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Spanish Civil War memorial plaque

In June 2011, at a ceremony in the Wellington City Council chamber, a plaque was unveiled by Mayor Celia Wade-Brown and the then Spanish Ambassador, Snr Marcos Gomez. It reads, ‘In grateful memory of all New Zealanders who contributed to the defence of freedom in Spain (1936-1939) “For Spain and Humanity”’.

The phrase ‘For Spain and Humanity’ was the motto of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, the largest of the relief organisations that raised funds for the victims of the civil war. ‘For Spain and Humanity’ is also the last verse of the Andalusian Anthem, first performed a week before the outbreak of civil war. When democracy was restored in Spain after almost 40 years of dictatorship, the song was reinstated as the official anthem of the region.

This bronze plaque has now been installed on the Wellington waterfront, a fitting location since several New Zealanders who served in Spain worked on the wharves. One of those was Jim Hoy, a member of the British Battalion of the International Brigades who was later elected secretary of the Wellington Waterside Workers Union. Jim’s widow Maureen and his two daughters Dolores and Penny attended the unveiling ceremony in Wellington.

It is the only known memorial to the New Zealanders who took part in the Spanish Civil War.

Credit:

Main image: Jamie Mackay, 2012

Other image: Mark Derby, June 2011

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New Zealanders in the Spanish Civil War

The following list names those from New Zealand, or who later came to live in New Zealand, for whom there is evidence of their involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Those whose names appear in bold face were killed in action in that war.

Name	Birth date and place	Death date and place	Spanish Civil War service
Angermann, Dr Marianne	1904, Germany	1977, NZ	Medical assistant, Republican Army medical services, 1936–39
Belcher, William Redmond Morrison	1 January 1912, Geelong, Australia	14 February 1999, Waiheke Island	Anarchist militia, 1936–1938
Bielschowsky, Dr Franz David	1902, Germany	Dunedin, 1965	Doctor, Republican Army medical services, 1936–39
Bryan, Herbert Richard	1908, Timaru	1961, Dunedin	British Battalion, International Brigades, 1938
Cox, Sir Geoffrey Sandford	7 April 1910, Rangitikei	2 April 2008, Gloucestershire, England	Journalist, Madrid, October–December 1936
Cross, Phllip E.	17 March 1906, Hamilton	14 February 1965, Whangarei	Nationalist (pro-Franco) army, 1936–37
De Treend, Leonardo Pedro	6 October 1919, San Sebastian, Spain	(living in Hastings, NZ)	POUM and militia, 1937–38
Dodds, Isobel (later McGuire)	15 September 1913, Auckland	(living in Auckland)	Nurse, International Brigades, July 1937–October 1938
Droescher, Werner Otto	5 January 1911, Karlsruhe, Germany	1979, Auckland,	Anarchist and other militia, 1936–38
Ford, Robert	1910, US	1993, Auckland	Lincoln Battalion, International Brigades, May 1937–October 1938
Gray, Bernard Maurice	20 May 1912, Masterton	1984, Lower Hutt	British Battalion, International Brigades
Griffiths, Eric Neville	9 September 1912, England	23 February 1942, Nadi, Fiji	Pilot, Spanish Air Force, 1936–37
Hoy, Jim	26 February 1910, Liverpool, UK	18 December 1997, Wellington	British Battalion, International Brigades, 1938 (?)
Jolly, Dr Douglas Waddell	16 December 1904, Cromwell	19 December 1983, Surrey, England	Lieutenant-surgeon, Republican Army Medical Corps, February 1937–October 1938
Kent, John Horatio (Jack)	Eltham, February 1911	31 May 1937, Barcelona, Spain	Volunteer for International Brigades
McDonald, William Murn	1913, Dunedin	1968, Lisbon, Portugal	Abraham Lincoln and Garibaldi Battalions, International Brigades, January 1937–October 1938
MacIntosh, Dr Robert Reynolds	17 October 1897, Timaru	28 August 1989, England	Anaesthetist, Nationalist Army medical services, 1937
Maclaurin, Griffith Campbell	19 September 1909, Auckland	10 November 1936, Madrid	Commune de Paris Battalion, International Brigades, November 1936
Maclure, Alexander Crocker	25 November 1911, Montreal, Canada	October 1937, Fuentes de Ebro	‘Mac-Pap’ and Lincoln Battalions, International Brigades, March –October 1937
Madigan, William, aka ‘Martinez’	24 July 1916, Wellington (?)	1938, Spain	Lincoln Battalion, International Brigades, 1 937–38
Montgomery, Dr Gladys	4 June 1891, Hamilton	23 December 1969, Auckland	Doctor, British medical unit, 1937
Morris, Dorothy A.	c. 1903–04, Christchurch (?)	23 January 1998, Christchurch	Nurse, International Brigades, February 1937–39
Riley, Charles Francis (Dennis)	1893, Stepney, London	21 November 1982, Lower Hutt	British Battalion, International Brigades, 1937–38
Robertson, Frederick Holmes	15 February, Cairo, Egypt,	1937, Jarama, Spain	British Battalion, International Brigades, 1937
Russell, Sir Peter	24 October 1913, Christchurch	22 June 2006, Oxford, UK	Covert intelligence agent, British government
Shadbolt, René (Renee) Mary	26 April 1903, Duvauchelle, Akaroa	16 August 1977, Henderson, Auckland	Nursing sister, International Brigades, February 1937–October 1938
Sharples, Rubi Millicent (née Milner)	1892, Temuka	4 April 1945, Auckland	Nurse, International Brigades, July 1937–May 1938
Spiller, Herbert Leonard (Tom)	1909, Napier	12 December 1984, Wellington	British Battalion, International Brigades, 1937
Texidor, Greville	1902, London	1962, Australia	Women’s militia, anarchist militia, supporting orphaned children
Wilson, Beryl Una	8 March 1907, NZ	1993, Auckland	Theatre nurse, International Brigades, December 1936–1938
Yates, Steve	c. 1895, NZ	10 November 1936, Madrid	Commune de Paris Battalion, International Brigades, November 1936

