(1913-2006)
Royal Medical Army Corps, International Brigades, Royal Air Force
ALUN WILLIAMS, eldest son of Welsh poet, Huw Menai, was born in 1913 in the Rhondda coal community of Gilfach Goch, Britain. At age 14, Williams and his best friend, Billy Davies, started working in the coalmines during a "very chaotic" time when unemployment was high in Britain. It was pick and shovel in the mines since they didn't have machinery in them yet. Alun Williams had first hand experience that the work was dangerous - he survived being buried alive.
The League of Nations in 1935 deliberately voted to impose ineffectual sanctions against Fascist Italy for the invasion of Ethiopia. The invasion could've been stopped if the league had voted for an oil embargo on Italy and blocked access for Italian war ships to use the Suez Canal in Egupt. The Italians killed tens of thousands of Ethiopian civilians through the use of posionous gas during the war and occupation that lasted until 1942.
Returning home from guarding the Suez Canal after six months and witnessing fascism invading a defenseless nation, Williams found out that his best friend had been wounded fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which started the day Williams left Egypt, and another friend had been killed fighting for the anti-fascist Republican forces. Williams decided to act: "I was a real anti-fascist," he recalls, "I was real involved in anti-fascist activities. I didn't like what Hitler and Mussolini were doing to their countries. I didn't want the same thing happen to my country."
In October 1936, Sir Oswald Mosley, creator and head of the British Union of Fascists and its paramilitary: the 'blackshirts', organized a march through a Jewish neighborhood of London. Anti-fascist counter-demonstrators tried to stop the march and clashed with the police, who were trying to force the march through. The riot that insued came to be known as the Battle of Cable Street. Alun Williams remembers being there:
The Battle of Cable Street caused the BUF march to be called off and legislation, caused by the riot, passed which banned political uniforms - thus weakening Mosley's BUF and blackshirts.
After returning from Egypt and participating in the Battle of Cable Street, Williams decided to follow his best friend, Billy, to Spain and join the International Brigades.
"The civil war broke out due to a bunch of Spanish generals [who wanted to] overthrow the legitimate government of Republican Spain. As an anti-fascist and a paramedic, I thought I might be of some particular use in that struggle at the time." Williams was 24 years old at the time.
William's first attempt to get to Spain in January 1937, without the knowledge of his family, failed. He was arrested and spent 14 days in a French jail before being sent back to Britain. The next month, he was sucessful on getting smuggled onto a ship heading from Marseilles, France to Barcelona, Spain.
"I was on the ship, Ciudad de Barcelona. There was quite a number of American volunteers in the ship." (see Abe Osheroff) The Ciudad de Barcelona packed with 250 international volunteers was struck by an Italian torpedo two miles off shore and twenty miles from Barcelona. Fasicst Italy was suppose to be neutral in the conflict - but that was only on paper. The ship sunk and 80 men drowned. "It was in May," Williams recalls, "the water wasn't too cold, and I was a good swimmer. I could keeo afloat for a while." That "while" turned out to be four hours before Spanish fishermen rescued the stranded Welshman.