Your name and your deeds were forgotten

Before your bones were dry

And the lie that slew you is buried

Under a deeper lie;

But the thing that I saw in your face

No power can disinherit;

No bomb that ever burst

Shatters the crystal sprit. --in "Looking Back on the Spanish War"

George Orwell wrote the above lines in tribute to an Italian colonel who dies fighting General Francisco Franco's fascist army in 1938. Orwell, who fought in Spain himself, always wrote respectfully, almost religiously, about the foreigners who aided the republicans during the Spanish Civil War.

Most American leftists who know about the civil war revere the veterans of the International Brigades with feelings of awe similar to Orwell's. These men, whatever their motivations, defended a legitimate republication government against a puppet of Hitler and Mussolini when the government of the western democracies only sought to appease the fascists. The failure of appeasement and the resulting World War proved the foresight of the republican supporters. Steven Nelson,a veteran of the civil war who now lives in Truro, Mass., says history's vindication is the greatest reward for having fought in the war.

The first thing one notices about the 74-year-old Nelson is the gentle but active physical presence of a kindly man. Though genuine, this appearance seems somewhat incongruous after one looks a moment longer and notices the long scar, left by a fascist bullet, which runs down his neck. An activist in the American Communist Party for 30 years, Nelson is, above all else, a Marxist and a fighter. These two characteristics made it almost inevitable that Nelson would join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and go to Spain.

Nelson arrived in Spain in February 1937 and fought for more than a year until the International Brigades were sent home by the republicans in 1938. In Spain, he served as the brigade's second-in-command, the political commissar. But only a small part of his career as a Marxist actively seeking change was spent in Spain. Born in Yugoslavia in 1904, Nelson emigrated to the U.S. and became a radical worker in the 1920s, soon joining the Communist Party and becoming embroiled in the battles of the American left. As a party member, Nelson agitated for unions, civil rights, unemployment benefits and other "radical" causes, and yet the months he spent in Spain fighting for an unsuccessful cause are the times of which he is proudest.

About 3300 Americans (most of whom were party members, Nelson says) went to aid the republicans. The volunteers, all young, single men, left the U.S. with passports marked "Not Valid for Spain," because of the U.S. neutralist policy.

When they got where they were not supposed to be, "they had to storm the fortresses" for many of their weapons, Nelson says. He adds that the bravery "was the kind you can only visualize in the Hollywood movies." Hitler sent German tank and aircraft divisions which technologically outdistanced the republican forces, enabling the fascists to bomb Guernica, Madrid and other large population centers in republican control.

Under these conditions, the Lincoln Brigade fought with the other groups in the international column--the Garibaldi Brigade from Italy, the Mazaryk Brigade from Czeckoslovakia--around Madrid at Jarama and Brunette, at Belchitte, Quinto, Catalonia and at the Aragon Front.