This table is an updated version of the original contained in Mark Derby (ed.), Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 2009.

The researchers and authors welcome any further information on the above names, and on others we may have missed. Please contact: Spanish War, c/-Labour History Project, PO Box 27-425, Wellington, email [email protected]">[email protected], or leave a community contribution below.

Douglas Jolly

Described by US medical historian David Adams as ‘one of the most notable war surgeons of the 20th century’, Douglas Waddell Jolly was born in Cromwell, Central Otago in 1904 and graduated from Otago Medical School in 1929. There he became an active member of the Student Christian Movement and its non-sectarian Christian socialism would remain a guiding principle of his life.

After working as a house surgeon in public hospitals, Jolly left for London in 1932 to study for specialist qualifications in surgery. Soon after the Spanish Civil War broke out in mid-1936, he abandoned his studies to join a British volunteer medical unit in Spain. He was given the rank of captain in the Republican Army and instructed to lead a 12-person mobile surgical unit facing fierce attacks around the city of Madrid. For the next two years he was present at many of the most crucial and devastating battles of the civil war. Operating impartially on troops and civilians, he developed a system of mobile emergency surgery that later became standard both in war- and peace-time.

During the final Republican offensive in the summer of 1938, a large emergency hospital was set up in a huge cave alongside the Ebro River. Jolly wrote,

For weeks and months flights of 50 to 80 heavy bombers bombarded the Republican communication lines almost daily; yet... Even the most serious abdominal wounds rarely failed to reach the operating table and… almost half survived, whereas in the First World War only one third lived.

For his work under these conditions, Jolly was awarded the Republican Army’s Medalla del Ebro.

His colleagues on the Spanish battlefront regarded him as one of the great figures of that war. A fellow surgeon, Dr Moises Broggi, recalls him as a ‘top quality surgeon who was very popular with the Spanish’, while the British doctor Sir Archibald Cochrane thought he was ‘the most important volunteer to come from the British Commonwealth’.

Jolly left Spain along with all other foreign volunteers in late 1938. His demobilisation papers described him as,

Excellent as a surgeon, courageous and totally reliable… He has always wanted to operate as close as possible to the firing line. His relations with the comrades are magnificent. Although not affiliated to any organization, he is an excellent anti-fascist.

