FEATURE
www.theolivepress.es
BRIGADES: Stations of the British battalions ed Teruel on February 20 and the remaining survivors were forced to retreat. After what had been a two-month struggle through constant blizzards and the bloodshed of over 140,000 casualties from each side combined, Lomon and an exhausted brigade moved on to enter yet another brutal battle, the battle for Aragon. With a large portion of the Republican army still suffering from Teruel, many of the front line troops in Aragon were inexperienced and ill-equipped as weapon supplies began to dry up from the Soviet Union. Franco, with the aid of Nazi-Germany, hammered the Republican forces with air
strikes and artillery attacks while Italian dictator Mussolini supplied thousands of additional troops. The plains of Aragon provided perfect landing pads for Nationalist aerial artillery, driving the Republicans out of position and forcing retreat. The US, Canadian and British battalions of the brigade were the last ones to pull out from the bomb-wrecked region, but many were not so lucky. Lomon was one of hundreds of men captured by Nationalists and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in San Pedro de Cardenos. Subjected to beatings, denied medical
7 olive press - January 24- February 06, 2013 the aid and living on starvation rations, one in five of the foreign volunteers died in the prison. Fortunately David made it out alive later that year when he was exchanged for Italian prisoners held captive in Britain. He headed straight back to England. He was lucky not to have been put in prison on his return and soon married an English woman and went on to have three children. While he was drafted to fight in World War II, he survived to go on and work in a clothes shop called Barnett Lawson Trimmings for 35 years. He retired in 1982 as Managing Director. Franco’s eventual victory proved what many of the volunteers had predicted before they had even left the British Isles. They realised that Spain would be the testing ground for fascism, and should it triumph it would be exercised on a much larger scale. Adolf Hitler would soon be causing more bloodshed with iron and steel supplied by none other than General Franco. Whatever political alignment the volunteers of the International Brigade may have had, they were all united by the chant of ‘They shall not pass’... a cry, which sadly fell on deaf ears as Franco eventually rolled them over to win the civil war. Either way, as the family of David Lomon gathered to say goodbye to the late Londoner last week, Great Britain, Spain and Europe should say thank you to one of its many unassuming war heroes.
7