I finished listening to Bill Bailey's in depth interview in the archives yesterday. The majority of the tapes consisted of his war time experiences. He recalls witnessing many tragic deaths that obviously have stayed with him for the rest of his life. For example, he remembers the mayor of some Spanish city in a field trying to run back to fascist lines and Republican soldiers taking their time, waiting until the mayor was "about 100 yards away" and then shooting him down in the back with a machine gun Bill remembers the death of his friend Arie, a fellow seaman and "a really great guy." H remembers sending Arie's personal belongings back to his sister and the entire account is cloaked in a solemn tone. He remembers that the three guys in his battalion who had fought in World War I "were killed right off the bat- boom." He uses a lot of onomatopoeia in his descriptions, like "boom!' and "bang!" and it is clear that these war images are still extremely vivid in his mind. He describes "the worst shelling I've ever seen in my life," recalling all of the sensations associated with shelling, including "the sound of it-'whoof!'"

The most interesting tape i listened to was the final tape, in which Bill commented on the current political situation of the 1980s and reflected on how his political ideology and affiliation changed his life. Commenting on the new conservative political surge, Bill says "there must be something wrong with the people" for them to have voted for Reagan. He predicts (correctly) that "we're gunna go through a stage before liberals can get a hold again." He asserts that liberals "hands are tied" at the moment (1988).

When Gerassi asks Bill if Spain was the biggest part of his life, he gives a more complicated answer than "yes" or "no". He believes that Spain was one of the major accomplishments of his life, but that the "biggest part" of his life would have to be his dedication to the Communist party. His dedication to this ideology changed not only his thoughts, but his actions, and therefore shaped his entire life. He has always rejected material things and in his rejection of materialism, he rejected a settled, comfortable American life. Instead of settling down with a woman, getting a decent job, working, paying bills, buying a house, and raising a family, Bill lives by himself in a rented apartment, always with an anxiety that his landlord will kick him out at any moment. Sometimes he worries that he made a mistake and should've done some things differently in order to "get more material things." However, he, Gerassi, and I know that Bill Bailey was a product of his time and place and could not have done things differently. Even when he is talking about his mistakes, there is an underlying pride for his Communist ideological convictions and lifetime commitment to the causes that drove him to Spain in 1936 and led him to his solitary apartment life as an old man.

Today, I finished the second tape of Bill Bailey's interview, which contains an hour long account of his participation in the Bremen demonstration.
Listening to Bill Bailey speak is quite delightful. He is a very well-meaning, blunt, energetic old man. In a rough voice he repeats phrases like "Dem Nazi bastards" and "Dem sons o' bitches." I found myself smiling at his vivaciousness, which remained strong even 50 years after his service in Spain. I want to clarify that although Bill Bailey lacked a formal education, he was very intelligent and was able to learn quite a deal through his life experiences. Listening to him narrate the Bremen story, he uses large words like "belligerent" and refers to things like "Murphey's law." He generates great metaphors; for example, when describing being arrested at the Bremen story, he says "Police tripping on their own big feet." I could see this sensitivity and intelligence in Bailey's letters to Marjorie Polon as well. As I noted in an earlier post, some of the passages in those letters are quite beautiful, despite occasional spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
I listened to a very descriptive account of Bailey's Bremen experience, feeling almost like I wa s there myself. From his narration, I realized that despite his gruffness and passion, Bailey was quite shy and sensitive. He recalls feeling almost "stage-fright" when he was on top of the ladder holding the Nazi flag in front of hundreds of people. He also recalls resentfully that their entire operation was rather brazen and arrogant, a "Hollywood production." It is interesting that despite inherent qualities in Bailey's personality, such as shyness and sensitivity, he becomes a part of this brazen and dangerous demonstration against the Nazis and in fact the central figure of the entire operation. It shows once more how forces of the community and life experiences impact a person, sometimes despite that person's inherent personal characteristics and inclinations.

I am still not sure what I want to research or even in which direction my research is going. However, I am interested in the questions of posed in my last post concerning the societal forces that led to New Yorkers to volunteer to fight in Spain. Today, I searched through the online ALBA archives and found an extensive oral history collection of interviews with veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade created by the journalist and scholar John Gerassi in 1980. Gerassi was the son of a Republican General and after the war, the his family emigrated to New York City, where Gerassi attended Columbia University.

