in New York Ted took the time to call in at the offices of the Federated Press, a wire service for the trade union movement, to offer his services as Spanish correspondent. His initiative earned him that commission.

On the ship Ted shared a cabin with a young actor from Boston, John Lenthier. Lenthier was a few years older than Ted, who was approaching his 21st birthday. They became fast friends. Ted recalls John teaching him a full repertoire of left wing music: Wobbly songs, union songs, Woody Guthrie's songs, Earl Robinson songs. Robinson's songs include one many will recognise: "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night..."

John Lenthier had recently married Kate Schwartz, now Mrs. Lenthier, and he feared he might leave her widowed. He wrote a parting letter, an adieu, and asked Ted that if he, Lenthier, should die, he asked Ted to deliver the letter to his young widowed bride.

Also on the boat was Jean Watts, known to all as Jim, the New York journalist who had forestalled Ted as correspondent for the Daily Clarion. Jim (Jean Watts) and John Lenthier became lovers, Ted says.

Of the trip, Ted recalls:

"Twenty odd American volunteers and seven Canadians on our way to Spain. We travel third-class, bunked four to a cabin without a port-hole, next to the kitchens, deep in the hold, all of us sea-sick, but still on fire with our cause. We spent as much time as we could on deck, day and night, singing songs, because our cabins were ill-smelling and sick-making.

We had quick, confused, exciting two days in Paris. I looked up my father's brother, Louis, who was running the clothing factory for the Galleries Lafayette. Louis asked how my sister Sadie was and I told him she was in a mental hospital. He looked thoughtful and said, "God has strange ways. Your mother is being paid back for Rosebud's death." I was astonished. According to Uncle Louis my mother brought me when I was four to his house after I'd had scarlet fever. According to him I was still infectious. His daughter Rosebud contracted the fever and died. From then on his life had been ruined. Now my mother, Annie, was being paid back with a daughter in a mental hospital, and I should careful in Spain. I was glad to leave him for Spain!

We took a train to Marseilles, and a truck to Perpignan and over the Pyrenees. We were the last group of volunteers to be allowed in in this way before the Non-Intervention Committee forced all subsequent volunteers to climb through the mountainous border on foot in secret in the dead of night.

They travelled by truck through Catalonia: a glimpse of Barcelona, of Spanish castles, the culture shock of open toilets, orange trees in fruit and blossom at the same time, olive groves, dusty roads, to a large barracks in the town of Albacete, the staging post for the International Brigade, halfway between Valencia and Madrid.

In a later account Ted wrote:

"We were now over two hundred strong: Englishmen, Frenchmen, anti-Nazi Germans, anti-fascist Italians, Americans, white and negro, and, we were soon to learn, almost half of these volunteers were Jewish, a fact unsung by us or by history.

We learned to drink wine and water out of the leather and ceramic 'pourrons'. We were given the khaki uniforms of the International Brigade. We strutted through the town nodding proudly to welcoming Spanish women, children, and old men. We spoke to comrades, soldiers of the International Brigade back from the front. They told grim stories of heavy casualties, of botched leadership, and we wondered if those who would tell such tales were telling the truth or were they Trotskyites(3). We were taught to handle rifles. There were not many rifles, and they were a mixed bag of new, old, and ancient. Then, in the night, the planes came. German Heinkels. They bombed us all night from midnight till dawn. They came at long intervals in relays of eight, dropped their bombs, and returned, and returned. Our guns were useless. There was no defence. There was nothing we could do but listen and tremble. Some comrades with rifles shot skyward. I trembled. Terror-bombing is very effective. The barracks were hit, and some recruits were hurt, but miraculously no one was killed. Albacete itself, though, was bombed to a smouldering ruin.

Most of us, the volunteers, went into the city to help with the rescue. Picks and shovels were placed in our trembling hands. All night we dug in the ruins trying to save those entombed in their crushed houses. Crushed hope. I helped dig out the body of a child: a boy perhaps four years old, his bloodied head indented. One arm twisted at a weird angle, shattered bone showing through, the blood still oozing. I hugged the broken body close and sobbed.

Newly massacred bodies emit strange and foul odours. There is nothing noble here. I was in a dream. I was far away. The night seemed endless, and gone. Morning brought the relief of no more planes, no more bombs. I was in shock. Exhausted. John Lenthier and I had worked side by side through the whole night not uttering a word.

We returned to the barracks. One of the walls and part of the roof had disappeared. The floor we slept on was cratered. We were slightly crazed and we giggled at the sight. We slept or dozed through the day scattered wherever we could find shade. Throughout the morning the air-raid sirens moaned, but the skies were clear, a paled blue sky washed out by the sun. The ambulances screamed. And we slept, and woke, and waited.

That afternoon we were assembled in the bull ring in Albacete, one of the few structures untouched by the raid. It was dusty and hot on the floor of the arena. My skin crawled. My throat was dry. There were several hundred of us. New recruits. An officer stood on an improvised wooden platform and shouted at us with a heavy Chicago accent. He bellowed a welcome and announced that he would now assign us to our units. He asked if anyone could drive a truck. Several recruits spoke out or raised their hands. "Okay, you're in transport." He marched them over to a table at the side of the arena where they would be signed into their unit. "Okay, who knows how to operate short wave radio?" No takers. "Okay, anyone have any medical training?" A few volunteers selected themselves out of the trenches and moved to the side. "Okay, who can drive a motorcycle?" A handful raised their hands. "Okay, you'll be despatch riders. Okay. The rest of you are infantry. You'll be the heroes."

