Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War

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Mine Were of Trouble : A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War (1957) by Peter Kemp is an account of the Spanish Civil War from the Nationalist side. It’s a very interesting accompaniment to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Here’s Kemp shooting at the Reds during the Battle of Jarama, one of the larger Civil War battles, immortalized in the song Jarama Valley by Woodie Guthrie: A lot of people around him disagree with this policy, but there’s nothing to be done.Discipline in the Legion was quite different than in Orwell’s militia: Kemp knows he’ll be shot himself if he disobeys. More quotes from “Mine Were of Trouble”

Quote by A.E. Housman: “I to my perils Of cheat and charmer

Anthony Beevor, in The Battle for Spain, says that between 6000 and 7000 priests and nuns were killed during the war, especially during the first few months, when there was an outbreak of mob violence against the church and the bourgeoisie in Republican territory.This perspective alone is worth the price of the book. The books I've read have all been written from the perspective of the Leftist Republicans where the bestiality and depravity of the Naitonalists has been an assumed fact. Aside from the partisan bias, these books shortchange the Nationalist side. In "The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction," for example, the author doesn't bother to explain what the "Carlists" were and where they came from. In other words, they say that the Civil War actually started before 1936, and it was the left who started it.

Mine were of trouble by Peter Kemp | Open Library Mine were of trouble by Peter Kemp | Open Library

Taking that into account, and knowing what I know, I don’t think the civil war was anybody’s fault in particular. The Spanish situation was bad, and one way or another there was going to be violence. There was plenty of violence happening before the war broke out, in fact. And while Orwell’s stint in Spain is over in a few months, Kemp ends up fighting for the National cause for most of the war, first in the Requetés and then in the Spanish Legion –one of Spain’s toughest fighting forces.stars. This is worth reading if simply for the perspective it gives but the author for no fault of his own produces a painfully biased perspective. Y'know because he's fighting for Fascists. Reading between the lines makes things particular obvious the rose colored glasses Kemp is using while writing this account decades after it happens. Defining men he served alongside during the war as "good hearted" or "good natured" despite them gunning down men who had surrendered to them. Sure Kemp protested some of this but eventually accepts it (to my own disgust). Furthermore Kemp perhaps unknowingly demonizes the Republican side of the war while framing every encounter with people on the Nationalist side as being good and them being grateful for him fighting for their side. It should be noted and expected to be understood that both sides committed atrocities during the civil war. I couldn't help but notice that the majority of people he encountered we're either A) petty aristocrats in some form who very obviously would feel threatened by a communist government or B) peasants and volunteers who were likely serving for the Nationalists because wherever they were from supported that side first. Spanish people of the older generations (older than me, at least) have told me that Spain is still divided between victors and vanquished: that which side your family was on makes a big difference in your life to this day. I don’t know if younger people feel the same way. Maybe Did Franco have a lot of popular support during the war? Was he popular during his years in power? Somehow, I doubt they were doing a lot of public opinion surveys during the dictatorship. Anyway, I’ll look into it. Monument to the fallen in Santander. Photo by Emilio Gómez Fernández, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mine Were of Trouble: A Nationalist Account of the Spanish Civil War (Peter Kemp War Trilogy) excel

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On his brief stint on the Madrid front, fighting house to house in the Carabanchel neighborhood in the south of the city… At the beginning of the war, the Falange was a small, basically irrelevant fringe party, and Franco wasn’t a part of it. But in the course of the conflict, the two other generals who’d organized the coup – Sanjurjo and Mola – died, separately, in plane crashes. The founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was executed in prison in Alicante. Franco had the new leader of the Falange arrested, and took over as the leader of the nationalist side of the war effort –making him the central “bad guy” in the Civil War narrative. But things could easily have gone in another direction. The Catholic church had a huge influence in Spain in the decades (and centuries) leading up to the war. They’d alienated quite a few working-class people in that time, with the idea that “the meek shall inherit the earth” which many considered to be a scam that benefitted the rich. Anarchists thought the Catholic church to be nothing more than the psy-ops branch of the state. Our only line of communications with Company Headquarters and the rear was the tunnel of sandbags. Through this had to come all our food, water, ammunition and supplies; through this we must evacuate our wounded. It could only be done at night, which meant that a wounded man might die before he could receive proper attention, for we had no doctor. Water was so scarce that there was no question of washing, or even cleaning our teeth. In a few days we were all infested with lice. Our food, which consisted chiefly of mule steak and dried codfish, was cooked at Company Headquarters.” Kemp, p 47.