The interviews are a few hours long and therefore, I chose to focus primarily on Bill Bailey's interview. I have already read his letters to Marjorie Polon and find him to be a fascinating character. When I saw his name in the list of interviews, I was extremely excited. I hoped to get a better sense of his personality by listening to him speak. I also hoped to learn his own story and identify any forces that led him to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigadge.

The first thing I noticed when the tape began rolling was Bailey's thick New York accent. This combined with terrible grammar made him sound very uneducated. I could somewhat tell that he was uneducated from the many spelling mistakes in his letters. Nevertheless, it was still odd to match a voice to the words of a man I had already constructed in my imagination. Bill Bailey was definitely different from what I had imagined. I could feel his presence with a better sense of reality than I had by reading his letters. I think that I might have romanticized Bill Bailey slightly when I read his letters. Listening to the audio tapes was a great way to sharpen my image of Bill Bailey, although it by no means makes his character or history entirely clear.

In my time at the library, I managed to listen to only one and a half of the five tapes of Bill Bailey's interview. In the first tape, he describes his parents and siblings. His father was English and his mother was Irish. Bill was born in Jersey City in 1910. He was the second youngest child. Seven of his siblings died before the age of one. The remaining six children consisted of three boys and three girls. Bill tells us about his oldest brother, who joined the navy, in part because "they gave him three meals a day." Similarly, Bill thinks the only reason his father went to political meetings was because politicians "bought you left and right." The families poverty is emphasized even more by the story of Bill's younger brother, who stole milk and bread from stores and in this way "kept the family going for quite some time." Bill recalls bitterly that his brother was eventually caught, arrested, and put into juvenile reform school from the age of 14 to the age of 20. When his brother got out of this institution, he was completely illiterate.

Bill himself was school only through the fifth grade. Then, his mother took him out of school to work for the family. He remembers his first job at the boxing factory, which he hated, and then the job at the waterfront. He remembered that out of the 21-or-so dollars that he earned each month, his mother would allow him to keep only 52 cents. Bill bitterly laughed at this and said "man, that was hard to take!" At this job on the waterfront, Bill acquired an interest in sailing and built his own boat.

In the next chapter of Bill Bailey's life, he travels around the United States, recalling many struggles caused by poverty that continued to build up his strong left political polarization and lead to his volunteerism in Spain.

For example, as a stowaway on a ship to Florida, Bailey was arrested and sent to jail for thirty days. He remembers how unfair the entire situation was and how difficult prison was, describing the claustrophobic bunk beds, the crummy food, and the hard labor. Once he got out of jail, he took a box car to San Francisco, where he found it to be "just as bad" as New York. There was just as much unemployment, poverty, and suffering. On a trip in to London, Bill recalls the sad story of an Indian man who was not allowed to travel back to Indian to see his dying mother because of his lack of identification. Bill says he wrote about this story in a leftist magazine when he got back to the states.

It is clear that there were many forces and experiences in Bill Bailey's early life that shaped his personality and developed his Leftist political ideology- particularly poverty during the Great Depression. I think that the relationships that Bill Bailey developed as he grew up with both his family and his friends were extremely important to his political development because their suffering evoked a human compassion stronger than any selfish sufferings could evoke. Once again, the community becomes most important to the development of personal and political ideologies. I hope to learn even more about these forces from listening to the rest of the tapes.

Today, I watched the video Facing Facism: New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War and learned a lot about the impact of the war on the people in New York, both family of soldiers and activists.

From watching interviews with two women who grew up during the Spanish Civil War, Luz Castaños and Vara B. Williams, I got a better sense of how young people were affected by the communities in which they grew up. Liberalism and activism was very prominent in New York City at this time and it's prominence seemed to have created a circular affect in which those growing up in such a highly liberal community became impassioned by the same concerns and beliefs themselves. Thus, support for the Spanish Civil War was spread not only through political activism but through community solidarity as well. Vara B. Williams recalls that her active support for the Spanish Civil War was "wreathed in a certain romanticism"- she believed she was "supporting heroes" and fighting "bad guys" and never really understood the larger political situation and ideological conflicts involved. The community created a simple romanticism which youth in particular could stand behind. Luz Costaños's first childhood memory, in fact, is a Republican song that she sang at the age of one and a half that has the words "salieron por la calle gritando: Liberta! Liberta! Liberta!" This shows how children were shaped by their families and communities. However, Luz also recalls how families and communites were split by political beliefs. Her father was a Republican and second cousin, whom she loved very much, was "the most right wing person in all of New York City".