We were marched over to a table where the rifles would be issued, our names taken and filed, next of kin... Everyone now handed over their passport for safe keeping. That was like a door closing. The doom of the trenches began to drag at my stomach.

During our brief march, or shuffle, across the sand covered floor of the bullring over to the line up at the table, I limped. That is to say I accentuated my limp. I wasn't going to lose my limp that quickly. I was going into the trenches limping.

When we reached the table we were reviewed one by one by a Brigade officer. He introduced himself to each of us - very civilized, Peter Kerrigan, a Colonel in the Brigade and the Political Commissar of the British battalion. Colonel Kerrigan enquired briefly of each of us about our background. I told him I was a writer and reporter, that I'd worked for the Clarion in Montreal, and that I was now a correspondent for the Federated Press. He made a guttural noise, a "ah", and paused. "We've lost lot of writers this last month. Cauldwell, Ralph Fox. Do you know their work?"

I nodded.

"We need journalists," Kerrigan said. "I may transfer you to Madrid to work as a correspondent for the Brigade."

"But I can't leave my comrades," I protested. All of me meant this, and all of me feared that he might take me at my word.

He nodded his head tiredly. "Your protest is noted. Believe me, I'd send you to the front if I though that was where you would serve us best. Come and see me this evening. We will arrange your transfer." He scribbled on my papers and turned his attention to the next in line, John Lenthier, an expendable actor, poor John.

Back in our shattered barracks John and I said our goodbyes. Was it now that John gave me his letter to Kate, his wife? I think so. With regret and guilt, but with great relief, I was parted from my friends.

That evening in the Brigade Headquarters I had dinner with Kerrigan and others in command. We were joined by George Marion, the correspondent for the London "Daily Worker" who stopped off in Albacete on his way from Madrid to Valencia. Discovering that I was a Canadian and from Montreal he spoke of the rumours that had been circulating in Madrid concerning Bethune's Blood Transfusion Unit. The rumour ran that Bethune was drinking heavily and fighting with the Spanish doctors. The morale in the unit was said to be low.

"Do you know Bethune?" Kerrigan asked me for he knew we were both from Montreal.

"I know him well. We are good friends. Infact he asked me to come and work with him here if I had any spare time. That was when I thought I was coming over as a reporter."

"Fine. I want you to see Bethune in Madrid. Place yourself at his disposal. You're to investigate what's going on in the Blood Transfusion Unit and report back to the Brigade. Report to comrade Gallo directly." Gallo was the Head Political Officer of the International Brigade. Kerrigan took out a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his uniform. "Here is your Safe Conduct pass. Find yourself transportation to Madrid. Report to brigade headquarters there. Good luck, and, oh, Ted! finish your dinner first and do stay for a cup of tea."

When the Second Republic was founded in 1931 Spain was polarized between right wing National Front and the left wing Popular Front(4). Tensions built. During the governments of the left there were burnings of churches, and abortive military coups. During the government of the right(5) there were general strikes and fighting in the streets between the fascist Falange and militants of the left. An up rising of miners in Asturias was bloodily suppressed.

The elections of February the 16th 1936 saw a narrow victory for the Popular Front. The fascistic National Front openly appealed to the military to save Spain from Marxism. On July 17th 1936 the military revolted. The insurrection was quickly consolidated in colonial Morocco and in extensive areas in metropolitan Spain. Catalonia and the Basque Provinces were loyal to the government, for the Republic guaranteed their autonomy. In Madrid and Barcelona the rank and file of the armed forces, aided by the militias of the workers, defeated the officers. Spain was divided in two: the Republic holding the industrial zones; the Nationalist holding the food producing areas.

The core of the Nationalist army were the battle hardened African corps under the command of General Franco. At first their advance was irresistible. By November the 7th 1936 Franco's armies were at the gates of Madrid. The loyalist government fled to Valencia. Madrid was expected to fall. Only the enthusiasm of the people of Madrid and their militias, and a remnant of the loyalist army, were left to resist Nationalist onslaught. Arturo Barea writes(6), "That morning the outlying workers' district on the other side of Segovia Bridge had been attacked by the fascists. My sister, her husband, and her nine children had fled together with all the neighbours, crossing the bridge under shell-fire. Now the Fascist troops were entrenched on the other bank of the river and advancing into the Casa de Campo, the University City. From the window of the censorship office in the Telefonica building I heard people marching out towards the enemy, shouting and singing, cars racing past with screeching motor horns, and behind the life of the street I could hear the noise of the attack, rifles, machine guns, mortars, guns, and bombs. The Gran Via, the wide street in which the Telefonica lies, led to the front in a straight line. The front came nearer. We heard its advance. Towards two in the morning somebody brought the news that the Fascists had crossed three bridges over the Manzanares river, the Segovia, Toledo, and King's Bridges, and that there was hand-to-hand fighting on the campus of the City University a kilometre away."

But here, in the Unversity City, the Fascists were held. The next day saw the first engagement of the foreign volunteers, the International Brigades. The lines of the loyalist resistance became firm. The Fascists had been stopped. The siege of Madrid began.