He first returned to New Zealand and made a nationwide speaking tour to bring attention to the situation of Republican refugees and International Brigades prisoners. He then went back to Britain where he recorded his experiences in a medical manual, Field Surgery in Total War, published in October 1940. It became required reading in the US Army Medical Service during the Second World War. According to one US authority, C.E. Welch, Jolly’s methods ‘undoubtedly contributed more to the saving of lives of patients with abdominal wounds than any other single factor’. In Korea and Vietnam the mobile hospitals used by the US Army and its allies were based directly on the mobile surgical units that Jolly described in his book.

In the early stages of the Second World War it was even proposed to set up mobile surgical units for New Zealand’s home defence use. That idea was soon abandoned but was put into practice with New Zealand forces overseas. In 1940 Arthur Sims, a wealthy New Zealander based in London, offered to provide and equip a mobile surgical unit for use in the North African campaign. The unit saw action at Sidi Oman on the Libyan border until it was disbanded in February 1942.

Jolly himself joined Britain’s Royal Army Medical Corps and was assigned to Tobruk with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was later transferred to Italy as senior medical officer of the New Zealand Hospital in Naples. For his service in the Second World War he was awarded a military OBE, the citation referring to his ‘untiring zeal and quiet but thorough methods’.

After the war Jolly never gained the surgical qualification he had abandoned in order to volunteer for Spain. He married Englishwoman Jessica Kain and they lived in the village of West Horsley, Surrey. In 1951 he joined the staff of Queen Mary’s Hospital at Roehampton, near London, an internationally renowned orthopaedic centre, and eventually became its chief medical officer. Dr Douglas Jolly died after a long illness in 1983.

By Mark Derby

Further information

A. Cochrane with M. Blythe, One Man’s Medicine, The Memoir Club, 1989
Character report on D. Jolly and other non-Communist British volunteers in International Brigades, 12 December 1938, Russian Centre for Preservation and Study of Recent Historical Documents, Moscow
C. E. Welch, ‘War wounds of the abdomen’, New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 237, 1947
D. Jolly, Field Surgery in Total War, Hamish Hamilton Medical Books, 1941
David B. Adams, ‘Douglas Waddell Jolly as a pioneer in the surgical treatment of trauma’, Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, September 1990, vol. 171
Lt. Col. D. W. Jolly, military service record, Army Personnel Centre, MS Support Division, Glasgow, UK
Mark Derby (ed.), Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 2009
New Zealanders in the Spanish Civil War (NZHistory.net.nz)

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Spanish Medical Aid Committee ambulance

Ambulance bought by the Dunedin branch of the SMAC for the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC), the Communist Party, and a number of trade unions raised enough funds through raffles, exhibitions, film screenings and public talks from civil war veterans to send three nurses – René Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples – directly from New Zealand to Spain.

Money was also raised to buy a field laundry truck and ambulance for the Republican army, as well as medical supplies for the refugee camps established across the French border.

Credit:

SMAC records, Jackson Collection.
Reproduced courtesy of Susan Skudder

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Spanish Medical Aid Committee poster

A leaflet produced by the Christchurch branch of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC) during the Spanish Civil War.

The only organised contingent from New Zealand to the Spanish Civil War was of three nurses, René Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples. They were recruited by SMAC and were used as promotional tool by the organisation. Their photographs were used on posters (such as here), and their letters home were printed in newspapers and in SMAC's regular newsletter. When Shadbolt and Dodds arrived back in New Zealand in January 1939 they continued to work for SMAC, embarking upon a six-week speaking tour to raise awareness of and money for the hundreds of thousands of Republican refugees in France.

Credit:

Christchurch SMAC records, Item 6. Jack Locke Deposit, Canterbury University Library
Reproduced courtesy of Susan Skudder

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Dr Doug Jolly

Cromwell-born surgeon Doug Jolly having a quick cigarette during a break from his medical duties.

Dr Doug Jolly served in the Republican Army Medical Service during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1938. He was an influential figure in the field of military medical practice.

See also a biography of Dr Jolly

Credit:

SAMC records, courtesy of Susan Skudder

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douglas jolly

Spanish Civil War maps

These maps show the changes in Republican- and Nationalist-held areas during the first half of the Spanish Civil War.

The struggle for Madrid in November 1936 saw the 3000 members of the International Column and their Spanish comrades halt the Nationalist advance. Madrid withstood continual bombing and artillery bombardment until it eventually fell to nationalist forces in March 1939.

