his back to the side of the building, he took sack by sack from the ba- 
rricade. Holding them in front of him in direct fire of the enemy he piled 
them in the new position until the whole barricade was moved forward. 
Later on we began to advance through the buildings by breaking 
holes in those thick Spanish walls until we reached a commanding po- 
sition from which we began harassing the Fascists by sniping. 
During our advance we heard voices in the cellar of a building 
and we discovered there was a large number of Fascist soldiers and ci- 
vilians downstairs. A Spanish officer was sent to talk to them. He 
told them through the cellar window what the Republican Army is figh- 
ting for and asked them to surrender. After hearing his arguments they 
surrendered, and we also got a number of prisoners in three houses right 
by our barricade.” 

*

As we fought our way into the town all night and all day the Fascists 
were escaping through underground tunnels and passages and concen- 
trating behind a barricade on the street in which our Battalion H.Q. was, 
but in the other direction from the Church. Their main point of resis- 
tance was a very big stone house about thirty yards behind the barri- 
cade. The barricade blocked the street to a large Plaza, a strategic 
point commanded by the Fascists. By their possession of that Plaza the 
Fascists controlled that entire end of the town. 
All our efforts to take this key-point were unsuccessful that day. 
There was a gully leading from our Battalion H.Q. to the street about 
fifteen yards from the Fascist stronghold. We would sneak up the gu- 
lly as close to the street as we could, heave a grenade over at the house 
in an attempt to make to it bounce off the house and into the street whe- 
re the Fascists were barricaded. We tried to have the grenades bounce 
off in many different ways but none of them proved very successful. The 
Fascists had a higher position and therefore their grenades travelled 
further than ours and they threw plenty of them into the gully to keep 
us inside the factory. 
Next we tried to make our way to the end of the street by breaking 
through the walls of the adjoining house. But this was also a failure. 
We also tried another method. We filled up sandbags with dirt and 
threw them into the gully, attempting to build up a barricade of our 
own. Every time we threw out a sandbag the Fascists countered with 
a hand-grenade or two and the barricade therefore was not a very 
good one. 
We besieged this position all day and we took turns keeping guard 

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