The siege of Madrid would last for two years. During all this time the centre of Madrid was shelled regularly. The Telefonica building, a modest sky scrapper, twelve stories high, became a primary target. In the spring of 1937 Ted Allan would make his regular radio broadcasts to North America form this target.

In February 1937 the Nationalist renewed their offensive for Madrid with a flanking attack on the south-eastern approaches to Madrid. The loyalist and the International Brigades halted the enemy advance on the Jarama at a terrible price. This is the backdrop for Ted's arrival in Madrid in February 1937.

Recall that Ted's friend and mentor, Norman Bethune had left for Spain before Ted. Bethune arrived in Madrid on the 3rd of November, just before the siege. Over the ensuing weeks Bethune devised and began to organise the "Servicio Canadiense de Transfusion de Sangre" to deliver blood transfusions on the battlefront. The Spanish Red Cross, the Socorro Rojo, provided Bethune with premises to operate from, a 15 room luxuriously furnished house at 36 Principe de Vergara, a gracious boulevard in a rich suburb. Many of the rich had fled to the Fascist held lands, and the rich suburbs of Madrid were the safest part of the city. The Fascists did not shell the rich or their property.

The Red Cross also provided Bethune with a staff for the unit including a couple of Spanish doctors and nurses. Meanwhile Bethune flew to Paris and then to London to outfit the unit. He bought two station-wagons and fitted them with generators, refrigerators and sterilization units. He returned to Madrid in early December to set up the Unit, which went into operation in January. It was an instant success, and a great morale booster. It gave the people of Madrid, the Madrilenos, another way of participated directly in the resistance, by giving blood. And, along with the International Brigades, it symbolised foreign support(7). But already in February their were rumours of serious problems with morale in the Blood transfusion Unit.

From Ted's notes dated February 10, 1937:

"I arrived in Madrid exhausted. Came by truck from Albacete. No light. Difficult driving at night.

I wondered how Beth would greet me. I looked in first at International Brigade HQ. I showed an officer at HQ my salvo conducto from Albacete. He asked what my assignment was. "Kerrigan said I was to report to Bethune and place myself at his disposal and then report back to Gallo," (Head Political Officer of the I.B.). He couldn't make head or tail of it, but asked if I had any money. I told him I had enough.

Madrid in the morning after the nightly shelling: men with hoses cleaning up debris and blood. Will I ever be the same after that bombardment in Albacete? I panicked. Wow! I was so frightened. Only thing that saved my sanity was taking the shovel and going out into the blazing town to help dig the dead and wounded from the ruins. Seven hours of it. I can still hear the bombs whistling and exploding. Will I ever be able to describe it? I feel stupid putting it down like this. I'm still shaking from it.

Beth greeted me warmly, hugging me, embracing me, laughing at the way I looked in my International Brigade uniform. I couldn't stop my sudden weeping. Why had I wondered how he would greet me? With in minutes he had me sitting at a huge dinning table: coffee, rolls, and terrible tasting margarine! Then he said, "You'll be the political commissar of the unit."

My mouth fell open. I had a sudden terrible feeling. Should I tell him that I had come because the Brigade wanted me to report on the Blood Transfusion Unit because of all the stories circulating? Finally I got it out, blushing. He laughed. "Great!" he said. "Somebody should find out what's going on. I could use some help. I hereby appoint you, again, as Political Commissar of the Spanish-Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit. The moment you feel you know what's going on here please report in detail to the International Brigade, the Party, anybody you want to. Feel better?"

I did. Then Jim came in (Jean Watts whom I'd met on the boat across). We hugged. Beth announced I was now Political Commissar of the unit. Jim said, "Hah!" And then, "Well... congratulations."

Later she told me she didn't like Beth, whispering to me in the hallway, "Can't stand him!"

"Why?" I asked astonished.

"Tell you when I have a chance."

I suspected that he doesn't find her attractive and this is killing her.

I'm still haunted by the memory of that dead child I pulled out of the ruins in Albacete. The town in flames. The noise. The nightmare of it. Me holding the dead child and weeping and screaming. And then that peculiar sensation of seeing the words "Something happened to me once and I wonder what it is." As if I was that child, dead. I told Beth about it. He said, "Write it quickly before you forget. Just get the notes down."

I met the staff. Hazen Sise: tall, seemingly cold. A patrician's face. Beth says his father's very rich. Something to do with Bell Telephone in Canada. Henning Sorenson: a Danish Canadian. We took to each other immediately. There is someone called Allen May who is away in Valencia at the moment. Jean (Jim) is living here at the moment. Dr. Culebras and Dr. Gonzales (must get their names right): Spanish doctors. Three Spanish nurses. One is very pretty. She offered to teach me Spanish. I accepted.

There are huge lines outside the Servicio Building to give blood. I watched the Unit in operation. It's very impressive.

Note: faces, enthusiasm, each donor gets food (don't be cynical).

I slept like a log. Slept, slept, slept, in a beautiful room off the corridor Beth gave me.

I'm worrying about Sadie, Momma, Georgie. Must write a despatch for Federated Press about the Albacete bombardment. And do a piece on the Blood transfusion Service. I'm now a Political Commissar with the rank of Colonel. I wonder what the International Brigade will say to this. It's funny. Beth's done it half as a joke.

I'll have to call a meeting of the Party members within a week or so and report all the rumours going all over Spain.