Other stories in the video seem to demonstrate this idea that the people of New York City were shaped by their communities, not just their personal political beliefs. Milton Wolff says that he was in the Youth Communist League because "I was an activist" and "there were very nice girls there too." Abe Osheroff admits that it was "easy to get politicized" in his hometown of Williamsburg because he was "living it all the time" and "reading left press all of the time." He admits that one of the main forces that led to his departure for Spain was shame. All of his friends were going, and he knew that if he didn't go he would be ashamed for the rest of his life. For many of these people, being politically left and activist was a way of life, not just an ideology; their ideological beliefs and actions were fostered and nourished by a community of people who could share and live together. Could New York City activism have been as strong if this community did not exist? How essential is a community to the formation of political and personal identities?

Today, I continued to research the correspondence between Marjorie Polon and some of the men in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I read the rest of the mens' letters to Marjorie, including those of Nat Gross, Harry Haken, George Kaye, Bill van Felix, and the Spaniard Ernesto. I found these correspondences with Marjorie to be different than that of Bill Bailey with the young girl. The one letter written by Nat Gross seemed to me the most respectful letter that Marjorie received from any of the men. In this letter, he praises her for being so "wise" and for sending the cigarettes to the men. He tells her "one of the boys told me that his life was saved by your cigarettes." He does not make love to the girl, but rather treats her how she ought to be treated, as a kind person and dear pen pal. He ends his letter with "The boys send their regards and love to a strong anti-fascist and true friend of the Lincoln Brigade."

By contrast, Harry Hakam's letters use strong, provocative, aggressive language. He sexually harasses the girl: " So watch out for I have big teeth and generally have a little red riding hood with my eggs for breakfast." He is even less subtle with the fact that he uses her for cigarettes. He writes: "P.S.- mucho love pero much más cuando it gives some more cigarettes pronto." His unsubtle writing is brutal and disrespectful- at least that is how I would feel if I were Marjorie.

However, it is suggested that Marjorie provoked this kind of response by being rather flirtatious herself. Harry wrote "From the way you write, I am tempted to call you my cute little provocative sweetie."

Therefore, it is very difficult to determine how these correspondences between Marjorie and the American soldiers reflects gender relation issues inherent in American culture in the 1930's. Perhaps Marjorie's flirtations with the soldiers were purely acts of compassion made by a remarkable young girl and the soldiers' aggressive and disrespectful attitudes were simply reflections of the unique condition of the disillusioned soldier. Perhaps not. Perhaps American gender relations factors in to the sometimes disturbing and inappropriate correspondence between this American teenage girl and the adult soldiers.

Yesterday, I explored a new facet of the archives: photographs. I had read the essay in Facing Facism: New York and the Spanish Civil War which discussed the importance of the photograph as war time propaganda and was interested in observing the Republican propaganda for myself. I looked at a box of original photographs taken by the Photographic Unit of the Fifteenth International Brigade spanning most of the war. I learned from the box description that many of the photographs taken by this unit were used in the Brigade's newspaper, Volunteer for Liberty. Therefore, I expected to find photographs intended to boost soldier morale and foster sympathy and support for the Republican Army abroad. In my search for propaganda photographs, I too realized how difficult it is to discern between the truth and a staged photograph.

In one picture of Anti-Tank Unit Leaders, everyone's facial expressions are serious, but their body language conveys mixed signals. One of the older soldiers is standing at attention, with his feet shoulder width apart, his hands behind his back, and his shoulders pulled back. Other men are standing less erect, while one standing man even has his hands at his side. Still others are casually hunched down on their knees in front of the rest. Perhaps the body language of the men is meant to convey both their serious attitudes and their physical exhaustion. This could be used as propaganda, showing in some ways the need for physical strength and military assistance for the Republicans. In the background of the photograph is a partially destroyed doorway and a corroding wall, which add to the disintegrative tone of the entire photograph.

In another group photograph, one of Spanish cooks in the MacPap unit, the scene rather than the body language of the men conveys the political message. The men look healthy, although noticeably dirty, and they seem to be earnestly working hard at their jobs. However, they are cooking in what seems to be the ruins of a building in a large field, perhaps in the aftermath of a battle. This scene may have been chosen to portray the destruction of the rural agricultural elite by the Republican Army. Also, what they are cooking draws a lot of attention. The food looks like giant mounds of grainy muck, which again draws attention to the Republican needs for supplies and foreign aid.

