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A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War

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Laurie Lee's spare, unsentimental memoir of his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War should take a place, I think, with Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as one of the English language classics of the time. Moved by idealistic sympathy for the Republican cause, Lee begins with his winter's journey by foot across the Pyrenees only to be taken as facist infiltrator and thrown into an underground pit-prison with a soon to executed deserter. Eventually allowed to join the International Brigade, he continues to tell a story of disillusionment: "I imagined a shoulder-to-shoulder brotherhood, a brave camaraderie joined in one purpose, not the fragmentation of national groups scattered around the courtyard talking wanly only to each other. Indeed they seemed to share a mutual air of unease and watchfulness, of distrust and even dislike." Yet A Moment of War is not sour story. Its prose evokes awareness heightened by danger and deprivation. Of a humble bowl of bean soup Lee writes, "Bean soup hot and chunky, with an interesting admixture of tar, but to me a gluttonous reward after almost two weeks of near famine in the cave. I remembered again the concentration of the senses, of smell and flavor, that hunger brings to appetite, and with each steaming spoonful I was also aware of the grime of the unscrubbed table, the rusting metal of the soup plate, the sharp frozen landscape outside, almost the fatness of each bean." Of a chance reencounter with a Spanish girl who smells of "fresh mushrooms and tampled thyme, woodsmoke and burning orange," he recalls the heady, sensual magic of being young, the "rare and magnetic driving patterns of youth, cutting across the humdrum chaos of the multitudes." The real story, however, is one of war told from a soldier's viewpoint, long delays and boredom interspersed with seemingly random episodes of violence, as vivid as any soldier's tale ever written. A Moment of War was a refreshing discovery for this media-burdened, hype-wearied reader. I am now searching for more of Laurie Lee's not well enough known titles

I do not know much else about the author, Larie Lee, but in "A Moment of War" he certainly led a charmed life. Those who have studied the Spanish Civil War know that the level of hatred, distrust, brutality, and revenge was excessive in this conflict. Indeed, they mirrored that of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia which, not coincidently, exemplify the two main factions in this civil war.

Right from the beginning the author steps into the middle of this tension. He is held in suspicion by the very side he has come to fight for. The "in and out of favor" status that he holds gives this book an even greater flavor of the conflict he writes of.

The book is brief, in part because the authors's tenure in Spain was brief. However, through his experiences and observations, we are able to understand much about this microcism of Twentieth Century European politics. It is a memoir written with a poetic style which allows the author to say so much in so few pages. As an account of the Spanish Civil War, it ranks up there with Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia".

Laurie Lee was one of the finest English stylists of the 20th century, and his three slim books of memoirs are a joy to read. A joy and a danger, because it is doubtful whether they are mostly memoir or mostly invention.

This defect is, perhaps, of small consequence in the first volumes, 'Cider with Rosie' and 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning,' since they purport to tell of the private and inner life of a country boy. 'A Moment of War' is another matter.

It pretends to be a history of a small part of the Spanish Civil War, a still-contentious conflict. That the moment never actually passed, or not in a fashion very much the way Lee tells it, muddies an already murky history.

It would have been more honest -- although not in Lee's character -- had he presented his memoirs as Siegfried Sassoon did in 'Tne Memoirs of George Sherston,' as fiction that we are expected to absorb as emotional truth, even if not every event really occurred.

That said, Lee's memoirs are delightful to read -- if read as fiction. 'A Moment of War' is considerably less delightful as to subject, though Lee's sensuous prose remains a joy to anyone who loves language.

'Cider with Rosie' has been, by far, the most popular of the three volumes and probably has the greatest value as a record of a thousand-year way of secluded village life that came to an end when Lee was in his early teens.
That it was sexy in a quiet way no doubt had something to do with this, as when it was first printed English publishing was still in its Mrs. Grundy phase.

'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is, to my mind, the best of the three and the one volume that is so personal that it doesn't matter how much of it was invented.

Sassoon's 'Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man,' the first volume of 'Sherston,' is the finest coming of age novel about an English boyhood. 'As I Walked Out' is second best, and a close second.

"We drove in silence, in a dumb state of nothing, having no part of what we saw, nor any certain direction."

p. 151.* This quote from Laurie Lee's A Moment of War could be a description of what it is like to read the book. There is no story in the sense of narrative structure, plot, or character development. Such deficiencies might be forgiven as this is a non-fiction book, but then one would expect to learn something other than the author's chance impressions at a certain time of his life. Lee describes his experiences in the Spanish Civil War without giving an explanation for his volunteering to fight for the Republic, without any explanation or explication about the Civil War itself, and without any differentiation of emphasis from one experience to the next. It is as if he collected a set of verbal postcards with little connection among them, flashed them one after the other before our eyes, and expected us to have a cinematic experience. Lee describes the looks and smells of things, but not how he feels or what he thinks of these things. It is as if he has "no part" of what he saw. This is a book without "certain direction."

*Laurie Lee (1991), A Moment of War. New York: The New Press, Publisher.

This is a thin book, but it conveys a message. That message is that war is not what it seems to be. Lee tried to enlist in the International Brigades in Spain, but on two different times was thrown in prison. Once because the peasants saw him with a violen, and the other because he had a Spanish Morocco stamp in his passport. Both times, he was almost shot for these offenses. When he did manage to join, he was not posted to the front. Finally, he is sent to the front and deserted by his friends. He manages to kill a Nationalist Moor in his time at the front, and becomes catonic. The Republicans realize he is useless as a soldier and send him home. Once again, he is thrown in prison in Barcelona. From there he comes home, more wiser than before.

One does not doubt Lee's bravery or idealism. What he points out is the baseness of war on the Republican side. People being shot because of suspected sympathies. Franco's use of civilian bombing to kill innocents.
Both sides invented new lows for fighting. Lee became disillisioned with war. This is the story of idealism being dashed by the realities.

Down in Stroud we have few famous people to cheer about and most of those are invisible (Princess Anne) or vulgar comers-in, so Laurie Lee always had great celebrity in the whole area. His 'Cider with Rosie' is legendary, while 'As I walked out one Midsummer's Morning' maintains the arcadian magic. Indeed, I thought much of him on my own teenage jaunts round Europe. As louts we would meet him up the Woolpack in Slad and occasionally throw pebbles into his beer. We followed his politics, too. Class differences in the country are even starker than in town. This title was one I had awaited for a long time. I had read Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' and expected something as inspiring, but this is definitely the work of an older man, looking back with indulgence and sorrow at his youth. There is no heroism, indeed there is no ideology, and instead we have a sad book, without the charm of 'As I walked out..' or the commitment of 'Homage..' This particular crusader lost his way long before the war was over.. I lost interest in the book long before the end.