Volk (9 page)

But of course it was legitimate. She delivered the meager supplies she had been able to fit in the car, and helped feed the children. The soldier nodded and departed. In due course Quality returned to the city. The check point had moved during the day, and there were different soldiers, but they had been given the word. “Do you have any contraband?” the officer demanded.

“Contraband?”

“Drugs. Weapons. Subversive literature. Dirty pictures.”

She laughed. “No, only milk, bread, cloth and bandages on the way out, and empty on the way back.” She waited in case they decided to inspect the car, but the man simply waved her on.

After that her car was not challenged in either direction, and no soldier followed it. The word of the Quakers was good.

Personnel changed, equipment failed, and Quality had to start driving a truck. The Republican government supplied some trucks for the relief efforts, but the service was inadequate. The Quakers had to rely on their own trucks, but they did not have enough vehicles to fulfill their needs. Experience made clear that light trucks did not carry enough or stand up well enough to the constant driving on wretched roads. The best trucks were three tons or more, equipped with four rear driving wheels and double springs. But they used a lot of petrol, which was in short supply. Even so, in the course of a year they managed to distribute several tens of thousands of tons of assorted foods.

Quality's deliveries consisted variously of the three basic relief foods, milk, bread and chocolate, supplemented by preserved meat, peanut butter, cheese, egg powder, dried fish, and dried vegetables: beans, peas and lentils. Cod liver oil was also distributed as supplies allowed. From Switzerland came Farina Lactal, a mixture of cereal flours, powdered milk, sugar and malt extracts which made a nutritious porridge when mixed with water and cooked. The Friends made every effort to buy food from outside Spain, because that added to the supply instead of merely shifting it within the country, and to avoid giving foreign currency to either Spanish government. It was too likely to be used to buy weapons.

The battle line continued to change. It was evident that only months remained before Barcelona itself would be under siege and would fall. The Nationalists were too strong, and their borrowed weapons were too effective. The refugees were now a pitiful horde.

Then a wounded, bandaged man waved down the car as it returned to the city in the afternoon on a routine trip without food. “I must reach to my home,” he said. “My family needs me. Give me a ride.”

“But I must pass a check point,” Quality protested. “You cannot go there.”

“The war is lost. I must go home. I have given up my weapon. Just take me through, and let me go, and I will be with my family.”

So this was a deserter. Quality didn't like this, but found herself unable to deny the man. “If they stop the car, and inspect it, you will be in trouble,” she warned him. So would she. Neither side took kindly to deserters.

“They will not stop a Quaker car,” he replied.

That was probably true. Most days now the soldiers at the check points simply waved the trucks and cars on by. So she let him climb into the back and hide under blankets. Ill at ease, she drove on. Probably there would be no inspection.

But as it happened, this time she was challenged. “Are you carrying any contraband?” the soldier asked.

“No,” Quality said, before she thought. Then it occurred to her that the man would surely be considered contraband; she had been thinking of the usual objects. But if she told them about the man, he might be taken and killed.

The soldier was already waving her on. She was moving forward before she got her thoughts organized. But then she was horrified. She had told a lie! She had never intended to do that.

Yet if she had told them, and the man had been taken and killed, after trusting her, what then?

She mulled it over as she drove, but the conclusion was inescapable: she had lied more or less by oversight and confusion, but she would have lied outright, rather than sacrifice a life.

She came to the section of the countryside the man had mentioned, and stopped. The passenger door opened and he jumped out. “
Gracias
!” he called, waving as he moved away.

Quality sat for a moment, and shed a tear. The man had cost her her honor, without ever knowing it.

•  •  •

The Nationalists advanced inexorably, and the Republican retreat became a rout. Now they were fleeing not to Barcelona, but from it, for any of them caught here would be massacred. The war was ugly, and atrocities were being committed on both sides. The Nationalists bombed innocent regions, simply because they were not Nationalist; the Republicans dug the bodies of priests and nuns from their graves and put them on grotesque public display, because of the Church's support for the other side. The Republican coalition was widely divergent, including even anarchists: those who believed in no government at all, though some of them held government positions. It also included Communists, who did support it well with men and with arms from Russia, but who also sought to make of it a Communist state. “First we must win the war; then we can settle between ourselves,” one leader said, but there was endless quarreling between the factions. They were not winning the war.

The International Brigade, composed of volunteer soldiers from more than fifty other countries, had fought valiantly, but had been overpowered. It retreated through Barcelona, and on north to the French border, the Nationalists in hot pursuit. There was no talk now of the four insurgent generals hanging; the generals had won. General Franco had assumed the leadership of the Nationalists, and it was apparent that he would be the new ruler of the country.

News was not always easy to obtain, or reliable. Often it was too old to be of use. They needed to know where the line was, and where the fighting was, to avoid it. They would hear the explosions of bombs, but it might be two weeks before they saw a newspaper report of any action in that region. There was also a difference between units, of either side; some were best avoided, lest they steal the food. Quality had learned to dress unattractively, even mannishly, so as to represent no obvious target. When there was danger, and he could be spared, a man would ride with her and be near, discouraging problems. Even so, it was increasingly nervous business.

In July 1938 the Republicans launched a massive counter-attack west from the Barcelona area. They had amassed almost a hundred thousand troops and improved equipment. They surged across the line, which had become relatively stable, and reconquered land in the interior. But they could not maintain their momentum, and the offensive ground to a halt in August. For three months the line stabilized again, neither side advancing. But the Quaker trucks no longer approached it; the war in this section had become uglier.

