The Swede who had walked in his sleep- he had not been wounded. Before we went into Batea he was in our peloton with Tabb and Moish Taubman and Johns… - Alvah Bessie

The free meal was bad, and 'Lopez' wasted a lot of time sending a cablegram signed 'Hy' to some one in America. But we got to the Committee at two, and sat on low benches in a lecture hall. There were other men there; one I recall who was wearing a blue beret and a leather glove on an obviously artificial hand. "You guys just get back?" he said, and we said, "No, we're just going." "Oh," he mumbled, "more suckers." We looked at him but he retired into himself, sitting in the back of the room for a time, and then suddenly leaving.

Every town along the Mediterranean shore was empty and deserted. The road was jam-packed with peasants evacuating toward the north, on mule-back, in donkey-carts, afoot. They looked at us in the cab of the truck, moving against the stream they made, and they kept moving. Hundreds were camped along the roads; hundreds were plodding north toward Barcelona, their few possessions, mattresses, blankets, household utensils, domestic stock, on their backs, in wheelbarrows or on their burros' backs. Little children were walking, holding onto their mother's skirts; women carried babies; older children were driving goats, sheep; old men were helping old women along the road; their faces were impassive, dark with the dust of the roads and fields, lined and worn. Their eyes alone were bright but there was no expression in their eyes. Looking at them you knew what they were thinking: 'Franco is coming; Franco is coming.'

We switched out the light and tried to sleep again; the windows were clouded with steam as the train shrieked along the tracks, and we thought of the thousands from all countries who had traveled this way before, and of those who had not come back. We thought of the volunteer organizations throughout the world that were helping to get these men to Spain; we thought of the men from Fascist countries, who had known the enemy at first hand, had escaped from their own countries and traveled thousands of miles to get to Spain to fight the enemy on another front, and who would have no homes if they survived the war. We were optimistic of the outcome.