Chapter 84

From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey - cont.

Mother cried out for me to come back. I ignored her and walked on as fast as I could while still having time to look at the sidewalk. I was just passing a lamp post on a corner when a bomb went off not too far down a cross street. It was one of the delayed fuse bombs the Italians used which crashed through the roof of a building and the floors below before exploding inside. The blast had almost spent itself by the time it reached me. The shockwave still struck hard enough to knock me off my feet. Before that happened, I had noticed out of the corner of my eye a man in a cloth cap and a shabby jacket running towards me. He was probably trying to reach the shelter I had just left.

As I lay on the sidewalk, I could hear a mild buzzing around me instead of the rattling, clanging, chattering noise of a living city. I could also hear a couple of muffled taps like a pair of sharp footsteps on a carpeted floor that were, undoubtedly, bomb blasts from elsewhere in the city. I looked down the cross street towards the site of the explosion, sharp daggers of pain digging into my skull as I turned my head.

Smoke poured out of the shattered shell of what had once been a sturdy brick building with a plaster façade. Across the street from it was a crumpled figure in a shabby jacket who appeared to be resting comfortably on the sidewalk next to his upturned cap. After pulling myself up slowly and painfully, I stumbled towards him with a vague idea of helping him. When I reached him, I carefully turned him over.

At first, seeing that there was not a mark on him, I thought he might be alright. Then I realized that he wasn't breathing and never would again. His wrinkled features were relaxed as though he had died peacefully in his sleep.

I don't know how long I knelt there in near silence before a man came and took me to my shaken and relieved mother. I could see her lips move, but no sound came out. My lip reading was good after years of watching silent films, but it was hard to focus my eyes even without the constant throbbing ache on the left side of my head. I could tell Mother was saying to my rescuer, and then to me, something like, "dear God! Are you hurt, Grace?"

A doctor in the shelter examined me. He pronounced me mildly concussed in written notes he shared with me so that he didn't have to shout at the top of his lungs to be heard in something approaching a normal tone. It was eerie not being able to hear my own spoken replies. After the all clear sounded and we were sure that it actually was the all clear, I was hustled off to Barcelona General. I was forced to spend the night there although the deafness, headache, and dizziness were gone after about an hour and there were many people injured in the day's air raids who were worse off than I was.

… It wasn't until we returned to the Hotel Continental after I was released the next day that I remembered the watch. I never saw it again. Hopefully, it was found by someone poor who used the money its sale would have brought to survive the hard, lean, fearful times that followed in Barcelona after Franco conquered the city.

May Bailey to Jessie Buchanan Nov. 24, 1938

… It was bad enough that Grace was almost killed, but we reached Barcelona General just in time to see a line of corpses being wheeled into the morgue on gurneys. The many bloodstains soaking the cloths that covered them testified to how badly mangled they must be. In the emergency room, we were told that fascist bombs had reduced the Bank of Spain to rubble, crushing to death many of its occupants.

Grace, seeing the shape the injured survivors were in, maintained to the doctor who came to admit her that the bed reserved for her should be used for one of them. She didn't need to stay at the hospital. She felt well enough to return to the Hotel Continental. Then, she jumped up intending to walk out only to be stopped in her tracks by a fierce headache and dizziness that forced her to sink back into her chair.

She conceded that perhaps she should rest for thirty minutes. The admitting doctor asked me in a normal tone of voice, inaudible to Grace, if she was always this mulish. I am not looking forward to telling Dr. Barlow about this if we make it back to New Bedford. I can just hear him now making some amused remark about the apple not falling far from the tree.

I feel cold all over as I think of how close I came to losing my daughter. The admitting doctor is certain that the only reason that Grace didn't die like the man by whom she was found kneeling was that the bomb that killed him and injured her exploded inside a building. The walls muffled the shockwave and the sound. That and being down the street from the blast was enough to save her from anything like the full, fatal impact.

Her hearing has returned, and her headaches and dizziness are gone. She wasn't happy to learn that I postponed our appointment at the Salem Bland Orphanage until tomorrow, but she spent the day resting and went to bed early. So far tonight, there have been no nightmares, but I expect that will soon change. She seems to be unable to sleep without them since we came to Spain, and they were not infrequent before. When I lost my John, I was sometimes able to find peace in sleep even if it was painful beyond words to wake up and remember that he was gone. However, it seems even that blessing is to be denied her.

From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -

The Salem Bland Home for over a hundred children orphaned by Franco and his allies was in a requisitioned mansion called the Pines at Pederalbes near Barcelona. The children were well fed and groomed. Their caretakers seemed kind and attentive. The classrooms were clean and well lit. The walls of the cafeteria were hung with brightly colored paintings of ships and dancing children.

I met with the director. In the privacy of her office, I removed the money belt I had been wearing since just before Mother and I left Marseilles at the request of certain officials of the Canadian Committee to Defend Spanish Democracy. She was very happy to see the 20,000 francs it contained. They would come in handy when it became necessary to bring the children over the French border to escape the advance of Franco's triumphant armies.

Mother and I distributed the candy bars and big-little books that we had brought with us from Canada to the children. Seeing their eyes widen at receiving the treats is one of the few happy memories I have of those days in Barcelona. Not all of them could read much English, but with an illustration with an easily translated caption on every other page of the books, it wouldn't have been hard for them to follow the stories. The director assured me that those who had better English would help those whose English wasn't so good.

I was introduced to a little boy of about eight years old named Nicolas whose dark brown eyes looked at me with timid curiosity from under an unruly mop of hair. He thanked us for our gifts in Spanish and then, in halting, but not too bad English when encouraged by the director to practice his language skills. His little brother, Enrique, peeped out tentatively from behind him like a squirrel from behind a tree.

… Afterwards, it was explained to Mother and me that the boys had survived the fascists' bombing, strafing, and shelling of refugees on the Malaga to Almeria Road. The director was somber as she told the story. "Their sister, Luisa, was killed by strafing. Nicolas still sees the blood soaking her dress in his nightmares and his father digging a grave for her with his bare hands. He remembers how tenderly he lowered her into it as though she were still alive and might cry out in pain from her wounds if he handled her too roughly.

His parents placed him and his younger brother on Norman Bethune's ambulance when they were past Torre del Mar. He never saw them again. He saw the fascists again when they bombed the marketplace in Almeria while he and his brother stood in line waiting for bread along with a vast crowd of refugees. They hid under a pushcart. Since that day his brother has not spoken a single word."

Mother and I left the Salem Bland Home with much to think about. The experience deepened a conviction in me that has not changed to this day. Only two kinds of people supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War, murderers and accomplices.

What might await those poor children when they had to evacuate Barcelona made me sick to think about. They would be a part of a stream of thousands of frightened refugees trekking north towards safety in France. If the fascists decided to rain steel and fire on that stream as they had on so many other civilians in this endless war, those of them that survived would endure another waking nightmare in addition to those that were already enough to haunt their sleep for the rest of their days.

Next Week: Meanwhile back in New Bedford. Leaving Barcelona.