Franco. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ On 27 September 1920, Franco was named commander of its primera bandera (first battalion). Putting aside his plans for a life with Carmen Polo, he set off on the Algeciras ferry on 10 October 1920, accompanied by the first two hundred mercenaries, a motley band of desperados, misfits and outcasts, some tough and ruthless, others simply pathetic. They were hard cases, ranging from common criminals, via foreign First World War veterans who had been unable to adjust to peacetime, to the gunmen (pistoleros) who fought in the social war then tearing Barcelona apart. This short, slight, pallid twenty-eight year-old major, with his high-pitched voice, seemed poorly fitted to be able to command such a crew.

      Millán Astray was obsessed with death and offered his new recruits little more than the chance to fight and die. The romantic notion that the Legion would offer its outcast recruits redemption through sacrifice, discipline, hardship, violence and death was held dear by both Millán and Franco throughout their lives. It underlies Franco’s diary of its first two years, Diario de una bandera, a curious mixture of sentimentalised Beau Geste-style adventure-story romanticism and cold insensitivity in the face of human bestiality. In his speech of welcome to the first recruits, a hysterical Millán told them that, as thieves and murderers, their lives had been at an end before joining the Legion. Inspired by a frenzied and contagious fervour, he offered them a new life but the price to be paid would be their deaths. He called them ‘los novios de la muerte’ (the bridegrooms of death).⁷⁸ They gave the Legion a mentality of brutal ruthlessness which Franco was to share to the full even though he remained outwardly reserved. Discipline was savage. Men could be shot for desertion and for even minor infractions of discipline.⁷⁹ Throughout the time that he was second-in-command to Millán Astray, Franco never wavered in his obedience, discipline and loyalty, although the temptation to contradict his manic commander must have been considerable.⁸⁰

      On the night of their arrival in Ceuta, the legionaries terrorised the town. A prostitute and a corporal of the guard were murdered. In the course of chasing the culprits, there were two more deaths.⁸¹ Franco was obliged to take the primera bandera to Dar Riffien, where an old arch was rebuilt with the inscription ‘Legionarios a luchar; legionarios a morir’ (Legionaries onward to fight; Legionaries onward to die’). They had arrived in Africa at a difficult moment. Berenguer had proceeded to the second stage of his grand plan for the occupation of the Spanish zone. On 14 October 1920, El Raisuni’s headquarters, the picturesque mountain town of Xauen, had been occupied by Spanish troops. To the Moors, Xauen was ‘the Sacred City’ or ‘the mysterious’. Tucked into a deep gorge, the historic fortified redoubt of Xauen was theoretically unconquerable. Its capture was an almost bloodless triumph thanks to the military Arabist, Colonel Alberto Castro Girona, who had entered the city disguised as a Moorish charcoal burner and, by a mixture of threats and bribes, persuaded the notables to surrender.⁸² However, since the marauding tribes between Xauen and Tetuán were not subdued, an expensive policing operation had now to be undertaken. Within a week of arriving, Franco’s legionaries were sent to Uad Lau to guard the road to Xauen.

      Franco would soon be joined by his eternal cronies, his cousin Pacón, and Camilo Alonso Vega. He charged Alonso Vega with creating a battalion farm to provide funds to permit decent provisioning and the building of better barracks. The farm was a great success, not only providing fresh meat and vegetables for the troops but also making a profit. Similarly, Franco made the arrangements for a permanent fresh water supply from the nearby mountains to Dar-Riffien.⁸³ It was typical of his methodical and thoughtful approach to the practicalities of both camp life and hostilities against the Moors. His concerns were narrowly military. Encased in the shell of his public persona, he apparently shared few of the feelings and appetites of his comrades, becoming known as the man without fear, women or masses, (‘sin miedo, sin mujeres, y sin misa’). With no interests or vices other than his career, his study of terrain, map work and general preparations for action made the units at his command stand out in an Army notorious for indiscipline, inefficiency and low morale.

      In addition, in the Legion, Franco was to show a merciless readiness to impose his power over men physically bigger and harder than himself, compensating for his size with an unnerving coldness. Despite fierce discipline in other matters, no limits were put by Millán Astray or by Franco on the atrocities which were committed against the Moorish villages which they attacked. The decapitation of prisoners and the exhibition of severed heads as trophies was not uncommon. The Duquesa de la Victoria, a philanthropist who organized a team of volunteer nurses, would receive in 1922 a tribute from the Legion. She was given a basket of roses in the centre of which lay two severed Moorish heads.⁸⁴ When the Dictator General Primo de Rivera visited Morocco in 1926, he was appalled to find one battalion of the Legion awaiting inspection with heads stuck on their bayonets.⁸⁵ Indeed, Franco and other officers came to feel a fierce pride in the brutal violence of their men, revelling in their grim reputation. That notoriety was itself a useful weapon in keeping down the colonial population and its efficacy taught Franco much about the exemplary function of terror. In his Diario de una bandera, he adopted a tone of benevolent paternalism about the savage antics of his men.⁸⁶ In Africa, as later in the Peninsula during the Civil War, he condoned the killing and mutilation of prisoners. There can be little doubt that the years of early manhood spent amidst the inhuman savagery of the Legion contributed to the dehumanizing of Franco. It is impossible to say whether he arrived in Africa already so cut off from normal emotional responses as to be untouched by the pitiless brutality which surrounded him. When Franco had been in the Regulares, a somewhat older officer, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, was struck with the imperturbability and satisfaction with which he presided over the cruel beatings to which Moorish troops were subjected in punishment for minor misdemeanours.⁸⁷ The ease with which he now became accustomed to the bestiality of his troops certainly suggests a lack of sensitivity bordering on inner emptiness. That would account for the unflinching, indeed insouciant, way he was able to use terror in the Civil War and the subsequent years of repression.

      To survive and prosper in the Legion, the officers had to be as hard and ruthless as their men. At one point, preoccupied by a rash of indiscipline and desertions, Franco wrote to Millán Astray requesting permission to resort to the death penalty. Millán consulted with higher authorities and then told Franco that death sentences could be passed only within the strict rules laid down by the code of military justice. A few days later, a legionaire refused to eat his food and then threw it at an officer. Franco quietly ordered the battalion to form ranks, picked a firing squad, had the offending soldier shot, and then made the entire battalion file past the corpse. He informed Millán that he took full responsibility for an action which he regarded as a necessary and exemplary punishment to re-establish discipline.⁸⁸ On another occasion, Franco was informed that two legionaires who had committed a robbery and then deserted had been captured. ‘Shoot them’, he ordered. In reply to a protest from Vicente Guarner, his one-time contemporary at the Toledo military academy who happened to be visiting the unit, Franco snapped ‘Shut up. You don’t realize what kind of people they are. If I didn’t act with an iron hand, this would soon be chaos.’⁸⁹ According to one sergeant of the Legion, both men and officers were frightened of him and of the eery coldness which enabled him to have men shot without batting an eyelid. ‘You can be certain of getting everything that you have a right to, you can be sure that he knows where he’s taking you but as for how he treats you … God help you if there is anything missing from your equipment, or if your rifle is dirty or you are a loafer’.⁹⁰

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