Word: moscard
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...country's modern history, lined up in front of the Generalissimo, a dumpy little chief in a tasseled forage cap. Down the line he went, kissing each man and clasping him hard. Then out stepped the Alcázar's heroic Commandant, bearded, emaciated Colonel José Moscardó. The circles under his eyes were greenish black and he trembled as he walked. "Colonel José Moscardó," said the White Generalissimo, "I confer upon you the Cross of San Fernando, and I confer this same cross collectively upon the whole company of Spain's greatest heroes...
...cadets and soldiers under obstinate Commandant José Moscardó had withstood Red Militia assaults for the whole period of the Civil War. Against the six-foot walls of the Alcázar more than 6,000 four-inch projectiles and more than 4,000 six-inchers had been vainly fired by the Madrid Cabinet's untrained proletarian artillery. The Government's trained miners had failed to blow up the Alcázar's rock foundations with dynamite charges totaling four tons. Futile were thousands of gallons of gasoline shot from Red flame-sprayers. Futile were hundreds...
...infernal affair of the Toledo Alcázar boomed and belched and banged last week toward an end thoroughly Spanish, thoroughly heroic. The Alcázar is the West Point of Spain. The farce began on July 21 when the Red radio of Madrid announced that Commandant José Moscardó and his 1,400 soldiers and spruce Spanish cadets had surrendered to 10,000 peasants under radical General Riquelmo. This broadcast was a midriff laugh to all Spanish officers who know the stuff of which their West Pointers are made. With a rabble overrunning the town of Toledo, some...
...Comrade Daniel Ovalle, admitted that the Whites still held the Alcázar, asked whether he should shell it. On Aug. 4 tentatively and one by one at intervals Reds popped 60 4-in. shells at the Alcázar without result, telephoned into the fortress to tell Commandant Moscardó: "We warn you heavier shells will come." On Aug. 11 cadets shot a cavalry mount for meat and mobsters standing at a safe distance shrieked at the military academy: "You fools! Why don't you surrender...
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...