Spanish Civil War
The next year, 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Bethune accepted an invitation from the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy to head the Canadian Medical Unit in Madrid. He joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion which was composed of Canadian communists and other leftists and set off for Madrid on November 3, 1936.
A frequent cause of death on the battlefield is medical shock brought on by loss of blood. A casualty whose wounds do not appear life-threatening suddenly dies. Bethune conceived the idea of administering blood transfusions on the spot. He developed the world's first mobile medical unit. The unit contained dressings for 500 wounds, and enough supplies and medicine for 100 operations. Bethune organized a service to collect blood from donors and deliver it to the battlefront, thereby saving countless lives. Bethune's work in Spain in developing mobile medical units was a precursor to the later development of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units.
Bethune returned to Canada on June 6, 1937, where he went on a speaking tour to raise money and volunteers for the anti-fascist battle raging in Spain.
When he was in Spain, he wrote poetry. One of his most well-known poems was published in the 1937 July issue of Canadian Forum magazine:
And the same pallid moon tonight,
Which rides so quietly, clear and high,
The mirror of our pale and troubled gaze
Raised to a cool Canadian sky.
Above the shattered Spanish troops
Last night rose low and wild and red,
Reflecting back from her illumined shield
The blood bespattered faces of the dead.
To that pale disc we raise our clenched fists,
And to those nameless dead our vows renew,
“Comrades, who fought for freedom and the future world,
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Famous quotes containing the words spanish, civil and/or war:
“The hangover became a part of the day as well allowed-for as the Spanish siesta.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)