Spain
As the political situation across Europe continued to polarise, and with the storm clouds of war becoming ever more visible, Romilly's anti-fascism clashed increasingly with his pacifism. The outbreak of Spanish Civil War decided him. He bicycled to Marseille and joined the International Brigades, hoping he would be accepted despite his lack of military training. With a minimum of preparation, he and other ill-assorted British volunteers were thrown into the defence of Madrid as a machine-gun section with the German Thaelmann Battalion. Almost all his companions were killed; he was invalided out with dysentery, and sent back to Britain to recover. While recuperating, he met and fell in love with his second cousin, Jessica Mitford, all the more ardent an anti-fascist for her elder sisters' strong Nazi sympathies (Diana married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Unity was a friend of Adolf Hitler). He had an offer from the News Chronicle to return to Spain as their correspondent and they created an elaborate plot that allowed her to accompany him. Romilly took up journalism, sending back war news, along with his friend Philip Toynbee, who later wrote his memoirs. After some legal difficulties, Romilly and Mitford, both 19, married in Bayonne, France, on 18 May 1937. He spent his honeymoon writing Boadilla, an account of his Spanish experiences.
Read more about this topic: Esmond Romilly
Famous quotes containing the word spain:
“How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don’t know my murderous impulses through C.G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Proust, Spain through Hemingway ... It’s true, you need never have read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends, who also live all their experiences second-hand. What an age!”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)