During 1937 Franco’s Nationalist forces were boosted by the arrival of Italian troops and Spanish colonial soldiers from Morocco, and later by the arrival of the German Condor Legion equipped with Heinkel He 51 aircraft. The Condor Legion was responsible for the infamous bombing of civilians at Guernica in the Basque Country, an event recorded by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.

The Nationalist forces had seized Malaga, Guernica and Bilbao by the middle of the year, but were still unable to capture Madrid. The cities of Santander and Gijón soon fell and the Republican army in the Basque region surrendered, effectively ending Republican resistance in the north. By the end of November 1937 Franco's troops were closing in on the Republican capital at Valencia, forcing the government to move to Barcelona.

The Republicans enjoyed a morale-boosting victory in January 1938 when they captured the city of Teruel from the Nationalists. But success was short-lived. Relying heavily on German and Italian air support the city was back in Nationalist hands within a month.

In early March the Nationalists launched an offensive that swept through to the Mediterranean, successfully dividing the Republican-held portion of Spain in two. In May the government attempted to negotiate a peace settlement but a supremely confident Franco demanded its unconditional surrender.

The fighting intensified as the Nationalists advanced on Valencia. In late July 1938 the Republicans launched a full-scale offensive in a bid to reconnect their territories. The four-month Battle of the Ebro failed to reunite Republican territory. Nearly 40,000 lives were lost – 30,000 on the Republican side alone. This fighting took place against the backdrop of the Franco-British appeasement of Hitler at Munich. The Munich Agreement, which effectively handed Germany Czechoslovakia on a plate, was soul destroying for the Republicans, who now realised that no anti-fascist alliance with Britain and France was going to come to the rescue.

The situation in November 1938.

The defeat at Ebro was the beginning of the end. Franco now prepared for the invasion of Catalonia and the city of Barcelona. The principal Catalan cities were captured by early February 1939. Two weeks later Britain and France recognised the Franco regime.

Madrid and Valencia remained as the key Republican strongholds thwarting Franco. Madrid fell on 28 March and the next day Valencia also surrendered. Franco proclaimed victory in a radio speech aired on 1 April 1939, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered

Credit:

The map images on this page are from Wikimedia Commons

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Dan Davin and Winifred Gonley

A portrait of Dan Davin and his wife Winifred Gonley taken in London.

Davin’s short story ‘The Hydra’ was based on the life of Alex MacLure, a communist who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. It was later published in his collection, The gorse blooms pale (1947). Davin fought in Greece and Crete during the Second World War. He wrote a novel and a collection of short stories about his wartime experiences, as well as the official history of the Battle for Crete.

Read more: Biography of Dan Davin in the DNZB

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-6304-40
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Rene Shadbolt

René Shadbolt led the only New Zealand contingent to the Spanish Civil War. She and fellow nurse Isobel Dodds cared for wounded soldiers, particularly those from the International Brigades, from July 1937 to November 1938.

René Mary Shadbolt (known to her family as Sis) was born in Akaroa in April 1903. She began her nursing training at St Helens maternity hospital in Auckland in 1927 and graduated in 1932. By 1936 she was head sister of Auckland Hospital's casualty ward.

Shadbolt had been ‘nudged leftward by the urban misery of the Depression years’, though she was not a member of any particular political party. She was horrified that some doctors and nurses were reluctant to treat patients wounded by police batons during street marches and riots. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she was among the first to volunteer for a contingent of New Zealand nurses being put together by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC). She was appointed to lead the group, which was made up of Isobel Dodds, a 22-year-old staff nurse from Wellington Hospital, and Millicent Sharples, aged 46, who worked at a private hospital in Levin. Shadbolt told an Auckland newspaper that she believed the group could 'be of some service to people in need'.

Prior to their departure on 18 May 1937 the group was detained by police for a number of hours. Shadbolt was accused of being the secretary of a communist cell. She retorted that she'd 'never even been a secretary of a tennis club'. Eventually the group was released in time to meet their ship. They arrived in Spain on 15 July.

Their first posting was to a large makeshift International Brigade hospital in Huete, central Spain. Shadbolt and Dodds stayed there until mid 1938 when the hospital was evacuated to Barcelona. They continued to care for wounded soldiers, particularly those from the International Brigades, until November 1938.

