{"id":29446,"date":"2024-02-28T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=29446"},"modified":"2024-02-27T17:38:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T17:38:36","slug":"the-lincoln-brigade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/02\/28\/the-lincoln-brigade\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lincoln Brigade"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Pablo Dur\u00e1<\/strong>, Carles Esquembre<\/strong> & Ester Salguero<\/strong>, translated\/edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari <\/strong>(Caliber Comics)
\nISBN: 978-1-63529-822-2 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad my parents are dead. <\/em><\/p>\n

Their generation thought that they had dealt with fascism so their children wouldn\u2019t have to, but every day it looks like that kind of intolerance is hardwired in some of us and never goes away. Maybe we simply need to be as ruthless and unforgiving as the foe if we want the insanity to finally end.<\/em><\/p>\n

At least there are still plenty of people willing to fight and keen to share warnings from the past in books like this digital clarion call.<\/em><\/p>\n

Preceded by an contextualising Introduction<\/em> by Josephine Nelson – Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and daughter of Abraham Lincoln Brigade leader Steve Nelson<\/em> – The Lincoln Brigade <\/strong>is a brief but powerful account ruminating on what 3,015 mostly white, largely second-generation European American, passionately Communist volunteers of the 17th<\/sup> (latterly 58th<\/sup>) battalion of the XV International Brigade experienced during the heroic but doomed struggle to defend Republican Spain from Franco and his Nazi allies in the Spanish Civil War (17th<\/sup> July 1936 -1st<\/sup> April 1939). That skilfully managed proxy conflict is now considered by many historians as a test run for World War II: something certain Russian asshats know very well\u2026<\/p>\n

The struggle is seen through the eyes of Oliver Law<\/em> – one of the few black comrades of the \u201cLincoln Brigade\u201d. Texas born Law (October 23rd<\/sup> 1900 – July 9th<\/sup> 1937) served in the 24th<\/sup> Infantry Regiment, US Army: a professional soldier in a \u201ccoloured unit\u201d stationed on the Mexican border. He served efficiently and with honour from 1919-1925 and on mustering out moved gradually north via Indiana and Chicago, finding jobs as a cement worker, taxi driver, restaurateur and dock worker.<\/p>\n

Law\u2019s experiences led to him becoming a labour organiser and member of the American Communist Party. As the Great Depression progressed, he was a member of the International Labor Defense movement employed by the Works Project Administration. Moments of early activism are observed as he meets legendary, inspirational African American freedoms fighter Harry Haywood<\/em> (February 4th<\/sup> 1898 – January 4th<\/sup> 1985) and faces strike-breaking cops beside equally fervent allies of all colours.<\/p>\n

In 1936, Benito Mussolini<\/em> ordered an invasion of Ethiopia in one of the first overt acts of fascist expansionist colonialism and Law realised – as did so many others across the world – that he would have to fight the rise of a tyranny even greater than that he and his kind faced at home. When Spain erupted into chaos with Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde<\/em> leading the army (supported by Nazi\/Italian National Fascist Parties) in revolt against the democratically elected government, Law and thousands like him volunteered to fight for the embattled Republic.<\/p>\n

In this fictionalised account of events by Pablo Dur\u00e1 (Original Sins<\/strong>, Tales of Rogues<\/strong>) illustrated by Carles Esquembre (Lorca – un poeta en Neueva York<\/em><\/strong>) and colourist Esther Salguero we see how Law – like so many others – had to sneak across neutral Europe into Spain by pretending to be a tourist or else face arrest by his own government. Like most nations the USA and Britain had signed a non-intervention treaty Italy and Germany were happy to flout\u2026<\/p>\n

What comes next is grim, tragic, stupid and shameful as the daily grind of driven idealists betrayed by their own supposed allies and cut down as much by indifference and ineptitude as enemy action lead to Law\u2019s swift rise as a soldier and untimely death. In the course of his duties the Texan advances to Commander of the Machine Gun Company and before his death was for a brief moment the official Commander of the whole Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Of the approximately 3000 Americans he so briefly led, 681 were killed in action or died of wounds or sickness\u2026<\/p>\n

Oliver Law commanded the first fully-integrated unit of American soldiers in combat 10 years before white and black US soldiers were in 1948 forcibly made to serve together by Presidential decree of Harry S. Truman<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all here for you to see and you really should, as it\u2019s delivered with coldly emphatic understatement and clinically clear authenticity: blurring fact with myth and history with extrapolation in the same compelling, upsetting manner as Orwell\u2019s Homage to Catalonia<\/strong>, or in graphic novels like Paco Roca, Rodrigo Terrasa & Astiberri\u2019s El abismo del olvido<\/em><\/strong> (The Abyss of Forgetting<\/strong>), M\u00f3nica Montan\u00e9s\u2019 Different: A Story of the Spanish Civil War Picture Book<\/strong> or Vittorio Giardino\u2019s epic No Pasaran!<\/strong> trilogy.<\/p>\n

Like all those, this too is a book anyone unhappy with the way things are should peruse and ponder upon.
\n\u00a9 2020 Pablo Dur\u00e1 and Carles Esquembre. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pablo Dur\u00e1, Carles Esquembre & Ester Salguero, translated\/edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari (Caliber Comics) ISBN: 978-1-63529-822-2 (TPB\/Digital edition) I\u2019m glad my parents are dead. Their generation thought that they had dealt with fascism so their children wouldn\u2019t have to, but every day it looks like that kind of intolerance is hardwired in some of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Lincoln Brigade”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,122,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-historical","category-war-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7EW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29449,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29446\/revisions\/29449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}