Word: alcs
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...Sept. 1 Toledo mobsters under orders from Madrid broke ground for subterranean mining of the Alcázar and talked of blowing it up with "20 tons of TNT." On Sept. 3 a lieutenant of the Red Militia, apparently in his cups and wearing a gaudy bathrobe, staggered toward the Alcázar shouting that he wanted to rescue a Red comrade who had fallen wounded just outside its walls. "All right!" called an Alcázar cadet, "Come and rescue him, so long as you leave us his gun." This bargain the bathrobed rescuer scrupulously kept. On Sept...
...extra loudspeaker was set up by Reds facing the fortress and connected to a microphone into which the Ambassador spoke at a safe distance: "ATTENTION ALCÁZAR! The Ambassador of the Republic of Chile, accredited to the Spanish Republic, wishes to speak to you! If you agree to this request signal with a white flag from the second balcony of the tower facing the Zocodover Square. Meanwhile the Government suspends hostilities. ATTENTION ALCÁZAR!" Five times the Ambassador thus adroitly asked the Commandant to show the white flag of surrender. Finally Alcázar cadets, who had been...
Three days later the Chilean was still appealing to the Alcázar without result. "If I succeed," he declared, "it will be the success not of the Ambassador of Chile alone, but of the entire Diplomatic Corps, which I have the honor to represent as Dean!" By this time nearly three weeks of Red mining and sapping had stowed away under the rocky base of the Alcázar not the "20 tons of TNT" but something like four tons of miscellaneous explosives equipped with electric detonators 200 feet long. In Madrid the Cabinet, dramatically convened, agreed with Premier...
Down next morning at 6:15 a. m. went the handles of the detonators and afternoon papers throughout the world shrieked such page-wide headlines as: COMMUNISTS BLOW UP ALCÁZAR! - NEARLY ALL DEFENDERS FEARED DEAD! An entire trainload of additional Red militia had arrived from Madrid to help the Toledo Militia swarm in over the ruins. To make the assault safer Red artillery poured a 15-minute barrage into the clouds of dust and smoke rising over the Alcázar. Then 1,500 militia led by four militia girls surged forward expecting merely to wade in White...
Even West Point spirit has its limits of heroic possibility and this week things looked black for the Alcázar cadets and Commandant José Moscardó as the Madrid Cabinet in a frenzy of frustration took another "terrible decision." This was to order to Toledo thousands of gallons of gasoline, to be squirted by means of fire engines into Spain's West Point, and, by setting it alight, flood the Alcázar with searing flame until the last cadet, woman and child and the two babies born during the siege were burned out in Spain...