While one of Franco’s press attachés said that Spain would have to “cleanse the country of the proletariat”, socialist members of the Republican government wanted to get rid of the bourgeoisie. One interesting bit of social history is how small the world seemed in 1938. Amazingly, Kemp would run into people he knew from college or who knew his friends. One of the most tantalizing bits is found in this passage: Finally retiring from the army due to tuberculosis, he became a writer and insurance salesman. As a reporter, he went to Central and South America, Rhodesia, the Belgian Congo, Hungary, etc. He wrote three books besides Mine Were of Trouble, all memoirs of his life and war experiences. In his book, Orwell says that churches in Catalonia were burnt “as a matter of course” but laments the headline “Reds Crucify Nuns” in the Daily Mail as being bad journalism. Kemp mentions at least one village allegedly crucifying their priest, but the historical (non-memoir) studies I’ve read don’t mention crucifixions. This church was destroyed just after the Civil War began. Now the bottom part’s a library. Unlike most burned churches, it wasn’t rebuilt after the war. Lavapiés, Madrid.

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Kemp was around 22 and had recently graduated from university. He had been involved with the Conservative Union at university. Kemp's explanation for joining the Nationalists was (a) he thought he could use the seasoning of military action and (b) there was no way that he would fight for the left. The book does not reveal any interest in fascism or fascist politics on the part of Kemp. Similarly, Kemp is clearly opposed to Communism, but we don't hear vituperative condemnations of Communism from him. As I said, his story mirrors Orwell's, at least superficially, in many ways. Both were Englishmen who came to Spain and fought in the war; both were wounded in battle; both wrote accounts of their experiences which also include a historiography of the conflict. Orwell was of course the superior writer and had a much more sophisticated political education, but he saw much less combat (through no fault of his own) and his hatred of Fascism blinded him to the factional complexity of the Nationalist side, even though he was able to see the contradictions of his own with ruthless clarity. Neither endeavoured to write a book of propaganda, but Kemp felt compelled to dispute many of the atrocity claims laid at the feet of the Nationalists, and he is honest enough about things like the execution of Loyalist prisoners to make me believe he was at least trying to tell the truth as he experienced it. Now, the Spanish Civil War was one of incredible factional intricacy. The Loyalist (Left) side consisted of communists, anarchists, Trotskyists, Republicans, and God knows what else, all of whom disliked, feared and even hated each other. It was supported with equipment and advisers by Stalin, and its army by the International Brigades of foreign volunteers from all over the world. The Nationalist (Right) side was not less factionalized, though in the habit of right-wing movements it did not cannibalize itself the way the leftists always seem to: it consisted of monarchists, Fascists, nationalist/conservatives, traditionalists, and on a military plane, also had a lot of foreigners in its ranks, by virtue of the Army of Africa, which Franco brought with him from Spanish Morocco when the war began: also by the Spanish Foreign Legion. It was supported in turn by Hitler, who sent the Condor Legion, and Mussolini, who sent 20,000 soldiers. So...the reader can be forgiven if he is periodically confused that reality does not conform to something as simple as "North vs. South" or "Reds vs. Whites." However, Kemp does a credible job of keeping the central issues fairly clear.

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This is arguably one of the most interesting, thrilling, and charming books I have ever read, and most certainly is a contender for my favourite of the year. The author, Peter Kemp, has a superb skill for structure, detail, and storytelling that makes it extremely difficult to put this book down. It gives you just enough detail to help you understand the situations he was in without being too heavy-handed and boring. At some moments, 'Mine Were of Trouble' reads almost like an adventure book; not because the events are so unbelievable, but because of the great lengths the author went to describe the acts of heroism and horror he saw in real life. A necessary read for N.S. & W.N. about the Spanish Civil War 1936-'39, Nationalists vs Global Communist recruits. Here is an overview of that book as it pertains to our current situation in EU, North America. Knowing what we now know about the situation of the Soviet Union during those years, this seems very doubtful. It could have been far worse if the Soviets had won. Franco goes on to warn of the communist threat, especially to British education, spreading “subversive influences among our youth”. Franco had that exactly right. It is depressing to see the depths to which these “subversive influences” have degraded Britishers. And not only them, of course, but everywhere leftist subversion is allowed free reign, even Franco’s Spain, which defeated the left, but the left, like cancer or toe nail fungus or sin, returned, and now Spain is as left infected as any European, formerly Christian, society. The war never ends. Kemp entered Spain under the guise of a journalist. Once there he joined the Carlist Requetes as a soldier and was subsequently commissioned. Then, after discerning that he would get more experience as a Spanish Legionary, he transferred to the Spanish Legion. He describes the military actions he was involved in, and these descriptions make for some tense and fascinating reading.