UNDATED. 1937. Damn it. I hate that man sometimes! He got drunk again last night and smashed the door shut so hard the glass broke. He's infuriated at Culebras and his nasty, devious manner, and at Culebras' sister. All very well. I can't blame him for being angry, but to get so damned drunk and scream at Culebras like that in front of everyone!

I told Gallo about the drinking. Gallo is a lovely man. Being Italian and more tolerant (is that the reason) he said he can understand Beth drinking because of the strain. All the rumours of trouble in the Unit come from Beth losing his temper with Culebras and his sister. Beth wants them out, but Culebras is a Party member, and the Spanish Party is not clear about the reasons for the arguments. How does one tell them Culebras is a prick? I think Culebras feels he should be head of the unit, because he's a Spaniard. But Beth conceived it, invented it, created it! The whole idea of bringing blood to the battlefield like a milk delivery system is Beth's,

I keep calling Maria "Culebras sister". I seem to resent giving her a name of her own.

I hated him last night because of his drunkenness. It reminds me of my damned Papa.

Febr. 28, 1937. Rumours of some bloody battle on the Jarama front. That's where the boys are, John, Milty, Dave, all the guys with me on the boat and the barracks at Albacete. I feel guilty living the life of a Medical Worker, Foreign Correspondent, with them in the trenches. I spoke with Beth about it last night. He said he understood but suggested I was doing the job I knew best how to do.

March 1. Today I love him! He's made me cry. I woke up this morning and a brand new typewriter was beside my bed. I've been using the Unit's typewriter. Beth had always said, "How in hell can you call yourself a writer and not have a typewriter?"

I stared at it. There was a note. "If you want to be a writer you need a typewriter. Love, Beth." I couldn't believe it. I dashed out of the room, into his bedroom. Ula was still there. Hah! I love her too. (Ula is a journalist from the Stockholm Tagblat who came to interview Bethune a week ago. "An in depth interview," says Bethune.) She's a darling. She's leaving next week for Sweden. Culebras sister will be pleased.

I was carrying the machine with me. "Is this true?" I asked.

He looked at me deadpan. "You need a typewriter, don't you, you ninny. One of your own. You call yourself a writer, don't you?"

I had been using the Unit's typewriter. "Where did you get such a lovely typewriter?" I asked. It was a Royal.

"Had it sent to me from Barcelona."

I gushed out my thanks, felt like a kid, and rushed back to the room and I am typing on it now. Beautiful machine. I'll write some good stories on it!

Thank you Beth. (Didn't mean a word when I said I hated you. Love yah!)

MARCH 5th. 37. Just came back from Jarama. Photographer Geza Karpathi, and Herbert Kline with me. Can't stand it. John, Dave, Milty and twenty others on the boat with me, dead! All dead. Wiped out in some stupid attack. God.

MARCH 6th. 37. Beth says I should have a little holiday. Don't want one. Feel sick. John dead. Milty dead. Feel sick.

Beth took me for a walk, We were very quiet. He said very little, but I loved him for being so sensitive. I hope I come through for him. I wish he didn't drink so much and get angry and irascible so much. It scares me sometimes.

In March General Franco made another flanking move on Madrid. At Guadalajara the International Brigades decisively defeated the motorised Italian corp that the Nationalist had thrown into the fray, but the loyalists were unable to follow up on their victory. The Madrid campaign remained in stalemate.

(UNDATED.) Just got back from an area near a place called Guadalajara. Beth giving blood transfusions to wounded, dying soldiers. He was like a mother to them. He really cares. He's fearless. Makes me frightened the way he doesn't care about bullets, bombs, anything. I told him he's bloody suicidal. He said, "Rubbish."

On the way there in the ambulance, with me and Henning and Geza (taking pictures), Bethune drove into enemy territory by mistake. Damned windshield shattered by machine gun fire. Two bullets through right over Beth's head, and mine! I dived to the floor of the ambulance.

Henning opened the door and jumped out. Beth leisurely brought the ambulance to a stop. I could have killed his calmness. Geza was white with fear, and I was giggling at him, probably hysterical. Christ, what a terrible soldier I am! I get petrified at the sound of bombs, gunfire, any sudden noise. Henning had dived into a road ditch first, me on top of him and Geza on top of me. More machine gun bullets and a bloody enemy tank, an Italian tank coming towards us. I couldn't believe my eyes.

And Beth? Shouting at us angrily, "Get out of that ditch. We've got four cases of blood! Get them out!"

The great reluctant heroes, Henning, Geza, and myself crawled out of the ditch to help Beth carry the cases of blood into the ditch, the bloody machine gun still at us. How in hell did he stay so calm and cool? He wasn't putting on any act, unless being so cool under fire is an act. Henning, Geza, and I were infuriated at him for driving us into enemy territory in the first place, and then calmly making us look like three cowering idiots.

The blood was safe for the moment, but the tank kept coming and I said, "Shit, we're going to be massacred."

"Not necessarily," Beth said. "They'll see our medical insignias (Socorro Rojo) and just take us prisoner."

And then from out of nowhere a Republican tank appears and then another and then another and the Italian tank turns and skidoos.

We come out of the ditch. Spanish soldiers surround us and cheer and help us put the blood back into the ambulance.

And then Bethune administering the transfusions an hour later to these badly wounded kids. God, they don't look more than 18 or 19. They look so young, crying "Madre mi madre". Beth putting his hand to their foreheads, giving them cigarettes.

