NOT GOING HOME

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 197, 6 September 1937, Page 7

NOT GOING HOME

-Presa Assn.

British Battalion With The Spauish Loyalists STORIES OF DESERTION

(By Telegrapb-

— CopyrigbtJ

(Received G, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, Bept. 5. A veteran of the Great "War, the Scottish Communist Lieutenant-Colonel G. S. Aitken, on furlough from the command of the Fifteenth International Brigade in Spaln, denies that tho British battalion is returning home. He adds: "If the French frontier remains open, a second battalion will be dispatched." The suggestion of evacuation vras fantastic, he added. Fivo hundred Britons were at present in tho fighling. Americans numbered 2000. It was expected that these numbers would shortly bo trebled. The food, pay and moraie were excellent. The Sunday Dispatch reported that London Communist Party chiefs had ordered the withdrawal, with tho smallest possible pnblicity, of thc British battalion from ihe International Brigade in Spain, owing to a breakdown of moralo and to daily desertions, which were expected to involve the breaking-up of the brigade. Deserters, the paper added, were arriving in London in increasing numbers. All told a story of lack of discipline, bad food and extremely hard fighting while the Spaniards enjoyed themselves at the rear. The brigade recently refused to advance, because they knew that tho ground was infestod with their opponents' machinc-guns. It was estimated that only 200 British participants remained from tho original 1000. French, Germans and Americans were also leaving.