A Reluctant Volunteer: Spain to LeBasque 1938-1941
One of his many lovers described Max Schilling: "despite his age, he was a daring child. Frivolous and Chauvinistic." But there were many more things that one could use in describing Schilling. He lived by himself in a spacious Marseilles apartment on a monthly annuity that came from a mysterious benefactor. He had an English public-school education yet he was not English. His nationality was hidden behind a foraged American passport. He spoke French, German, and English (with an American accent) like a native and learned to get along in Spanish. And, in the company of a somewhat shady associate named Ignacio Vargas, he was a gallant gunrunner to the Spanish Civil War Republic and Basque Separatists. Anyone who knew this much about him would never have guessed that he had a romantic way about him that served as his subconscious, a subconscious that kept him continuously aware of his need to survive to the next day even if it meant volunteering to fight in the Spanish Republic's army against Franco's fascist revolution and with Basque Separatists trying to reestablish their republic. This narrative delves into the development of the character of Max Schilling as influenced by his former lover, Petra Rocha de los Santos, Josef, a Serb who converses in German, a French communist World War 1 veteran Cecil Thibodeaux (known as Dough), and two ex-patriate Germans Wilbur Franz and Dieter Schlump who had escaped from Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. It begins with a sea voyage from Toulon to Valencia in which he is smuggling machine guns which, as he was led to believe by Ignacio Vargas, would be sold to the highest bidder once they arrived in Spain and continues through disastrous Ebro front retreat, the fall of the Republic, and joining Basque Separatists who conduct attacks on Spanish ore trains bound for Nazi Germany. This is also a narrative of Petra Rocha de los Santos who is a former lover of Schilling, a hero machine gunner who helped defend Madrid against Franco's fascists, a propaganda commissar in Madrid, and the leader of a small group of Basque Separatists after the Republic falls. Dogging both Schilling and Rocha is Guardia Civil Commissioner (under the Republic) and a Colonel (in Franco's new order) Raul Cuero who comes within a hair's breadth of executing a pregnant Rocha.
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