The Real Band of Brothers: First-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War. Max Arthur

a sheet of flames, and I almost fell on top of a small child lying on the ground, covered with debris. It was awful, and I shall never forget it. As I picked the child up, it seemed to regain consciousness and struggled in my arms, and I had to hold it tightly, which was difficult because one leg was only hanging on by a sinew. For one moment I stood with the child in my arms, horrorstruck. My legs were so weak I couldn’t move. One of the medical people saw me struggling with the child and took it from me and carried it to the hospital. It was sickening. But what happened to all the other people, and the mules and the fuel? It was just a big flash. It must have been a terrific bomb—they were trying to hit the line between Madrid and Valencia. It was that day when I first met the doctor from the English unit, Doctor Alex Tudor-Hart, and he took me to his hospital. He said I couldn’t go back to my hospital, that I’d better stay. He tried to keep me there—but I knew I had to go back.

      We had a man come round—a relative of one of the people who was killed when the bomb went off. We used to mother him and see that his things were ready for him after a day’s work. He had had a job at one time as a porter, overseeing the prevention of typhoid, and he used to go round and was very suspicious of the water. We never had typhoid antitoxins—we were never inoculated against it. It should have been done in London really before coming out to Spain.