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Milton Woolf was born in New York City in 1915. During the Great Depression Woolf joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. His experiences of the gap between rich and poor "disillusioned and abused and enlightened" him. On returning to Brooklyn he joined the Young Communist League.
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Woolf joined the International Brigades, a group of volunteers willing to defend the Popular Front government against the Nationalist Army .
Woolf arrived in Spain in March 1937. As he was a pacifist he initially wanted to be a medic but was later persuaded to become a machine-gunner with the George Washington Battalion. He fought in the battles at Brunete, Belchite and Teruel.
The American forces suffered heavy casualties in the war. In March 1938 the Lincoln-Washington Battalion lost two of its most senior officers, Robert Merriman and David Doran, when they were killed at Gandesa on the Aragón front. Wolff now assumed command of the battalion and John Gates became battalion commissar.
Woolf led his forces at the great offensive across the River Ebro on the 25th July 1938. The men then moved forward towards Corbera and Gandesa.
On 26th July the Republican Army attempted to capture Hill 481, a key position at Gandesa. Hill 481 was well protected with barbed wire, trenches and bunkers. The Republicans suffered heavy casualties and after six days was forced to retreat to Hill 666 on the Sierra Pandols. It successfully defended the hill from a Nationalist offensive in September but once again large numbers were killed.
The head of the Republican government, Juan Negrin, announced on 21st September that the International Brigades would be unilaterally withdrawn from Spain. That night the Lincoln-Washington Battalion moved back across the River Ebro and began their journey out of the country.
In the Second World War Woolf joined the United States Army and served in Italy and Burma. On his return to the United States he became involved in the civil rights movement. He also wrote three autobiographical novels: Another Hill, A Member of the Working Class and The Premature Antifascist.
Milton Woolf died of heart failure in Berkeley, California, on 14th January 2008.
(1) Milton Woolf, interviewed by John Dolland about getting to the International Brigades training camp at Albacete (June 1942)
Most of the guys were like me, just city slickers. We were dressed in fancy shoes, in fancy clothes, and looked like anything but a mountain-climbing expedition. It was very, very grueling, going up and up, and always thinking we were reaching the top and never getting there. When we arrived, weary as we were we cheered and yelled at the top of our lungs."
(2) Milton Woolf, interviewed by Judy Montell in 1991.
Spain was only one battle. World War II was only one battle, what's going on in Central America, South Africa, the Middle East now is another battle, and we're into these things. Struggle is the elixir of life, the tonic of life. I mean, if you're not struggling, your dead.
(3) Studs Terkel interviewed Milton Woolf about his experiences during the Second World War for his book, The Good War (1985)
I left OSS and volunteered for the infantry. I was a machine-gunner in the Spanish War, so I knew my trajectories, my cones of fire, everything like that. I enlisted in June 1942, and I did not fire a shot in anger until the end of 1943. The U.S. Army just did not want me to go to the front. Me and a lot of other Spanish reds.
World War Two, besides giving me the GI Bill of Rights, certainly did not make life easier for me or for the other guys who had fought in Spain. We were still stigmatized as premature anti-fascists. We were harassed by the FBI, Dies Committee, McCarthy Committee. The Subversive Activities Control Board took a year out of my life, defending the Lincoln Battalion before those characters.
I don't ever want to see another bloody war again. There's a certain amount of glamour attached to a guy like me because I was a warrior. But I've always had more respect for the conscientious objectors. We were in good wars, that's what we should be honored for, but not because we were warriors.
I went to Berlin in 1960.1 stood in one of those mausoleums Speer built. It was partially shattered and burnt out. People have defecated and peed in it. I stood in the middle of what was once a magnificent hall. And I felt good. I was glad I was part of this. Because I remember Guernica and I remember Madrid and I remember Barcelona and all that. I felt good standing in that hall, that these sons of bitches got it.
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