A Broken Land

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Cal Jardine was never himself entirely sure how he got so caught up in the counter-revolution that went on to become the Spanish Civil War. Many who knew him put it down to his inability to pass up on a scrap, but initially it was merely from being in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the company of the wrong people, like his one-time sergeant and now good friend, the boxing gym owner and anti-fascist street fighter, Vince Castellano.

His presence in Barcelona at the fateful time came about because he was doing a favour for a valued friend, one that also cocked a mighty snook at the pretensions of Nazi Germany and the stupidity of Aryan eugenics; given his openly stated antipathy to National Socialism, the idea of helping to facilitate, even on the margins, what was being called the People’s Olympiad appealed to him.

The Berlin Olympics, which Adolf Hitler was using as a showcase for his absurd theories on race, were due to take place in mid August; the idea of pre-empting that with a socialist set of competitions, as well as demonstrating there was another, saner world, had come from many sources, though it had to be admitted the organisers were no more Cal Jardine’s natural bedfellows than those who claimed to be part of the master race.

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