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Author: Nick Lowles | Date: February 2008
The last US commander in the Spanish Civil War died last month aged 92. A lifelong communist, Milton Wolff went to Spain aged 21 and within a year was the ninth commander of what has since become known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Born in Brooklyn in October 1915, Wolff dropped out of high school and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal programme for the young unemployed. He did not last long, sacked after complaining about the poor treatment of an injured friend.
With a job in the garment district he joined the Young Communist League. Then discarding his pacifist beliefs he joined the Washington Battalion in 1937 and made his way to Spain. With other US units they formed the 15th International Brigade.
Like many other international units, the brigade suffered heavy casualties, losing 900 out of 3,000 men.
In 1938 Wolff became commander after an artillery shell killed many high ranking officers. Then a captain, Wolff led his soldiers behind enemy lines before they managed to swim to safety across the Ebro river.
During one training session he was photographed next to Ernest Hemingway. He was not impressed. “Ernest is quite childish in many respects,” he wrote to a friend. “He wants very much to be a martyr … So much for writers, I’d much rather read their works than be with them.”
Hemingway was more complimentary, describing Wolff as “tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed.”
Returning to the United States with the rank of major, Wolff never lost his passion for Spain or the International Brigade’s cause. He campaigned tirelessly for democracy during the Franco era and was a leading figure in the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
He was refused entry into the US Army at the outset of the Second World War because of his leftwing views, but he worked closely with William Donovan, who had been brought in by President Roosevelt to head the Office of Strategic Services (later to become the CIA), to recruit Lincoln veterans to work for British intelligence.
Eventually his military skills were recognised and he was sent to Italy to establish intelligence networks among communist partisans.
During another mission in France he met Spanish partisans who were plotting to invade Spain. Alarmed at this move, the Army sent him back to the US.
He continued to champion deserving causes, especially regarding Spain, where he was loved. During one trip he won loud applause when he told the audience that if they were ever in trouble to “give me a call”.
During the 1960s he led Lincoln veterans on anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. In 2005 he returned to the River Ebro where, after a minutes silence, he threw some carnations into the water. “I call them my dead,” he said.
A national monument in honour of the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade will be installed along the Embarcadero in San Francisco on 30 March 2008.
For more information about this statue and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade visit http://www.alba-valb.org.
© Searchlight Magazine 2008