Sometimes I hate him. Sometimes I love him.

Ted learned from Bethune that throughout his life Bethune might wake at night from a nightmare, not knowing where he was, but in panic and often with a compulsion to travel, to move somewhere, anywhere. So in Madrid, on occasion, Bethune would drive off in the middle of the night in the one of the Unit's station wagons, the ambulances. "Once he didn't stop until he reached Valencia. He was gone five days without anybody knowing where he was." This behaviour did not help the smooth running of the hospital, and put Ted, as Bethune's friend and confident, and Political Officer of the unit, in an awkward position.

The main problem within the unit, however, flowed from the friction between Bethune and the Spanish doctors. "Culebras, was a pain in the ass. He would insist on having his afternoon siestas no matter what was going on." No emergency would shift him from the leisurely manner he saw as his right, but which Bethune viewed, when indeed it did interfere with urgent matters, as pure self indulgence. Culebras' wife worked in the Unit's blood laboratory, and his sister was a nurse with the Unit. All were members of the Communist Party, and this gave them a certain tenure. They would be hard to move. Bethune however felt the matter was more than a clash of personality or culture, more than petty obstruction. Bethune felt that Culebras was a fascist sympathiser and an active saboteur. But was Bethune rational? He was drinking like a fish. One could understand, but not excuse his drunken binges. And then, Bethune maintained that even the mild mannered and inoffensive Dr. Gonzales was a fascist too.

Bethune was popular with his patients and with the common people who viewed him as a symbol from the distance. But close up he made enemies easily. Jean Watts told Ted she thought Bethune was "egocentric to the extent of mania. Really quite crazy. Completely insensitive. I hate him." Arturo Barea, the censor, describes(8) how "Doctor Norman Bethune, the dictatorial chief of the Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit, came stalking into the room with his escort of lumbering, embarrassed young helpers. ... In immaculate battledress, his frizzy grey hair slicked back on his long, narrow head, he stood there swaying slightly on his feet and proclaiming that he would take these important paper - his own treasure trove - to Alvarez del Vayo, in the blood Transfusion van." Bethune had found some correspondence in German in the house on Principe de Vergara. It turned out to be rather innocuous inconsequential letters from some time before, but Barea says Bethune insisted on making an issue of it.

Yes indeed, Bethune was a handful. What was Ted to do?

Late in March 1937 Ted visited Valencia. On March the 30th, as Ted was about to return to Madrid, Constancia de la Mora, who was in charge of the government press bureau, asked Ted if he would mind sharing his car with an American reporter, the correspondent for Colliers magazine, who was looking for a ride to Madrid.

The following is from Ted's notes titled "Hemingway" and dated "1946"

"Constancia is an incredible woman. She wrote a book that some of you may remember, "In Place of Splendour". She was in charge of propaganda for the Spanish government. Her husband was the head of the Spanish airforce, whatever there was of it.

Constancia asked if I would take some reporter to Madrid. I made a face to indicate that I was not too keen on sharing the car. She told me, "You will not be sorry when you see her."

"In that case, by all means," I said.

Constancia smiled, and then frowned. "There is a man, an acquaintance of her's, to travel too."

I shrugged. "C'est la guerre."

The next morning in the lobby of the Hotel Victoria Constancia introduced me to Martha Gellhorn. Martha was a very attractive young blond lady, in her mid or late twenties, quite striking looking. She came out of a cultured and comfortable background, was highly educated, and had been working now many years as a writer and journalist. Her latest novel, "The Trouble I've Seen", which had been published the summer before, was highly acclaimed. I didn't know all this at the time, just that she had a wonderful smile, beautiful hair, and a great figure. I absolutely flipped. Constancia told me that Martha had just arrived and didn't know too much about the war, so Constancia asked me to brief her on policy matters.

The car arrived. The driver opened the door and a man stepped out whom Constancia introduced to me as Sidney Franklin. Sidney was an American bullfighter with quite a reputation in Spain. On the way to Madrid when we stopped in a village, the word spread like wildfire. Children tagged after him, grown-ups stood about entranced, and even the mayor came out to shake his hand. You know, he may have been the only Jewish bullfighter in history. Sidney and Martha may have been acquaintances, but I had my brief, to fill Martha in on the background of the war, so Sidney sat in front seat beside our Spanish chauffeur.

Martha and I settled in the back seat and I gave her a brief history of the war. We felt very comfortable together, hit it off immediately, and soon found ourselves almost sitting in each other laps, giggling and cuddling for warmth under the baleful eyes of Sidney Franklin, who turned around frequently with a disapproving glare. It was a long trip. Martha and I spent nearly the whole journey kissing and necking.

When we got to Madrid I had to go to the Blood Transfusion Unit: she had to go to the Hotel Florida. I asked, "When will I see you?"

She said, "Whenever you want".

I said, "In a couple of hours."

She said, "Fine."

So a couple of hours later I was in her hotel room. I asked her, "Have you got the key to the door?" The various hotels I've had been in in Madrid always needed a key to lock the door.

She kept smiling. She said, "No."

I said, "For Christ's sake. I know you have the key. I want to close the door."

She kept smiling. It turned out this door did not need a key to be locked.

So we were sitting on the bed, and there's a knock on the door. It opens, and there's this big man I've never met, but I've seen pictures of Ernest Hemingway. He went, "Oh!"