On their return to New Zealand in January 1939 Shadbolt and Dodds worked for SMAC. In February they embarked upon a six week speaking tour to raise awareness of and money for the hundreds of thousands of Republican refugees in France. Shadbolt had more reason than others to continue this work. Unbeknownst to SMAC, she had married one of her patients, Willi Remmel, a German member of the International Brigade, during her time in Spain. Following the completion of the tour she made numerous appeals on his behalf to the New Zealand government and other agencies, never mentioning the fact that they had married. Remmel was denied entry into New Zealand and the two never met again.

Like others who had served in the Spanish Civil War, Shadbolt was marked as 'dangerously political' and initially found it difficult to find work. Eventually she was employed at a private hospital in Martinborough. During the Second World War she worked at an Auckland convalescent home for returned soldiers and back at Auckland Hospital. She remarried in 1944 but was divorced 11 years later. In 1949 she became matron of Hokianga Hospital, where she remained until 1967. Following representations of the people of Hokianga she was made an MBE in 1969. She was widely mourned on her death in 1977.

Shadbolt remains the only New Zealander who served in the Spanish Civil War to have a memorial. The New Lynn Borough Council renamed a local reserve in her honour on 23 February 1942.

biography of René Shadbolt on the DNZB website
Maurice Shadbolt, One of Ben's, David Ling Publishing, Auckland: 1993.
Renee Shadbolt 'Snow and springtime' in Jim Fyrth and Sally Alexander (eds.), Women's voices from the Spanish Civil War, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1991.
Dear Tim get your own park (NZ Herald)
New Zealand medical support in the Spanish Civil War

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NZ nurses detained on way to Spanish Civil War

Most of the handful of New Zealanders who served in the Spanish Civil War made their own way to Spain from Britain and Australia. The only organised New Zealand contingent comprised three nurses: René Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples.

The nurses were recruited by the New Zealand Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC), which was formed in February 1937 after it became clear that New Zealand would not officially support the Republican government. SMAC initially planned to send a doctor, two nurses, an orderly and an ambulance to Spain. This more ambitious plan was abandoned in favour of sending aid more quickly. René Shadbolt, aged 33, the head sister in Auckland Hospital’s casualty ward, was appointed to lead the group. Isobel Dodds, aged 22, a staff nurse from Wellington Hospital, and 46-year-old Millicent Sharples, who worked at a private hospital in Levin, made up the rest of the contingent.

On the day they were to leave Auckland, 18 May 1937, the nurses were summoned to the Central Police Station and interrogated for three hours about their reasons for going. The police took a ‘slightly different tactic’ with each woman. Shadbolt was accused of being a member of the Communist Party and Dodds of having an illegitimate child. Sharples, the oldest member of the group, was seen as simply naïve. Though the nurses were released in time to board the Awatea, SMAC was outraged. It wrote to the government demanding an explanation and an inquiry. Neither was forthcoming, although Police Minister Peter Fraser – a family friend of Dodds – eventually admitted that the government had over-reacted to a fear that ‘three dedicated revolutionaries [would be] flying New Zealand’s flag in Spain’.

The nurses arrived in Spain, via Australia and England, on 15 July 1937. They were initially based at a large makeshift International Brigade hospital in Huete, 75 km south-east of Madrid. Shadbolt and Dodds remained there until mid-1938, when the fighting came too close and the hospital was evacuated to Barcelona.

By this time Sharples had left Spain. She had been posted to the Aragon front as an ambulance driver in October 1937. Then, following several other transfers, SMAC recalled her to New Zealand. It is unclear what prompted this, but SMAC was certainly displeased with her performance after her return to New Zealand. In July 1938 it severed all official connections with her.

Shadbolt and Dodds, meanwhile, continued to be a key promotional tool for SMAC in New Zealand. Their photographs were used on posters, and their letters home appeared in newspapers and in SMAC’s regular newsletter. After a month’s leave in England in June 1938 the pair returned to Spain to work in a large hospital at Mataro, near Barcelona. As the Republican forces continued to retreat they were evacuated to Barcelona. They left the city shortly after a ‘stirring and emotional’ farewell parade of the International Brigades on 15 November.

Dodds and Shadbolt arrived back in New Zealand in January 1939. While seeking nursing positions they continued to work for SMAC. In February they embarked upon a six-week speaking tour to raise awareness of and money for the hundreds of thousands of Republican refugees in France.

Image: Nurse Dodds, Sister Shadbolt and Nurse Sharples