Alvah Bessie's Spanish Civil War notebooks
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Alvah Bessie's Spanish Civil War notebooks
University Press of Kentucky, c2002
- : alk. paper
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
From an American perspective, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade is arguably the most famous group of soldiers to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Hollywood screenwriter Alvah Bessie (who was later blacklisted as part of the Hollywood Ten) was a foot soldier with the Brigade and kept a riveting handwritten diary of his activities in four pocket notebooks. Carefully transcribed for the first time, these journals begin with his arrival in Spain in January of 1938, then depict his training, battlefield experiences, work on the battalion newspaper, and departure almost a year later. This never before published raw material formed the basis of Bessie's classic 1939 book Men in Battle, but in several ways these journals are even more vivid than that memoir. Bessie's notebooks reflect the fast pace of a soldier's life as he jots down impressions, often while under fire. He and his comrades stumble into a fascist camp and must flee for their lives. They endure the shelling and bombing from the forces commanded by General Francisco Franco. Ernest Hemingway visits to provide moral support and cigarettes. The squad must lead Spanish recruits as young as fifteen into a sea of deadly fire.
Bessie learns that his best friend has been killed. Not simply a combat record, the notebooks also record songs the soldiers sang, diagrams of loyalist and fascist positions and combat formations, arguments among the men about politics and the conduct of the war, opinions of their officers, and the desire of many to go home. Alvah Bessie's Spanish Civil War Notebooks lend a fresh perspective to one of the most important conflicts of the 1930s, and to a historically crucial opening chapter of World War II.
by "Nielsen BookData"