She said, "Oh, come in. This is uh, Ted."

I said "Hi."

I looked at her. He stared at me, and she said, "I'll see you later, okay Ted?"

"Okay yeah."

May 26th, 1993. Ted is seventy seven. It is 56 years later. Ted is with his young friend, Beth Richards (is it or isn't it an affair?). They are recording their conversation on tape. Ted feels the conversations are, in part, hilarious, and that they may be able to write a comedy from this material. Much of the material, however, is dry and serious. This time, I guess as usual, Ted's doing most of the talking.

"It's ten past seven. I'm sitting with Elizabeth, Helen Elizabeth (Beth) and we were discussing dreams I've had. At the moment I'm feeling bloated and gassy and belching and exhausted. I wasn't sure about this actress, directress, from L.A. who wants to direct "Secret". I didn't even know if I liked her, and then Beth said something about Sadie. Was I always unsure about Sadie? Yeah, but not when we were younger. Not when I was in love with her. Then later as she got sick, as she got totally paranoid and manic, I became very scared and unsure about Sadie. And I'm probably unsure and scared about all women. And Beth suggested that I write about my unsureness with women.

I've also come to the conclusion that I exude a certain kind of scent, a certain kind of chemistry, because women and men are more influenced by smell than any other factor, I'm convinced of it. So I must have had a powerful scent that I exuded, otherwise I can't explain why women have found me attractive. This thought is being triggered by what Merrily Weisborn told me this morning, that Martha Gellhorn told her when she was interviewing her for the documentary (on Ted). Martha Gellhorn told her that when she met me in Valencia - I was then 21 years old, she was 27 (Gerda's age) - I was exceptionally handsome. I looked like a gypsy. My eyes were sparkling, and she had an instant crush on me. We cuddled in the car all the way from Valencia to Madrid. She's the woman who married Hemingway, and happens to be one of the finest writers alive today.

She then revealed something to Merrily that I'd forgotten, and that was that Sidney Franklin, the bullfighter, threatened me in Madrid, and said if I saw Martha again he would attend to me, and he scared me, it may have influenced me, coz he was a big bruiser. Sydney Franklin and Hemingway were close friends. They had travelled to Spain together. Bullfighting and machismo bound them together. I didn't see too much of Martha, but that was mostly because Hemingway was jealous and keeping her under lock and key.

We read in Kert's account of Martha's first days in Madrid(9): "After her arrival in Madrid, Ernest tried to take charge of Martha in ways that were sometimes heavy-handed. On her second night, during a heavy bombardment, she woke up and, seeking company, found her door locked from the outside. She banged and shouted but to no avail. Finally, when the shelling stopped a hotel employee unlocked the door. Who had locked it, she wondered. She located Ernest in someone's room playing poker. He had locked it, he admitted sheepishly, so that no man could bother her."

From Ted's notes written in Spain, 1937:

"Bethune and I met Hemingway today. Beth and Hemingway hated each other at first sight. But I like Martha Gellhorn. Mmm. So did Bethune. Mmm.

Met Robert Capa and his girl friend Gerda Taro. Yum Yum. Beth and I giggled at one another after we left them.

"Isn't she beautiful?" I said.

"A delicious thoracic creation," he said.

"Yum Yum," I said.

"Make that ditto," he said.

Back to Ted's "Hemingway" notes from "1946":

All the correspondents used to eat in a restaurant on the Grand Via, lunch, not dinner, but lunch. And the next day sure enough there was Hemingway and Martha sitting there. There was every well known writer in the world around that table at the time. Everybody was there except Shakespeare. It was incredible. And she, Martha - Hemingway was very possessive about her. It turned out that he was expecting to marry her.

She hadn't mentioned this. Franklin had told Hemingway that we had been necking in the back of the car, so his attitude to me, right from the beginning, was not friendly.

I was twenty one at the time. He was in his mid or late forties. He had not yet written "For Whom the Bells Toll", of course, but he had been one of my heroes as a writer. I had loved his short stories and I had loved his novels "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms". He was already world famous by this time. He was the correspondent in Spain for the North American Newspaper Alliance and was writing marvellous stuff.

I was sending cables to the trade unions wire-service, Federate Press. I was also just beginning to broadcast regular radio reports to North America.

The head censor in Madrid was a man called Arturo Barea who worked with his wife, Ilsa. At the table everyday Barea would refer to various dispatches he thought were special or important and everyone would be very excited.

One afternoon Barea started to read what he said was "one of the most vivid, the most exciting dispatch ever written." Before he started to read we all automatically turned to Hemingway because that description could only describe something Hemingway had written. I thought, "What a moment. What a historic, incredible moment."

After the first lines three of us knew that it wasn't Hemingway's piece. Barea was reading the article I had sent that morning describing the bombardment at Albacete, and everybody was going, "Oh, fantastic," looking at Hemingway, and saying, "Great," and I thought, "Holy shit." Hemingway was trying to wave off the compliments, "No, no!" but nobody knew. Finally when it was over they all jumped up, "It's great. It's Fantastic. It's..." and Hemingway said, "I didn't write it," and Barea said, "No, no! Ted Allan!"

Soon after that Hemingway asked me if he could read my short stories. I said, "Would you?"

He said, "Yeah."

"Oh," I said. "I'll get them," and I got up to leave.

