Word: battalions
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...LINCOLN BATTALION-Edwin Rolfe -Random House...
Edwin Rolfe's book is the class history of a graduating class of 61-the number of men mustered by the Lincoln Battalion at its last inspection. Most of them were very young; the best soldiers among them were Communists. Their school was a bitter war. Of hundreds who did not graduate, most were neither flunked nor fired; they were casualties. In recording their names, words, battles, songs, commanders, Rolfe writes hardly ever as an individual but as the chosen chronicler of a group. His book is thus an official history, clearly and decently told but subject...
...unit which has lost more than one man in five to continue effective. It must be withdrawn from action, given two months' rest, completely reorganized. One reason that World War I fell into so many clinches and deadlocks was that the 20% Axiom was often ignored. The Lost Battalion, having been reduced from 660 men to 190, was yanked out, given two days' rest, sent into the lines again. Never again can a commander who hopes to win a war afford to lose, as the 254th Bavarians lost on November 5, 1918, in the face of the fifth...
...Hope (TIME, Nov. 7). Alvah Bessie's book is not only the second finest; it is an addendum. Malraux's fictional account of the war ended with the Loyalist victory at Brihuega in March 1937. Bessie's personal story of eight months in the Lincoln Battalion begins in February 1938, six weeks before the battalion was cut to pieces in the Fascist drive to the sea. The author, a gifted short story writer and ex-Guggenheim fellow, took part in that retreat and later in the last desperate offensive across the Ebro River...
Bessie got his first shock on joining the Lincoln Battalion after its retreat from Teruel. Of 500 men who had started the battle there were about 100 filthy, unarmed survivors, silent or snarling, lying dead-beat on a hillside. In a week, with new replacements and an issue of old Russian Imperial Army rifles, they had to slog back into the line, still dopey with fatigue. "You fired till the rifle got too hot to handle; then you opened the bolt and blew down the barrel and let it cool, resting your face on your extended arm, waiting...