Churchill's Spaniards

Continuing the Fight in the British Army 1939-46

Séan F Scullion

• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781804516935
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Unveils the untold story of over a thousand Spanish Republicans who joined the British Army to continue their fight against fascism during WWII. Very little, if anything at all, has been told about the service of over one thousand Spanish Republicans who volunteered to join the British Army during the Second World War. Churchill's Spaniards remedies this and tells their story, men who were 'continuing the fight' against fascism from 1939 to 1946. Churchill's Spaniards is not the story of the Spanish Civil War, nor the equally well-known one of the International Brigades. It is the story – against the backdrop of Churchill's efforts to keep Spain out of the war – of the recruitment, training and deployment of often battle-hardened Spanish Republicans into the service of the United Kingdom. These fighting men served widely across British Armed Forces: as members of the elite SAS and Commandos, in the ranks of the Infantry and of the Pioneer Corps and as members of the Special Operations Executive. Further Spaniards fought in almost all of the battles and campaigns in the West from the Fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, to the campaigns in North Africa and Italy, as well as those in North-West Europe. Using a wide range of material from Britain, France and Spain as well as previously unpublished eyewitness and official accounts along with groundbreaking new research, Séan Scullion finally tells the story of these previously overlooked men.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Book Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Lists of Illustrations
• List of Colour Plates
• List of Maps
• Chronology
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1 ‘The First Summer After and The Last Summer Before’
• Chapter 2 ‘Brave New World’
• Chapter 3 ‘My Country’
• Chapter 4 ‘Vagabonds’
• Chapter 5 ‘See You In Hell’
• Chapter 6 ‘Wonderful Way to Go’
• Chapter 7 ‘Flying Through The Smoke’
• Chapter 8 ‘Did You Make It Safe?’
• Appendix I No. 1 Spanish Company, Nominal Roll Dated 5 December 1942
• Appendix II List of SCONCEs
• Appendix III 50 Middle East Commando List Summary
• Appendix IV Spaniards on the Nominal Roll of D Squadron, 1st Special Service Regiment in the Summer of 1942
• Appendix V Spaniards in the SAS During The Second World War
• Appendix VI List of Spaniards known to have died whilst serving in the British Army, recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• Appendix VII List of Enlisted Spaniards in the British Army 1939–1946
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• Back Cover