She received a letter from Lane, who had completed his training in Canada and was now in England. It brightened her week, though she was sorry he had not come to England in time to see her there.

In September the Republican government agreed to have wheat from the U.S. Government's Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation distributed under Quaker control. The Nationalist government had already agreed to this. The International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees in Spain was formed to administer contributions from governments, headed by a commissioner, but the actual distribution was carried out by existing organizations in the field. The Red Cross distributed it to the American Friends Service Committee, requiring affidavits to the effect that it was to be used only for the relief of the civilian population. The American Friends shared it with the British Friends. The wheat started arriving near the end of the year. The shipments were not as large as hoped, but were significant. They were, in their fashion, a godsend.

“Perhaps thee could bring some supplies in thy plane,” she wrote to Lane. But the humor didn't work; there was precious little humor in war, to her mind.

One morning in November Quality drove a truck out toward a distant village near the Ebro River, southwest of Barcelona. There had been the sounds of shooting and bombing, but that had been almost continuous for months. She discovered that it had been the site of an artillery bombardment that the Friends had not known about. There was rubble across the streets, buildings had collapsed, and fires were blazing many places. A pall of smoke hung overall. It looked like a scene from Dante's
Inferno
. Or like her vision of Guernica. She had of course seen many bombed-out villages, but this was horribly fresh.

As she picked her way through the debris, she came up to the bodies. There was one in the middle of the road. She stopped and got out, thinking to help the man, but as she approached she saw that he was dead. He had to be, because half of his head was missing.

At first she couldn't believe it. But when she turned her face away, stunned, she saw an arm. No body, just the arm. Beyond it were other objects that had to be human because they were covered with blood.

Quality vomited before she even realized she was being sick. The stuff just spewed out of her and splashed on the drying blood on the road. Oddly, that made her feel better. Except that it was an unfortunate waste of food.

She wiped her mouth, then walked around the man, took hold of his feet, and hauled him off the road. Then she returned to the truck and resumed driving. She felt the diminution of her innocence. War was hell on innocence, as she was to write to Lane.

In the center of the village the people were trying to care for the survivors. The job seemed almost hopeless. Many of them were dying where they lay, and there was nothing to be done for them except to make them comfortable while their blood leaked out. There was no electric power in the village, and no running water, and whatever medical supplies were available were so phenomenally inadequate as to be a mockery. The village authorities were performing triage: determining whom to try to treat and whom to ignore because the injuries were slight or death was inevitable. It was the borderline cases that were the problem.

But through this hell came the children, hungry as they always were. Numbly, Quality helped serve them, and they were appreciative. When she had done what she could, and the main portion of the supplies were put away in the canteen she drove away, taking along three who could probably be saved by more competent bandaging and care in Barcelona. There was nothing else to do.

The battle line had been stable; now it collapsed. Yet the children had to be served, so the trucks went out on ever more limited rounds. Even so, it was dangerous. Quality heard the sound of airplanes, and ahead the bombs exploded. She pulled over to the side, hoping to wait out the raid, but she was in the wrong place. The planes came right over her, and the bombs landed on either side. She hunched down inside the truck as the detonations shook it. She was terrified. She knew that only chance separated her from eternity.

How had she gotten into such a situation? She, who deplored war and all the artifacts of war! Here she was, literally, in the middle of it. Yet she could not retrace her life and discern where she had gone wrong. She had done what she believed was best throughout, and she knew she had helped many children to survive. If God saw fit to punish her for that, it was nothing she understood.

Then the planes passed. It had seemed an eternity, but it had been perhaps only a minute. She had been spared, in body. Only her faith had been shaken.

She started the truck and put it in gear. She moved slowly forward, watching for bomb craters. This was after all a routine day.

But it was evident that the battle line was getting too close. The trucks were no longer allowed to go out.

Quality was now trapped in Barcelona. She had not intended to leave anyway, because there was too much need for her here, but the choice had been usurped by the advancing forces. She wanted to huddle deep in the building, fearing that the shells would crash amidst the city and the power would fail, but she made herself get out and help where she could. It was no longer food she dispensed, but medicine and first aid, sadly inadequate. Refugees were everywhere, dragging themselves on through the city, sleeping huddled on the street, some of them dying there from their injuries and exposure.

In January 1939 Barcelona surrendered without a fight. The Nationalists marched in and put on a victory parade, and all the people had to come out and cheer. Because any who did not would be deemed to be enemies.

Then it was worse. The Nationalists combed through the city, routing out all enemies real or suspected, and shot them. The women and children they left alone, if they did not try to interfere. An officer recognized Quality, or perhaps her Quaker emblem, and showed her the wounded Nationalist men being trucked in who needed attention. She was officially neutral, though her private sympathy had been with the Republicans. It was her business to help whoever needed it, and so she did what she could for these men too.

Perhaps it was just as well, for her loyalty to the new order was not questioned, and she was treated well. When she sought to load her truck with what supplies remained and drive to a village where children were in need—which was any and every village!—they did not prevent her. For her it was business as usual. “But it is a tearful business,” she wrote to Lane. “The need is so much greater than the ability.”

Thus it was that she made the transition. In the following days and weeks the shipments of food continued to come, and the Friends Service continued to distribute it to the children. Now it was done under Nationalist auspices. There was not enough for the need, but it was far better than nothing. Quality was doing what she had come to do: helping people in a peaceful way. Yet her heart was not easy. She had never imagined that there could be so much grief in the world, so pointlessly wreaked. It was as if she were putting little bits of salve on a man who was burning to death. Sometimes that was literally the case.