He said, "Great. Bring them to the hotel"

I ran back to the Blood Transfusion Institute and picked up the several short stories I had with me in Spain, and ran to his room at the Florida Hotel. I gave him the stories and I thought, "Oh God. This is fantastic. He's gonna read my stories."

I waited and waited. It took a week or so and one day at lunch he said, in front of everybody, "I read your stories, kid."

"Yeah?"

"I guess I don't have anything to worry about."

I said, "Yeah, well I didn't think you'd have anything to worry about."

"Yeah," he said. "You know what you should do with your stories?"

"Yeah, what?"

He said, "You should put then away for ten to twenty years, and then come back to them."

I said, "Yeah, okay, thanks."

And this was at the lunch table with everybody listening. I thought he was being pretty shit ass.

A few days later I was at the Hotel Florida and there he was at the bar. "Hi. Hi, kid." All the rest of them called him Poppa or Uncle. Bethune and I were the only ones who called him "Mr. Hemingway."

We both went down to the toilets to pee. As we were peeing in the urinals, the hotel was hit by a shell. Now the Florida Hotel was hit by sells one, two, three, four, five times a week. And it shook. We were peeing, and Hemingway said, "Well, one of the good things about the shells hitting this hotel is it's getting rid of the Jews."

I said, "What do you mean, it's getting rid of the Jews?"

"Well, I heard Herb Kline was leaving, and he mentioned three Jewish guys who had been in the hotel and they were leaving."

I said, "Didn't you know I was Jewish?"

He said, "Oh Christ, I didn't remember you were Jewish."

I said, "Yeah, I'm Jewish."

He said, "Oh shit." He then said to me, this was after the peeing, "Hey kid, if you ever write a novel, I don't care what it is, I'll write a preface for it."

I said, "Oh, great."

Ted split his time in this fashion between working with Bethune at the Blood Transfusion Unit and living the life of a war correspondent in the city besieged. Madrid, the centre of the world. Rubbing shoulders with Hemingway, Dos Passos: everyone but Shakespeare.

During the spring Ted suggested to Gallo - Gallo was the nom du guerre of Luigi Longo who many years later would succeed Togliati as head of the Italian Communist Party. Gallo, as we've mentioned, was Chief Political Commissar of the International Brigade, and Ted was reporting to him about Bethune. Ted suggested to Gallo that he might broadcast reports from Madrid to North America. Gallo approved. This took Ted the Telefonica building, that landmark and target, every night in the midnight hours so that his broadcasts would reach the East Coast of America in the evenings.

During this period Herbert Kline and Geza Karpathi were making a documentary of Bethune's work, "The Heart of Spain". Meanwhile that other "publicity hound", Hemingway, was making his documentary, "Spanish Earth." Photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro (Capa's beautiful companion, whom Hemingway is reported to have called a "femme fatale") were involved in this project. We'll meet them later.

Meanwhile, back at the Blood Transfusion Unit, tension continued to mount. Two more Spanish doctors, a haematologist, and a bacteriologist, joined the unit. With this Culebras gained some success in his campaign to "democratise" the Institute, to achieve more Spanish control. In practice what this amounts to was a bureaucrification, a proliferation of rules and paper, restrictions on Bethune's freedom of action.

Bethune responded stormily. Ted had already seen him slam a door so hard its glass window shattered. Now he watched Bethune hurl a heavy glass ashtray across the room at Culebras. When the innocuous Dr. Gonzales inadvertently spilled a bottle of blood, Bethune growled, "Idiot". That's a word the Spaniard recognise, and it had a chilling effect. Gonzales was mortified. All possibility of professional co-operation was ruptured. By this time everyone else had already turned against Bethune, and now, even for the young Ted Allan, his hero had lost his lustre. Ted wrote:

"Beth and Culebras' antagonism was becoming impossible. After a few more drunken tantrums, broken windows, thrown chairs, flung ashtrays, another episode absconding in the night with an ambulance, I began to find myself allied with those Bethune called "the misfits and the shits". I saw him, not as a loving mentor, but as a drunkard and a publicity seeker. I agreed now that he must leave the Unit, and wrote a full report, copies to the Brigade in Madrid and to the Party in Canada, suggesting Bethune be sent back to Canada. In Spain he was a liability. At home he could be of service speaking and raising money for the Spanish Aid Committee.

A.A. MacLeod and William Kashtan of the Canadian Communist Party travelled to Madrid to investigate. The day that they arrived and phoned me, Bethune, sober for a change, was planning to leave for Valencia to buy, he said, some medical supplies. An excuse to get away, because we all knew there were no medical supplies in Valencia. I suggested MacLeod and Kashton come to the Unit the following morning and be present at a meeting of the Unit's personnel to hear it all for themselves first hand.

The meeting next morning went its inevitable way, one speaker after the other telling MacLeod and Kashton how impossible a man Bethune had become with his drinking and whoring. Admittedly he had done wonderful work at the beginning, but he seemed to have degenerated into an incurable and unpleasant alcoholic.

Finally I took the floor. "We all know he's a son of a bitch..." I began. I didn't get much further. Some drapes that walled off an alcove parted and, from their folds, out stepped Bethune. He had not gone to Valencia as he had said he intended, but had hidden that morning behind these curtains in the room where we held our meeting. He glared at me.