In another photograph of a sound truck, dated August 1938, I saw another picture of determined men looking rather physically worn out. One of the men is sitting on the hubcap of the truck and the other man is leaning on the truck with his left arm. This body language contrasts ironically with their helmets and the scene, which suggests that they are ready for war at any moment.

A photo of American Engineers repairing a road to Quinto which was cut off by Fascists in August of 1937 again conveys the Republicans severe lack of supplies and need for external support. There are lots of engineers present on the work site, but only a few are actually helping to repair the road because there are a limited number of tools available and the men can't help without the proper tools.

A photo entitled "Tanks Going into Action" shows two small Republican tanks in the distance driving into a vast, foggy field. The enemy is not distinctly seen. This makes the two small tanks seem even smaller and meager, as they travel into a great abyss of enemy territory, where it is known heavy artillery awaits. This photo again exemplifies Republican propaganda aimed at garnering external support for the Republican cause.

A photo entitled "Internationals and Republican tank after action" is a posed group photo depicting the soldiers in a line in front of the tank, looking happy and proud. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out whether this photo was planned in this way as propaganda to boost volunteer morale or whether the men genuinely felt happy. I realized after some thought that the mere fact that the photo was taken is a clue that it was intended for political purposes. As supplies were low, I'm sure that taking photographs was reserved mainly for special events and propaganda. As the essay "Images at War: Photographs of the Spanish Civil War in New York City" asserts, photographs were very powerful as propaganda during the Spanish Civil War because with faster technology, photos were imbued with a new perception of truth. Therefore, photographs were special, especially at the end of the war when the Republicans were desperately low on supplies. I would like to find out just how many of these photographs made their way into news papers, who viewed the photos and what kind of emotions they evoked from those viewers. As of now, I can only speculate based on what I see in the photos and logical assumptions based on historical facts about the photograph, propaganda, and the Republican condition.

Saturday, I decided to explore a different story for the time being. I read the letters some soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade wrote to a 14 year old New York girl named Marjorie Polon. These correspondences presented a new and unique angle on war-time correspondence and the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers. The men had never known Marjorie, which gave the letters a different tone, especially those of Bill Bailey, the chief correspondent.

Bill Bailey's letters were both honest and romantic, qualities which I feel lacked in the Gordon letters. In a letter to Marjorie on September 16th, 1938, he describes how the soldiers marched toward the River Ebro without knowing where they were going or what they were doing. He describes how he has to fight lines of Moors and says that after the fascists charged with a front line of Moor soldiers and then retreated back, "we found that they had left plenty of their dead behind." He answers her questions about Spain honestly and thoroughly. Answering her questions concerning the relations between the soldiers and the farmers, he writes "we learn their songs and they learn ours." He says the one word to describe Republican Spanish/American relations is "healthy." In a letter a week later, Bill describe for Marjorie an air raid that "killed and wounded hundreds, mostly women and children."

It is clear that Bill uses these letters as his outlet for romance and comfort. He romanticizes the situation, pretending that he writes to a great love, thereby giving more beauty and joy to his tough army life. He writes beautiful things like: "What a coincidence we must of had, me reading about you paddling a boat and not knowing where you were going to stay the night. And me, the same way, of course we had a little idea that we were going to sleep among the Angels, or on some cold ground underneath a Olive tree." He also signs the letters endearingly, for example with "Loads of Love."

In his later letters to Marjorie, after the war, the bitter tone reflects his resentment of the unrequited love. Marjorie was writing to other men as well as Bill, out of curiosity and compassion. After the war, she went to Vassar College, built a career, married, and created a life for herself. It was rather sad reading Bill's two bitter, lonely letters to Marjorie after the war.

By contrast, Syd Levine's letters were brutally realistic. He facetiously attacks all of Marjorie's questions about himself and about Spain because, he explains, "from your letter, I gather you had a romantic idea of Spain." In answer to her query as to his age, he writes that "every day in Spain is equal to a year in some former life- if that is so, then I am over 400 years old." In answer to her query as to why he left for Spain, he writes "I leave that to be answered if I ever see you personally." Syd does not use correspondence with Majorie romantically to satisfy some inner longing. He is completely realisitic. This shows how psychological reactions to war time conditions can vary from person to person- from personality to personality.