For over two years I have been on a wonderful journey of discovery. Little did I know that John’s request for a leaflet to accompany his planned memorial (https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/stocktonbrigaders) would bring me so much pleasure and bring me into contact with so many wonderful people.
This part of the story really starts with this iconic photograph.
Members of the XV International Brigade Anti-Tank battery.
My primary interest in this image is that Otto Estensen and Tommy Chilvers were both members of this specialist unit; Otto can be seen here seated before the gun playing his mandolin. Standing above him is Miles Tomalin, playing his recorder.
Bill Rust describes Miles thus –
The anti-tank soon became known as the happiest family of the Brigade, and their comic wall-paper, Assault and battery news, and merry social evenings were the envy of all. Miles Tomalin, Battalion poet, musician, and cheery soul, was their foremost mirth provider, while the commander himself sometimes displayed his versatility by dancing steps from classical ballet. Britons in Spain – William Rust
Very early in writing I approached Miles’ daughter Stefany informing her I was writing about her father and enquiring about his poetry, she very kindly gave her permission for us to use an image of the commanders of the British Battalion and to include Miles’ poem The Gunner in our book. Later, in July 2020 Stefany asked me to check on her father’s recorder which she had donated to the Imperial War Museum; I was pleased when Richard Baxell confirmed that it was safe.
Now that the book is published I was able to send Stefany a copy, I send a few as she asked for some for family members. Her response was overwhelming, see – https://www.facebook.com/stocktoninternationalbrigaders/posts/495052918700677) we are deeply grateful.
Not only that Stefany kindly sent me a copy of a booklet of Miles’ Christmas verses, which is quite simply a wonderful idea, the booklet will be treasured. Yesterday I was reading through the copy of Yet, Freedom yet, a book produced in January 1939 by The International Brigade Wounded and Dependants’ Aid Committee.
Stuart Walsh had given me the copy as he felt that I would find the Roll of Honour useful, as ever Stuart was correct; and in addition I’ve found the articles in it equally useful.
In I sing of my comrades I have tried to use every mention of the Stockton men, frustratingly I’ve found in Yet, Freedom yet where Otto Estensen is mentioned. Miles Tomalin writes a chapter on the XV International Brigade Anti-Tank Battery, mentioning Otto’s command of the unit. The full text –
Anti-Tank Battery
In the spring of 1937, when the Spanish Government acquired some of the newest and most efficient light-artillery pieces in the world, the Internationals were called on to form the first batteries for their use. One of these was the Anglo-American Anti-Tank Battery, which after a brief and hurried training, hauled its guns up to the lines at Jarama, and in the quiet June days in that sector got to know itself and its guns and feel pride in both.
The battery had three guns, called Anti-Tank guns, because one of their functions was to destroy advancing tanks. They had other uses, the most important of which, so far as this battery was concerned, was the elimination of machine gun nests preparatory to an infantry advance. For a shock brigade like ours, taking part in one offensive after another, this was an essential service.
We learned beneath Mosquito Crest, the vital point in the Brunete battle, what the job was really like in active warfare.
We first experienced an air bombardment, when a squadron of fascist bombers went for us as we were driving up to take our first positions with the infantry battalions. We did not see them coming. The first we knew was that bombs were roaring in a ploughed field about 50 yards to the right of us. A second’s difference in the timing and most of us would have closed our experience of real war where it began. The first artillery shells to be fired at us landed right beside their mark before we knew the fascists had even seen us. While we were waiting for final instructions, near Brigade headquarters, the worst barrage of the war up to that time came over at us while we crouched in a shallow trench.
In this battle we had little time or energy left to let these things depress us. We changed our positions continually, firing from positions behind the lines, in them, sometimes even in front of them. The physical effort of dragging those guns and the ammunition up the rough, steep hills of that terrain was greater than any of us had thought possible to sustain. In that dusty soil it ground the soles off our feet.
Nobody who was in that battery in the Brunete days will forget the morning that followed our withdrawal from the sector into a reserve position. We went down to bathe in a nearby river. Sitting in the shallow water, we sang like a bunch of children. Our spirits were high.
In time it became a byword in the XVth Brigade that you couldn’t get the Anti-Tank Battery down. Our reputation was up to anyone’s and a matter of pride to every man. For this, good leadership was largely responsible. Malcolm Dunbar and Hugh Slater were our first two commanders-none better. Bill Alexander was our political commissar before he left to become adjutant of the British Battalion. Otto Estensen, Arthur Nicoll and Alan Gilchrist carried on their tradition. These men not only gave us good military and political direction, but were wise enough to encourage our cultural activities as well at times when there was opportunity for them, and our wall newspaper, “Assault and Battery News,” achieved, we were told, a reputation among the best in the Spanish Army..
The Battery saw service in all the Brigade’s campaigns until March, of 1938, when massed fascist artillery knocked out our guns at the beginning of their push through Aragon down to the Ebro. By the time we were ready to hit back and cross the river again , the remaining members of the battery had been drafted into the British Battalion, and played their part there with the best. There lie some of the best of them now.
Ours was a fine unit, and we shall not forget it. Those of us who have come back will see it that its spirit stays alive. MILES TOMALIN.
One must remember that Miles was writing this in December 1938 as the British Battalion returned from Spain. Despite the passage of time, and the work of numerous historians, I feel that one will find it virtually impossible to find a finer summary of the XV International Brigade Anti-tank battery. I feel pride in the fact that as members of The International Brigades Memorial Trust John, Stefany, Stuart and myself are playing a small part in ensuring that the spirit of the Anti-tank battery and the International Brigades are kept alive.
You can find out more about what we have been doing by visiting – https://www.facebook.com/stocktoninternationalbrigaders