BACK FROM SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 157, 29 March 1939, Page 5

BACK FROM SPANISH CIVIL WAR

New Zealander In The Republican Army

SERVICE WITH BRITISH BATTALION

Baek after 14 months in Spain with the British Battalion, fighting for the Repu'dieau Government forces against General Franco, Mr. Charles F. Riley, a New Zealander, returned to Wellington yesterday by the Awatea. He bore the marks of many wounds inflicted by shrapnel and machine-gun tire. He said that lie joined up in Paris, where lie was subjected to a still’ medical examination, and sent to join the 2800 oilier British soldiers under the republican Hag. Of them, 510 were killed and 1700 wounded, many repeatedly. With them were also some 32 Australians, of whom 24 were killed, and four or live New Zealanders.

He was wounded badly on the Ebro, where lie was serving as a machinegunuer. Side by side with the British Battalion, in the Spanish ranks fought 15-year-old boys, many of them already veterans who bad been wounded, and had returned lo tight again, it was no uncommon siglrt. even, to see young girls manipulating machine-guns, iu the thick of the firing.

They were opposed mostly by Italians. But for the overwhelming Italian and German support. Franco would not have lasted two months. Between July 23 and 28 last year, when aerial warfare was nt its height, SIG Fascist planes were shot down. They came over in great flocks, and dropped bombs weighing up to four-fifths of a ton. packed with liquid air. They were devastating in tlreir effect. It was useless to. try. to escape by dropping prone. Everything within several hundred yards was destroyed. Th>y dropped their bombs by squadrons, placing them with great precision.

The British Battalion was eventually withdrawn, said Mr. Riley. He himself was badly wounded in face and neck and arm. He was lucky to come home with his life, for he had faced the most modern and terrible forms of warfare yet devised. As a souvenir, lie brought with him a silvermounted dispatch ease, engraved with his name and a suitable inscription in Spanish, and presented to him by the Republican Government.