At this time the militias, though theoretically being recast on an ordinary army basis, were still organised in columna, centuria, seccion, the centuria of about 100 men more or less centring round some individual and often being called ‘So-and-so’s bandera’.3 The commander of the centuria ranked more or less as captain, but below that there was no well-defined rank except corporal and private. People wore stripes etc. of rank in Barcelona but it was ‘not done’ to wear them at the front. Theoretically promotion was by election, but actually the officers and NCOs were appointed from above. As I shall point out later this does not in practice make much difference. One peculiar feature however was that a man could choose which section he should belong to and as a rule could also change to another bandera if he wanted to. At that time men were being sent into the line with only a few days’ training and that of a parade-ground kind, and in many cases without ever having fired a rifle. I had brought with me ordinary British Army ideas and was appalled by the lack of discipline. It is [of] course always difficult to get recruits to obey orders and becomes much more so when they find themselves thrust into trenches and having to put up with cold etc. which they are not accustomed to. If they have not had a chance to familiarise themselves with firearms they are often much more afraid of bullets than they need be and this is an added source of indiscipline. (Incidentally a lot of harm was done by the lies published in the leftwing papers to the effect that the Fascists were using explosive bullets. So far as I know there is no such thing as an explosive bullet,4 and certainly the Fascists weren’t using them.) At the beginning one had to get orders obeyed (a) by appealing to party loyalty and (b) by force of personality, and for the first week or two I made myself thoroughly unpopular. After about a week a man flatly refused to go to a certain place which he declared was exposed to fire, and I made him do so by force – always a mistake, of course, and doubly so with a Spaniard. I was immediately surrounded by a ring of men calling me a Fascist. There was a tremendous argument, however most of the men took my side and I found that people rather competed to join my section. After this, for some weeks or months, both among the Spaniards and the few English who were on this front, this kind of thing recurred over and over again. Ie. indiscipline, arguments as to what was justifiable and what was ‘revolutionary’, but in general a consensus of opinion that one must have strict discipline combined with social equality. There was always a lot of argument as to whether it was justifiable to shoot men for desertion and disobedience, and in general people agreed that it was, though some would never do so. Much later, about March, near Huesca, some 200 CNT troops suddenly decided to walk out of the line. One could hardly blame them as they had been there about five months, but obviously such a thing could not be allowed and there was a call for some POUM troops to go and stop them. I volunteered though not feeling very happy about it. Fortunately they were persuaded to go back by their political delegates or somebody, so it never came to violence. There was a lot of argument about this, but again the majority agreed that it would be justifiable to use one’s rifle against men doing this if necessary. Throughout this period, ie. January-April 1937 the gradual improvement in discipline was brought about almost entirely by ‘diffusion of revolutionary consciousness’, ie. endless arguments and explanations as to why such and such a thing was necessary. Everyone was fanatically keen on keeping social equality between officers and men, no military titles and no differences of food etc., and this was often carried to lengths that were rather ridiculous, though they seemed less ridiculous in the line where minute differences of comfort were very appreciable. When the militias were theoretically incorporated in the Popular Army5 all officers were expected to pay their extra pay ie. anything over 10 pesetas a day, into the Party funds, and everyone agreed to do so, though whether this actually happened I don’t know, because I am not certain whether anyone actually began drawing extra pay before the POUM militia was redistributed. Punishments for disobedience were, however, being used even at the time when I first reached the front. It is extremely difficult to punish men who are already in the front line, because short of killing them it is hard to make them more uncomfortable than they are already. The usual punishment was double hours of sentry-go – very unsatisfactory because everyone is already short of sleep. Occasionally men were shot. One man who attempted to cross to the Fascist lines and was clearly a spy was shot. Another caught stealing from other militiamen was sent back supposedly to be shot, though I don’t think he actually was. Courts martial were supposed to consist of one officer, one NCO and one militiaman, though I never saw one in action.