The XVth Brigade commander, Vladimir Copic, who had a penchant for singing opera and staying away from the front lines, ordered the executions, Copeman said, and they were reluctantly carried out by Sam Wild, the battalion commander.

The perspectives on Copic were predictably varied. Jason Gurney believed he was "an utterly unprincipled brute who would swear that black was white if it suited his convenience, and his only genius lay in his capacity for intrigue." Robert Merriman, the commander of the Lincolns, loathed Copic's arrogance and held him responsible for the decimation of the American battalion on February 27, 1937, by forcing it into an impossible attack. On the other hand, from a British commissar's perspective, Copic "symbolises proletarian strength," an example of the kind of man "our class produces."