"Thank you comrades for your expressions of trust and loyalty. I appreciate it. Especially from you." His countenance withered. Beneath the steal of his stare, hurt and humiliation were too painful to conceal. My shock and embarrassment left me speechless.

He turned to MacLeod and Kashton. "I am happy to resign from the Blood Transfusion Service, but I see no advantage in returning to Canada. I can be used here as a surgeon. I will join one of the Brigades medical units."

MacLeod said they could discuss all this in private. I persuaded MacLeod and Kashton that it appeared that Bethune could not handle himself at this time in Spain; that he should be ordered home where he could be of more use. Eventually Kashton and MacLeod persuaded, or ordered, or any event prevailed upon Bethune. Bethune returned to Canada to tour and lecture promoting the Spanish cause.

Betrayal: betrayal of Sadie, betrayal of Bethune. A major theme for Ted. At about this time an acquaintance from Montreal, one Harry Muscowitz, was accused in Spain of being a "Trotskyite" and a spy for the fascists. Harry had heard that his acquaintance, Ted Allan, was in Madrid and he appealed to Ted to act as a character reference for him. To Ted, Muscowitz was simply a Trotskyite, and therefore not to be trusted. Besides, what did Ted know of this Trotskyite, a mere acquaintance? Ted said as much.

Muscowitz was not shot, but was deported. I am not clear that Ted knew this at the time. Certainly Ted felt that he had as good as abandoned Muscowitz to his death. In several versions of his fictional writings Ted recounts the story of a denounced Trotskyite being shot. It is one of the themes of Ted's great work, "The Secret of the World".

Many years later Ted would run into Harry Muscowitz on 6th Avenue in New York. "You son of a bitch," said Muscowitz. "You bastard. They could have killed me. And you and I are Jews!" and with that he spat on Ted.

From Bethune's letter of May 5th, 1937: "To my friends in Canada: This is an attempt at an explanation why I, who think of you often with love and affection, have not written - or so briefly - since my arrival in Spain..." Bethune continued by saying that an attempt to describe or explain his experiences in Spain is a foray into the world of art, and he then went on to discuss art for many pages... Bethune spoke of the artist: "The environment in which he has his being are those dark, sunless, yet strangely illuminated depths of the world's subconscious - the warm, pulsating yet quite depths of the other-world. He comes up into the light of every-day like a great leviathan of the deep, breaking the smooth surface of accepted things, gay, serious, sportive and destructive. In the bright banal glare of day he enjoys the purification of violence, the catharsis of action..."

"The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world. He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth. He is at once the product and the preceptor of his time. After his passage we are troubled and made unsure of our too easily accepted realities. He makes uneasy the static, the set, and the still. In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution - the principle of life. He is an agitator, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the soul of man.

"But enough. Perhaps the true reason I can not write is that I'm too tired - another 150 miles on the road today.

"Our first job is to defeat fascism - the enemy of the creative artist, the enemy of man. After that we can write about it.

"Goodbye. I do think of you with love and affection. Forgive me when I do not write.

Salud,
Norman Bethune"

My ex gave me Doug Boyd's book "Rolling Thunder". In it Boyd writes of Rolling Thunder, "I am convinced that every image, every mood and every reaction he displays has a purpose." This sentence troubled me. It reminded me of my initial reaction on reading "The Scalpel, The Sword", my father's biography of Norman Bethune. Scalpel was written as a eulogy - that seemed to Ted and his collaborator to be politically appropriate at that time (published in 1952). Bethune is portrayed as a man of exceptional energy, drive, ambition, talent, intellect, and charisma, and the moral of the biography seemed to be - seemed to me when I first read it at the age of twenty - that if you had that exceptional talent, energy, et cetera, why then you could make a contribution. But if you're black, get back... I didn't like this Bethune. I felt he had nothing for me, nothing of help to me.

Over the years, talking to my father, listening to my father, I got a different picture of Bethune. I learned the details of my father's relationship with Beth, which were not in print. My father was, in some sense, a protege of Bethune's. They were almost like father and son. "He turned into my father, crazy Harry" said my father, "I felt that he had betrayed me." Listening to my father tell the stories on memorable nights in his apartment in Putney above the river, looking down through the grey to the Thames, I met another Bethune: a man whose passion and foibles constantly had him falling on his ass, but a man who every time he fell, wiped off the dust and insisted on trying again. The best, or at least the biggest example of this was the model hospital. Bethune insisted that the Mao's guerrilla army build a model hospital, had insisted that this was the only way he could train the Chinese in modern medical methods. And so the guerrilla army put enormous energy and effort into the construction of a model hospital. The partisans took a tremendous pride in this accomplishment. However, within three week of it completion, just as the Chinese had predicted, it was destroyed by the Japanese. Now this was a catastrophe that Bethune did not cast off lightly. He was devastated. But he learned from it, and used it as a spring board for his great accomplishments in China, and not least for remoulding himself. I believe Bethune developed a receptivity and sensitivity out of this passage. This man, a man wrestling with his weaknesses, is a man that I can model myself upon. I am grateful to my father for giving me be the name, Norman Bethune Allan.

At the end of May, 1937, Bethune was sent home from Spain, publicly a hero, privately humiliated.

"Spain is a scar on my heart!" Bethune wrote to his ex-wife, Frances.

Did my father betray Bethune? No! my father acted the part Bethune had given him: he was Bethune's Political Commissar and, ultimately, this was in Beth's best interest.