James Neugass (1905–1949)

James Neugass was a New Orleans native who was one of the thousands of Americans who went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War against Franco's fascist forces. Neugass was a published poet and his writing reflects this, as it is evocative and moving. The boredom and the horrors of war, the appalling poverty of the Spanish peasants, and even the occasional beauty and humor, are all strikingly depicted in Neugass' journal entries.

Neugass got to Spain in time to drive his ambulance in support of the Lincoln-Washington Brigade in the battles of Tereul and Segura, and to reel away from the ultimate fascist onslaught in the heartbreaking Ebro retreat. Neugass describes the day-to-day lives of the combatants and medical teams, and particularly gives an idea of what it's like to drive a full ambulance along a bomb-cratered road while being attacked from the air.

Here is a passage that gives a pretty good example of the level of writing:

"By midnight, the Major and I were again on the road, headed south to Albacete.

The road was as clean of trucks as the sky was of planes. Not one ounce of lead or a single soldier's footprints had poisoned this landscape; and here we lay in the khaki filth of our executioner's apparel, stew-eyed on groaning nerves, impatient to reach the next theatre of war before the curtain should go up on the latest most stream-lined slaughter. For how many years will we who hate war as no pacifist ever hated war have to fight, and love to kill?

'It is very beautiful here,' said the Major, breaking the silence in which we had traveled for eleven hours. Neither of us likes to talk while we are on the road. There is no need for talking. The human voice is an organ whose use is the planning of campaigns and the giving of orders.

'Yes,' I answered, 'it's a nice spot for a Classification Post.' There were trees for camouflage, ditches deep enough to use for trenches when the planes came over and the ground was soft enough for the quick digging of graves. People are sometimes stupid enough to die in places where a pickaxe has to be used."

I can't remember a book I've read that gives a clearer, more immediate, more human picture of the stress endured by combatants in a war zone.… (meer)